[Converting Industry]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

CONVERTING
INDUSTRY
Turning a Nation's Production to War
Transcript of Conference of Business-Paper Editors and Publishers With War Production Board Officials, Washington, D. C., February 13, 1942
Issued by
WAR PRODUCTION BOARD Division of Information Washington, D. C.
CONTENTS
Page
The Business Press and Industrial Conversion . 2
Robert W. Horton, Director, Information Division.
Front Expansion to Conversion ..... 2
Paul Wooton, President of National Conference of Business-Paper Editors.
Why Industry Must Convert •	•	.	.	.	. 3, 29
Donald M. Nelson, Chairman, War Production Board.
The Procedure for Conversion ...... 10
Philip D. Reed, Chief of the Bureau of Industry Branches, War Production Board.
Case Histories of Conversion ...... 19
C. A. Woodruff, Chief of Conversion Unit, Contract Distribution Branch, War Production Board.
George V. R. Mulligan, Conversion Unit, Contract Distribution Branch, War Production Board.
Henry P. Allberg, Conversion Unit, Contract Distribution Branch, War Production Board.
What Has Been Done in Conversion and What
Must Be Done .	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.32
James S. Knowlson, Chief of Division of Industry Operations, War Production Board.
Page How the Government Is Helping Industry to
Convert ......	....... 38
B.	T. Bonnot, Consultant, Contract Distribution Branch, War Production Board.
Manpower for Conversion .......43
a.	The Problem of an Adequate Labor Supply. Lieut. Col. Frank J. McSherry, Deputy Director, Labor Supply and Training of Labor, Labor Division, War Production Board.
b.	Training Within Industry for Conversion. Channing Dooley, Training Within Industry Branch, Labor Division, War Production Board.
c.	Union-Management Arrangements for Orderly Transfer from Civilian to War Production.
Eli L. Oliver, Chief of Labor Relations Branch, Labor Division, War Production Board.
"Convert or Perish" ......	...58
Sir Clive Baillieu, Head of British Raw Materials Mission.
How Britain Converted •	•	••....65
Charles Hitch, Economic Adviser to W. A. Harriman, Minister to England.
CONVERTING INDUSTRY
TURNING A NATION’S PRODUCTION TO WAR
Transcript of the Conference of Business-Paper Editors and Publishers With War Production Board Officials at Washington, D. C., February 13,1942.
MORNING SESSION
(The conference convened at 9 a. m., February 13, 1942)
Mr. WOOTON : Our first speaker is Mr. Robert W. Horton, the Chief of the Information Division.
Mr. HORTON: I want to welcome you to this gathering which has been arranged for a very important purpose—to let you hear at first hand some of the problems of the conversion of industry from civilian to military production, which is one of the most important problems we face at this time.
The conversion problem is one in which you can be of great assistance by carrying to the respective interests which you represent in the many industries of the country the stories of ways and means of doing it.
We shall be glad to supply you with everything and anything which we possibly can so you can carry sound information and advice to the people that you represent, many of whom are faced with a double problem. One is conversion for military production, and the other is, you might say, conversion to save themselves. It is probably going to be impossible for many of them to stay in business unless they are working on military production.
Mr. WOOTON : American industry is going to be revolutionized in this year of 1942. That is the prediction of the well-informed chairman of the War Production Board at whose request we have come to Washington. We know that the point has been reached in our armament program where many plants must be converted or they must quit. That we can convert most plants to some war use is shown by what already has been done.
Here are a few specific examples to illustrate what has been done: A plant that was making orange squeezers is now making gages. A plant that was making hair curlers is now making clamps for use in airplane manufacture. Oxygen tanks are being made in a beverage container plant, superchargers in a permanent-wave machine plant, percussion caps in a plant that made electric egg-poaching devices, camouflage nets in a fishnet mill, and fuses in an auto block plant. I take those rather insignificant instances to show that small industry can be converted as well as large.
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I believe our host on this occasion was well-advised to call in this group. Through the years, by careful editing, you have built up your prestige with those who manage American industry and business. Now that it has become necessary to tell your readers that their plants must be used for war purposes, your suggestions as to how it can be done will have weight and will reach every plant in the United States quickly.
Not only have we called in our best editorial talent, but we have here some of our distinguished publishers and representatives of advertisers. The ideas that will help in the conversion effort can be carried in advertising pages as well as in editorial mats. Advertisers probably will be glad to make that contribution, and that is one of the reasons why we have them here.
From Expansion to Conversion
We have passed definitely out of the stage of expansion into the stage of conversion. This means better and more guns. For a time we were able to take care of armament needs by expansion. Now, the number of plants that can be built is limited, so we must turn existing plants to war work.
This country has a genius for mass production. It knows how to organize industrial operations. It was industry that made America great. Incidentally, the fact that we have had a strong industrial press is one reason why that has been possible. It has kept every plant, large and small, abreast with improvements in practice.
American industry invented mass production. Germany and Japan have tried hard to imitate our mass production methods. For some reason, they are not as good at it as we are. War materials lend themselves ideally to mass production. Many designs have to be frozen, and it is then only a question of quantity.
I believe that American industry is going to pass our enemies in the amount, the quantities that we are going to produce. Representatives of the War Production Board throughout the day will give us the benefit of their thought and of their suggestions in that connection.
First, we are to have the pleasure of hearing from our friend and our very honored host, Mr. Donald Nelson.
Mr. NELSON: We are awfully glad that so many of you came down here today to hear what we have to say to you. If we can only get over to you what is in our minds; if we only had adequate command of the English language to do it, I think you would go away from here feeling that your trip had been worthwhile.
None of us are great orators and none of us are great speakers, and we just want to sit and talk to you today about the problems that face us. And you men, you gentlemen of the trade press, I think, are one of the very important groups to get over the message to industry of the problems that face America.
I have detected, of course, among American industry a great smugness. Now, I don’t believe there is any one of us who can say that industry hasn’t been cooperative within the bounds that it has seen the picture, but I do
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detect within that spirit of cooperation a great smugness, a feeling on the part of all of us, and particularly industry, that we will just swamp our enemies with mass production.
Yes, I think we can—when we get started. But when are we going to get started? And I think that is the question that faces you and me and every one of us today.
American Industry on Trial
I believe that American industry is definitely on trial. While there are many who feel that they don’t appreciate the situation they are up against, I believe that the man on the street does appreciate it. I believe he appreciates it more than you or I do, and certainly more than American industry does. I think he is going to hold us to account, you and the American industry that you represent through your trade press, and we here who are trying to do the job of setting the designs on the trestle board.
This country is facing the most gigantic job that any country has ever faced in the history of all time. Now, those are trite words, and they have been said many, many times, but let’s just see what our problem is. Let’s look at it, face to face, and just get a good look at what we are expected to do. We are expected to build a great armament program, to make up in a year or two—not more than 2 years—for all that the aggressor nations have been doing during a period of io years, and to build an armament program that will not alone meet their rate of production, but also make up for the reserves which they have built up during this period of time because of the determination and the will they have had to get the job done.
Then, we have got to build armament for Great Britain, because it is absolutely essential. We can never, in my opinion—and I am not a strategist— we can never win this war if Great Britain falls, and she will fall if she doesn’t have our full and unstinted help to produce the things that she needs.
We have got to supply the Dutch East Indies, as long as they are able to receive equipment, China, and all of the South American countries, with the things that they need to keep their economy going, and in doing all of this we have still got to keep our American economy going so that it is sound. I have always said lean, but sound, because it is necessary to keep the American economy going.
Must Preserve Sound Economy
When we say “Convert for war purposes,” don’t forget we mean convert for purposes of producing munitions of war and at one and the same time produce the essentials, the needs of our American economy, to keep it on a sound basis, so that we can produce more and more war material.
To do this job today, many of the very essential things which we need to do the job are cut off, cut off because part of the territory is occupied today by the enemy, and cut off from us because shipping is needed so badly to take things away from here now, rather than just to bring things to us.
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' Now, that is the situation in a very brief and, of course, generalized statement. That is what faces us. But there is something even more important than that, in my opinion—much more important. The thing that faces us is the job of getting out today things that we would have produced tomorrow if we had the time. That, I think, is the big job that faces all of us.
The President has said in one of his press conferences that we may have as many as io AEF’s. We are fighting from the outside. We are fighting an enemy with greater reserves of war material, greater determination, greater ruthlessness, and greater anything that you want to mention that an enemy may have. They are fighting from the inside, and we are fighting from the outside. We have got to find a point at which we can begin to attack, and it all comes from the outside; and it all is just the result of carrying things in ships over very long distances to get to those bases, wherever they may be established.
