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Show General p hugh s I by JOHNSON ! BIG JOB FOR INDUSTRY I Washington, D. C. The President's speech on armaments arma-ments was excellent oratory and a great show. The stage-management was intended to impress Mussolini. I Congress should act promptly, but the business of bum's rushing a billion bil-lion doliar bill through without looking look-ing at it is the same old stuff especially espe-cially since it gives the President a couple of hundred million lump I sum and sight unseen. There is no need for any such haste as that. The money can't be gotten into action in the rush that it can be appropriated. It is doubtful if the navy money can begin to be spent within the year of its appropriation. This situation could be remedied, but not with the present system. The President gave no indication of any change in his present attempt to combine in himself the powers and duties of secretary of state, war and navy. Indeed, the requests for personalized person-alized appropriations indicates he intends in-tends to carry it still further. He is fitted neither by training nor ex- Next? Kirby In N. Y. Post. perience to do this present job and he has far too much to do already. If we have not enough plant and shipbuilding capacity, the job is to go out and create them. That is purely an industrial job and nobody in the administration is equipped to undertake it. If we have not enough machine tool equipment, equip-ment, the task is to set up a system of priorities right now. If we fear any shortages of tin or rubber, we ought to begin now conserving con-serving them for defense. A large percentage of our normal use of both comes from reclamation. We should begin restrictions on the unnecessary un-necessary use of both and stop at once the wastage of tin and rubber scrap. All these suggestions are merely by way of example. There are scores of other ways to get this job done quickly and far more economically econom-ically than it has been done or than there is any prospect of doing it. If our whole problem is, at this stage, industry now just as much an arm of national defense as the army or the navy, it is a job of industrial strategists and tacticians, just as much as the army needs generals and the navy needs admirals. ad-mirals. They do not exist in government. I would as quickly consent to entrusting en-trusting it to a soldier, sailor or politician, poli-tician, as I would let one of them cut off my leg, or ask an industrialist industrial-ist either to do that amputation or to nin trip arm,r We can get the job done, but not merely by appropriating money no matter how much noise we make about it and not with the present men and organization without expert industrial advice and direction. WAR AND INDUSTRY What is the matter with the stock market? Was it Josh Billings who first said: "Congress is a ass " Superficially it would seem that no group of more or less independent individuals can be "a ass," but there is such a thing as a mob mass mind-especially in panicky times. When it appears and begins to work it is a frightful knock on the average aver-age run-of-miU donkey to compare mob intelligence to that of an. ass. It is far below that. This country's safety just at this stage depends not nearly so much on its army, its navy, or its air force as it does on its industries. in-dustries. They are going to have to go to work overtime not only to supply our defensive needs but to take up the burdens of formerly competing nations, now cut off bv war in supplying the needs of the world. Happily 0r otherwise, it will create a boom. This nation has not yet begun to function on the industrial side of buildrng up defenses Th.s tration remains allergic to consequences conse-quences and continues to shoot craps with destiny. The current" dumb statements that we can't ge for two years the pitifully insuf ficient armament yet asked for are an insult to industry To say that the greatest and most efficient industrial system in Z world can't do this job for us is ,o confess .gnorance of that sys em Tb?a,rrecruit: |