The Waterbury Democrat., 1941-08-20

CA NY N1A6AA ACO A. Haleck of Rennselaer, Indiana, to study the problem of the little fel- low squeezed out of business by the defense effort.
 Entrance of the Halleck com- mittee into the picture brings to a total of five the number of govern ment bodies who are now profess sionally worried about the little fell low. The Halleck committee isn't an official congressional commit tee. It is purely political, it has no appropriation, and its activities will consist of receiving complaints from small business men caught in the prioritieS draft. The committeeman will probably make speeches about them.
 In the Senate two committees have tackled the problem. The Tru- man committee, Investigating na- tional defense contracts, has touch- ed on the subject in testimony from a few witnesses. and Truman inves- tigators have dug into it consider ably. Then there is the committee headed by Senator James E. Murray of Butte, Mont, appointed speci- fically to study problems of small business enterprises. It started work even before the defense effort got hot, so far hasn't come up with anything very helpful.
 SPREADS
 THE WORK
 Over in OPM is the Defense Con- tract Service under Robert L. Me- hornay which has the real job of trying to promote sub b-contracting, bringing the little manufacturer in- to the defense program, spreading the work to "bits and pieces" pro- duction. Its recent job of inviting manufacturers in the Detroit area to come in and see a torn down model of aircraft and tank engines, to see what parts they could make, is an example of the constructive work in aiding the change-over from normal to defense production.
 Paralleling this work is the effort of Sidney Hillman's labor dvision in OPM to keep up employment dur ing the transition period and main tain steady supply of labor for the expanding defense efforts. Both of these are positive steps to benefit the small business man, particularly the manufacturer, but they don't cover the problems of the little fel- low who can't get piece of the de- fense pie.
 Broader in its scope, and likewise | positive in its intention of actually | doing something to help the small, | or independent business man caught | in the defense rush, will be the ! work of the new small business unit now being set up in Assistant l Attorney General Thurman Arnold's anti-trust division. Arnold has just picked his man to head this unit in Guy Holcomb of Atlanta, Ga.
 It will be early September before Holcomb will be set to start func- tioning, but in the meantime, he is willing to receive letters from small business men who feel tn tathey are being left out of the defense pie ture, or are actually being discrim- mated against. When organized, this unit will have staff of follow up on these complaints and an econ- omic staff to analyze them. Address: Small Business Unit, Antitrust Division, Department of Justice, Washington, D. 0.
 BUSINESS MAN TO
 HELP BUSINESS
 Holcomb himself is not a lawyer, which makes him one of the few non-legal lights in the D. J. setup. He has been small business man, with experience in banking, bond selling, corporate insurance and re- tail selling. He helped organize a gasoline filling station retailers organization in Georgia, fought the battles of the independents against 4 the big refining and distributing companies. He caught Arnold's at tention in that and so was picked to head up this new unit.
 Numerous compla Slts have been received from small business men by the Justice Department. A lot of them are crackpot letters but about one in four will have some thing in it that bears further in vestigation.
 If the new Arnold -Holcomb unit can serve as raal friend of the small business man in Washington, where the big fellows with the lob- byists and special representatives have an obvious advantage, use- full work can be done.