This document explains the problems and policies which placed manpower in a position of national priority, delineates the various manpower programs which have been designed, and evaluates the directions in which they are moving. Part One attempts to provide an overview of the slow evolution of manpower policy since the founding of the Republic; examines the dynamism of technology and its impact on contemporary manpower from the viewpoints of employment and skill; and considers the larger parameters in the American society that contain and shape developments on the manpower front. Furthermore, it tries to differentiate what actually has happened from what is believed to have happened. Part Two tries to delineate the principal factors that contribute to various types of manpower waste and to draw connections and point out linkages between some forms of social pathology. The final section deals with population pressures, together with the long-term upward drift in the proportion of young people who complete high school and enter college, the draft, shortage of physicians, and paramedical manpower. (nl)