The Waterbury Democrat., 1941-09-20

. speech. Don't forget that I'm from Indiana, t0O."
 NOTE - Tn the motion picture industry will Hays long has been called General, ahbreviation for Postmaster General. At first the movie people in Washington didn't know what to call Willkie, hit upon "Generallssimo". Now, however, they call him "Tield Marshal"
 DEFENSE RED TAPE
 Today the word priority" is the most unpopular in the jargon of American business. It causes more trouble than the "code" of ancient MIRA days, and 1t Is even more distasteful than taxes.
 This does not mean that husi- ness resents the principal of priorities = which are adminis- tered with such haphazard red tape.
 Here are illustrations of how certain government officials are bungling priortties:
 A new naval air station was built in . certain southern city, and the city agreed to build Q new fire house nearby to pro- vide protection. But the city had to have fire hose for the new fire house, and 1t couldn't buy the fire hose from the manufacturer without first get- ting . priority order from the OPM. The city fathers filed an application and got nowhere. So they asked a special representa- tive in Washington to go per- sonally to the OPM and try to disIodge the application.
 Their representative went to the OPM in person, trudged from office to office, from bureau to bureau over a period of ten days, in the course of which time he discovered that thousands of priority requests are dumped In a basement mail room in the old police building Gin such confu- sion that they are being trodden upon and some of them even bearing the stains of tobacco juice from passing messengers.)
 To pass the time between sta- tions, this representative drew up diagram of the course followed by a single vagrant priority re- quest, and his graphic diagram shows no less than 20 knots in the long string of red tape which a single priority order must pass. It goes from one mail room to one index room to one clearinr office to another clearing office, and so on through a vast maze so complex that no official of the OPM, indeed no one except a rep- resentative who has trudged the path of all 20 messengers placed end to end, could possibly de- scribe or diagram it.
 FINALLY, the fire hose pa- pers were found and the action was taken. The action itself required only two hours, but the mechanics of getting the thing through the mill (the mill cOn- sisted mostly of messengers and index girIs) required ten days. LOST IN THE SHUTTLE
 Another illustration: On Aug ust IA, priority application was made by 8 representative of a large industrial plant which is producing essential war supplies. The plant desired to purchase some pieces of machinery for re- placement of parts in their own plant. The parts were necessary in order to keep the plant pros duction from breaking down. But these artciles were under priority restriction, and they had to get 6 priority order from the OPM.
 0PM officials immediately recognized the deslFabillty of granting such an application and t was given A-i-b rating with no reluctance or hesitation at ali. It Is very unusual that such c high rating is given to any ap- plicatlon.
 But the application. made out in aulntluplicate according to in- Etruetions, was never seen or heard from again. All that Is known, both hy priority officials and company officials, ls that the application, all s copies Of it. dIs- appeared from existence. though t bore ihe ( signatures ef the principal pFioFliles officials of