Enemy Must Be Curbed Now
We have to prevent now, not next year, an enemy from keeping on extending to a point where it may make it absolutely impossible for us to win this war. I think today we are really face to face, and looking it right squarely in the face, that we, great Nation that we are, one of the greatest, of course, of all time, all throughout history, may not be able to win this war. We look with a great feeling of contempt upon the Japs, but if the Japs keep on with their initiative and take all of the Malay barrier, the Dutch East Indies, and get complete and absolute control of the Pacific Ocean, and the Axis powers should come down through Turkey and down around the Mediterranean and join up with the Japs, and with the. resources that they would have at that time by having taken Russia in their stride, and others things, and joined forces, it is entirely possible—I don’t say probable, but it is entirely possible— that we might fight to Doomsday and never win this war against an enemy that was entrenched that way.
Now, that is what I see facing us, and I see only one thing that will ever prevent that from happening, and that is to have American industry produce enough implements of war to put in the hands of these boys that go out in an AEF and try to stabilize this situation so that thing can’t happen, and do it today.
1942 the Critical Year
Every weapon that we produce today or tomorrow is worth io that we are going to produce in 1943. Every airplane that we produce today is worth I don’t know how many times one that we are going to produce in 1943. This 1942 is the critical year of the existence of this United States, and I don’t make that statement idly, I will assure you of that. And those who have studied this situation very carefully, who are strategists—I am not—today are somewhat worried about what may happen during this year 1942.
Now, I don’t want you to think that I am painting this picture darkly— I am not. I believe that we who have been in industry, and know what
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industry can do, must sit and look at that thing squarely in the face and decide what we are going to do from now on to make up for the time we have lost, and we have lost a lot of time. We have lost a lot of time because industry and many of the managers of industry were fearful of what might happen after the war if they expanded their industry too far.
I am not saying this critically; I am not being critical at all. I don’t believe this is a time to be critical of each other for our mistakes of the past, for the things we failed to do in the past. I think it is the time for us to point our faces and our minds forward and not into what has happened in the past, except as we can take lessons from the past that will help us prevent making that mistake in the future.
Golden Months Wasted
But we have wasted the golden months that this country had to get ready for that possible combination of enemies which has now come about. As we look back on this, they were golden months when we could have expanded the steel industry, the chemical industry, we could have-expanded the copper industry, and we would have had plenty of material to make the things that we want.
That time is gone. We have lost those golden months. In my opinion we have got io silver months, not gold, and they are the months directly ahead of us in 1942. It is true we can’t make the expansion now, but we can do things that we never thought we could do, never thought we would have to do to build the things that we have to build if we are going to hold the enemy in 1942. These are 10 silver months, and the speed and the energy and will and determination that every one of us puts in this picture will determine what we will think after the 10 silver months have passed and we look at the end of 1942. We may meet here again then and review the situation.
I am not trying to make you a prophecy. I am trying to bring to you a picture that I see. Now, what can we do about it? Well, I bet there isn’t one of us, there isn’t one member of industry, there isn’t one workman at a machine that can’t do more if he has the will and determination to do more during those 10 silver months of 1942. I think that each and every one of us has to just figure out when we come to work in the morning how much more we can do to produce more implements of war during 1942, now, rather than wait until f 943 to swamp an enemy that we may never be able to reach.
A Job to Be Done Now
We are going to do that, of course, in a number of ways, and I have no fear that American industry is going to approach this problem not as something it is going to do in the far-flung future, but as something it is going to do right now. I have gotten to a point that when I hear that clock tick I just think of how rapidly time is passing, precious time, time taken out of those 10 silver months that we have got ahead of us.
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Now, true, the first of the job we have got to do is to find ways and means of getting more production out of the machinery we have already got set up, and fortunately, there is a very substantial production coming off those machines. The Army, the Navy, many down here who gave their time from American industry have really done, in my opinion, a very remarkable job, and if this were to be a nice comfortable little war in which we could just sit back and watch the bullets fly at the enemy, I think we could go away and feel very happy about the job that has been done so far.
But it is woefully inadequate, big though it may be. . Today, of course, we are producing more than we ever produced in 1918, many more guns, many more airplanes, of course, many more battleships, and many more merchant ships; but no matter how much we are making today, it just isn’t anywhere nearly enough to meet the urgency and the needs of a situation that faces us right at the moment.
Up to the Leaders of Industry
We have got to find ways and means of producing more out of those machines, because we have the will to do it, and because we have the knowledge and the skill in handling the labor situation so that labor recognizes its responsibility in getting more off those machines. That isn’t just a job of putting it up to the leaders of labor. I think it is up to the leaders of industry to do it, and we have to get more out of the present machinery, because we haven’t time in these 10 silver months to install a lot of new machinery and get ready for mass production. Then, after we have done everything we can to get more out of the machines we have got, we have to figure out a way of getting more out of the machines we already have that are doing something else.
We call it, because we all like slogans, “Conversion,” and it is conversion, because it is producing on the machines we have got now, that have been making something else, the things we need far more than the things we are making. You can be of great help in the selling of that job to industry, the selling of the necessity for doing it and doing it with a will and determination, and not just leaving it all to the Government.
You don’t want to leave it all to Government. Those who fear a change in the form of our Government will see it brought about much more rapidly if you leave entirely to Government the job of conversion, the job of taking those machines off what they are doing now and putting them on to the production of things we need badly to put in the hands of boys who are going to meet any enemy with much more equipment than they have got.. You know what that means. I don’t want to get melodramatic about it, but that means death to the boy. That means if he hasn’t got an airplane and the other fellow has, he is absolutely helpless, no matter what his will and determination or spirit or fire may be. If he isn’t as well-equipped as his enemies, he isn’t going to have a chance in this war.
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Machine Guns vs, Typewriters
When we look at this problem of conversion, we have got to look it squarely in the face, on the basis that we have got to do more now and not be producing typewriters and adding machines and accounting machines and mimeographs just because they are nice things to have. If we don’t have typewriters, we can write longhand, and a machine gun is worth a lot more than a typewriter today to that boy out there in the AEF. We can get along without adding machines and accounting machines because we need other things a lot worse than we need typewriters and adding machines and accounting machines.
We have got to go through every industry in the United States that has the engineering ability and the managerial ability and the trained workers and put them right to work making the things that we need during these i o silver months. That is what I call conversion, and industry has got to help.
We can’t do it all. We will fail if you have to depend upon us to do this whole thing. And I see entirely too much of that. I see entirely too much criticism of the Army and of the Navy, and this organization here, because some man says, “Oh, I have got a lot of machinery and nobody is using it.”
Is that the way that man built that business? Didn’t he go out after the customer? Didn’t he build it by salesmanship as well as ability to produce? The United States is a customer today, I won’t say a desperate customer, but I will say a customer greatly in need, and you have to help get the idea over to American industry that they must study that machinery and they must find ways and means of putting that machinery to use.
Production by Subcontracts
Now, it isn’t done entirely by prime contracts. That is only a small part of it. I am willing to make the prediction to you, and you know I am absolutely right: there isn’t a single big producer in this country that can’t do more if he subcontracts part of his work out to others who can do it. Oh, it is a little more work, yes; it is more responsibility, yes; it isn’t as nice as having it in your own plant; but I tell you it will produce more stuff, and industry itself has to find the way to do that subcontracting job, to find the fellow who can help break the bottlenecks in the plants.
The Government alone can’t do it. We can do part of it. We can set up some machinery; but it has to be done by the fellow with the machinery hunting out the fellow that has the need and putting the two of them together. Don’t let industry make the mistake of depending entirely upon us do that. I will be frank with you—we can’t do more than a very small part of that.
Now, that is the second great way I think we can increase production, by putting more of that machinery to work. Industries who have these contracts can go out and help find subcontractors that can do the work and teach them. True, they don’t know now. They can teach them how to do it and they can'help them do it and then they can help them expedite it and
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help them meet the tolerances and other things. American industry, in my opinion, has been lazy on this whole subject of subcontracting, because it was a difficult job and hard.
Now, that day has passed, and if industry, through you, sees the seriousness of the situation that is facing the country, we will get a lot more use of that machinery out there in the field that is now doing other things or even standing idle because it can’t get the material to make the things it has been making.
Pooling of Prime Contract»
Then, lastly, of course, we can find ways and means of doing this great job of conversion through giving prime contracts to pools of operators who may get together and pool their facilities. But that, again, takes management. It takes brains; it takes initiative, a lot of initiative.
We are going to have to go at this job with a will. We must put to work every one of those machines that can be put to work, and stop thinking about what we are going to do to the enemy in 1943 and start thinking about what we are going to do to him in February, in March. Always remember that each one of those 10 months that goes by is more precious than the one that follows it, and the more equipment we produce in the first one of those 10 months, the more important it is to this Nation.
