Government to the Rescue

Before Oct. 1 some 24,000 small factories will be forced out of business. In 1939 they made $4,000,000,000 worth of goods--8% of the whole U.S. total.

On that gloomy expectation, WPBoss Donald Nelson last week named a five-man board to head the $150,000,000 Smaller War Plants Corp., told them to get these little businessmen out of the mire.

Main job of SWPC is to convert the little fellows into war-goods production. To do this the agency will sign contracts directly with the Army & Navy, then subcontract to little plants best equipped to do the work. Some midget factories will pool their facilities. In other cases SWPC will finance needed machinery and equipment (if it can be bought). If all these small plants were smokestack deep in war work, they might produce more than one-third as much as Detroit's amazing war giants.

But many little businesses will never land a war contract, for neither their equipment nor their labor nor their technical know-how is adaptable to war work.

Warned Don Nelson: This is not "a panacea which will solve all the problems of small businessmen."

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