Prairie Forge: The Extraordinary Story of the Nebraska Scrap Metal Drive of World War II

5. The Second- Half Comeback

100 5 The Second-Half Comeback A community like an individual has a work to do. —Inscription from Aristotle’s Poetics, Nebraska state capitol Their hard-working team had failed to make a comeback in the second half. That painful memory was fresh in the minds of many wartime Nebraskans. On January 1, 1941, their beloved Cornhuskers had taken the field in Pasadena, California, to compete in the twenty-seventh annual Rose Bowl in front of 92,000 spectators. It was the team’s first bowl game, and the state’s passionate fans were optimistic. After all, their team had lost only once during the regular season, in a close game to top-ranked Minnesota. But it was not to be. After a strong start, the Cornhuskers fell behind the Stanford Indians by one point. In the second half, the team staged a spirited goal-line defense, but then decided to punt on first down after regaining possession of the ball. Stanford quickly returned the punt for a touchdown. Before long, Nebraska’s humbled team found itself trudging back to the locker room with no points to show for the entire second half.1 Some eighteen months later, Governor Dwight Griswold—apparently well aware that Henry Doorly’s salvage drive was not on track to meet its ambitious goal of 100 pounds of scrap for every Nebraskan by August 8—had come to believe that the state’s scrap drive could not afford a The Second-Half Comeback / 101 similar letdown. In a statewide radio address, he reminded Nebraskans that “the thing that has made Cornhuskers famous in football circles is the fact they always put up a great fight.” The scrap campaign, he suggested, needed a similar effort: “If the people of Nebraska can be considered a great football team, then we must start to win at the beginning of the second half.” So far, he said, “the score is against us. Are we going to lie down and quit or are we going to fight back? I appeal to you as a great fighting people—as Cornhusker scrappers—to do your best.” There could be no doubt, as the scrappers were aware, that Doorly’s drive had generated a lot of enthusiastic noise. The Scrap Mountain in downtown Omaha, as well as many of the county operations in rural areas of the state, were good cases in point. But enthusiasm was not enough, and the governor knew it.2 In fact, by this point the desperate need for scrap metal in the war effort was becoming more acute. Steel industry insiders warned that “the scarcity of scrap iron and steel continues to plague the War Production Board for it is one of the most serious factors facing the nation on the production end.” In Washington, President Roosevelt did his part to help raise the alarm, using a late July press conference to ask that allAmericans turn in “every possible item . . . to local receiving points or junk dealers .” Despite the government’s efforts, however, the crisis appeared to be spreading to actual production facilities. On July 18, Higgins Industries of New Orleans announced that construction on some 200 Liberty ships had been halted by the U.S. Maritime Commission due to a lack of adequate steel supplies.3The World-Herald, by now hyperaware of the national scrap situation, printed such alarming details for readers to see even as the statewide campaign inched toward the finish line. The point was clear: it was time for Nebraska’s scrappers to challenge themselves and their neighbors even more intensely in hopes of turning the faltering scrap campaign around. But how in the world could the state possibly elevate its scrap contest total from a mere 18 pounds per person to over 100 pounds in the second half of the campaign? Fortunately, the drive had a few hidden advantages that would help immeasurably. One vital factor in the scrappers’ favor 102 / The Second-Half Comeback was a natural byproduct of Nebraska’s great spaces and the time it took to haul, weigh, and report so much scrap metal.As it turned out, the standings reports that garnered so much attention tended to lag significantly behind the actual pace of the campaign, since there was no way for them to reflect scrap material that was awaiting transport, that was still unweighed, or that remained unreported. The 18-pound average published on July...