Donald Nelson’s WPB rescinded its previous order to stop all sales of typewriters: now it permitted a maximum output for this year of 500,000 machines, 289,712 of them for Army & Navy, the rest for other Federal agencies and Good Neighbors.* Actually, 500,000 machines is 39% of the 1,260,000 machines which supplied the entire nation, civilian and military, in booming 1941.
The typewriter industry owns a fabulous array of small precision tools, desperately needed in arms manufacture. But the Government thinks it needs typewriters more. The Army already has more than enough to put a typewriter in every kit of a huge A.E.F. The 1942 allotment for Army & Navy is alone enough to supply every tenth man now in the armed forces with a machine. The Government is obviously determined to win the war even if it has to be won in triplicate.
* Only new typewriters for civilian use: those already in dealers’ hands—which will be rationed.
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