In aircraft production more than in any other "war effort lies Britain's chance of beating Hitler, And if Britain succeeds in sufficient planes, it will be the triumph of the er brook, say articles in "Life" and "Time."
Before Lord Beaverbrook took over, the job of producing planes rested in many hands, largely military, and could proceed' only after endless ions. The "Beaver," as everyone calls him, took everything into his own hands, then parcelled out responsibility to committees and personal advisers, largely outsiders and self-made like himself. Using emergency powers, Lord Beaverbrook told directors' boards that their authority would be suspended for the duration; company executives were replaced by foremen and engineers recruited from the factories and responsible not to stockholders but to the government.
He speeded up plants by stopping all design changes once a plane was in production, military fussiness having caused incredible delays, He concentrated, like Hermann Goering, on a few proved types. Every manufacturer found himself accountable to one of Lord Beaverbrook's committeeman once each day.
He turned the neat flawlessness of the ministry offices into something resembling the newsroom of his "Daily Express."
Once-prim civil Servants were told to take off their coats and roll up their sleeves. By nagging, harrying, wheedling, he gets underlings to assume responsibility. One subordinate whom he "bawled out" wrote a stiff request for a transfer. The "Beaver" read the note, muttered cosily: "My frightful temper," and sent the offended secretary three dozen bottles of liquor and (in case he didn't drink) a dozen of ginger beer. With them-went a note: "From a bad Minister to a fine Under Secretary."
It is reported that Lord Beaverbrook has a stooge who comes into his office whenever an important visitor is being entertained. Lord Beaverbrook shouts at the stooge: "Get a week's pay! You're fired!" He then remarks calmly to his visitor: "You see? That's the the way I run this office, No red tape."
Last May, when the House of Commons preferred the brilliance of Churchill to the dignified ineffectuality of Chamberlain, it acquiesced in a revolution in British politics. It was the beginning of the end of the Old School Tie. At that time the British wanted things done, and the "Beaver" proceeded) io" do them. Within three months after he took office, the production rate of planes had doubled, standing in August at 1,800 a month.
Brought up in genteel poverty as one of nine children of a Presbyterian preacher at Newcastle, New Brunswick (pop. 3,000), he quite school at 18. He washed drugstore bottles, studied a little law, ran a bowling alley, sold insurance and stocks, then got a job as secretary io a Halifax investment banker named John P. Stairs Always a live wire, Lord Beaverbrook helped -Stairs negotiate a bank merger. Mr. Stairs and his friends liked his style and gave him free rein: He achieved a string of mergers and promotions that would have been impressive in Wall Street 20 years later, and climaxed these by consolidating practically the whole Canadian cement industry. At 30 he was a multimillionaire.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.