The Waterbury Democrat., 1940-10-18

naQ a lOOK-ln DeIOr6.
 The new system junks the old procedure of advertised bids and substitutes modified plan of ne- gotiated contracts. Instead of buying shoes, shirts, or raincoats in huge quantities from a few large concerns, the Army will pur- chase these as far as possible within each of the nine corps areas.
 This means that small local factories will have a chance to obtain a chunk of the Army's business.
 The new procedure works this way: When the Army. needs l.. 100000 pairs of shoes, it will not ask for bids on the total order, upon which only a few of the big gest firms can bid. Instead, the Procurement Divisions of the nine army corps areas will each ask manufacturers in their districts to submit a bid on as large an order as they can fill withon a specified time. The manufac- turer must also make a statement on the size of his plant, type of equipment, number of employees, wage levels, working conditions, and other details about his methods.
 At corps headquarters these offers are opened on 8 given day and hour, but not publicly as in the past. Instead, the quoted prices will be kept cOnfi- dential until the orders have been allocated.
 Each corps abstracts the bids submitted and makes report to the Quartermaster General in Washington. There the awards are decided on the basis of lowest price = plus considerations of speed of delivery, labor standards, local conditions and other military facors. Thus, while price is in- portant, it is no longer all import ant in making the awards.
 Procurement experts predict that the new system not only will speed up deliveries, but also will eliminate many bottlenecks by dis persing, production, build up ocal industries and raise the general level of labor standards, since plans with the best standards will be given preference.
 On the basis of orders already granted under the new system, experts say costs will be no high : CT than under the old procedure. WINNING ISOLATIONISTS
 Very quietly, the Administration is waging campaign to win over Midwest isolationist sentiment. Most striking feature of this cam- paign is the distribution of the Bullitt speech given at Indepen- dence hall in Philadelphia.
 This distribution has now reached the amazing figure of 2,384,000. It was done by using the congressional frank of cer- tain senators who wanted the speech circulated. The printing was done by the Government Printing Office, but the bill was not paid by the Government.
 After his speech, Bullitt received no less than 5000 letters and tele- grams, with unsolicited contribu- tions totaling more than $6,OOO. This paid for distribution of the speech. The mailing lists were made up largely of RED names, a tactic which met the approval oi Secretary Hull.
 Three people saw the BuIlitt speech before it was delivered. One was Stanley Hornbeck, State Department adviser on Far Eastern affairs, who urged, without success, that Bu1litt tone it down. Another was Archi- bald MacLeish, Librarian of Congress, who was eIated with 1t The third person was the President.
 NOTE - Highlight of the Bull lit speech was the warning: "The United States Is in as great peril today as was France a year ago. .... Unless we act now, decisively, to meet the threat, we shall be too Iate."
 ON STRIKE
 Hefty Bill Hutcheson, veteran boss of the AFL carpenters union and for many years an influential leader in Republican campaigns. has quietly taken a walk on the Republican organization - but not on Wendell Willkie.
 Hutcheson is still strong for Willkie personally. But he is quits !. q .I