True, we are going to have a lot of problems. It is not going to be easy. We have the problem of small business. We have labor problems. We have recalcitrant management just as we have recalcitrant labor leaders in spots. There isn’t much of it but there still is the inclination to think, “What are we going to do after this is all over if we do too much now? If too many apprentices are being trained, how are we going to find employment after this is all over? If we expand now, what are we going to do after this war is all over?”
Fortunately, I think industry has gotten that pretty much out of its mind, ’ but there still are remnants of it. I tell you this is a time to stop thinking about what we are going to do after it is all over and think of what we can do to prevent its being all over for us, and do it right now.
This isn’t a time to be panicky. This is a time to be as cool as we can in going out and doing everything that we can do to protect our own interests, as coolly deliberate as we have ever been in the history of this country. Above all else, let’s not do it by blaming each other for the wrongs that can’t be undone.
There are a lot of obstacles to be overcome. There is only one thing that ever overcomes obstacles and that is will and determination to overcome them.
Mr. WOOTON: Mr. Nelson, on behalf of the editors, I want to thank you so much for coming here. I know that your stirring message is going to be carried by this group to every workshop in America.
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Our next speaker will discuss the procedure of industrial conversion— Mr. Philip D. Reed, Chief of the Bureau of Industry Branches of the War Production Board.
Mr. REED: It is one thing to state what the problem is, and it is something else again to state how it shall be solved. If I read the program right, that seems to be some part of my assignment. I am sure that 30 days from now I could tell you much more specifically how this problem is going to be dealt with in terms of a myriad of events. But I am going to tell you what I can, and I hope it may stimulate your thinking. I hope it may suggest to you other ways and stimulate particularly your interest in the whole problem, so that we can have the backing of this immensely important group, the trade press, to help us tell the story, sell it, to impress upon all industry the gigantic importance, the inestimable importance of this job.
But, first, I want to tell you a little bit about the organization that we are developing down here, not only to handle this problem of conversion but also to deal with the many other problems of industry. For a long while, in fact since the summer of 1940, under the early Advisory Commission, it was recognized that groups were needed to deal with raw materials, with strategic materials, and so they were organized with well-staffed branches and given assignments dealing with the need for and methods of getting all the copper that could be gotten, all the lead, all the zinc, all the rubber, the raw materials whether they come from here or from abroad.
Organizing the Producing Industries
It was not, however, until relatively recently that things were done about organizing the manufacturing trades, the producing industries. The automotive branch was the first to be set up. Since then great emphasis has been placed upon the importance of organizing and setting up branches, with men in them who understand the problem of all, large, intermediate, and smaller industries. The job isn’t done by a long way, but our objective is, in this Bureau of Industry Branches, to have representatives of every industry in the country that can make a contribution toward this wartime production job that confronts us.
Just in the last 2 or 3 weeks, we have made a great deal of progress. We can get men now that we couldn’t get some months ago. They consider themselves drafted in effect when we call them to come down here now, which is a new attitude and a tremendously important one. We have got to get men who can talk the language of an industry, who know its problems, who speak to its members in the terms they understand themselves, who know whether a given program or a given suggestion is a reasonable or unreasonable thing to ask of that industry in times of great stress when it is expected to do things that are painful and necessary.
So we are doing that. We are undertaking to organize these industry branches with representatives, and many of these, from the industry, so that when any group representing a particular industry or an individual comes
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down here with its or his problem it can get an answer from a man who is responsible for all the problems of that industry, whether they be conversion, conservation, supply, labor, or anything else.
Responsibility Is Centralized
The branch chief has no alibi. We look to him here in this organization for the answers and for the reasons why a specified industry that is under his wing and under his jurisdiction has or has not taken its part and participated as it seems it should in the wartime production. And by centralizing responsibility we also must and do centralize and lodge authority in that branch chief. These branch chiefs will have authority that is single-line authority, straight down from Don Nelson, so that they can deal with things and don’t have to sit through endless meetings to clear and study and debate and discuss programs that pertain to programs that involve this job we are trying to do.
Our job is to bring industry, to bring the producers together with exactly the right procurement individual in the Army, Navy, and Air Force, so that they can get together and make this thing move and make it move rapidly; and after that to follow it and see that the job is turned out. It is our job to give all the help we can in procurement of material and all the machinery that is necessary once the job is laid out in order to keep it rolling.
Getting away from the organizational aspects of the job, it is a broad picture and there are a great many possibilities. Take, for example, an industry made up of companies—the average industry—of several large, several intermediate, a number of small companies. Very often it is the case that the large and intermediate companies have already been down inquiring about war work. They may have contracts already placed with them. If that was done a year ago, let us say, and the tooling up of the job had been completed and, on the basis of the original orders, the program is moving, then what is almost inevitable happens—the over-all program is increased or doubled or trebled.
The Quickest Way to Results
The first thing is to go right back to those companies that have contracts and load them up with that much more. And that is what has been done. That doesn’t mean there haven’t been additional sources of supply developed, but the first and easiest thing to do is go out to those spots and say: “Here is your assignment. Get ready; do it.” And it is unquestionably, I believe, the quickest way, as a first step, to get those results.
Obviously, it is not the only way. We have reached a point now where new facilities can’t be provided to do this job. We are going ahead with all that we have to produce them, but any new facilities that will be coming in from here on won’t be a drop in the bucket compared to the need for additional facilities over and above those that are currently set aside, allocated for production work. This means that a great deal of production equipment, production machinery currently utilized for other than war
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work must be converted over now from peacetime civilian jobs to these war programs.
That sounds easy, but it isn’t easy at all, because, by and large, the tools aren’t adapted for the work. This means that a great deal has got to be done in terms of searching around among various companies in a given industry, or out of . a given industry, perhaps, to find one set, two sets of equipment that will go together and make a unit, because we have got to do this job with practically no additional machine tools of critical categories. They are already spoken for. The position of the machine tool itself is going to be immense production-—fantastic—in 1942.
Tools Must Be Studied
With that already scheduled, with these being placed in a spot where they are immensely important, we are still way short, so we have got to go through industries that are being shut down in part because of lack of materials. All their tool shops have got to be searched—I don’t use the term “searched” in the sense that the door is closed to us. We can go in and are welcome anywhere to find these tools. But the tools have to be reviewed, studied, matched up, and that again is part of our job, not to do it physically but to get the people together who know how to get that done, get the industry groups and the small industry subcommittees in to make those studies.
So we take a given picture with a great many contracts, as simply one illustration of the job ahead; heavy contracts loaded up on top of a few well-known sources of supply. To accelerate the production rate, move that production schedule forward 30, 60, 90, 120 days is just that much more production for the over-all program.
So that is the job: first to get these companies to accelerate within the limits of human ability their own production schedules; and, second, to take what they can’t accelerate or what seems to be too much, too top-heavy, and move it around in the industry or elsewhere among other companies who can take it; a redistribution, if you will; a subcontracting, if you wish to use that term, of existing business let to prime and secondary contractors.
Tougher dobs Ahead
It means a careful, intimate, thoroughgoing study of the picture in each of these industries, and that is being done currently and will be done a great deal more as the weeks proceed. Then, too, further production demands will be made on industries where business was placed perfectly naturally a year ago. A company then took on a job, an important job, but as we look back at it now we find that that company can do a much tougher job. It can do a much more intricate, much more difficult piece of machinery work than the one it had the contract on. This doesn’t mean that at the time it took the contract a year ago there was a mistake. Perhaps this intricate device, something new, a new director of some kind that calls for the most intricate kind of machine work, hadn’t even been thought of then.
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That has got to be let, so that there will be a good many cases where machines currently employed on a given task will, when the contracts expire, not be renewed for that product but will be filled up with the harder jobs. Even by keeping every machine doing its absolute limit in terms of intricacy at this time, tolerances and all the rest of it, we will still have all we can do to handle this job in terms of just having machines that are equipped and adjusted to meet anything like the tolerances that are required in this man’s job, and it is a big one.
There are a great many spots, as we all know, where business has not yet been let. There are companies that do not have contracts; smaller companies that themselves have a selection of tools that don’t add up to a particular product and which have got to be combined with others; industries that are threatened with very sharp curtailment, if not complete elimination, of their products for the duration of the war.
Peacetime Product Studied
Those industries have got to be dealt with differently. First, obviously, with any industry the branch chief’s job is to say, when he looks at his problem of conversion or whatever may be necessary to get all that production work out of that industry that he can possibly get: “All right. Let’s see what the normal peacetime product of that industry is.”
He examines it and he makes inquiries through our various staffs, statistical, Army, Navy, and other relations that we have here, and makes an estimate of what the essential military requirement of that industry is, because there are many things, a whale of a lot of our normal peacetime production which we have to have just to keep the military rolling.
