The Waterbury Democrat., 1941-09-05

1 troubles that z @Aeo@ have beset OPM ard the defense efforts in the last nine months.
 Creation of this new seven-rian priorities board by the Presidents latest reshuffling order--it is not a full reorganization-carl be hailed or damned as New Deal victory, just as you like. Three of the board
 members Vice. President Wallace, who is chairman, Leon Henderson, and Harry Hopk!ns-are out-and- out Roosevelt men. Sidney Hill- man represents labor on the con- servative side, but Is pro-adminiss tration. Secretaries Stimson and Knox, ex.RepublicanS in the cabi- net, have nevertheless shown their colorS and sounded of their big guns so openly as to leave no doubt about where they stand. OPM Dl- rector William s. Knudsen, alone of the seven, can be considered as representative of business, and though Knudsen reminds you con- Stantly that he lis no longer In the automobile business" he Is Baruch's original choice as the best produc- tion man in the country, and there is no substitute for him, even to New Dealers.
 STRENGTH IN ONE MAN
 At It's best, however, STAB .s only another holding company set- up, and the real strength of what ever 1t does will come from she man whom the President named as It's executive director, Donald Marr Nelson, who Is also now the head of the priorlties division of OPM. It Is Nelson who will do the work. It is Nelson who, if anyone can, will bring order out of the increaS- ing chaos developing around the shift from civilian to all-out de- fense economy. He is trusted and respected by big business and the New Deal, and by Army and Navy. And since he was formerly vice. president of Sears-Roeb in Chl- cago, he knows what everyday folks want, what they actually need, what they can do without, what they'll have to get along without during the emergency,
 Nelson, in Washington, has won tho confidence of everyone and ar- rived at his present position of trust simply by Ininding his own business and doing whatever job was assigned him without playing politics, without reaching for more power, wihout becoming involved in any of the palace 1.ctionS which surround the White House throne. As long aS Knudsen was boss, Nel- son took orders from Knudsen and never went over his bead even to correct things which he may have thought all wrong. Several times, 1t has been reported that Nelson was fed up with Washington and the cumbersome old National De- fense Advisory Council and the three equally Impossible OPM ':re- organizations" which succeeded 1t. But he stuck 1t out, and it's a good thing he did.
 Big and broad -shouldered, Nelson has often been characterized as @ great fighter, but that is hardly correct. He Is patience personified. He never loses his temper. He Is a perfect conciliator and some of liis best jobs have been done in cooling down the hot heads in business and government to make them see reason. He doeS 8 tremendous amount of work, but he is able to organize 1t and get 1t done in a normal working week. Though he sees lot of people at night, and so gets a lot of work accomplished after hours, he isn't one to pack home a loaded briefcase and fight 1t all evening. Also. he gets out of the office on Saturday.
 TIME PROVES HIM RIGHT
 That Nelson was never put at the head of the entire OPM Is general ly attributed to the fact that he is not production man, but a mer- chandiser. As one of the biggest and best purchasing agents in the country, having bought in ten years Sears -Roebuck merchandise that sold for over $4 billion, he was nat urally given the purchasing job for the defense effort. He handled that in the old treasury procurement cf- flee before OPM was set up, then when he became director of pur- chases in OPM, he brought into the government food, clothing and supplies buyers from private indus try and organized purchasing ad- visory service for Army and Navy which has resulted in saving the government millions of dollars in its military procurement program. All the economies of the big chain stores-off season buying. advance buying. regional buying, buying m quantity-were shown to Army quartermasters and Naval supply officers. When bids were too high, Nelson,s men simply threw them out, then got on the telephone and closed their deals at fair prices.
 Don Nelson was one of the first of the dollar-a-year or government men to see that the defense effort could not be made on a business as-usual basis. He vas not listened to when he first advanced these ideas, but time has proved him right. Reduction of the number of styles and models of all lines of merchandise to give the country more defense productive capacity is a Nelson program. Curtailment of Aa