Army and Industrial Manpower

This book is one of a number in the present series that describe what happened to the U.S. Army in World War II as the result of two prevailing circumstances. One was that the War Department had a vital interest and a leading role in maintaining the production of supplies needed to win the war. The other was that, once organized for war, the War Department and the Army comprised an administrative machine incomparably more efficient for getting things done than any other at the disposal of the President. In both connections Army officers found themselves drawn into the realm of industrial management-one surely remote from the field of battle. A companion volume, The Army and Economic Mobilization, shows how extensively and deeply the War Department became involved in business relationships. The authors of the present volume examine and illustrate the ways in which the Army and its officers dealt with the problems into which they were drawn in dealing with organized labor. Since World War II the Army has become even more deeply involved in relations, present and potential, with industry and industrial management. No officer can therefore afford to overlook the instructive experience that this book recounts.
About the Author: Byron Fairchild received the Ph.D. degree in history from Princeton University and has taught at the University of Maine, Amherst College, and Munson Institute of Maritime History. He is the author of Messrs. William Pepperrell, which received the Carnegie Revolving Fund Award of the American Historical Association for the outstanding manuscript in any field of history in 1954, and has contributed a number of articles and reviews to historical journals. As a civilian professional historian with the Army since 1949, Dr. Fairchild has been coauthor of two other volumes scheduled to appear in the Army's official World War II series: The Framework of Hemisphere Defense and Guarding the United States and Its Outposts. Jonathan Grossman has his Ph.D. degree from Columbia University and has taught at City College of New York and Rutgers University. Author of the biography, William Sylvis, Pioneer of American Labor, Dr. Grossman has also worked on projects with the National Industrial Conference Board, prepared sections of a history of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, and worked as a historian on the Morgenthau Diary. He joined the staff of the Army's Office of the Chief of Military History in 1949, leaving in 1953 to become Historian for the Office, Chief of Finance, where he is currently writing a history of fiscal activities during World War II.