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Show 'All-Out' Industrial Effort Bolsters America's Front Lines By WILLARD HOLMES WASHINGTON, D. C Twenty-four Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. That's the job for American industry to play its part winning the war against the Axis powers. "Speed now is of the essence just as much in turning out things in plants as it is among the fighting forces," said President Roosevelt to the recent War Labor conference, where representatives of both labor and capital had gathered to work ways of speeding production. Considered by many to be the most momentous meeting between these two groups in recent history, the conference was headed by William Wil-liam H. Davis, .chairman of the National Na-tional Defense Mediation board as moderator. Representing labor were both William Green, A. F. of L. president, and Philip Murray, head of C.I.O. Leading industrialists represented rep-resented the interests of capital. These leaders heard the President issue a "must" assignment For truly this is a war of production. The assembly line then becomes an important line of the fight. While these battle lines are strengthening how does America stack up on the front lines? What did we have when the war started and how fast are we getting what we need? How Well Prepared? Because war came to us so violently vio-lently just as we weVe hitting our stride in defense materials production produc-tion and because the future schedules sched-ules look so much higher than what we actually have produced, the impression im-pression was felt in many quarters that we are not at all prepared. While there are some gaps in many things between what we have and what we would like, the country coun-try is far from defenseless. The Knox report on the disaster at Pearl Harbor was bad, but it wasn't as bad as most people expected. We lost six warships and a large number num-ber of planes. As far as the planes are concerned, con-cerned, the aviation industry is so geared that much of this loss has already been replaced by new pro- duction. With respect to the warships, war-ships, the fact is that in every category cate-gory except cruisers on hand the navy shows a superiority over Japan. Ja-pan. Being the industrial nation that we are, this margin can be expected to increase over the period of a long war. For we have the materials and means for production something some-thing Japan doesn't have in the same degree. Stepped-Up Production. While the ratio of expansion in American sea and air power is a military secret we can safely assume as-sume that it is much larger than anticipated over a year or even six months ago. Coupled with the drastic controls that come with war and with war's resultant national unity this expansion should really boom. While it is too easy to forget that we are at war also with Germany and Italy in addition to Japan, sea power at present does seem to be the most important phase of the fighting. True, one day a land army may somewhere have to face the power of the Axis mechanized military mili-tary machine but the even more immediate im-mediate job is keeping the sea lanes of both Atlantic and Pacific oceans open. Before the Pearl Harbor attack the United States had 17 battleships with 17 building and due for launching launch-ing in the next three years. Twelve air-craft carriers were being built and six were in use. Thirty-seven cruisers were in service and 48 were on the way. In lighter vessels the line-up was this: 171 destroyers being used, 197 being built; submarines, subma-rines, 103 in fighting trim and 82 under un-der construction. Subtract from this the battleship Arizona, the target ship Utah, three destroyers and a mine layer, lost at Pearl Harbor and you have the front fine of defense. This force was buttressed by about 5,000 navy planes, with about 10,000 more on the way. Though the army air corps has not released figures fig-ures on the number of planes it has in use, the numbers are being increased in-creased each week especially in heavy bombers, medium bombers and dive bombers possibly the deciding de-ciding factors in this war. Army's Strength. What of the army in addition to its flying force? As 1942 dawns there is a personnel of about 1,600,000 officers and men. Roughly half of these are selectees, 400,000 are National Na-tional Guardsmen and the rest regulars. reg-ulars. But this is just the beginning. begin-ning. Already selective service has a pool of about 1,000,000 Class A men available for immediate call. Enlistments boomed at a terrific pace following the declarations of war. With the extension of the age limits lim-its for draftees another three or four million men will be immediately immediate-ly available without lowering physical physi-cal or dependency standards. Plans for tapping this huge supply of manpower man-power are already worked out Just as important as a good reserve re-serve of manpower in modern warfare war-fare is the organization of strong striking units. The army is known to have five divisions comprising its armored force. This unit is composed com-posed of tanks and men who know how to handle them. Fifty battalions bat-talions of tank destroyers, parachute para-chute troops and other specialized units to meet Panzer and blitzkrieg tactics have been and are being trained in great numbers. Even this will be speeded up under the impetus of war. Doubling and even tripling of schedule is anticipated |