leon keyserling remembers that time of national torment.ndustry was in collapse, banking was in panic, agriculture was in ruins, and labor was in despair. we had 13-15 million umemployed out of a labor force of 46 million people. you had bank failures right and left. people wondered how long life could be sacred or property safe in the face of fathers who couldn't meet their children's cries for food. after 10 years of depression, one in six remained out of work. factories were closed. it was a vicious circle. it took a worldwide explosion to break it. in 1939, german armies marched into poland, igniting world war ii. the united states vowed to stay out, but the allies needed our economic resources. what were these resources and how would we mobilize them? robert nathan was on the war production board. as early as the fall of 1940, at the advisory commission, we began to come up with bottlenecks under a total mobilization of the economy, a fully-employed economy. it was clear we needed more aluminum and would need more steel. i remember whe