OPA Volunteers: Big Democracy in Action

Abstract

N O OTHER agency, with the possible exception of the Office of Civilian Defense, has used volunteers as widely as has the Office of Price Administration. Over 75 per cent of our staff consists of unpaid volunteers. In fact, no other nation, not even those with democratic traditions similar to ours, has used volunteers to the same extent or given them the adjudicative and enforcement powers in the administration of a national-and urgentgovernment program. OPA's experience with such extensive volunteer assistance has, I believe, important implications for democratic government and for workers in the field of public administration. The way OPA volunteers were enlisted and the way they have worked to help accomplish an enormously difficult, staggeringly vast war job shows, I think, the strength and value of democratic participation in government. At the outset, the OPA faced two major problems which made widespread democratic action necessary. First, since both our rationing and our price-control regulations have affected every individual in the nation personally and closely, they could not succeed without acceptance and compliance by the majority of the people themselves. With little or no precedent, prices had to be set and policed for more than eight million items everywhere in the country. Almost one-half billion ration books had to