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ADDRESS BY
HONORABLE FARR IS BRYANT
DIRECTOR
OFFICE OF EMERGENCY PLANNING AT THE
ANNUAL MEETING
OF THE
AMERICAN ORDNANCE ASSOCIATION'S MOBILIZATION READINESS DIVISION
OCTOBER 12, 1966
-9
basic, modern-age proposition -- that national security is something more than guns and infantrymen, planes and pilots, and ships and sailors. Equally important is the economy and massive industrial complex which makes a military machine run.
The statutory membership on the National Security Council accorded the Director of tEP reflects the many implications of the term "National Security." It is directly related to the capability of industry to meet whatever crisis may befall us.
OEP, as a planning agency, is
primarily an initiator and coordinator. Our studies form one basis for
-t
Presidential assignment of operational authority to appropriate Federal departments and agencies. Twenty Presidential Executive orders are now in force among 31 departments and agencies.
Each of these departments has
emergency planning responsibilities as an extension of their peacetime roles.
Salary and wage controls would, for example, be administered by the Department of Labor, should they ever be needed.
The Secretary of Commerce now has the operational responsibility for the Defense Materials System. This program is carried out by the Business and Defense Services Administration. It assigns priorities and makes allocations
-11
of basic materials needed to complete Defense contracts. Certainly, many of you here today have had occasion to deal with BOSA. It is significant, I think, that industrial applications for assistance in obtaining materials have risen by more than 500 percent in the last year -- from 623 in fiscal year 1965 to 3,756 in fiscal year 1966. There is no question that manufacturers are having a more difficult time obtaining the raw materials they need for essential contracts; but there is also no question that they are getting the necessary materials in most cases. While bottlenecks do occur we are able to run them down before they can cause serious delays.
-12
Many other agencies would have comparable responsibilities in a fullscale mobilization. Certainly we must be prepared for this prospect even though we do not expect it to materialize.
This we are doing. The Office of Defense Resources is a standby unit now in the blueprint stage. Approved by President Johnson more than two years ago, the Office of Defense Resources could be ordered into force only at the President's direction.
I can now report we have advanced to the point where an organizational structure has been laid out. This new agency, when and if activated, would absorb all the functions of the Office of Emergency Planning. It would then
-13
serve as a nerve center for the President in the entire mobilization field.
At the outset, fIR was conceived
to provide a mechanism for use in nuclear war. Today, the concept has been extended and redesigned for use in limited war. Nevertheless, it remains solely with the President to activate GO R .
There are all kinds of limited wars. To be sure, what was once considered a full-scale conventional war is, by today's definition, a limited war. Certainly fIR is not now needed.
In concept, however, it comprises both the voluntary and mandatory measures which might have to be invoked.
-14
Among the voluntary measures important to mobilization are:
Measures to encourage industry to expand production of essential goods and services, to curtail non-essential production, and to construct or convert facilities for essential uses by means of special financing arrangements, tax incentives and competition for government procurement orders. Others could involve training and retraining programs to increase productivity and skills and to bring new workers into the labor force. Still others could be concerned with public information programs to obtain the voluntary cooperation of individual citizens, industry, labor and other organized groups.
-15
Mandatory emergency measures, some of which are presently available, would also be used, but only as required by the national interest. In the case of wage and rent controls, it would be necessary to obtain statutory authority not now available. All told mandatory measures which could be used are those dealing with priority and allocation systems, price and wage controls, consumer rationing, inventory controls and anti-hoarding orders, conservation measures, import and export controls and requisitioning orders.
The next obvious question is "When would such a structure be needed?" I have no precise answers, but I think
-16
economic history plainly tells us we are not close to needing such a major expansion of economic mobilization.
Touring the first eighteen months of Korea defense outlays accounted for about fifty percent of the increase in Gross National Product. Only twelve percent of the increase in GNP has been devoted to increased defense expenditures since the early part of 1965. By itself, the economic burden of Vietnam can easily be borne. In fact, our economy has been amazingly resilient.
Obviously, we look upon any
erosion of the dollar as a danger sign. And we should respond to it.
-17
This was the basis for the President's earlier request to industry not to exploit prosperity by raising prices.
It was the basis of repeated appeals to labor to exercise like discipline in their wage demands.
It is the basis of the more recent actions by the President to pare down Federal expenditures for both programs and personnel, and of his request to the States to slow down their capital expenditures.
it is behind his request to Congress to suspend temporarily both the 7 percent investment tax credit for industry and the accelerated depreciation now in the tax system for buildings.
