OCR Text |
Show RnupAhcU by JameS Preston The attitude of a noisy, minority minor-ity that "dog bites business man" is the real test of headline news Ikis misdirected the attention of many people from the really tremendous tre-mendous achievements of American Ameri-can industry so far in building up the national defenses. Coupled with the vociferations of disgruntled theorists in obscuring obscur-ing the accomplishments of industry indus-try has been the necessity of keeping keep-ing detailed figures and information informa-tion concealed in many cases. After Af-ter all. when you're creating defenses de-fenses to make the nation safe, you don't go out of your way to give potential enemies a complete set of charts on those defenses. But evpn parts of the record of manufacturing achievements so far afford sufficiently startling evidence to give the average citizen citi-zen a new measure of confidence and a new measure of pride in the industrial machine of his own United States, the greatest, most adaptable, and most efficient in' the whole wide world. ticular industry would become a serious "bottleneck" and hold up the entire program. Well, the machine tool companies compan-ies answered those idle statements with deeds. They expanded, they set their minds to the utilization of all available machinery, they went in for sub-contracting on a big scale. The 1940 production figure for the machine tool industry indus-try was hold your breath 2000 per cent over the depression low! It will be even more startling for the year ahead. That's the spirit in which industry, in-dustry, not counting the risks or the uncertainties, is moving ahead to make America strong. Every week there are stories like these: an airplane factory built in 57 days ... a tank factory in 4 months in the snow and cold mud . . . ships launched three months ahead of schedule. Free men build best. Americans hoped that was true, knew in their hearts it must be true, for it was the best justification of the kind of life our forefathers conceived in this country. Now industry, with free men working for "it and free men doing the planning, is proving the value of human liberty liber-ty beyond the least shadow of the smallest doubt! took on ten billion dollars' worth of defense contracts between June and the first of the year and currently, cur-rently, a survey shows, is on time or ahead of schedule in the case of 75 per cent of firms with defense de-fense contracts. Space doesn't permit relation of the whole breath-taking story, but one more example is of particular moment. Remember the case of the machine tool industry? it makes the "super-machines" necessary for modern mass production. At the outset of the defense program, carping critics said that this par- It is not, for instance, giving away a military secret to state the plain truth that in the course of the last IS to 2 4 months American industry has arrived at a state of production of the weapons of defense de-fense which the Germans reached only after six years of an intensive 'effort that ended with Mars eating up 72 per cent of the German national na-tional income each year. Like a champion runner competing com-peting against a man hobbled with chains, American industry is "lapping" "lap-ping" its field of totalitarianism opponents again antl again as time goes by. Free men move fastest. In the fields of thought and action, they not only move fastest, they also move most intelligently. In defense, there are examples galore, to prove this point. A few among thousands may be interesting inter-esting to readers. To begin with, the manner - in which industries geared to peacetime peace-time production have changed over swiftly to the making of defense equipment is one of the most fascinating fas-cinating stories on record. At the present time, a maker of sewing machines is turning out pistols; a maker of lingerie weaves mosquito netting for army cantonments; a linoleum factory makes shells; oil plants make rubber, and" rubber fabricators make gas masks; a typewriter factory turns out mi-chine mi-chine guns; a tobacco machinery plant puts together diesel engines; auto makers turn to tank production; produc-tion; a lipstick maker produces shell casings; a lawn mower manufacturer manu-facturer turns out. fuses, and a carpet' manufacturer fabricates machine ma-chine tool parts. The list could be continued endlessly. Even more remarkable, though perhaps on the surface somewhat less colorful, is the way in which American industry in almost every case unused to making military mili-tary equipment has fulfilled the new requirements set for it. In spite of countless handicaps, it |