Nail Quota Raised to 1OO% of 1940 Shipments

The priorities program for steel warehouses put in effect by OPM last September was designed to assist warehouses in handling various types of steel products, among them being certain "merchant" products, which included nails, fencing, and other steel products handled by lumber dealers.

The original OPM orders complicated the dealers' ability to obtain these products in two respects:

(1) Quotas were set up which purported to provide a means whereby the dealer could purchase 70 per cent of certain steel products based on purchases in corresponding quarters of 194O. Established dealer purchasing policies and the factor of supply and demand made this an unsatisfactory method of securing dealer requirements.

(2) Many dealers were unable to establish for themselves quotas of these various products by reason of the fact that their normal sources of supply were no longer producing them.

This latter difficulty has been cleared up by the issuance of the attached form, PD-83-e, which provides a means whereby a dealer or jobber may transfer a