President Hopkins' Defense Work

OPM Priorities For Minerals and Metals Vital To Armaments Are His Important Responsibility

PRESIDENT HOPKINS NOW IS the Minerals and Metals Executive of the Priorities Division of the Office of Production Management. More concisely, that means that he has been given the exceedingly important job of organizing the unit of the Federal Government which will be responsible for making available for the defense of the Western Hemisphere an adequate supply of copper, steel, aluminum, zinc, nickel, magnesium, manganese, tungsten, chromium, and other needed minerals and metals to build ships, planes, tanks, and guns. It is his task as representative of the Director of Priorities to see that these critical and essential materials are given priority with respect to use in the construction of armaments rather than frying pans, shiny gadgets for automobiles, ice trays for refrigerators, and the thousand-and-one industrial products which consume hundreds of millions of tons of vital minerals and metals annually.

The OPM is divided into three divisions —Production, Purchases, and Priorities. Mr. J. D. Biggers, who has been President of Libby-Owens-Ford Glass Cos., heads up the Production Division; Mr. D. M. Nelson, who has been vice president and chairman of the Executive Committee of Sears-Roebuck Company, heads up the Purchases Division; and Mr. E. R. Stettinius Jr., former chairman of the Board of Directors of the U. S. Steel Company, is Director of Priorities. In the opinion of many, Priorities is the cornerstone of the defense establishment. Produce, yes—but when and what? Purchase, yes—but only after production, based on priorities, is completed. Progress in national defense stems from the Stettinius unit where Dr. Hopkins, quite literally, works the stop-go lights in the "arsenal for democracy" in-so-far as the indispensable metals and minerals are concerned.

The whole business of priorities is complicated and difficult to explain in simple terms. Things are moving so fast, men are working under such tension, and the scene shifts so completely from day to day, that any attempt to describe Dr. Hopkins' work must be hedged about with qualification and modification. Furthermore, in view of the anonymity in which he and many other OPM executives choose to operate in order not to confuse the organization lines, he is not accessible to press interviews about his work. In round terms, however, here is the picture as pieced together from sundry sources having knowledge of the OPM.

When the Army and Navy Munitions Board gives a priority rating to the Fore River ship yard (or any ship building company, airplane plant, or other defense construction agency), for a cruiser, the yard is privileged to extend its priority once. Suppose it needs, among other things, 50 motors as part of the cruiser equipment. It places an order with, let's say, the General Electric Company, calling attention to the urgent need for the material as a part of the national defense program, and stating that it has been given an A-C-3 priority rating by the Munitions Board.

GE finds it difficult to obtain steel for the motors. It writes to OPM, and the problem becomes one for solution by the steel group of Dr. Hopkins' Minerals and Metals Section. But the steel group has already received a similar letter from GE requesting steel for an airplane plant whose priority rating for the particular job at hand reads A-C-2. Whereupon the steel group recommends to Dr. Hopkins that GE be given an A-C-2 priority for steel in order that it may quickly fill the needs of the airplane maker, and an A-C-3 priority for steel for motors for the cruiser. The airplane order moves out of GE ahead of the cruiser order because, in the opinion of the Munitions Board, there is earlier need for the plane than for the cruiser in the whole defense picture.

As chairman on each of the several minerals and metals groups of his division, Dr. Hopkins serves as a clearing house for the tremendous responsibility that has been deposited at his threshold as the authoritative adviser of Mr. Stettinius. With a representative each from the Army, Navy, producers, and industrial consumers, the minerals and metals groups function in the traditional democratic pattern. It is on the basis of counsel with them and of their advice that Dr. Hopkins determines the issuance of priorities that will set in motion the construction of armaments to buttress the defense of freedom and liberty for Americans in a war-torn world.

Suppose in our example, however, that GE can't get the steel because it is not immediately available to steel companies? Or the tin, zinc, aluminum? What techniques can Dr. Hopkins use to obtain metals for defense if there are none at hand?

In the first instance, he can pursue the so-called direct method of procedure straight on down to the steel mill. Here, however, he must rely largely upon the integrity and goodwill of the industry to determine for itself whether the order placed is for defense purposes, or for the ordinary uses of industrial consumers. To date, industrial cooperation for defense has been whole-hearted, and OPM has had only to ask industry to help in order to get its support. There is, however, another door open to Dr. Hopkins in his efforts to conserve strategic metals and minerals. Besides approaching this problem directly, through producers of basic defense materials, he is seeking supplemental support from industrial consumers.

For example, automobile manufacturers have agreed to produce models without so many pretty doodads and gadgets which drain supplies of stainless steel, zinc, aluminum and other much-needed metals. Refrigerator companies and many others right across the industrial front are tossing blue chips into the defense pot by sacrificing many of the "come-on" aspects of their products, thereby saving vitally important materials for guns, ships, planes, and tanks.

Mr. Hopkins sits in on conferencesmorning, noon, and night—with the leaders of America's gigantic industrial establishments persuading them to cooperate with Federal efforts to help build a stronghold of defense against whatever emergencies the future may hold. Further, he seeks their cooperation in study of the problem on their own initiative in order to find if there may spring from private research new and better conservation methods than those yet devised by Government. One gathers the distinct impression around the OPM offices that industry is ready to pitch into the defense job with its sleeves rolled up, prepared to accomplish the task with the efficiency, dispatch, and ultimate success one would expect from the finest industrial organization in the world.

President Hopkins has undertaken a 84-hour a day job. None knows it better than he. Right now he is at the fulcrum of the defense lever upon which the Nation must rely to lift it into an impregnable position for safeguarding everything we cherish as a democracy.

And also he has as his right-hand man, and what he characterizes as his invaluable associate, Dr. Samuel S. Stratton, the distinguished Harvard Business School authority on Business Ecomonics—otherwise Sam Stratton, Dartmouth 1920. Likewise Dr. Hopkins says he learned most of what he knows about his job from Cliff Hill '25 who inaugurated the Priorities work and carried it on for months until recently when he was transferred to a high post in the Division of Purchases.

THE PRIORITIES EXECUTIVE AND THE DIRECTOR OF PRIORITIES DIVISION, OPM President Hopkins who is responsible for priorities in all minerals and metals talkingwith E. R. Stettinius Jr., Director of OPM's Priorities Division.