We have to keep Government functioning. We have to have some minimum amount to keep our own civilian economy extant. So those figures have to be determined in absolute minimum, “broken-down-till-it-hurts” figures. We examine inventories, manufacturers’ and distributors’ stocks. We study to see what would happen if we froze them, and how far we could make them stretch. We then determine what the total capacity of that industry is, how much it could make, and we see that by cutting it down to this figure, 15, 20, 25, or whatever it may be that we have to have, how much then of tools and production facilities will be released or can be released for other work.
Fixing the Level
Then the question arises as to whether that level shall be fixed on the basis of some kind of curtailment, industry-wide, or whether the figure is so low that only a few of the companies could live under it, that it is so small a percent of their normal production that they would eventually bankrupt themselves. It may be advisable to have only one company, or two or three, operate to produce that minimum—operate on a break-even basis— rather than to have a number of companies all operating in the red. Those questions obviously have to be considered.
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But only after you have decided what the figure is, how much you have got to have, do you determine how much is to be released. We analyze the tools of .each of these industries, the kind of facilities they have, the nature of the wartime end-product or subassembly or part that is best adapted to the facilities of those industries and that would call for an absolute minimum of new tools of conversion and change-over in order to meet the tolerances and specifications.
Having determined that, we tried last week—had four meetings down here, experimental meetings in a sense, at which we invited the members of four industries to come in. Through Bill Harrison, the Director of our Production Division, and others here, we arranged to have representatives of the Services, of Ordnance and the Signal Corps, Navy, Air Corps, and others in to make a statement at the opening part of the meeting in the morning of their position, of the kind of things they needed, of a list of items that had been pre-selected in a general way, so that they would fit the kind of facilities that the industry had.
Industry Is Shown the Need
A statement was made first to show to them the need, to try to impress upon this group that was here the importance and the absolute necessity of doing this job and doing it quickly, followed up with statements of our own production people, our military production expediters, and military people themselves to say what they needed and then to make specific engagements in the afternoon for follow-up meetings to consider the individual pieces, to look at the print, to make further dates to bring in the industrial engineers and the industrial men and talk over the details, hoping that in that way we might feel our way toward a technique, a scheme starting with a pilot plant, to try out a program we could expand quickly to other industries.
We are still experimenting. We are still feeling our way. We weren’t satisfied with the meetings last week. We didn’t feel they did nearly what we hoped they would do. But we learned things from them, and that is the only way we know of going about it—to keep moving and trying and improving each time you do it. We will make mistakes, but we believe now that we are very close to finding a way quickly of doing this thing.
It seems strange to me, and it seems strange to you, that a number of companies are loaded chock-a-block with war orders, and a great many other companies with people in them just as intelligent, really, say, “We don’t know where to go. We don’t understand what the problem is. You have just got to take us by the hand and take us out.”
Many Are Worrying
There must be sense to that or there wouldn’t be so many of them worrying, so many people who say they have gone away entirely discouraged, that they weren’t able to contribute and help as they wanted, and have no way of knowing how to do it.
Well, as I say, our job is to bring them together, to be the catalyst, to
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arrange for these meetings, and that is what we are doing, and that is what we will continue to do, and, what is more, I hope effectively as the period goes on.
The job just can’t be overestimated. We could give you the statistics; we could talk in terms of billions in contracts yet unlet, billions for which facilities haven’t currently been provided, and have to be taken from these various industries, and we want them to know that story. We have no case yet where the response, once the position and problem were understood, wasn’t 100 percent. It is a question of getting it over, of making it clear, of doing it in terms that can be understood, and of making it, wherever possible, on an industry basis in order that everybody hears that part of the story at the same time, so they know what the problem is.
Sometimes it becomes necessary to impose curtailment orders on an industry over-all, in order that the units of that industry should all be brought down together in order to free that amount of additional facilities.
I could go on almost indefinitely talking about this. I think I have given you a picture of the things we are trying to do. If you have any questions, I am willing to expose myself.
QUESTION: I thought there was some justification a few months ago in statements made that industry did not get its orders far enough in advance of the completion of orders already on hand to enable them to plan the necessary plant layouts, the necessary assignments of personnel, and that that was one reason why they went along and lived up to their delivery dates but did not beat them.
I am wondering if now this business of placing orders in advance, either orders for new products, such as you described, or renewal orders on the job they have at present, is going along far enough in advance to make sure that there will be no slow-down, in order to retain employees, in order to get the most efficient use out of their equipment.
Mr. REED: I have heard that same complaint made. I am not the person to answer it except to say this: We don’t let contracts. That isn’t part of our job. The job, however, there of Harrison’s Production Division and MacKeachie’s Purchases Division is to be in very close touch with the Services and work with them daily. But the actual procurement, the actual contract letting is done by the Services and will continue, so far as I know, to be done by them.
I think that unquestionably has happened. I know where particular companies have begun worrying as to whether there will be a continuation, a reorder on the basis of their not being loaded as fully as they might have been, and no effort has been made to accelerate their production or date of their delivery schedules.
One doesn’t hear about that so much now, in the last few weeks, and I suspect that part of it will be a thing of the past very quickly if there is any of it at all. If there is any of it, it is in the process of being corrected, be
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cause I think there isn’t a facility in the country currently engaged on war production that isn’t contemplated to be continued at increasing tempo. There isn’t any I know of that is going to be shut off, unless to be converted to a harder job or a new job.
QUESTION: That is the thing I had principally in mind. If a man didn’t
get his order or his detailed specifications far enough in advance, he might have a lag there and run the risk of losing quite a number of employees, and that is a serious business.
Mr. REED: That is true also in these industries that are being curtailed today from their normal peacetime operations. You have just got to be realistic about it, and you have to be careful, and it seems to me the way to approach it is, first, to require that industry or that company to come in with its war conversion program. In other words, “Here is the order. Here are the things we are going to make, and here is the absolute earliest date that we can tool up to do this job or make the necessary change-over.”
Have that examined by experts down here who are confident that the thing can’t be done any faster; and, having satisfied ourselves of that, that leaves the men with a normal production here, with a conversion curve coming up this way, and a gap to be filled in. Also, all their workers or a large part of them will be out, and they will have to call them in and train them as they need new people.
Filling in the Gap
That raises a question of whether, during that interim period, working toward a fixed, known conversion schedule, whether that gap shouldn’t be filled in with enough continuing peacetime production out of inventories on hand, enough needed additional materials to balance our inventories in order to preserve the working force, keep the continuity of the organization until it can keep up the war work as it goes along.
That seems to me immensely reasonable, and that is the approach we have. The approach hasn’t been that way. People generally haven’t come in with a whale of a carefully worked-out conversion program. But, if they do come in with that kind of a program and it doesn’t involve any substantial amounts of these very tight materials, I am all in favor of maintaining that organization.
QUESTION: I wonder what is being done to speed up the work with regard to making it easy for firms who are now receiving contracts to study the methods, get the designs of tools and tooling equipment of firms who have already made that same product on another contract.
For example, suppose there is a 75-mm. or whatever gun it might be. Now, of course, a great deal of time can be saved if the new contractors do not have to decide the tools they may have to have made, and do not have to go over the methods, determine on methods, and design tools.
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Mr. REED: Quite right. There isn’t the know-how of any manufacturer in this country working on a military item that shouldn’t be the know-how of any other, and it is perfectly available to any other contractor. Some of the early contractors in the game, making guns and other items, have been literally swamped with this training task of other contractors, of people coming over from other companies to sit in, and give courses, if you like. It has come to a point in many cases where it has become a very real problem in terms of time and availability of the executives and production people to do that job, but it has to be done.
The first fellow in just recognizes it as a part of his task. He is going to have to staff for it. But the answer to what you say is: Wherever the contractor working on a Government job has developed the technique, has the know-how to do that job, everything he has is 100 percent available to the fellow who hasn’t got it and makes his request in the proper way to get it. If there is any difficulty about it, why an inquiry here will correct it, either through the individual he is having trouble with or, if that fellow happens to be loaded up with training jobs of that character, we will put him somewhere else where he can get it.
There isn’t any resistance to it except in the very fact of that training impairing work in the first fellow’s place., They say, “Are we going to train other contractors or are we going to produce?” That is being taken care of.
QUESTION: Mr. Reed, you referred to experimental meetings last week of four industries. I take it that typewriters—:—
Mr. REED: Typewriters, laundry machines, and pulp and paper machines.
QUESTION: Are they all going to bring in conversion programs for consideration?
Mr. REED: Not on those terms. The subcommittee of the typewriter industry is today meeting again, considering a curtailment order to be applied to that industry.
The laundry-machine industry is quite different. It is practically chock-a-block with military requirements alone for laundry equipment equalling its peacetime production for several years back. Every industry is different, and you have to examine whether we can squeeze some more capacity that we could use some more material on.
