Squeeze Play

The American war effort has suffered long enough from dead wood at the top. Of Washington's many parasites the first to go should be the multi-millionaire, Houston banker, and Secretary of Commerce, Jesse Jones. While the country has been girding itself for an all-out war effort, Mr. Jones has been craftily amassing power for the sake of power until now he is the third most powerful man in Washington with little to show for his ability as a war leader. Already, of incalculable harm to the defense effort has been his knuckling under to the special interests. For the past two years he's cozily slumbered in the belief that an all-out productive schedule was not necessary, and today he still favors business as usual, though the lists of American soldiers who have died as a result of this disastrous policy are growing. Such inertia and complacency in so powerful a man can only be interpreted as a breach of public faith to a nation fighting to defend itself.

One of the old timers in Washington when the defense program first got under way, Jones was given considerable authority over many of its vital parts. To him went control of all strategic imports, all new defense plants, and the important expansion of aluminum and magnesium factories. With all this control the Secretary of Commerce could have been the most influential man in the Administration, other than the President, in pushing ahead the defense program. But instead he chose to swivel contentedly in his Washington office while the manufacture of tanks, planes, and guns fell behind.

He befriended the worst monopolies in the United States, making sure their rights weren't infringed and that they'd get the lion's share of government orders. As a consequence of his selling out to the American Aluminum Co., plane production was stopped or retarded in many plants. This particular plant simply wouldn't expand to meet the needs of the government. Even now the new Reynolds Co. isn't granted the same advantages as its grasping rival. Jones has tried hard to protect this semi-monopoly, but at the possible expense of an undefended America.

Today with Malaya gone and the rubber plantations of Java scorched, the United Nations are faced with a frightening shortage of rubber. Yet over a year and a half ago Jesse Jones was asked to get started on a 130,000-ton synthetic rubber program. A year later he had contracted for only a third of this requirement, and then only on an experimental basis. By 1944 Jones still won't have produced the required amount of rubber. With tin, it's the same story. He knew what the requirements were but never purchased the necessary stockpiles.

In short, Mr. Jones has failed to do his job in our struggle to arm quickly. He has proved to be incompetent as a war-time leader, and has been one of the greatest bottlenecks the defense program has had to squeeze through. The only way to play safely with our hoped-for production schedules of this year is to get Jones out of any responsible defense position.