OCR Text |
Show Expanded War Program Will Touch Every Home All Phases of National Life to Feel Effects of Changes Brought About 'Colossal' Economy; Econ-omy; Tire, Car Curbs Mere Beginning. AitL By BAUKHAGE National Farm and Home Hour Commentator. ffND Service, 1343 H Street, N-W, Washington, D. C. In less time than it takes to read this column a new airplane should be completed that is, if the program pro-gram outlined by the President in bis message on the state of the Union is carried out. That seems like a large order. It is But this is what the President has planned for 1942: 60,000 new planes, 45,000 new tanks, 20,000 new anti-aircraft guns, 8,000,000 tons of merchant shipping. Since there are only 8,760 hours in the year, if the 0PM is to meet the President's goals, planes will have to roll out of the factories at the rate of one every eight minutes, tanks at the rale of one every 11 minutes, antiaircraft anti-aircraft guns at the rate of one every 25 minutes, and shipping at the rate of 15 tons a minute. America's resources may be unlimited, un-limited, but human comprehension is not Ever since that message was delivered in congress, Washington has been straining in an attempt to comprehend those colossal figures. Already some of the effects are being translated in terms of human experience you know if you have tried to buy a tire or an automobile. automo-bile. Other even more painful experiences ex-periences are ahead. One. of them is the unemployment which is coming com-ing while the civilian industry is being be-ing converted to defense production. Small Plants Hit It means that some 133,000 small plants will close their doors for good. They are too small to be converted. Their workers and supervisors, if they are competent, will be able to fled employment elsewhere. It means that thousands of salesmen sales-men who sell, not merely refrigerators, refrigera-tors, ice boxes and juke boxes, vacuum vac-uum cleaners and electric, toys, but other things which we once thought were necessities will stop selling. They may have to take off their .white collars. Third, sprays. Formaldehyde is a vital part of many sprays. Also, it is needed to disinfect stored grain and to remove smut and fungus from grain before seeding. But formaldehyde for-maldehyde is necessary in the production pro-duction of plastics to dissolve the woody material. And plastics! They are needed as substitutes for many essential metals.' Fourth, copper sulphate. There is no need to comment when you consider con-sider the part copper plays in war. When it comes to rubber, the farmer, like everybody else is affected. af-fected. The difference is that some farmers are going to be making rubber rub-ber the next few years. Out in California the climate produces pro-duces the best Gayule plants. And there will be acres and acres of these plants cultivated. It takes some time but some are already growing. A two-year-old crop will produce 900 pounds of very good rubber per acre. The trouble Is that you have to dig up the plant to get the latex it comes from the roots. Then, of course, there is synthetic rubber, but I am not allowed to reveal re-veal the figures, which are going to play a lot more important part than many of our enemies think in our victory production. There are also the big cultivated rubber plantations plan-tations in Brazil and Central America Amer-ica run by Ford and Goodyear, there is the wild rubber from the Amazon. And most important of all, there is the contribution that the most auto-minded auto-minded people in the world are going go-ing to have to make the privilege of not buying tires for America's 27,000,000 pleasure cars. The prhrilege of "not buying" is going to be extended. There will be no more gadgets and there will be a -lot less money to buy even the necessities when we pay our share of the bill for building the greatest war machine in history. A machine so big and so destructive that perhaps per-haps it will destroy war itself. k survey of some thousand middle sized manufacturing concerns now turning out defense products has been made by the labor department. It revealed that three-fourths of the plants were working on three shifts already. Remember that was before be-fore the President tossed off his new production figures and the OPM "raised its sights" to meet them. But in these plants it was found that the second and third shifts used only half the man-power employed in the first shift. Right there is a 50 per cent increase in employment. These were plants selected as typical. typ-ical. Someone will have to fill those extra ex-tra shifts and a great many others. It will mean that a lot of "brain-workers" "brain-workers" will have to work their hands. When a nation suddenly turns over 50 per cent of its income to defense production, it means that the man in search of a job has less than half a chance at getting any other kind of work. 10 our homes, the effect of war measures has already made itself Wt Wool is rationed already. That because even with all our sheep e depend on Australia and the f?entine for wool. We haven't the snips to bring it here. And we are Wing ready to clothe an army of j5.0O0.O0O men. Other restrictions "ill come. In his budget message, the Presi- hinted that we might have to carry ration cards the way the Euro-Pf"!! Euro-Pf"!! do before the war is over. is more of a threat perhaps, D a prediction but it is worth "membering before we get too cmplacent Fertilizer 'Rationing tinA'rf dy farmer is being rained ra-ined though he may not realize take fertilizer, for instance: nitrai"' nitrates- A1l synthetic ates have to go into munitions. " one word nitro-glycerine re- h.. yuU 01 Natural "itrates e other things in them, so the after those, too. But since com.T from ChUe- "ley have to shir,! , Shlps- A there are few for this purpose. from pit' Plates. They come But th ' Wyming a"d Idaho. eme,J !me to rocks- You riEht 1 . ole piIe of these rocks &'mBJaltim0re- B"t it takes SulS aCld 40 "digt" them. j acid Is needed for muni- Weather Information And Broadcasting The highly ( interesting yearbook just issued by the department of agriculture ag-riculture is devoted to climate and weather. It appears just when for the first time in American history it is worse than a crime to discuss the weather that is if you talk loud enough to be overheard by enemy ears. A few weeks ago the navy department de-partment released an official communique com-munique severely blaming a commentator com-mentator who mentioned the weather weath-er in Dakota. He gave out information informa-tion which the navy said may have been the cause of increased submarine subma-rine activity in the eastern Atlantic. . In Washington we are not permitted permit-ted to mention even yesterday's weather on the air. This ruling seemed a bit far-fetched to me. In commenting on the fact to an official I told the story of what happened to me when I was broadcasting from Berlin just after the war broke out. On a beautiful moonlight evening I 1 blandly announced over the short wave that "it was a fine night for an air raid." Nobody objected to that. There had been no air raids and the question had never been raised. But the next night it was different. No more description of the current weather, I was told by the military censor "You can talk about last night's weather but not tonight's," he said. I asked my Washington friend why, if Berlin let me talk about last night's weather I couldn't do the same thing here. "Weather," he answered, "moves from west to east. Berlin's weather moved off where it didn't matter in 24 hours. Washington's weather moves right into the eastern Atlantic where knowledge of it might benefit raiders." raid-ers." ' "Without disparaging in the least the huge metropolitan dailies, with circulations running into the hundreds hun-dreds of thousands and occasionally occasion-ally into the millions and I say they are the best daily newspapers in the world-it is to the weekly newspapers and the small-town daily newspapers that I, myself, turn for information, guidance and inspiration, especially in the case of problems and questions affecting the public welfare."-Sen. Arthur Capper in the U. S. senate. |