-18
It is the reason the President has urged the Federal Reserve Board to cooperate with the effort to lower interest rates.
All these anti-inflationary moves are part of the process of meeting a problem head-on -- but not with so much force that you barrel beyond your objective in such a way as to disrupt the delicate balance on which our present prosperity depends.
Nobody, of course, can foretell the future. In many respects the measures we would need would depend on forces outside our control. It could, for example, depend on how long a stubborn and tenacious enemy refuses to believe that we will not leave
I welcome this opportunity to speak to members of the Readiness Division of the American Ordnance Association.
In a very real sense your organization embodies the know-how and experience, the great productive skills and power upon which we have come to rely in meeting the manifold problems of national defense in a dangerous age.
The American soldier in Vietnam today relies upon you for the equipment he needs to do his job. We in the Office of Emergency Planning count on your advice and counsel to do our job.
It took man 250 years to progress from the short bow to the long bow. Another 300 years carried us from the
-19
Vietnam until Vietnam is left alone, until aggression ceases and that battered and beleaguered country is permitted to shape its own destiny.
But what happens in Vietnam, and the speed with which it occurs, will in part determine how much and how fast our economy will be obliged to produce.
We have the ability.
We have the resources.
We must also have the will power to see the struggle through.
Certainly, the American Ordnance Association has contributed mightily to this effort.
It in not merely the proficiency of your industry which impresses me.
-20
It is also the response you have given to our call for help in our planning. A year ago the Association set up the industrial Mobilization Division with separate panels on Allocations and Pr ior cities, Economic Stabilization, Manpower, Production Planning, and Stockpiling.
These panels closely parallel our own activities. I am pleased to note that a predecessor of mine, Edward A. McDermott, is on one of them.
These liaison groups are extremely important to our work. They assure a constant awareness on your part of what we're doing and, equally important, they give us access to your thinking as we move forward.
-21
It is the kind of business-government partnership which is the hallmark of the President's philosophy.
I congratulate the Association for establishing this Industrial Mobilization Division and f commend Mr. William E. Haines who I understand, was the driving force in bringing it about.
We will, of course, take full advantage of your initiative. I have asked Mr. G. Lyle Belsley, OEP's Director of Economic Affairs, to serve as your principal point of contact with OEP.
And I have directed all members of my staff to provide continuous information to the panel members as our work
-22
evolves. You will be working with these staff members during panel sessions tomorrow.
Finally, I ask you to remember that this question of economic capability in a crisis involves something more than the hardware of war -- the guns and tanks, and ammunition. If that was all that concerned us there would be little meaning in life, and less in our determination to pay such a heavy price. We are also thinking of a commitment to an idea.
Touring fifty centuries the war lords, kings and emperors ruled the earth; tyranny was the common lot of man and chains seldom bestirred the populace. Before the great liberation began -- and it began with the founding
of this Republic -- out of all the billions who inhabited the earth, never more than three or four million, at any one time, enjoyed liberty and freedom as we know it. Unhappily, one third of the people on earth are still in chains.
We tend sometimes, in this fastpaced world of ours, to forget the larger question -- our talents and skills and resources are committed to the defense and advancement of an idea.
As President Johnson said just a few weeks ago:
"...it is never easy to commit men to battle. But we know that -if a leader is to pass along to the next generation the treasure of liberty -he must do what must be done."
-24
I hope you will remember -- as I do each day -- we are in Vietnam because we believe all peoples ought to be permitted to work and live under governments of their own choice.
Emergency planning is an important part of the arsenal which helps us to live, as a Nation, by that conviction.
-2
musket.. .to the megaton. Less than ten years were needed to leap from the A-bomb to the H-bomb. Technological revolutions now occur almost overnight. Regrettably, man's understanding of himself, at least on many parts of this troubled globe, has not kept pace with the breathless advance of science and technology.
If it were so, emergency planning would not be necessary. And the great talents and energy now devoted to the ordnance industry could be shifted to more constructive pursuits. It is not so, however, and the likelihood of a long hard struggle is still ahead of us.
-3
Vietnam holds center stage in that struggle today.
Once again our capacity to maintain a stable, productive and efficient economy is being put to the test. Once again we are asked to show that a free system can retain its balance, can satisfy both civilian and military requirements and can move to higher plateaus of prosperity and general wellbeing, as we have done before.
The touchstone of emergency planning on the national as well as the local level is that emergency plans and facilities must be ready too for any such challenges that we face today or that we could face in the future.
