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Show THIS BUSINESS nrm -X SUSAN THAYER we wTOffiiTwAToT history; ing proof that they cherish those institutions above all else, and that we in this country are enterprising enter-prising enough and intelligent enough to find the means to see that they shall survive todays storms. American women will remember this march of events as times move ahead. They know that there will be trying times and sacrifices ahead for all of us. But they know, too, that we are going through these present efforts so that we can have a future which will be worthy of all the endeavors endea-vors and all the strivings that the history of the last few decades has imprinted on the scroll of American Am-erican history. We are a peace-loving people, and we hoped, when the tumult and the shouting of the World War died down, that the nations of the earth were ready to live together as friends. We hoped it so strongly and believed in it so sincerely that we insisted on getting get-ting rid of the plants and factories that had been used to provide our arms and munitions in '17 and '18. Wartime machinery was smashed under gigantic hammers and sold for scrap metal. The making of smokeless powder declined to a tiny fraction of previous output, and the industries involved turned turn-ed to the making of goods and products for normal consumption. We women played an important role in the peace movement. Remember? Re-member? We realized, probably more keenly than men, the bitterness bitter-ness of war, and we dreamed a great dream of well-being and abundance. Why shouldn't these things be ours, we asked, wtih the greatest industrial system in the world devoting itself exclusively to the production of peacetime products? We worked out many of the elements ele-ments of that dream here in America, Am-erica, too, before the period of world unrest which saw European dictatorships grow daily more powerful pow-erful as they battened on economic unrest in their own states. And one fateful week last Spring, Americans Ameri-cans men and women alike were brought face to face with the realization that the way of life we cherished was menaced. American industry was called upon to forge the weapons that would make our freedom strong. At first it was on the basis of "business as usual" plus defense. Then, a events continued to unfold un-fold ominously, industry was called call-ed upon to apply "speed and more speed" to production for defense. The defense accomplishments of industry to date will go down in the annals of history as living evidence evi-dence of the potentialities of a free people. It is not the way that American men and women would wish to prove the value of their free institutions. But it is strik- |