BOARDS & BUREAUS: The Begats

BOARDS & BUREAUS

In the beginning was FDR. People all over the nation got to know those initials. Then came the begats. FDR begat NRA, FERA, CWA, AAA, WPA and PWA. Some begats, like NRA, died without issue, others begat more. OEM (Office for Emergency Management) was the first war bureau. Then NDAC (National Defense Advisory Commission) begat SPAB (Supply, Priorities and Allocations Board), which begat WPB (War Production Board).

Old standbys like AAA, CCC. FBI, NYA, RFC, SEC and TVA had been around so long that they were now more or less familiar. Anyone who didn’t know these initials was out of luck. And knowing them now was no good: most had been superseded by weird new wartime initials. For instance: FCC is less important than DCB (Defense Communications Board), and NLRB plays second fiddle to NWLB (National War Labor Board).

More important initials in the new alphabet soup:

> BEW (Board of Economic Warfare) tries to damage the enemy’s economics (by export-import policies), acts as an economics intelligence division for the Army & Navy. Head is Vice President Henry Agard Wallace; executive director, Milo Perkins.

> CAA (Civil Aeronautics Administration), CAB (Civil Aeronautics Board) manage air transport; ODT (Office of Defense Transportation) and WSA (War Shipping Administration) work out war transport by rail, truck, bus and ship.

> COI (Coordinator of Information), CWI (Committee on War Information), OFF (Office of Facts and Figures), OOC (Office of Censorship) handle problems of news and censorship.

> DPC (Defense Plant Corporation) is a war branch of Jesse Jones’s RFC, with power to build, buy and sell plants, operate them if necessary; DSC (Defense Supplies Corporation), MRC (Metals Reserve Company), RRC (Rubber Reserve Company) are RFC subsidiaries, concerned with stocks of war materials.

> FCA (Farm Credit Administration) explains itself; FSA (Farm Security Ad ministration) aids tenant farmers, sharecroppers, migrant farm labor. Another FSA (Federal Security Administration) administers social security, public health, etc. Chief is Paul V. McNutt.

> NHA (National Housing Agency) in corporates 16 old agencies that dealt with housing, such as FHA, USHA, PBA, etc.

> OCD (Office of Civilian Defense) is charged with the protection of civilian life and property.

> OCIAA (Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs), Nelson Rockefeller’s agency, works on cultural, political and commercial relations with Latin America.

> WPB (War Production Board) is ‘the big overall war agency headed by Donald Nelson.

There were a lot more: BAE, BLS, DPI, ECC, EHFA, EIB, FCIC, FDA, NIC, NPPC, OADR, OGF, OCR, OLLA, OSRD, SCS, SSB, SSS, USSS, USES, USIS. Hardly a man was now alive who knows or needs to know most of them. If he did, he could not find them. They were moving: REA was on its way to St. Louis, one of 14 peacetime bureaus which had moved or were moving to make more Washington room for war agencies. SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) is now in Philadelphia, the Patent Office in Richmond. To Kansas City will soon go FCA (Farm Credit Administration), to Chicago the Interior Department’s divisions of Fish and Wild Life, Indian Affairs and National Parks.