-4
It is neither a glamorous nor an easy task. it is however, an extremely vital one. Many years ago, as the Nation was meeting the economic problems of Korea, an eminent military journalist, Hanson Baldwin wrote:
"Economic Mobilization is an
undramatic, dry-as-dust subject, little considered by the average citizen. But it must have public interest and public support, for it holds the key to future victory, and it can affect more basically than any other security measure the lives and liberties of all of us."
That statement was taken from a book called "The Pr ice of Power." The author was correct to place freedom
-5
and power alongside one another. Emergency planning -- or economic mobilization, if you will -- is nothing more than the twentieth century version of the eternal vigilance which Thomas Jefferson called Liberty's price.
I would agree also that it is a dry subject for the average citizen... unless the average citizen understands that words like priorities, allocations, economic stabilization, defense resources and many others are professional jargon for very simple and elemental functions. In everyday terms we are talking about the amount of money a man takes home, and what that money is worth.
-6
We are talking about the price the American family pays for food, clothing and shelter.
We are talking about how much of these basic items would be available to the average citizen and how much would have to be diverted to military requirements.
We are talking about more than four million businesses -- small and large -- which comprise the American system of free enterprise and the more than 73 millions of persons employed by these businesses.
We are talking about the four million farmers who make up our agricultural economy and supply our food and fibers.
-7
All of these people have a personal stake in the success of whatever mobilization may be required now and tomorrow.
What I have to tell you iS of obvious professional interest to your vital industry. It deals also, with matters that can bear upon your family. That is why the President is so deeply concerned when any trend is detected which could undermine our prosperity and reduce the benefits of national abundance now so fully employed and widely shared. That is why inflation is on our lips and minds. That is why we solicit the cooperation of all segments of society in fighting its insidious effects.
-8
Economic mobilization involves all these fields and the Office of Emergency Planning has a primary responsibility for economic mobilization to whatever degree it may be necessary.
The Office of Emergency Planning is a staff arm of the President established in his Executive Office to assist him in all aspects of nonmilitary defense. Our history parallels closely the history of crises and tensions since the end of the Second World War. We are the natural extension of agencies such as the National Security Resources Board, the War Production Board and the Office of Defense Mobilization. All our predecessors grew out of a
PAGE 1
ADDRESS BY HONORABLE FARR IS BRYANT DIRECTOR OFFICE OF EMERGENCY PLANNING AT THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN ORDNANCE ASSOCIATION'S MOBILIZATION READINESS DIVISION OCTOBER 12, 1966
PAGE 2
-9basic, modern-age proposition -that national security is something more than guns and infantrymen, planes and pilots, and ships and sailors. Equally important is the economy and massive industrial complex which makes a military machine run. The statutory membership on the National Security Council accorded the Director of tEP reflects the many implications of the term "National Security." It is directly related to the capability of industry to meet whatever crisis may befall us. OEP, as a planning agency, is primarily an initiator and coordinator. Our studies form one basis for
PAGE 3
-tPresidential assignment of operational authority to appropriate Federal departments and agencies. Twenty Presidential Executive orders are now in force among 31 departments and agencies. Each of these departments has emergency planning responsibilities as an extension of their peacetime roles. Salary and wage controls would, for example, be administered by the Department of Labor, should they ever be needed. The Secretary of Commerce now has the operational responsibility for the Defense Materials System. This program is carried out by the Business and Defense Services Administration. It assigns priorities and makes allocations
PAGE 4
-11of basic materials needed to complete Defense contracts. Certainly, many of you here today have had occasion to deal with BOSA. It is significant, I think, that industrial applications for assistance in obtaining materials have risen by more than 500 percent in the last year -from 623 in fiscal year 1965 to 3,756 in fiscal year 1966. There is no question that manufacturers are having a more difficult time obtaining the raw materials they need for essential contracts; but there is also no question that they are getting the necessary materials in most cases. While bottlenecks do occur we are able to run them down before they can cause serious delays.
PAGE 5
-12Many other agencies would have comparable responsibilities in a fullscale mobilization. Certainly we must be prepared for this prospect even though we do not expect it to materialize. This we are doing. The Office of Defense Resources is a standby unit now in the blueprint stage. Approved by President Johnson more than two years ago, the Office of Defense Resources could be ordered into force only at the President's direction. I can now report we have advanced to the point where an organizational structure has been laid out. This new agency, when and if activated, would absorb all the functions of the Office of Emergency Planning. It would then
PAGE 6
-13serve as a nerve center for the President in the entire mobilization field. At the outset, fIR was conceived to provide a mechanism for use in nuclear war. Today, the concept has been extended and redesigned for use in limited war. Nevertheless, it remains solely with the President to activate GO R There are all kinds of limited wars. To be sure, what was once considered a full-scale conventional war is, by today's definition, a limited war. Certainly fIR is not now needed. In concept, however, it comprises both the voluntary and mandatory measures which might have to be invoked.
