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Show time, and the machines have started start-ed turning over almost before the plaster was dry. Steel production reached an all-time all-time high. And so the record reads ... It is more than ever evident that it was good judgment to select skilled skill-ed production men to handle this biggest of all industrial jobs, that of making America strong. JameS Preston The head of the division of production pro-duction in the Office of Production Produc-tion Management. John D. Big-gers, Big-gers, in talking the other day to a group of defense manufacturers, manufactur-ers, had this to say about the progress pro-gress of the rearmament effort: "The progress is good in most cases amazingly good; but gentlemen, gentle-men, you and I know that we cannot can-not be satisfied. The task is so tremendous, the need so' urgent, that greater and greater efforts are the order of the day." Those remarks are a good digest di-gest of the general attitude in the capital these days. Astonishing progress has been made, but the job is so terrific that constantly more endeavor is being asked of all who have a part in it. That approach ap-proach is helpful to keep in mind if you want to follow defense news business men should be put in charge of defense production and raw materials purchases and various var-ious other phases of this big industrial in-dustrial job. The presence of Messrs. Knudsen and Stettinius and Biggers and their compatriots gave the general public confidence, and rightly so. These men were not primarily interested in performing per-forming interesting statistical tricks; they liked to see products rolling off the end of a well-synchronized assembly line. That was what the American people wanted to see, too. Today, the public is getting what it wants in the form of an astonishing record of accomplishment. accomplish-ment. The full figures aren't available, of course, but even the scattered ones we have indicate clearly that defense progress has been remarkable, in the tradition of private American manufacturing manufactur-ing achievements. Statisticians tell us that in nine months we have made more progress, working together to-gether as free men. than the Nazis did in two and a half years with their much-vaunted government-dictated government-dictated economy. American industry has already completed more than 3 billion of the first 12 billion of defense goods ordered. Productive facilities facili-ties of American aircraft factories factor-ies increased 2 8 per cent in the 5 9 days ending March 1. We are well on our way towards employing one million men in aircraft production. produc-tion. The machine tool industry, vital because it makes the big "super-machines" "super-machines" upon which all mass production industries depend, has expanded by 2.000 per cent over the depression low. The two-ocean navy will be ready two years ahead of schedule. sche-dule. Our newest battleships are coming off the ways a year ahead of the time originially anticipated. Powder plants, tank factories, great sprawling aircraft plants, have been completed in record intelligently. Washington observers, who have had the need for defense speed dinned in their ears constantly for the past few months, and who have had a good chance to watch the immense progress that has been made so far, feel pretty sure that any additional step-up in the program can only be achieved by' men of the type now on the job. Here is a little bit of history on this subject: When our federal government began to "buy defense" on a large scale last June, it was putting the American public, which it represents, repre-sents, in business for itself in a big way. For the defense program was a kind of super-super enterprise enter-prise that could only succeed if it were run on sound business lines of planning, coordinating, spending spend-ing where it would do the most good, and producing the best possible pos-sible finished product. It was only natural, then, that |