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Show News j Behine I theNews! by PaulMallon Js? Released by Western Newspaper Union. PRODUCTION LAGS STILL PRO VINO SERIOUS WASHINGTON. Mr. Trumnn and his reconverler, John Snyder, have been bragging that the "pro- I duction of civilian goods and serv- ices nas reacnea the peak of all time. They want to prove by some unexplained un-explained generalized general-ized figures on income in-come and dollar volume that production pro-duction hag been more than restored and reconversion 1 accomplished. 'Tain't so. There Pres. Truman are tricks in it, to wit : A foremost weekly index of ac-tual ac-tual production from a non-gov- j ernmental source places our output for the week ending March 23 at 131 compared with 143 a year ago and about 127 for 1941. Miscellaneous car loadings are less than a year ago. ! as are steel, electric power and lumber lum-ber production, but "other car load- j ings" and paperboard production are above a year ago. Messrs. Truman and Snyder did nnt tahulnto nrtnnl vnlitmp nf nro- duction but only dollar volumes and income, and they made no allowances allow-ances for price increases. in-creases. Furthermore, Further-more, they said only that "civilian" production was at i all-time peak. There is no way of telling how much of the J. S. Snyder above - cited pro- ! duction is still i j army, navy and marine, but a portion por-tion must be. So the discrepancy Is somewhat greater than the figures j indicate. MANY ITEMS STILL ON ! 'HARD TO GET LIST' Producers themselves tell me the situation Is bad. Ford publicly pub-licly closed his plant for a week the very day the President spoke, because he could not keep enough steel on hand to warrant continuous operations. Every producer has that same trouble in one way or another. Manufacturers cannot get little things. An air conditioning im.i1.it finds his narticular kind of steel for certain parts difficult diffi-cult to obtain because the steel companies will not manufacture much of it, saying they lose $15 I a ton on It because of the OPA ceiling. The steel companies are ! producing other more profitable lines. Then the air conditioning man finds for a time he cannot get motors, finds a shortage of bearings due to strikes, cannot get production of a special copper cop-per bolt which is essential. His production line operates off ! again, on again, off again and the doctors are operating on the manufacturer. As far as "civilian services" are concerned, there are not any restored re-stored around here. Cleaners require re-quire three to six weeks to clean ! a suit, shirtmakers and many other lines inform their customers '. flatly: "We are not taking any more ' orders." They will not even con-i con-i sider delivery months hence. Parts j for auto repairs are unavailable throughout the United States in I some vital cases. A tailor took an I order for a suit the first of last j November and gave the first fitting I at the end of March five months later. He will not promise the suit ! by summer. Some outfitters are al-! al-! ready stopping orders for summer suits imagine it, next summer's tvffrtnt cnrmlipc in Washington SUI umj" o are getting bad again, only'inferior grades of a few lines having been available the past few weeks. There are no autos, coal, refrig-; refrig-; erators, nylons and only a few ra- 1 dios. A considerable (say 10 to 15 : per cent) improvement In sales , stocks can be noted in many lines, and a bare beginning toward res- j toration is noticeable. The experi- j ence of the average citizen in these j I parts will strictly deny, however, any claim that production has been I restored in "civilian services." Now there has been a great acceleration In dollar volume of production in such lines as liquor (but not good liquor), department depart-ment store sales and some particular par-ticular food products, and these no doubt caused Mr. Snyder's Sny-der's figures to swell to the conclusions con-clusions he induced the President Presi-dent to make from them. But if you figure a 25 to 50 per cent increase in such items (I have j noticed in my purchases price in-I in-I creases as high as 400 per cent) ' even the visible results of great- er production in restricted lines do not loom formidably when compared com-pared with the job of sizing the production pro-duction bottleneck up to demand. As measured with demand, we cannot can-not yet begin to speak of "produc- j tion." Mr. Truman has a faculty of mak-! mak-! ing the sensational appear to be ! commonplace. His army day die-I die-I turn was a re-hash. |