General Materials

File — Box: 83

Identifier: VI

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

When Hinckley joined Sperry Corporation in 1942 as assistant to the president, he had given up government service and intended to remain in private business until he retired. In 1944 President Franklin D. Roosevelt persuaded him that his services were again needed in government to serve as director of Contract Settlement.
In 1943 and 1944 contract termination loomed as one of the largest of the problems of the transition from war to peace. Contract settlement required the utmost cooperation from the various branches of government, from contractors and contracting agencies, from prime contractors and their subcontractors, and from all those engaged in the various aspects of an exacting task performed under the pressures and tensions of the war and postwar period. The wholehearted response to the needs of the situation on the part of Congress, the executive branch, and contractors met the difficulties so completely that by the end of 1945 contract termination had vanished from the category of reconversion problems.
Hinckley, a former assistant secretary of commerce for air, was appointed the first director of Contract Settlement on July 28, 1944. From the beginning, the director followed the policy of leaving the actual settlement of terminations in the hands of the contracting agencies which had made the original contracts. Qualified personnel was recruited and the Office of Contract Settlement was organized as a policy-making office, following the direction of the act to use "the personnel and facilities of the contracting agencies and other established Government agencies" to the maximum extent feasible. Extensive use was made of special consultants chosen from persons prominent in the accounting, engineering, and other fields, as a means of obtaining highly competent assistance on particular problems without building a large permanent staff. The staff of the office at no time exceeded seventy-eight.
In accordance with the act, the director submitted quarterly reports to Congress on the progress of the settlement program. These reports provide a concise record of important actions taken and of settlement statistics.
The organizations developed and the experience gained in settling 157,000 terminations with canceled commitments of $23.7 billion prior to VJ-day prepared government and industry for the mass terminations which followed victory over Japan. More than 132,000 terminations, involving approximately $26.6 billion in canceled commitments, were effected during the third quarter of 1945. The bulk of the termination load (96 percent of the total number and 83 percent of the total canceled commitments) had been settled by June 30, 1946. Only 1,804 terminations, with canceled commitments of $2.2 billion remained by March 31, 1947. This was less than 1 percent of the total number of more than 321,000 contracts canceled, and approximately 3 percent of the total of $65.7 billion of canceled commitments.
From the beginning of war production to March 31, 1947, canceled commitments of $63.5 billion were settled for gross allowances of $6.5 billion or slightly more than 10 percent. (Information on the Office of Contract Settlement was taken from , Office of Contract Settlement, July 1947, p. 3.)
The items covering the Office of Contract Settlement include, besides the complete history, correspondence; reports to Congress, 1944-1947; miscellaneous reports; news releases; published articles; Hinckley's trip to England, 1945; and other related materials.

Dates

1891-1997

Conditions Governing Access

Twenty-four hour advanced notice encouraged. Materials must be used on-site. Access to parts of this collection may be restricted under provisions of state or federal law.