Those things are being studied. Generally, the technique is to break it down into a couple of small committees, a technical committee and a planning committee, studying it and going back and talking with our experts in the branches, and more particularly to deal directly where there is found to be capacity available, with the procurement officers in the Services who find what is the best and toughest thing to put in there, and work out actual contracts.
We measure our results only in terms of contracts let and production plans actually under way.
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QUESTION: Where is the normal producer for an industry to get this know-how? Is the procedure to get this information through the industry committee set up there, or through the industry branch?
Mr. REED: Certainly through their industry branch and through the industry committee, if that seems to be the easiest way to do it. I don’t think there is any required channel. Maybe it is through the trade association. There is no protocol; there is no special approach to it.
You come in one by one or together or through your trade association or committee or any other way and we will be delighted to work with you. If you have a problem, let’s have it. If it is a problem that you aren’t sure is a common one to the industry, it would help us immensely if you could consider that with your fellows in the industry in advance, get it from your own standpoint and put, in simple, clear terms, so that our job down here is accelerated. Anything you can do to plan in the field, to present your problems broken down and streamlined and stripped of the nonessentials, is going to make it that much quicker for you to get the answer and help us tremendously at this end.
QUESTION: What will be the practical manner in which a small plant or a pool of small plants could offer their services in this conversion planning?
Mr. REED: From a community, you mean?
ANSWER: Yes.
Mr. REED: And probably from various industries, perhaps? You have various questions involved there. If there were a number of small companies in a given industry, I think their best approach would be either through their trade association or in concert to come down to the branch chief in charge of that industry and he would put them in touch with the conversion specialist and the people down here who could give them suggestions and advice on that.
If they represent a number of different industries, and it is a community rather than an industry basis, our set-up isn’t quite as well geared to pick up that kind of a situation, but if in that case they wished assistance, they would either address themselves .to me or to the Bureau itself or to Jim Knowlson, the head of the Division of Industry Operations, or approach their local office, their local field office of the WPB, which will have people in it who are not of a particular industry but represent us here at headquarters in all phases of this job, who could give them guidance and tell them where to come down here.
QUESTION: Do you have a set-up for conversion or a branch chief for foodprocessing or food-manufacturing plants? I am thinking of some of these lesser branches of the food industry, such as bottlers of carbonated beverages, confectioners, and so forth, who are very seriously hampered by sugar rationing, and imports of cocoa, and so forth. Is there a branch set-up?
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Mr. REED: Oh, yes. We have a food branch which is broken down into a good many sections.
Then, again, the specific conversion aspect—incidentally there is going to be another section which is now being added which will take in it beer, distilled products, tobacco, confectionery of all kinds—that kind of thing— but the bottlers, as you say, the soft-drink people who can’t get sugar and are having difficulty with their materials, may come in and see Mr. Townsend of the food branch. He will be able to direct them to someone in the branch who can discuss with them their problems, consider their facilities, nature, type, kind of things to be made.
This thing should be done by them. I can’t be too emphatic about it that you fellows make clear to these industries that the way for them to get the job done quickly is to figure it as their own problem. After all, this Nation was created on the basis of individual initiative, and let’s not get away from that.
The problem, as you get down the line and get into industries that have never made a product of that character, is very much more serious, and I don’t think we need reflect on that, for the fact is that they need help. That is what we are here for, but I do hope in every case they will exhaust the possibilities at home, and then, having done that, come down here or write down here and we will go to bat for them, just as fast as we can.
Mr. WOOTON: The next speaker on our program will deal with the case histories of conversion in American plants, Mr. C. A. Woodruff, who is chief of the Conversion Unit of the Branch of Contract Distribution.
Mr. WOODRUFF: I think we were all very much impressed with Mr. Donald Nelson’s urgent plea that American industry should exercise the same aggressiveness and resourcefulness in taking defense business that they showed in developing their own industries, and I think that we have here this morning a very typical and fine example of those qualities exercised to the nth degree.
We have all seen the ladies’ handbags that they tuck under their arms, and you wouldn’t think that they could be very much of a defense potential, the handbag-frame manufacturing business. In the first place, it is all press work, and this isn’t a sheet-metal war exactly, in general.
They buy this stock in a wide width; they shear it down to the width they want to use; they run it through some embossing rolls to put the pattern on it, and then they “U” it up and notch it and all in a single operation in progressive dies. They form the hinge on a conveyor feed press; they put in the eyelet between the two pieces; and then they bend it into the form of a U and then make a fastener, also in progressive dies. They spot weld it to a frame. They take a piece of wire and form a loop; they take a couple of those and spot weld them together and then they spot weld them onto the little frame.
Then they nickel-plate it; give it a copper wash, bronze color, and they have the frame ready to go out on milady’s arm, on milady’s handbag.
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In the meantime, they have made the inside parts for the little coin purse, and so forth.
hooking for War Work
A manufacturer of those things came down looking for business. There wasn’t very much that he could get into, but the same ingenuity that produced those parts—and I might say he produces one million of these finished things a week, one million frames—stood him in pretty good stead, because he looked at a device for loading a projectile into a rapid-fire gun. It has a cartridge case that stands way out here. I am sorry I haven’t got the cartridge case and the device for loading those into a rapid-fire gun, which is a casting with some screw machine parts.
The casting had to be milled, and he didn’t have a miller. It had to be ground, and he didn’t have a grinder. It required screw machine parts, and he didn’t have that either; so he took the drawing anyway and developed the thing in the sheet metal, pressed steel. When he got through he had something that weighed half what the casting did.
He didn’t need any drill presses; he didn’t need any broaches; he didn’t need anything but what he had in his own imagination, which he used very fruitfully.
That was tested at Aberdeen, and it worked. That is a conversion job.
I am going to let Mr. Mulligan talk about some conversion angles in the tank program and Mr. Allberg some conversion angles in the plane program.
Mr. WOOTON: I don’t know that they understood exactly what the finished product is.
Mr. WOODRUFF: The finished product is a charger for a rapid-fire gun.
Mr. WOOTON: Now we will hear from Mr. Mulligan.
Mr. MULLIGAN: This conversion of a civilian economy to war industry is a reversal of the expression about turning swords into plowshares, by turning the plowshares into tanks and guns.
In that way there is a whole army of people, industry, labor, the War Department, the War Production Board. Our own contribution is a very humble part of the whole program. If we were to stop now and build plants and manufacture the machine tools to equip those plants, it means months, as Mr. Nelson told you, and probably years in the prolonging of the war. So we must remember that one tank now may be worth five or ten tanks i o months from now.
Therefore, the problem becomes one of making the most effective use of every available industrial facility which will enable us to produce tanks. So let us scan briefly what has been done, and let us see what is now being done in the direction of conversion of plants that have been engaged in the manufacture of civilian products to the production of tanks.
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The Modern Trojan Horse
Now, the tank represents about as complex a production problem as can be encountered. Over 30,000 piece parts go into the production of a single tank. Someone said that the tank is a modern version of the Trojan Horse, probably on the theory that that weapon, through the element of surprise, has some analogy. I bet the boys that built the Trojan Horse didn’t have any of the production headaches that the men in American industry have, that is imposed upon them by the modern tank.
The tank might be described as a highly specialized machine which must be produced to close tolerances on a mass-production basis. None of the men involved in the designing of tanks, perhaps at the outset, could foresee to what extent that particular weapon was to become a mass-production vehicle, so, starting from scratch, there was no manufacturer of civilian machinery or equipment who was 100 percent equipped to go into the production of tanks.
It is true, locomotive manufacturers are equipped and experienced in developing a highly specialized piece of machinery and milling to close tolerances, but we can hardly say that we have turned out locomotives on a mass-production basis.
It is true, again, that the automobile manufacturer is building a specialized type of machinery and is turning them out on a mass-production basis, but the tolerances to which he must work when he starts to produce tanks make an automobile as simple a production proposition as a kiddy-car.
I am telling you all this so you will realize what a marvelous job has been done and is being done and will continue to be done until victory is won. The locomotive manufacturer has taken his ability to produce locomotives and has proved his adaptability to learn mass-production methods, so that he can roll tanks off an assembly line after the best Detroit traditions.
The Magic of Conversion
Now, I said a while ago that no manufacturer was set up to turn about overnight from peacetime production to the manufacture of tanks. How, then, has Mr. Locomotive Manufacturer been able to get into production so quickly? This has been done by the conversion of hundreds of plants, manufacturing automotive parts, trucks, heat directors, rubber tires, road machinery, farm implements, and a thousand and one other peacetime products to the production of tanks.
I mention those things not to seek out industries to put them in the limelight to the exclusion of others but to give you an indication of the variety of industries that have contributed to the production of tanks.
Now, this conversion has been accomplished not only by the energy, the élan displayed by the prime contractor, but by full collaboration of the Services and of the predecessor of the War Production Board. Visualize, if you will, hundreds of plants collaborating on the manufacture of parts that are eventually assembled into tanks by one manufacturer.
