Thomas, president United Automobile Workers ![]() “The most important single task before the nation is the rapid conversion of the automobile industry to war production.” has been accepted here with resignation which is tinged, in some quarters, with resentment.” With remarkable understatement, a New York Times article reported, “The virtual wiping out of Detroit’s chief industry. Though the move itself was not unexpected, the short timetable was. 4, 1942, when Federal Price Administrator Leon Henderson ordered Detroit to cease making cars and trucks for the civilian market in order to free up assembly lines for military production. ![]() The other shoe (another commodity soon to be rationed) dropped on Jan. The Office of Price Administration issued a draconian tire rationing edict, the result of Japan’s imminent conquest of the world’s only source of rubber, the Dutch East Indies. American consumers, who had come to regard the ability to drive an automobile as fast and far as they liked as a sacred right, had the brakes slammed on them in January 1942.
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