The day is not far distant when men may say: All troubles lead to Paul Mc-Nutt.
The man who best understands that fact is named McNutt. For a few—only a few —of those troubles have begun to arrive.
To his War Manpower Commission office in one day last week came a frantic telegram from Washington's big Yakima Valley applegrowers (they needed 35,000 more pickers right away or they would lose their crop), came the problem of a shipment of planes all ready to go to General MacArthur except for a single part (to come from a plant whose workers have been stolen by another factory), came an ugly message from one of McNutt's regional aides (a group of West Coast farmers, unable to get labor, threatened to plant no crops for next year).
But for every manpower problem that has arrived, 100 or 1,000 are on their way. The only way to glimpse the catastrophic size of the problem is to take stock of conditions in a few sample spots—conditions often individually ridiculous but in the aggregate appalling:
> In Buffalo, where "scamping" (pirating of workers) has become a fine art, foremen make the rounds of war workers' homes, to lure them to new jobs. One plant sent telegrams to another's workmen, offering them all good jobs—sight unseen—at 7:30 next morning. Personnel managers were saying: "the way to get one good man is to hire four because three will quit."
> In Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh Coal Co. has had a 35% turnover since Pearl Harbor, needs 400 more miners than it can find—and it takes longer (two years) to train a miner than a soldier.
> In Seattle, the aircraft mechanics' union lost 2,518 members in a single month: a third to the Army, the rest to higher-paid jobs in the shipyards. In one little alloys plant with 50 vital employes, 18 left for the shipyards in a single week.
> In Los Angeles a small steel-castings company figures that with 60 steady common laborers it could increase production 20%, has tried in vain for three months to find the men; of its 500 workers. 10% are absent every day, mostly looking for better jobs. (Last week the personnel manager said: "Well, another of our old employes just left us; he was with us three and a half days.") The Lockheed plant has 6,000 stars in its service flag, is adding 300 a month.
> In Chattanooga a want ad summarized the local situation: "WANTED: Registered druggist—young or old, deaf or dumb. Must have license and walk without crutches. Apply Cloverleaf Drug Store."
> In Portland, Henry Kaiser's burgeoning shipyards hired so many workers that department stores have taken quarter-page ads for clerks; the draft takes 1,000 men a month from Kaiser's yards. Last week, impatient of waiting for Washington to act, Kaiser set up his own manpower system, went to New York City (whose 400,000 unemployed are one of the few real labor pools left in the U.S.), signed up 4,000 men in three days, shipped them across the continent.