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normal times.

Of course, it was a surprise to me, and I think to Hershey, to see the great number of items that were on the list as necessities for the Army and Navy. You were astonished as you say what they needed. They involved sometimes almost the luxury trades. However, that was part of the conversion program.

Now, while it was the policy of the government to convert to war industries, it was carried out very largely by the War Production Board. That was their principal function principal duty, and principal accomplishment. They brought about the conversaion of a large number of factories to the production of the necessary supplies. At that point there had to be a very careful meshing with the army and navy so that you wouldn't get a man who owned a factory closing it down for the production of its ordinary goods, and having a big gap between the day he closed for that and the day he began to operate for the government order.

There was a good deal of “business as usual” sentiment in WPB. People were horrified at that, but actually it was necessary. For instance, you can't shut down a man's ordinary lamp shade production, we'll say, until he's actually got the order and is prepared to operate in some other line. That's called a “business as usual” problem, but you couldn't close him down, throwing his workers out of work, without having