Word: answer
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1940
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...these two ends, the first was more immediate. The President moved to answer criticisms of the Defense Commission, by a new organization. He turned laconic Commissioner William Knudsen into a pamphleteer to state the "terrible urgency." plead with the U. S. to "roll up their sleeves...
When was the President going to give the U. S. defense program an executive head with full executive powers? Franklin Roosevelt's regular Friday morning press conference came & went without definitive answer from the President. Big Bill Knudsen of the National Defense Advisory Commission had set the country ringing with his blast against the weekend "blackout" in U. S. industry, his plea to machine toolmen-management and labor-to speed up because of "terrible urgency...
What Franklin Roosevelt had to tell them was something that could not keep: it was his answer to the question. On the soundness of his answer might well depend the fate of the democratic world...
...some had expected, appointed a National Defense Tsar, endowed with more power than Bernard Mannes Baruch had had as head of the War Industries Board of 1918. Franklin Roosevelt's answer was a super-defense board, on which he had hung a cumbersome jawbreaker-Office for Production Management for Defense. (Later he referred to it as the "Big Four.") Its director: Big Bill Knudsen. Other members: Laborman Sidney Hillman (with the title of associate director), Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, Secretary of War Henry Stimson...
Knowing the economic consequences of war, businessmen naturally disliked the defense boom. They were swept downstream almost against their will, steering as cautiously as they could. They ploughed their profits back into debt retirement or new plant, drove good bargains with the Government in answer to its demands for industrial expansion. When the boom ends, this caution may help Business to face a buyer's market with efficient plant, low overhead-may ease post-war adjustments. But the engine of industry did not speed up because of confidence burning within. It was sped up from without by the energy...