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It might be well to say a word, too, about this business of the prime contractor. If the War Department were to contract with each of these hundreds of individual manufacturers who are making piece parts, it would mean not only hundreds of individual contracts but hundreds of Army inspectors, and, over all this, the Government, the War Department would be .required to maintain the production-control system—remember we are dealing with a mass-production item—to get these parts to the assembly line, where they are wanted at the time they are wanted. .
Firms of Responsibility
Now, these manufacturers who are producing tanks are all accustomed to farming out the production of their parts and subassemblies of their normal peacetime product. They are firms of responsibility. They would have to be to get any serious recognition in the production of so important a combat vehicle. They may be relied upon to see that other firms with whom they place subcontracts for tank parts and assemblies will produce those parts strictly in accordance with Government specifications. And, of course, they are subject to Government inspection both at the subcontractor’s plant and at the prime contractor’s plant when those parts or subassemblies are manufactured there.
But the prime contractor takes the responsibility. He answers to the Government for seeing that these parts are delivered to his assembly line when and as they are wanted. With his mass-production experience, the manufacturer of motor cars and trucks is a natural subject for conversion to tank production. The first tanks he produces are manufactured to a great extent in his own tool rooms, which are probably more extensive than any other single industry in the country. Meanwhile, he is accustomed in his own practice to study his plant layout and to move machines to the point where they can produce the parts wanted with minimum handling, so he goes right on and does that while he is getting his first tanks, machines, and assemblies.
He, too, is accustomed to farming out parts and having them manufactured in other plants. There are probably between 800 and 1,000 firms in the United States which normally are tributary to the automotive industry through that course I have just described. These and many others are being converted wherever possible to the supplying of parts for tanks.
Freight Cars to Tanks
Another tank conversion is that of railroad passenger- and freight-car manufacturers. The shop areas required for assembly of tanks find a natural haven in the shop facilities afforded by industry of this type. I believe, though, that the industry that furnishes a classic example of all-out conversion is the agricultural-equipment manufacturer who is now producing tanks.
From the peaceful pursuit of supplying the farmers with tractors, threshers, plows, seeders, and the like, to the production of a great war machine,
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the modern tank, is indeed quite an evolution, but it has been accomplished and will probably be accomplished again and again.
Who are some of the people supplying the tank components? Well, the tank has a periscope that serves the same function to a tank that it does to a submarine. The manufacturer of heat regulators and thermostats heads up a group of some 20-odd subcontractors to him, and is the producer of the end result, the periscope.
A manufacturer of car heaters has been converted into production of parts. Perhaps it is not so great a jump for the manufacturer of rubber tires for passenger cars and tubes to the production of the rubber parts required for tank tracks, but you will agree, I am sure, that it is quite a step in conversion to turn from the production of corn crushers to the metal parts for the tracks.
The manufacturer of construction equipment is playing his part in this tank conversion and turning to the production of tanks from the manufacture of concrete mixers, road scrapers, and such tools to the production of large-unit steel castings used on tanks.
One firm which normally manufactured conveyor systems and probably has its product in over 50 percent of the automotive plants of the United States has been converted from the production of those normal products to the production and the machining of large unit steel castings for tanks.
Another manufacturer has lately turned from the manufacture of plowshares to forgings for tank trends, and so forth.
What is the actuating motive in this production program? I quote from a statement Mr. Nelson made in an interview printed in the papers last Sunday: “Speed is essential, for any lagging in the conversion effort may lead directly to the death of American fighting men. There are no ‘if’s’ in it. As our Commander-in-Chief says, ‘We must win; we can win; we will win.’ ”
Mr. WOOTON: We are going to hear from Mr. Allberg, an aeronautical engineer by profession, who has had 15 years of experience in general production.
Mr. ALLBERG: All adaptable industries for aircraft should be utilized for conversion as quickly as possible. This has been a general statement, and we are still adhering to it. It goes without saying that employing the present productive capacity of the various industries for aircraft production will give our armed forces more planes. We must have planes and more planes in order to obtain air supremacy.
In converting industry to aircraft, I shall speak of it as aircraft conversion rather than conversion to aircraft. There are many problems that arise in the production of aircraft, particularly relative to industries that are being converted; the type of equipment, the personnel, determine largely what can be done in converting from peacetime production to production of aircraft assembly and aircraft components.
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Concentration of aircraft parts, specializing on one or two critical items, is being changed, due to this conversion program. A very critical item in aircraft has been localized on the West Coast. It is now being shifted to the East Coast as well as the Midwest. Conversion has made this possible.
For example, a manufacturer having a building with small space and no clearances is limited as to the size and type of aircraft subassembly. Provided the manufacturer is particularly adaptable for that kind of work, at least 500,000 to 2,000,000 square feet is required for a final assembly. That, of course, varies, depending on the type of aircraft.
Greater Precision Required
The machines that heretofore have produced so-called precision-made parts for peacetime are now called upon to produce aircraft parts requiring greater precision. Not only facilities have to be converted but personnel has to be converted as well. It must be trained along new lines, it must learn new and different techniques. This applies to the manager, chief engineer, down through the ranks to the man that is running the machine or the individual who is doing the simple assembly operations. I say individual, because that means female help.
In the field of aircraft conversion, there have been partial and complete conversions of industries. You will observe that their present aircraft products are rather remote from their peacetime products. For example, a manufacturer of rubber goods is now making wing panels. Conversion in this case was not easy for the manufacturer nor for the prime contractor. The educational program involved is tremendous, but our American managerial staff, our American engineering, and our American skilled labor has made this feasible.
Another case: The automobile and the automotive body manufacturers are now making complete airplanes, and in some instances are making very important subassemblies, such as center panels, tail surfaces, and wing panels. We will have to lean on the automotive manufacturers to take the lead in aircraft conversion with respect to conversion of the largest subassemblies and final assemblies. Due to their production skill in the production of automobiles, not only are they a factor in the production of tanks but their production experience in aircraft will go far in evolving new techniques and new methods which may become adopted in the future as standard practices.
Workers Are Converted
Some of the automotive body builders are now manufacturing aircraft exhaust manifolds. This, on the face of it, looks like a simple job, but it isn’t. It was necessary to convert their skilled welders, who are useless in the respect of welding stainless steel. It requires from 3 to 6 weeks to have them become certified for welding stainless' steel. The specifications are rather rigid for welding of this nature.
Incidentally, many women have qualified as certified welders.
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Some of the automotive engine industries have now, as you know, been converted to the manufacture of aircraft engines. Going a little far afield, I would like to cite the case of eight gas-stove manufacturers who pooled their facilities and will make very large rudders and tail surfaces. In this instance, one manufacturer could not handle the order alone but needed the support of the other seven.
A washing-machine manufacturer is now making airplane-engine gears. In this case, the manufacturer had to cut and grind gears requiring a higher degree of precision. There was another definite conversion job.
A manufacturer of plumbing supplies is now making oil lines for aircraft engines.
Notable Conversions
In the manufacture of airplane propellers, there have been some notable conversions. A refrigerator manufacturer is now making a complete propeller. A railroad-switch manufacturer is making gliders, a washing-machine manufacturer propeller gears, a small-tool manufacturer is now machining propeller forgings.
Another good case of remoteness is a cork-product manufacturer who is now making wing tips; a manufacturer of railroad-car window sashes is now making aircraft canopies, windshields, and bomb windows. A pot-and-pan manufacturer is making airplane parts. A washing-machine manufacturer is now making hydraulic mechanisms. Even a manufacturer of motionpicture machines is making precision tools for aircraft purposes.
One of the large aircraft instrument manufacturers, finding his own facilities inadequate, has gone far afield in selecting subcontractors for precision-made parts and has obtained the use of manufacturing facilities which during peacetime normally make the following products: Printing presses, cream separators, tobacco-handling machines, sewing machines, refrigerators, clocks and watches, and a number of others.
A manufacturer of children’s toys, specializing in coasters and scooters, is making subassemblies for this instrument manufacturer of a confidential nature.
So you see the spread that is taking place throughout the industry. Let me cite another case. An agricultural-equipment manufacturer is now engaged in making tail-wheel assemblies. An office-equipment manufacturer is making airplane-stick assemblies. Other stove manufacturers are making, and metal office-equipment manufacturers are now making fuel tanks, doors, and seats.
Cooperate With Services
Now, not only have the airplane conversion manufacturers furnished parts or subassemblies or assemblies in accordance with blueprint specifications but they have also cooperated with the Army and Navy in the development of aircraft products. Many of these products are of secret and confidential nature. The Army and Navy have recognized that various industries not
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only offer floor space and machines but skilled labor and engineers. For example, a machine that perhaps all of you have tried, the vending machine’s manufacturer has developed an electric turret and a turret gun sight for aircraft.
