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Show Broad Program Shaped by Engineers' Society. DETROIT. The United States never again will be caught in an emergency without enough skilled workers to swing full speed into a national defense production program, pro-gram, according to a broad new educational ed-ucational plan just formulated by the American Society of Tool Engineers. En-gineers. The society soon will release through its 37 chapters a three-point training program to local school boards that eventually may turn out skilled men by the thousands, Ford R. Lamb, executive secretary of the society, said. An acute shortage of machinists, tool and die makers and machine designers has been the principal bottleneck in attempts to retool and expand factories for defense production, pro-duction, and the society estimated last summer that 1,260,600 technical and skilled workmen were needed for defense requirements. This figure, Lamb said, has not changed "because we can make a semiskilled machine operator in four to six weeks, but it takes years to train a skilled mechanic or tool and die maker." Lamb said it was impossible to operate tool and die and machine shops on a three-shift day,' seven-day seven-day week, as requested by Production Produc-tion Chief Knudsen, "because it would take 300 per cent more manpower man-power than we'have." Whereas the solution to the immediate im-mediate problem is longer working hours for each employee, Lamb said, the educational program will assure the industry of a plentiful supply of manpower in the future. Acting only in an advisory capacity, the society, composed of men employed in the industry, will submit programs pro-grams to high schools, colleges and manufacturers. |