1942 - Commerce

Commerce

The Beveridge Report (Social Insurance and Allied Services) advanced by Indian-born economist Sir William H. Beveridge, now 63, is a comprehensive plan embodying proposals for postwar "cradle-to-grave" social security in Britain. Master of Oxford's University College, Sir William chairs Britain's Inter-Departmental Committee on Social Insurance and Allied Services (see medicine [National Health Service], 1948).

The War Production Board (WPB) set up by executive order January 16 is headed by Missouri-born former Sears, Roebuck executive Donald M. (Marrs) Nelson, 52. General Electric Co. president Charles E. Wilson gives up his $175,000-per-year job at President Roosevelt's request to join the WPB.

An Emergency Price Control Act voted by Congress January 30 gives the Office of Price Administration (OPA) power to control prices (see 1941). The Farm Bureau Federation and other groups oppose price controls but consumers welcome them (see 1946).

Congress appropriates $26.5 billion for the navy February 2, bringing total war costs since June 1940 to $116 billion. Another $42.8 billion is appropriated for the army June 30, and by July 1 the nation is spending $150 million per day on what President Roosevelt calls an "arsenal of democracy."

Labor leader Tom Mooney dies at San Francisco March 6 at age 61; former NRA director Hugh S. Johnson at Washington, D.C., April 15 at age 59.

The Revenue Act of 1942 is the largest in U.S. history. Designed to produce $9 billion, it includes a provision for a 5 percent victory tax on all incomes above $624 per year for the duration of the war and increases the number of taxpayers from 13 million to 50 million. Taxes on excess profits and other sources of income require rich Americans to shoulder much of the burden, producing for the first and only time a significant redistribution of wealth (see Pay-As-You-Go, 1943).

President Roosevelt creates an Office of Economic Stabilization October 3 with authority to control farm prices, rents, wages, and salaries; he asks Supreme Court Justice James F. Byrnes, 63, to resign and become its director. An order issued by Byrnes October 27 limits salaries to $25,000 per year.

Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy by economist Joseph A. Schumpeter says that capitalism will eventually fall victim to its own success and be replaced by some form of public control, or socialism.

Brazil establishes a state mining concern (Companha do Vale do Rio Doce) that will play a key role in developing the Amazon Basin.

More than 3.6 million American men remain unemployed, but the number has fallen from 9.5 million men and women in 1939. The ranks of the unemployed dwindle rapidly as war plants, shipyards, oil fields, and recruiting offices clamor for manpower; labor union membership increases to 10 million, up from 3.4 million in 1932, and 2 million women enter the workforce. By November, 13 million women are working, 2.5 million of them in war industries, and experts say the nation will need another 6 million women workers by the end of 1943. Women who never worked before take factory and shipyard jobs previously reserved for men; "Rosie the Riveter" becomes a national symbol (a widely distributed poster drawn by J. Howard Miller depicts Rose Monroe [née Will], 22, who was left with two young children to support when her husband was killed in an automobile accident and who has gone to work in a Ypsilanti, Mich., aircraft parts factory, where actor Walter Pidgeon found her to use in a promotion film for war bonds. Bandleader Kay Kyser has written a song entitled "Rosie the Riveter" inspired by a Long Island war-plant worker. President Roosevelt orders the dismantling of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) December 4, there being no further need for a government agency to create jobs.

Rosie the Riveter
"Rosie the Riveter" and other U.S. women helped factories pour out torrents of war materiel to supply Allied forces. (© The National Archives/Corbis.)

The U.S. Mint issues zinc-coated steel pennies under an Emergency Coinage Act designed to release copper for war production (silver nickels are issued to free nickel for the war effort). By the time the last wartime coins are issued in 1945 they will be made from salvaged shell casings.

Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closes December 31 at 119.40, up from 110.96 at the end of 1941.