Contracts educational orders

The CWS took steps, under the guidance of the Office of the Assistant Secretary of War, to implement the educational order legislation enacted by Congress in June 1938. This legislation had as its objective the training of selected industrial concerns in the manufacture of a half-dozen Army items, one of which was the gas mask. The first educational order contract was written by the Chemical Warfare Service in late 1939 and several more were awarded in 1940 and 1941. The educational order program was the first real step, as far as the CWS was concerned, in the direction of industrial mobilization in the emergency period. 

P.L. 639, 75th Cong. (2) In Annual Rpt of SW, 1931, p. 157, an educational order is defined as "a contract placed, without advertising, for a limited quantity of a desired technical article, with any selected facility. ... 

Under educational order legislation, bids were received only from those firms that had been selected by the Secretary of War and any contract entered into as a result of the invitation to bid had to be approved by the President of the United States. Usually, although not always, the Secretary of War solicited bids from the firms recommended by the CWS. 

The first educational order of the CWS went to the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. for the operation of a service gas mask assembly plant at Akron, Ohio. This contract, the only CWS educational order contract written in fiscal year 1939, resembled all later contracts in requiring the... 

Although educational order contracts were awarded mostly for gas masks and components, one contract was written in fiscal 1S>40 for a CC-2 plant. In the following fiscal year the CWS awarded educational order contracts for the construction of a shoe impregnite plant and for the manufacture of filter paper. (Tables 4 and. 5) ... 

Source All the data in this chart, with the exception of the Goodyear Tire A Rubber Co. assembly contract, were taken from a study prepared by the Purchase Policies Branch, OC CWS, in 1945, entitled Analysis of Chemical Warfare Service Pricing Record World War II, p. 34. CWS 314.7 Educational Order Program File. This study makes no reference to the Goodyear assembly o>ntract, which was the first contract under the F.ducational Order Program. The data on this ntract were obtained in 1949 in a file of the Procurement Agency, Army Chemical Center. 

The only major item on which the CWS had cost and price data was the gas mask because that was the one item which continued to be manufactured in considerable quantity after World War I. Experience gained under the educational order contracts was especially productive of valuable data on the cost of the mask. The Purchase Policies Branch had little trouble, therefore, compiling charts depicting the discrepancies in prices charged by the various contracts. By simply calling the attention of the contractors to these charts it was sometimes possible to secure a reduction in prices. The price level of the gas mask declined over 9 percent between January 1942 and June 1945. ... 

But if one gas mask program was marked for conclusion after war came, another was suddenly and vigorously resuscitated. The period of educational orders had witnessed a small-scale trial production program for noncombatant gas masks. In 1940 the Chemical Warfare Service selected five firms, none of them experienced in such items, and contracted to set up complete noncombatant mask production lines in each for turning out a single educational order of gas masks. On the basis of this experience... 

The U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (DHEW) (now the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS)) halted the immunization program in December 1976 after several vaccinated individuals contracted Guillain-Bark syndrome, a condition that leads to paralysis.29 About 40 million people had received the vaccine. In June 1978, DHEW announced that because the vaccine label and consent form did not warn recipients about the possibility of Guillain-Barre, those claiming injury did not need to prove fault (i.e., negligence by the government) in order to receive compensation. Out of the 4,179... 

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