¹ Washington, Government Printing Office, Feb. 15, 1944.

² These terminations did not reduce over-all war production. New contracts were constantly being let, often in the same plants where other contracts had been cancelled.

³ See War Department, Procurement Regulation 15.

⁴ See the testimony of James F. Byrnes, Director of War Mobilization, in description of the above process, in Hearings, Subcommittee of Senate Committee on Military Affairs, on S. 1730 and S. 1823, Pt. 7 (June 12, 1944), pp. 250–301.

⁵ For relevant testimony, see ibid., Pt. 9 (July 10, 11, 12, 1944), pp. 520–522.

⁶ No adequate description of the workings of the War Production Board is yet available. However, in broad principle the agency has operated in the same fashion as the War Industries Board of World War I, but with far greater effectiveness and much more highly developed techniques.

⁷ War Production Board, Press Release 5946, June 18, 1944. The general course of action had been foreshadowed in a letter by the chairman to Senator Franeis Maloney on March 7, 1944, reprinted in Cong. Rec. Mar. 9, 1944, p. 2433.

⁸ Federal Register, Vol. 9, pp. 8781–8782.

⁹ Federal Register, Vol. 9, pp. 9202–9203.

¹⁰ It should be noted that during 1944 reconversion of a sort was almost constantly going on. The increased supply of most materials permitted literally hundreds of modifications of regulations. The effect was not a great increase in total civilian production, but a removal of substitution requirements, of limits on the variety of models, and of specification standards designed to conserve materials. Thus steel replaced wood in baby carriages. Individually, these changes were not spectacular, but in the mass they permitted considerable return to normal industrial practice.

¹¹ Federal Register, Vol. 9, pp. 9945–9947.

¹² See New York Times, Sept. 6, 1944. The plans of the War Production Board and related agencies were described by the Director of War Mobilization in a report to the President dated September 7 and printed in full in New York Times, Sept. 10, 1944.

¹³ For a statement of expectations in price policy, see a letter by the Price Administrator to the editor of the New York Times, June 18, 1944.

¹⁴ War Department policies were reflected in successive revisions of its Procurement Regulation 15.

¹⁵ The following agencies were represented on the Board: War, Treasury, Justice, Navy, Reconstruction Finance Corporation, War Production Board, Maritime Commission, Foreign Economic Administration, and the Smaller War Plants Corporation.

¹⁶ The text of these documents is reproduced in Baruch and Hancock, op. cit., pp. 78–90. Exceptions to and interpretations of the termination article were issued as directives of the Director of War Mobilization on February 24 and May 2, 1944 (Federal Register, Vol. 9, pp. 2251–2252, 5192).

¹⁷ Federal Register, Vol. 9, p. 5193.

¹⁸ Ibid., Vol. 9, pp. 6134–6136.

¹⁹ Public Law 395, 78th Cong., 2d Sess.

²⁰ The Board was to be composed of the following officials or their representatives: Director of Contract Settlement, Secretary of War, Secretary of the Navy, Secretary of the Treasury, Chairman of the Maritime Commission, Administrator of Foreign Economic Administration, Chairman of the Board of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, Chairman of the War Production Board, Chairman of the Board of the Smaller War Plants Corporation, and the Attorney-General.

²¹ Executive Order 9425, Feb. 19, 1944.

²² The Board was constituted of representatives of State, Treasury, War, Navy, Justice, Reconstruction Finance Corporation, Smaller War Plants Corporation, Maritime Commission, War Production Board, Bureau of the Budget, War Food Administration, Federal Works Agency, Civil Aëronautics Board, and Foreign Economic Administration.

²³ The following language assigned responsibility among disposal agencies, subject to modification by the Administrator: “consumer goods to the Procurement Division of the Department of the Treasury; capital and producers' goods, including plants, equipment, materials, scrap and other industrial property, to a subsidiary of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, …; ships and maritime property to the United States Maritime Commission; and food to the War Food Administration; provided that surplus war property to be disposed of outside the United States, unless otherwise directed by the Director of War Mobilization, shall be assigned, so far as it is deemed feasible by the Administration, to the Foreign Economic Administration.”

²⁴ Federal Register, Vol. 9, pp. 5096–5099.

²⁵ Ibid., Vol. 9, pp. 9183–9185.

²⁶ Ibid., Vol. 9, pp. 9870–9871.

²⁷ Ibid., Vol. 9, p. 7842.

²⁸ For House views on H.R. 5125, which passed the House August 22, 1944, see H. Rep. No. 1757, 78th Cong., 2d Sess. The bill, in a different form, passed the Senate on August 25. See S. Rep. No. 1057, 78th Cong., 2d Sess. For the conference report, see H. Rep. No. 1890, 78th Cong., 2d Sess. The Surplus Property Act (Public Law 457, 78th Cong., 2d Sess.) was approved October 3, 1944.

²⁹ See Kaplan, A. D. H., The Liquidation of War Production (New York, 1944), Chap. III.Google Scholar

³⁰ A recognition of one of these problems was involved in the creation on September 2, 1944, by the Director of War Mobilization, of a War Plants Utilization Committee. Constituted of representatives of the War Production Board, Defense Plants Corporation, Surplus War Property Administration, and War Manpower Commission, it had the duty of seeking ways and means for assuring continued utilization of government-owned plants.

³¹ Executive Order 9427. The Retraining and Reëmployment Administration was given statutory status as a part of the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion, but with powers somewhat less than those it possessed under the executive order. See Public Law 458, 78th Cong., 2d Sess., approved October 3, 1944, Title III.

³² Public Law 346, 78th Cong., 2d Sess., approved June 22, 1944.

³³ The Office was established by Executive Order 9347, May 27, 1943.

³⁴ S. 2051, providing for the creation of an Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion, passed the Senate August 11, 1944. See Senate Report No. 1035, 78th Cong., 2d Sess. On August 31, the bill passed the House, but with important amendments, including the removal from the Senate version of provisions broadening unemployment compensation coverage. See House Report No. 1798, 78th Cong., 2d Sess. For the reconciliation of those differences, see House Report No. 1902, 78th Cong., 2d Sess.

³⁵ In some of the bills (e.g., S. 1893), a “Bureau of Programs” was provided to aid the proposed Director of War Mobilization and Reconversion by maintaining a system of progress reports and by preparing proposed plans for action. The statutory language was somewhat reminiscent of the functions of the National Resources Planning Board, earlier abolished by Congress; but the failure of the bill was attributable to its liberal unemployment insurance provisions.

³⁶ There was some wry speculation about the state in which the country would find itself should the basic military assumption, viz., that Germany would be first defeated, turn out to be wrong.