I might add a few more. A manufacturer of rubber products is now making bullet-proof gas tanks; a manufacturer of water heaters, small precision parts and machine assemblies; a corrugated paper-box company, an oil company, is now making wing-hinge fittings.
Now, figure this one out. A silk-hosiery manufacturer is not making silk hosiery but wing-hinge fittings.
This is but a mere cross-section of what industries in our country are doing to speed up the production of aircraft. There are many examples of conversion which have not been mentioned, much too numerous to take up. They will range from the silk-hosiery manufacturer to the automotive industries. It is up to all of us to bring about further aircraft conversion. This must be done and will be done.
Mr. WOODRUFF: I would like to say, in connection with some of these conversion problems that have been mentioned, that very often the answer to conversion for the small shop—and there are loads more small shops than there are big ones—lies in the subcontracting field.
Obviously, the little shop of 50 or 100 people is not sufficiently great to undertake a prime contract of hardly anything that our armed forces are buying. The quantities involved are so big, the responsibility is so great, and the ability of the armed forces to supervise and inspect the work at 50,000 plants would be practically impossible. There just isn’t that much trained personnel.
Small Industry Is Important
So the only way that they can get around that one is to award their contracts in rather large chunks and to ask the prime contractor to break it down into subcontracts, which does let the small industry in, and that small industry is of vital importance. There is a crying need for more tank parts, a crying need for more of anything you can think of in this man’s program.
Mr. Mulligan, I know, has spent days and weeks with a staff of men out in the field, trying to find facilities. We have been going there to do that to dig them up, rather than their bringing us out; and in the airplane program the same thing has held true. Of course, there has to be the greatest discretion as to who makes an airplane part. It is just too bad if that part fails, and it is just too bad if the assemblies or subassemblies made don’t fit into the rest of it, because if you make a middle part in your shop, and the end pieces in somebody else’s shop, and the three don’t go together, we haven’t got very far.
Consequently, the present situation has been refined all the way along the line. Study, trying, all that sort of thing has had to accompany the search for work and the search for facilities.
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Mr. WOOTON : Let us proceed with the questions.
QUESTION: I am interested chiefly in the consumer-goods people. When a conversion program hits a consumer-goods factory, is the conversion there complete 100 percent- conversion, or is there some effort made to let that factory carry on with some portion of its ordinary retail business?
Mr. WOODRUFF: That question as to how much a thing is curtailed lies within the industry branch. For instance, there has been a shortage of facilities for the manufacture of small arms; Colt automatic pistols, the soldier’s rifle, small-caliber machine gun. We know that some of those facilities lie in the typewriter industry, because they have milling machines. They have profiling machines. Profiling machines are not common. There are a lot of drilling machines, grinding, heat treating, and they are accustomed to fairly precise work. Hence a curtailment order is in process and will affect the typewriter industry. It is not to hurt the typewriter industry but because the country needs guns.
So the curtailment order may be flavored either way. Either we can’t spare; the materials or we can’t spare facilities to use up that material.
Mr. MULLIGAN: Perhaps while someone is thinking of a question, I may be able to make a suggestion as to how they can help. The trade publications have done a great job, of course, in the education of American management. There is a further job of education here to be done, and the trade publications are the people to do it. In fact, I believe they are the only people who can do it.
We encounter this thing, for example, in our search for facilities to build tanks. Mr. Woodruff told you that we had a staff of engineers who would go out into the field and search out these facilities. What are some of the things that we encounter?
Well, we still encounter some of that feeling of, “Let George do it. I am building a product. I have poured a good deal of money into the trade part. I have built up a national reputation for it, and where am I going to be after this thing,is over?”
I think Mr. Nelson furnished the real answer to that, when he said that if we don’t take advantage of this next io months, these io silver months, as he called them, it is a question of where we are all going to be when this is over.
Now it is just as serious as that, and if you can get that message over to that type of management, the people who have the facilities, the people who have the management, the people who have the engineering skill to contribute to this program but still are worried about what they are going to do after the peace treaty is signed, that is one thing.
Admit Management Is Weak
Another thing we encounter is the type of management, and you would be surprised, gentlemen, at the size and the extent of some companies in
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which they make these expressions, they say, “Well, our management is weak.” They don’t admit it; they brag about it.
Now, that is not some company employing 25 men, but that admission is made by managements of thousands of men. Now, what they are really trying to tell us is that this tank is more complex. It means that they are going to have to burn more midnight oil to study it out. It means they are going to have more production problems. It means they are going to have to study out their production planning. They have been able to get by with a rule-of-thumb method up to now. They haven’t yet overcome that mental attitude of sitting back and expecting that the rest of industry is going to do the job that they should do.
Now, those men would get highly indignant if we said their attitude was unpatriotic. But you men in the trade publications have the opportunity to make up that type of management’s mind, make them realize that if they are big enough to build up their position to produce the product that is their normal product, there isn’t any reason why they can’t adapt themselves and apply the same amount of energy to these war weapons.
Now, I am talking to you men about the management side of the picture, because while there has been a great deal of conversation, a great deal of criticism of the war program, I find that some of that is coming from the very type of mind in management that needs to examine his own conscience and needs to examine his own organization to see whether he is doing the job that he should be doing.
Now, if we go out and try to do anything about getting that message across, we have got two strikes on us, so to speak. We may be accused of any number of things, but, gentlemen, we only have one objective here, and that is to get these facilities to producing the weapons of war that are needed. The job of getting that message over to management and to industry, I think, is a No. 1 job on the trade-publications agenda.
Mr. WOOTON: Mr. Mulligan, those remarks were splendid, and I can say that out of the 184,600 manufacturers’ plants, I am sure there are very few that do not take the paper that is devoted to their industry, and I want to repeat that those men, those operators of those plants, really make these papers seriously. They know, over a period of years, that they are very carefully edited. You would be surprised how many times everything that goes into the average business paper is checked and rechecked so that they may maintain this reputation for accuracy and for handling timely things.
Just the minute that someone gets an idea in speeding up processes, that is immediately passed into this vast number of plants, and I know of no other means of communicating readily with those plants.
At the Census Bureau you can get them out in 15 minutes if you have got 6 weeks to get the cards fixed on the machines. Then you can get them in 15 minutes, get them all, but here, next week, you can get those stories over.
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QUESTION: Mr. Woodruff, that sample you showed us this morning of sheet-metal work—is that indicative of considerable progress being made to get some use out of these forge and blanking presses that are standing idle around the country?
Mr. WOODRUFF: I think it is, sir. There is more thought being given to what you might term cold forging as against cast machining. We all recognize and must frankly admit that we have got 20 times the punch-press capacity loose than we know what to do with. I am speaking in a general sense. That doesn’t mean that we have got an excess of blanking and drawing equipment, because there isn’t an oversurplus of that. But there is more and more attention being given to this other angle, and also to the use of steel with a suitable protective coating to replace the nonferrous alloys, copper, zinc, and so forth. There is a great deal of thought going into that.
You asked the question, Mr. Wooton, about textiles and what they might be doing. Some of the things that I have got on a rather extensive list; A fellow making silk ribbons is making parachutes, silk for that, and doing something in pyrotechnics at the same time. A cotton mill machinery house is making some armor piercing shot, a little smaller size than the example I exhibited. Another textile-machinery house is making the fin-assembly on a large shell of a bomb. Another cotton-mill house is making the 75-millimeter shell. It gives some idea, perhaps, of what goes into some; of those things.
Oh, yes; the fellow that makes auto felt is making cotton comforters; a carpet shop is making some blankets, and an auto-upholstery shop is making some uniform cloth.
Mr. DONALD M. NELSON: One point I didn’t make this morning that I intended to was about one of the most fruitful sources of getting additional production out of the facilities that are now in use. When we get the figures of plant utilization there is so much more that can be done from putting on the second and third shifts.
That just isn’t being done. Now, I realize that many of those things are difficult. They are difficult to do. It involves the work of training apprentices and getting labor and there are the difficulties of doing it all, the additional costs, and a lot of things, but as we look over these figures coming in on plant utilization, I am really surprised. I believe it would be worth while, perhaps, without us necessarily giving you the names of all the industries, if it isn’t subject to censorship, for you to show just how these plants are really being utilized on the basis of the relationship of the number of hours of use to the total theoretical or 168 hours a week.
More Output From Present Machines
Now, we realize that you can’t reach 168 hours, except in a very few operations, but there is room for tremendous expansion of our production
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in present facilities that are now tooled up, if we get greater plant utilization by working a longer number of hours. I realize the difficulties. In some cases it means working the thing out with labor unions or with employees and getting new employees, training and a lot of difficulties; but as I look over those figures, I think it is our best means of getting additional production right now out of the present machines.
