OCR Text |
Show Shortage of Critical Materials Commenting recently on the cancellation of the Higins shipbuilding ship-building contract, Joseph W. Mor-rell, Mor-rell, special assistant to the Secretary Sec-retary of the Navy, told a congressional con-gressional committee that "there will be a good many other cancellations" can-cellations" because of shortages of brass, copper, rubber, and nickel and added that every one of these critical materials "is so short it is hard to sal one is more serious than the other." This statement should be read with that of Captain N. L. Raw-linns, Raw-linns, head of the Shipbuilding Division, in tiie Navy's Bureau of Ships, who says that the Navy has too many shipyards, or as many shipyards as it can use on the basis of the availability of critical materials and adds that "we are having considerable difficulty dif-ficulty in maintaining our present pres-ent yards at the present rate of production. They are not operating oper-ating at maximum capacity." In spite of these statements, there are Americans who look on the scrap collection campaign as something of a pastime. They apparently do not realize the enormous demand for critical materials and the necessity of securing all available scrap in order to make possible the production pro-duction that is necessary to win the war. |