Control of Manpower

Report Outline
Control of Manpower
Manpower Demands and Manpower Supply
Activities of War Manpower Commission
Compulsory Labor Control Measures

Control of Manpower

Appearing before the House Agriculture Committee, September 28, to testify on farm labor shortages, Paul V. McNutt, chairman of the War Manpower Commission, indicated that the administration would make recommendations “in the very near future” for a “National Service Act,” empowering the government to allocate labor to war jobs in industry and agriculture. McNutt had declared at a hearing of the Tolan committee of the House, a fortnight earlier, that imposition of some system of compulsory labor controls was inevitable.

In the meantime, bills have been independently introduced in Senate and House to amend the Selective Training and Service Act to give the President broad powers to mobilize men for service on the production front, as he can already mobilize them for military service. Senator Reynolds (D., N. C.), chairman of the Senate Military Affairs Committee, has stated that combined hearings on the Senate manpower bills and on proposals to lower the military draft age to 18 years will be opened soon after the middle of October. The question of manpower control is expected to absorb the major attention of Congress after disposal of the now pending tax bill.

Manpower Shortages; Need of Compulsory Controls

Manpower shortages have shown up most conspicuously to date in agriculture, the inadequate supply of farm labor having been an underlying factor in the recent fight of farm organizations for inclusion of labor costs in computation of price parities. Agriculture has been losing labor to the Army, on the one hand, and to war industries on the other hand. War industries, in turn, though able to draw men off the farms by offers of higher wages, are running into shortages of various types of skilled labor and, like agriculture, are constantly giving up men to the armed services. The Army alone, among the three principal competitors for manpower, has no difficulty in meeting its requirements for men, since the services of all those needed can be conscripted under the Selective Service System.