PAGE 7
-14Among the voluntary measures important to mobilization are: Measures to encourage industry to expand production of essential goods and services, to curtail non-essential production, and to construct or convert facilities for essential uses by means of special financing arrangements, tax incentives and competition for government procurement orders. Others could involve training and retraining programs to increase productivity and skills and to bring new workers into the labor force. Still others could be concerned with public information programs to obtain the voluntary cooperation of individual citizens, industry, labor and other organized groups.
PAGE 8
-15Mandatory emergency measures, some of which are presently available, would also be used, but only as required by the national interest. In the case of wage and rent controls, it would be necessary to obtain statutory authority not now available. All told mandatory measures which could be used are those dealing with priority and allocation systems, price and wage controls, consumer rationing, inventory controls and anti-hoarding orders, conservation measures, import and export controls and requisitioning orders. The next obvious question is "When would such a structure be needed?" I have no precise answers, but I think
PAGE 9
-16economic history plainly tells us we are not close to needing such a major expansion of economic mobilization. Touring the first eighteen months of Korea defense outlays accounted for about fifty percent of the increase in Gross National Product. Only twelve percent of the increase in GNP has been devoted to increased defense expenditures since the early part of 1965. By itself, the economic burden of Vietnam can easily be borne. In fact, our economy has been amazingly resilient. Obviously, we look upon any erosion of the dollar as a danger sign. And we should respond to it.
PAGE 10
-17This was the basis for the President's earlier request to industry not to exploit prosperity by raising prices. It was the basis of repeated appeals to labor to exercise like discipline in their wage demands. It is the basis of the more recent actions by the President to pare down Federal expenditures for both programs and personnel, and of his request to the States to slow down their capital expenditures. it is behind his request to Congress to suspend temporarily both the 7 percent investment tax credit for industry and the accelerated depreciation now in the tax system for buildings.
PAGE 11
-18It is the reason the President has urged the Federal Reserve Board to cooperate with the effort to lower interest rates. All these anti-inflationary moves are part of the process of meeting a problem head-on -but not with so much force that you barrel beyond your objective in such a way as to disrupt the delicate balance on which our present prosperity depends. Nobody, of course, can foretell the future. In many respects the measures we would need would depend on forces outside our control. It could, for example, depend on how long a stubborn and tenacious enemy refuses to believe that we will not leave
PAGE 12
I welcome this opportunity to speak to members of the Readiness Division of the American Ordnance Association. In a very real sense your organization embodies the know-how and experience, the great productive skills and power upon which we have come to rely in meeting the manifold problems of national defense in a dangerous age. The American soldier in Vietnam today relies upon you for the equipment he needs to do his job. We in the Office of Emergency Planning count on your advice and counsel to do our job. It took man 250 years to progress from the short bow to the long bow. Another 300 years carried us from the
PAGE 13
-19Vietnam until Vietnam is left alone, until aggression ceases and that battered and beleaguered country is permitted to shape its own destiny. But what happens in Vietnam, and the speed with which it occurs, will in part determine how much and how fast our economy will be obliged to produce. We have the ability. We have the resources. We must also have the will power to see the struggle through. Certainly, the American Ordnance Association has contributed mightily to this effort. It in not merely the proficiency of your industry which impresses me.
PAGE 14
-20It is also the response you have given to our call for help in our planning. A year ago the Association set up the industrial Mobilization Division with separate panels on Allocations and Pr ior cities, Economic Stabilization, Manpower, Production Planning, and Stockpiling. These panels closely parallel our own activities. I am pleased to note that a predecessor of mine, Edward A. McDermott, is on one of them. These liaison groups are extremely important to our work. They assure a constant awareness on your part of what we're doing and, equally important, they give us access to your thinking as we move forward.
