To repair the Spring 1945 flood damages, Congress in June of that year granted the War Production Board, and every other governmental agency which had jurisdiction over allocations and priorities relating to farm machinery and equipment, authorization to take such steps as might be necessary to provide for the necessary allocations and priorities to enable farmers in the areas affected by floods in 1944 and 1945 to replace and repair their farm machinery and equipment which was destroyed or damaged by floods, or windstorms, or fire caused by lightning, and to continue farming operations.[356] Again, the Defense Production Act of 1950 gave the President virtually plenary power to require that defense orders be given priority by private industry: “The President is hereby authorized ... to require that performance under contracts or orders (other than contracts of employment) which he deems necessary or appropriate to promote the national defense shall take priority over performance under any other contract or order.”[357] Perhaps not classifiable as examples of an assertion of governmental priority in the use of productive facilities are three enactments under which the Federal Government has exercised the right to withhold issuance of patents and to reserve certain inventions for its exclusive use whenever the public safety or defense so require.[358] _Compulsory Orders_: The establishment of priorities for the fulfillment of contracts presupposes voluntary fulfillment of government contracts by private industry. Do the principles of democratic government preclude conscription of industrial plants, regardless of the willingness or unwillingness of owners to execute war contracts? Having conscripted physically eligible young men under the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 Congress also established therein priority for industrial performance on military orders, and a provision to compel acceptance and priority performance on defense orders.[359] The President was empowered, through the head of the War Department or the Navy Department, to place orders with any individual, firm, association, company, corporation, or organized manufacturing industry for whatever materials might be required, and which were of the nature and kind usually produced or at least capable of being produced by the productive units involved. General Motors produced automobiles, but they could also produce tanks or trucks as the Army required. Compliance with all such orders for products or materials was obligatory and took precedence over all other orders and contracts previously placed.[360] The use of plant seizure by the government as the sanction for infraction of the provision has previously been reviewed in the section on acquisition. In the Second War Powers Act of 1942 the President was given the plenary power to require acceptance of and performance under defense contracts or orders in preference to all other contracts or orders.[361] More recently, the