He Who Gets Slapped

The U. S. Army, which will need 186,000 trucks and motorcars when it reaches its basic strength of 1,400,000 officers and men, found last week that it had to take a crack at Henry Ford, lest Ford's fight with C. I. O. get the Army embroiled with labor. Recently the Army invited automakers to make competitive bids on a big slice of its truck business: 11,781 half-ton trucks to be used for field radio centres, reconnaissance cars, ambulances, etc. Last week the War Department announced that the order had gone not to the low bidder but to Fargo Motor Corp. of Detroit, a subsidiary of Chrysler. Accepted bid: $10,298,128.

Lowest bid was Motormaker Ford's: he had undercut the Chrysler subsidiary by $250,000. But Henry Ford had refused to sign the provisions of the War Department's Procurement Circular No. 43 which would have bound it to comply with State and Federal labor laws. Found guilty over & over again by NLRB of unfair labor practices, Henry Ford has appealed to the U. S. Supreme Court, meanwhile takes the view that he is not bound by Labor Board rulings until the Supreme Court says he is.

Since C. I. O.'s United Automobile Workers still hope to force Henry Ford to recognize them as a bargaining agency for Fordmen, U. A. W. yelled bloody murder when Ford got a $122,000,000 order for making Pratt & Whitney aircraft engines, gave a Bronx cheer to unofficial Army explanations that Ford was best qualified to make the engines and that the engines were needed. The Defense Commission's ClOman Sidney Hillman put in his protest when Ford got another order: $2,000,000 worth of midget combat trucks to replace the Army's motorcycles.

By the time the Army started shopping for more trucks, Sidney Hillman's voice had more carrying power, for he had be come the left side of Franklin Roosevelt's two-headed defense tsar, Knudsenhillman, head of the powerful Office of Production Management. One of the first things Sidney Hillman said in his new, strong voice was that Army orders should go only to manufacturers who respect the Wagner Act and other New Deal labor legislation.

Meanwhile. in Detroit, Fordmen plugged on with the production of parts for Consolidated bombers (TIME, Feb. 3), tested a new Ford-designed 1,500-h.p. air craft engine, saw workmen finishing the building where Ford will turn out 4,500 2,000-h.p. P. & W. engines for bombers, beginning early in the summer.

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