Farm Machinery and Equipment: Government Controls During World War II

Excerpts from the report: To produce farm machinery requires the same kind of resources as to produce planes, ships, and tanks. With the overwhelming emphasis throughout World War II on sheer quantity of war equipment in order to keep the loss of lives to a minimum, and with farmers' requests for more machinery to produce larger quantities of food and fiber in the face of shortages of farm labor, it was to be expected that farm-machinery production would pose many problems requiring solution by governmental action. Because of the National Defense Program, manufacturers of farm machinery began to have difficulties in obtaining some materials as early as the spring of 1941. At that time production of farm machinery was being greatly expanded. To bring this problem to the attention of Government agencies in Washington, the Farm Equipment Institute, representing manufacturers, appointed a Priorities Committee. The Government agencies that were at that time charged with responsibility in farm-machinery problems were the Office of Agricultural Defense Relations in the U. S. Department of Agriculture, the Office of Price Administration and Civilian Supply, and the Office of Production Management. Beginning with August 1941, the Office of Production Management granted manufacturers of farm machinery priority assistance for materials in quantities not exceeding 120 percent of the quantities used in corresponding months in the previous year. This program, called the Civilian Allocation Program, enabled the manufacturers to maintain substantially the expanded rate of production that had been begun in April 1941. The farm-machinery situation was generally satisfactory at the time the United States became actively engaged in war and it became necessary to issue drastic restrictions on the production of farm machinery.