SCIENTIFIC MANPOWER 27I 



ried prior to December 8, 1941, who had maintained a bona fide rela- 

 tionship with their famiHes since that date and who had one or more chil- 

 dren under 18 years of age born prior to September 15, 1942, should not 

 be inducted as long as qualified unmarried men remained available. This 

 act again served to increase the pressure for the induction of physically fit 

 unmarried young men who had been deferred for occupational reasons. 

 At the same time, however, the procedure for appeal from decisions of 

 local boards was changed to give jurisdiction of the appeal to the appeal 

 board in the area in which the registrant's principal place of employment 

 was located. This change operated to the advantage of OSRD as the board 

 physically located near the site of work was in a better position to judge 

 its importance than one situated several hundred miles away, as had fre- 

 quently been the case previously. 



Experience showed that although OSRD had tried to establish a proce- 

 dure for screening requests to local boards made in connection with em- 

 ployment on OSRD contracts, contractors would occasionally try to supple- 

 ment the OSRD efforts by direct representations on their own behalf to the 

 local boards or in some cases on appeal. The resulting confusion led OSRD 

 to announce in November 1943, that if OSRD endorsement of a request 

 for deferment of a contractor's employee was desired the OSRD Scientific 

 Personnel Office must conduct all correspondence and communications with 

 any branches of the Selective Service system that might be concerned ex- 

 cept that the Form 42A should be filled out and signed by the contractor. 

 This was not intended as a usurpation of the contractor's rights, as the con- 

 tractor was perfectly free to prepare and prosecute the request for defer- 

 ment without involving OSRD at all. It did serve to keep contractors from 

 involving OSRD in statements which OSRD was not prepared to substan- 

 tiate, and it eliminated the confusion which followed the descent of infor- 

 mation upon local boards from two different sources in the same case. In 

 practice a contractor had very little chance to obtain deferment of person- 

 nel on the basis of OSRD contract work without the intervention of OSRD 

 itself. 



January 1944 saw a revision of Local Board Memorandum 115 with many 

 changes as to occupational classifications which the local boards were re- 

 quested to consider in connection with deferment applications. Among the 

 changes was the provision that no registrant of the ages 18 through 21 

 should be granted occupational deferment, with very limited exceptions 

 requiring the authorization of the State Director in each individual case. 

 The number of such cases relying on OSRD endorsement was relatively 

 small and the necessary endorsement of the State directors was forthcoming 

 in all except a few cases. 



The next move which complicated the OSRD manpower picture is effec- 

 tively described in the following quotation from page 73 of the report of thq 