PAGE 15
-21It is the kind of business-government partnership which is the hallmark of the President's philosophy. I congratulate the Association for establishing this Industrial Mobilization Division and f commend Mr. William E. Haines who I understand, was the driving force in bringing it about. We will, of course, take full advantage of your initiative. I have asked Mr. G. Lyle Belsley, OEP's Director of Economic Affairs, to serve as your principal point of contact with OEP. And I have directed all members of my staff to provide continuous information to the panel members as our work
PAGE 16
-22evolves. You will be working with these staff members during panel sessions tomorrow. Finally, I ask you to remember that this question of economic capability in a crisis involves something more than the hardware of war -the guns and tanks, and ammunition. If that was all that concerned us there would be little meaning in life, and less in our determination to pay such a heavy price. We are also thinking of a commitment to an idea. Touring fifty centuries the war lords, kings and emperors ruled the earth; tyranny was the common lot of man and chains seldom bestirred the populace. Before the great liberation began -and it began with the founding
PAGE 17
of this Republic -out of all the billions who inhabited the earth, never more than three or four million, at any one time, enjoyed liberty and freedom as we know it. Unhappily, one third of the people on earth are still in chains. We tend sometimes, in this fastpaced world of ours, to forget the larger question -our talents and skills and resources are committed to the defense and advancement of an idea. As President Johnson said just a few weeks ago: "...it is never easy to commit men to battle. But we know that -if a leader is to pass along to the next generation the treasure of liberty -he must do what must be done."
PAGE 18
-24I hope you will remember -as I do each day -we are in Vietnam because we believe all peoples ought to be permitted to work and live under governments of their own choice. Emergency planning is an important part of the arsenal which helps us to live, as a Nation, by that conviction.
PAGE 19
-2musket.. .to the megaton. Less than ten years were needed to leap from the A-bomb to the H-bomb. Technological revolutions now occur almost overnight. Regrettably, man's understanding of himself, at least on many parts of this troubled globe, has not kept pace with the breathless advance of science and technology. If it were so, emergency planning would not be necessary. And the great talents and energy now devoted to the ordnance industry could be shifted to more constructive pursuits. It is not so, however, and the likelihood of a long hard struggle is still ahead of us.
PAGE 20
-3Vietnam holds center stage in that struggle today. Once again our capacity to maintain a stable, productive and efficient economy is being put to the test. Once again we are asked to show that a free system can retain its balance, can satisfy both civilian and military requirements and can move to higher plateaus of prosperity and general wellbeing, as we have done before. The touchstone of emergency planning on the national as well as the local level is that emergency plans and facilities must be ready too for any such challenges that we face today or that we could face in the future.
PAGE 21
-4It is neither a glamorous nor an easy task. it is however, an extremely vital one. Many years ago, as the Nation was meeting the economic problems of Korea, an eminent military journalist, Hanson Baldwin wrote: "Economic Mobilization is an undramatic, dry-as-dust subject, little considered by the average citizen. But it must have public interest and public support, for it holds the key to future victory, and it can affect more basically than any other security measure the lives and liberties of all of us." That statement was taken from a book called "The Pr ice of Power." The author was correct to place freedom
PAGE 22
-5and power alongside one another. Emergency planning -or economic mobilization, if you will -is nothing more than the twentieth century version of the eternal vigilance which Thomas Jefferson called Liberty's price. I would agree also that it is a dry subject for the average citizen... unless the average citizen understands that words like priorities, allocations, economic stabilization, defense resources and many others are professional jargon for very simple and elemental functions. In everyday terms we are talking about the amount of money a man takes home, and what that money is worth.
PAGE 23
-6We are talking about the price the American family pays for food, clothing and shelter. We are talking about how much of these basic items would be available to the average citizen and how much would have to be diverted to military requirements. We are talking about more than four million businesses -small and large -which comprise the American system of free enterprise and the more than 73 millions of persons employed by these businesses. We are talking about the four million farmers who make up our agricultural economy and supply our food and fibers.
PAGE 24
-7All of these people have a personal stake in the success of whatever mobilization may be required now and tomorrow. What I have to tell you iS of obvious professional interest to your vital industry. It deals also, with matters that can bear upon your family. That is why the President is so deeply concerned when any trend is detected which could undermine our prosperity and reduce the benefits of national abundance now so fully employed and widely shared. That is why inflation is on our lips and minds. That is why we solicit the cooperation of all segments of society in fighting its insidious effects.
PAGE 25
-8Economic mobilization involves all these fields and the Office of Emergency Planning has a primary responsibility for economic mobilization to whatever degree it may be necessary. The Office of Emergency Planning is a staff arm of the President established in his Executive Office to assist him in all aspects of nonmilitary defense. Our history parallels closely the history of crises and tensions since the end of the Second World War. We are the natural extension of agencies such as the National Security Resources Board, the War Production Board and the Office of Defense Mobilization. All our predecessors grew out of a
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