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War industry took top priority by boosting wages. The Army took a higher priority by the draft. War industry took a still higher priority by getting draft deferments. The draft took still higher priority by ordering reclassifications.
In all this no adequate calculation has been made of civilian needs. The population must be fed, clothed and given at least the bare necessities of life. But to date the armed services and war industry have made their claims on manpower without calculating what share of the total pool was available for them.
Nor has Administration brainpower yet been put into drafting a manpower law. McNutt has not presented such a bill to Congress. Last week two such bills were finally offered by individual Senators. Warren R. Austin (Vermont) introduced a bill to draft men 18 to 65 for war production. Lister Hill (Alabama) proposed one broader still to authorize the President to invoke "universal service and total mobilization." But the nation had still to do its serious thinking on the problem.
Willpower. Sometimes it has appeared that even McNutt, whom critics had once called a Man on Horseback, is afraid of his job—and well he may be. If he does not get the power to act, the manpower problem will go screaming into chaos, and all the black blame will be his. If he gets the power, he will have the tough, delicate, dirty job of administering a law that affects the lives, ambitions, hopes and fears of 132,000,000 citizens. If he succeeds, he may be a national hero. If he fails, he may well become the most hated man in the U.S.
At 51, Paul McNutt is at the turning point of his career. Far behind him now is the period of unabashed politicking which lifted him to dean of Indiana University's law school, National Commander of the American Legion, Governor of Indiana, a sure nomination as 1940's Democratic candidate for Vice President had he not rejected it in favor of Franklin Roosevelt's man Henry Wallace.
When he took the job of Manpower Commissioner, wise old Editor William Allen White had already written his political death warrant: "Paul Vories McNutt is merely Garner in a high hat, a white vest, a pongee-silk scarf, pumps and the glamor of a movie hero." Today even in Indiana, McNutt has no political support from popular Governor Henry F. Schricker and large slices of the Democratic vote. His future rests on his success in his present job.
In a good many respects, handsome, energetic, clean-living Paul McNutt is a model of the successful American. He and pretty, brown-haired Mrs. McNutt live quietly in a six-room apartment at Washington's fashionable Shoreham .Hotel, keep two dogs, give small dinner parties, play bridge, do a gregarious family's amount of Washington party going. Paul McNutt shoots bad golf at the Burning Tree Golf Club, plays good poker with a little group of cronies that includes Presidential Secretary Stephen Early. Mrs. McNutt also golfs, is vice president of Washington's Women's Democratic Club, works for China Relief. Their 21-year-old daughter, Louise, is an honor student at George Washington University.