Paper v. Steel

The U.S. automobile industry last week refused to make new cars until it got good & ready. The stated reason: much as it wanted to make cars, the industry was far too deeply engaged in war production to consider it now. The real reason: the War Production Board's "Blue Order," under which the industry could order production materials now for delivery later, was only paper. Automen would not get the materials until WPB decided to release them; and no automan can plan production unless he knows what materials he will get, how much, and when.

At a closed Washington meeting, representatives of nine major companies reminded WPB that passenger-car production was predicated on military cutbacks --but that there had been no cutbacks. In fact, one representative said, the industry had been getting an increasing amount of war work.* Also there was no way to guarantee the present first-year production estimate of 2,150,000 cars. The deciding factor will be whether victory in Europe comes in a trickle or a torrent.

WPB said it would let the industry make experimental postwar models. Again the automen said no. Their biggest manpower trouble lay in the engineering and drafting fields, where the burden of reconversion and new model planning would fall. The industry wanted to start by producing 1942 models; fundamental engineering changes are a big, long-time job.

The tone of the conference showed that the auto industry is not really fighting off reconversion. Plainly, while willing to take Federal control over military production, the motormen want none of it, if possible, in peacetime carmaking. Actually, Detroit's reconversion plans are way ahead of Washington's. At the meeting automen stressed that what they really need is machine tools. If the Government will release these, the automobile industry will be three-quarters of the way along its own private road to reconversion.

** But next day George Rommey, managing director of the Automotive Council for War Production, said that production cutbacks had canceled $14,000,000,000 of war contracts.

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