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Show U. S. Industry Drives for . More Plants Bjr FREDERICK GARDNER NEW YORK. Jan. 11 IrPV Amerl. w Industry, after worrying the last tfcde over surplus of plants and ssschines, today faced an insists! insis-ts! defence rail for more capacity. New year business report Inrll-' Inrll-' rated a rush to extend productive fa clime In ateel, machine tool, shipbuilding aircraft, munition! and allied supply Induatrlea would dominate activity for month to foinf, Muity factories ahut down dur-tnf dur-tnf depreailon yean or consigned to the acrap heap were being diluted dilut-ed off for emergency duty on the mlrhty Industrial job of handling billion In order from Uncle Sam and British purchasing agent. teel New Capacity Steei producers looked around for added sources of supply in big Iron and coke as mills climbed closer t theoretical capacity. In the Birmingham area, producers sought to end a bottleneck in coke supply by additions of new ovens and bringing back into production long-unused facilities. Sloss-Shef-field Steel and Iron was reported restoring beehive coke oven idle since the World wsr. Steel was a center of a controversy contro-versy over need for expsnslon out-aide out-aide strictly wsr factories which must be built from the ground up. Studies tentatively made for U.S. defense plsnners were said to havs ' forecast 1941 demand for steel ingots in-gots 10,000,000 tons In excess of the Industry's capacity. ItnlldlBg Rushed Driving to get war plants into production at the earliest possible, construction engineers were engaged en-gaged in one of the busiest winter campaigns of factory and military bulking in the country's history. Indicative of extraordinary building build-ing was the latest weekly compilation compila-tion by the Engineering News-Record, snowing awards of $157323,000 gainst 161378,000 in the oompara-tW oompara-tW 1M0 week. Defense planners continued to ' approva contracts for expansion of fsctlltles in aircraft, shipbuilding, munitions and other vital war Industries. In-dustries. The peak of the rush to construct a vast war industry, however, appeared ap-peared to have passed, although the $17,500,000,000 federal budget handed to congress by President Roosevelt for the 1942 fiscal year foreshsdowed rising defense outlay . for months ahead. iBshattry s4 Pea By next summer and autumn. It was pointed out, more defense money would be going into actual utput of aircraft, engines, munitions muni-tions and ships in proportion to sums now being spent for construction construc-tion of plants. Steel, textile and other major barometers of Industrial operations on the btsls of this week's reports held at record or near-record fig-tires. fig-tires. Further expansion. It seemed, would be dependent mainly upon addition of capacity, bringing unused un-used plants into action and Increasing Increas-ing working hours. The huge defense budget was followed fol-lowed by a quickening advance in omsnodity prices. The Associated Press index of 35 key commodities anoved up to the highest since November, No-vember, 1937. |