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But the last fortnight has brought a promising new burst of activity in McNutt's air-conditioned offices. He worked out the voluntary freeze of Western miners and a similar plan for the Northwest lumber industry. He set up management-labor committees in cities where shortages are worst. He persuaded the Army & Navy to check with draft boards before accepting enlistments, and set up a drastic manpower plan for Government employes (who henceforth are subject to being moved to new jobs anywhere the Civil Service Commission sees fit). And before the House Tolan Committee, he made the strongest, clearest case yet for giving him similar power over all American workers.
His figures proved the need. To man the U.S. war effort (Army, Navy and war workers) WMC will have to shift about 18,000,000 men & women from one job to another, from home to factory, from school to farm. It will be the greatest occupational shift in U.S. history.
Yet the Administration still shies from the all-out control of manpower. A National Service Act is definitely out until after elections. Even then there is no assurance that Washington can bring itself to face the inevitable. But if Washington will not go to the inevitable, the inevitable is already on its way to Washington.
The shadow of things to come—when the inevitable arrives in Washington—is already cast by manpower control in Britain. There the Ministry of Labor under Ernest Bevin disposes of all manpower—for both military service and industry. No British industry can exist today without the Labor Ministry's blessing: it has transferred workers to plants hundreds of miles away, puts them to work at new jobs. No worker can leave a war job, and no employer can fire a man, without the Ministry's permission. Britain has registered all men & women, classified them by skills and experience, decided where and how they shall work.
The mature, relatively conservative British trade-union system—in contrast to the adolescent turmoil of U.S. management-labor relations—provided a favorable backdrop for such drastic decisions. Moreover the British law is democratic in intention: it treats all citizens alike, workers moved under the plan get travel expenses and an allowance for living away from home, those who think they have been treated unjustly can take grievances to joint management-labor committees which constitute a jury of their peers. But in the name of war, Britons live under a totalitarian labor system.
Of 16,000,000 men between 14 and 64, Britain now has 14,100,000 in the armed forces and at essential war jobs. Of 17,300,000 women in this age group, 7,800,000 are in uniform or at work. When the U.S. has a combined military, war-worker and essential-industry force of 61,000,000 it will reach the same stage of mobilization—and know what total war means.
Brainpower. But the U.S. cannot solve its manpower problem until it has first used its brainpower. Up to now the problem of manpower has been treated like the problem of raw materials (see p. 24) —by recklessly creating more & more priorities without regard to the realistic fact of how much is actually available.