To War & Back with Emil Koch

As in most U.S. war plants, war contracts fell with a thud at General Electric Company's giant Appliance & Merchandise Department in Bridgeport, Conn, last week. As fast as Washington could send telegrams, almost hourly, news of new cancelations flashed through the many divisions--no more bazookas, no more rocket launchers, no more B-29 gun turret parts, no more searchlights.

By midweek, one of the divisions, the vast, home laundry plant (washing machines, ironers, etc.), had ground to a stop. By week's end, the plant was purged of most of its $750,000 worth of machinery that had beaten out $23 million in war goods since January 1942.

Back from specially acquired storehouses came G.E.'s grease-covered tools and presses, the old and almost forgotten drills, hoists and presses of the prewar assembly line. This week, G.E. would turn out its (and the industry's) first 15 washers (OPA has promised to set the price this week). Before 1946, it would produce 60,000 of them.

War & Overtime. While the plant came apart around him, quiet, durable, skilled mechanic Emil Koch, 39, went right on working on the last of the big searchlights he would help build for the Navy. He was used to tumult.

Four months before Pearl Harbor, he had been adjusting washers on the final assembly line, when the foreman switched him to a new line--hydraulic wheel retractors for aircraft. The swift scrambling of the plant's orderly insides had made Emil blink. His work week had jumped from 40 to 84 hours. Emil had hardly been able to see the fat overtime pay checks. But as the plant clanked out of its surprise, the hours came back to a reasonable 48, and Emil was again earning his usual dollar an hour, plus time and a half.

Then the draft started to work. Out of the 500 men who had built washers, 450 vanished. Some 850 green hands, mostly women, had taken their places. By 1943, Emil received a 12-c--an-hour raise. It was stage money--taxes and prices had already driven his living standard to an all-time low.

When he switched to searchlights in 1943, Bridgeport-born Emil Koch was nearly ready to bolt for the California shipyards. But last week, with the papers full of unemployment alarms, he was glad his wife had held him back.

Peace & Competition. Emil needs G.E., and right now G.E. definitely needs Emil.

The minute he finished his last searchlight, he walked a few hundred yards to the final washer assembly and was back at peacetime work. The whole 160,000-man G.E. organization from president to foremen to typists had pointed for this moment. Like other key men, Emil had to be reconverted before most of the 32 other U.S. appliance manufacturers got going, and before the customers beat down the doors.

He will use the old tools on the first models--which, in answer to frantic appeals from the nation's doctors, may be converted to special, G.E.-developed heaters for polio packs. There will be no layoffs while G.E. tries to gather its raw stocks, or hurry its sub-assemblers. For months, G.E.'s huge home laundry sales force, acting solely as expediters, has been out breaking reconversion bottlenecks.

Bright Future. At first, Emil will help make but one medium-priced washer, closely resembling the 1942's (G.E. made six prewar models, three of them at or near the loss level to meet low-priced competitors). Most will go straight to G.E.'s 60 domestic distributors, who will dole them out through dealers to the appliance-hungry U.S. (estimates of first-year sales run as high as $2 billion for the industry). The rest will go to globe-girdling International G.E. salesmen who hope to get the jump on competitors for the South American and South African trade. For the next year, at least, speed is the watchword.

Even for G.E., speed eventually equals Emil, plus the 900 reconverted war workers, the returning veterans and the new people G.E. will hire. Emil knows it. He is very glad he resisted the California impulse, although he intends to vacation there sometime after he becomes a foreman.

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