A straight-faced OWI press release last week was the first public sign of a war production scandal that has long seethed underground in Washington. The brief announcement said only that Colonel Charles R. Baxter of Army Ordnance had been made Chief of a new Materials Redistribution Branch of WPB, successor to the Inventory & Requisitioning Branch. But it meant that after ten wasted months the U.S. was finally going to do something about frustrated freight.
Frustrated freight is the Washington nickname for goods that were manufactured, paid for, consigned and ready for shipment to...