I just don’t want to leave you again without impressing the necessity for that being done wherever possible, because each month that goes by, every time that clock ticks, if we have lost any production, it is just that much more danger to our whole program. I think that plant utilization is a thing you and your editors and some of your technical men might study in the industry and keep stressing the additional utilization of those machines through increase in shifts or however it might be done.
That is the point I forgot to get home to you this morning. I know that it is a fruitful source of increased production and anything we can do to give you figures on it, I am sure that we can arrange to do.
If there are any questions, I would be glad to answer them if I- can.
QUESTION: Mr. Nelson, how far has this idea of conversion already spread through industry?
Mr. NELSON: I haven’t any figures, sir, but I think that a great deal of it has been done, and we haven’t any knowledge of it. It has been done piecemeal. A fellow who has been making civilian things finds a way to use the automatic screw machines a few extra hours in doing some job for someone else who had those automatic screw machines. I think there has been a lot done that we don’t know about.
Now, the automobile industry, I feel, is just doing a swell job of converting themselves. I really feel that while it was late, and public opinion has been very much upset, I really feel that now they are doing an amazingly fine job of converting that industry into war production.
Concerns like the National Cash Register have converted part of their facilities into the making of things and International Business Machines and others have started, but I haven’t any idea of the quantitative amount.
QUESTION: We are doing a job now in producing as many shoes as you need for the armed forces, but there has now come up the need for producing shoes for Russia and other places, which means heavier types of shoes, heavier lasts, all the conversion within ourselves to make different types of shoes. Now, is that going to be tremendously expanded, too?
Mr. NELSON: Why, I think it will have to be. I heard a military man say the other day that part of the reason for the success of the Russian Army was the fact that they had boots and the Germans didn’t. Even the boot may be an important military thing.
I think we can’t think today in terms of any particular industry that won’t have to be expanded or converted to doing things. Now, we have to be
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careful, and we want to be sure to be careful that we do take care of the essential civilian needs, but I am positive, too, gentlemen, that the essential civilian needs are a lot, lot less than anybody even thinks about today as being things that they can do without.
Now, when we say essential civilian needs, we mean that, and we are going to have to go into tremendous campaigns of conservation, perhaps, of shoes just as we are with rubber tires, of showing the people how we can save rubber tires, how we can keep the present reserve stock we have on rubber tires, and I think that each and every one of us has done everything he can do to conserve that rubber. I think that conservation of the things that we need, of these essential materials, is so very, very important, and it is going to be important even in the shoe industry. We thought we had plenty of leather, and we are going to have to conserve even leather by making those shoes, perhaps, of a kind that will wear longer. We have a problem to meet, and we have to meet it no matter how much it costs us in pride and luxury—just necessities.
QUESTION: Mr. Nelson, I heard a top defense official say recently that it is not materials and equipment but perhaps management that is our bottleneck; that if we had better management, we might be able to increase production with present facilities as much as 25 percent. Would you say anything on that?
Mr. NELSON: Yes, I think that is very true. I think, of course, again, like any other statement, it is a generalization, and you have to define what is good management. I think that if our management were more resourceful, were more convinced that they didn’t have to observe the old customs of doing things, if management were more keenly alert to doing the thing that was necessary to be done to expedite their program—I don’t say that is bad management, but don’t forget, gentlemen, just as in each and every place today, good won’t count. Good isn’t enough. It is superlative, just as each and every man that is in this organization in the War Production Board can’t be just a good man. He has got to be the best, and then he has to use a lot of ingenuity that he has never used before.
Superlative 1» Needed
So, I don’t consider that it is bad management. I think it is just not superlative management, and you know what percentage of superlative management there is in the United States. But we have to be that, and I think your group can do a lot, a great deal toward helping improve the alertness of that management.
I read, when I get time, some of your publications, and I think you have done a good job in telling foremen how others have done, or telling management what others have done to do this thing, but I think you will have to go even farther than that, and I think you will have to help us organize, perhaps, clinics in some of the plants that your papers cover, with the idea
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of getting it down even more to the man who doesn’t get it by reading, and I believe that is a field in which you can be very helpful.
This is a job where every one of us has got to use every bit of ingenuity he has got to bring about results. Now, I am confident. I don’t want you to feel I am not confident. I am confident, but I am confident only when I feel that the full energy, determination, will, skill, and alertness of all of the American people is just directed at this one job. Then I would get confident. I am not confident until that has been accomplished, and that is why I was so anxious to have you men, who I believe are tremendously influential in this country, through your papers, come down here and try to get, if you could, the flavor of this thing, the feel of it, the atmosphere of it, because I think that each and every one of us needs an urging at all times, that human nature is such that you just have to have it.
In business your stockholders get after the board of directors when they get complacent, and the board of directors gets after the management, and the top management after the management below, and it is just that alertness that keeps industry driving forward.
That is just the atmosphere that I wanted to see you men take away from here if you possibly can.
(The meeting recessed at 12 o’clock noon.)
AFTERNOON SESSION
(The conference reconvened at 2 p. m.)
Mr. WOOTONs I want our distinguished guests to know that this group long since dedicated itself to the intensification of the battle for production. As Mr. Nelson recently pointed out, every week of delay in getting started on war production means a loss of 2 percent of the year’s output. Only 5 weeks’ delay means a 1 o-percent loss. As far as the business press is concerned, I am sure we are doing all that we can to prevent that type of loss.
Now, our distinguished speaker this afternoon is going to speak to you on the subject “What Has Been Done in Conversion and What Must Be Done.” It is my pleasure to present at this time Mr. James S. Knowlson, Chief of the Division of Industry Operations, War Production Board.
Mr. KNOWLSON: The theme of your meeting is conversion, and I am against it. I don’t like it at all. But just as necessity is the mother of invention, so it seems to me that conversion is the child of necessity. That is the only way to look at it.
Mr. Nelson told me this morning that time is of tremendous importance. In all our thinking, in all our doing here, time hovers over us like a buzzard. We are obsessed by this feeling that the work must go on, and the result of that is that we are using shotgun methods of trying to accomplish what we feel must be accomplished, and do many things that in the final analysis prove to be wrong. But I again call your attention to the fact that it is the necessity of war.
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Big Business Glad to Convert
Big business is more anxious for conversion than anything else. If you will stop and think of that situation, the big business as we know it is the business of big companies. They have a great variety of products. They have great facilities for change from their production of one thing to another. They are already mixed up in the war effort and to convert, to them, is nowhere nearly as difficult as we might imagine it. If we stop a radio line or a refrigerator line, immediately there are eight superintendents of a big plant that are clamoring for that space or clamoring that that facility be turned over to them for the war production they are already engaged in and which is being more or less handed to them. And so the conversion of the large plants is not a serious matter. Day after day men come into the office and say, “Tell us how many of this you want us to make,” or, “When do you want us to start?”
The real problem, the fundamental problem, is the middle-sized business, the business that has been created to compete with the big business on a specific line, the man who, with his ingenuity, his skill, has developed one single product where he competes against the big companies and is himself a big operator in that field. His problem is a difficult one; and it is, probably as Mr. Nelson has told you, being given consideration, and he is making an effort to see that insofar as the necessities of the civilian economy during this wartime are concerned, the residual business will be channeled to those people and also the requirements in the services.
New Viewpoint Needed
Now, in this effort to convert, which is going along very much more rapidly than any of us realize, business can be of tremendous help; and you, in your contacts with the business groups, can be of tremendous assistance to us. If you ask them in their thinking to divorce from their minds the time before Pearl Harbor; the time when we thought we were hot stuff; the time when we thought that this Nation could by a turn of the hand conquer all, or by a few columns in the newspapers scare our enemies away from our shores; and get down to realization that right now our fellows are dying in the Philippines. Right now a submarine is probably sticking its head up out of the water, stopping a tanker out there on the sea some place, taking oil off that tanker to refuel itself, and then backing away to put some shot into it and torpedo it because it isn’t armed, doesn’t have the guns.
What we are doing now, the problem that is before us in industry now, is the problem Kettering propounded years ago: “What are you going to do when you can’t do what you are doing now?” Well, this is “now,” and all industry has to realize it. They are not going to be able to do what they are doing now—and that is a challenge. A challenge to industry. A challenge to the only professional class we have in this country—because the fellows who run the factories, the shops, the businesses of this country of ours, I think you will agree with me, are our real professional class.
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Business No Child’s Play
Because running a business as you and I have known it is no child’s play.r All of our lives it has been a real fight, and a pretty brutal fight. That is a professional class and once their minds are directed to the necessities and the objectives, I don’t think that we here are going to have to do much planning about conversion—because, coming back to the old Kettering saying, you know what you are going to do now. Most of us in normal times, when we run out of a market, or run out of a product, are lost to know where we are going to turn. But today you have the United States Government—the Services—standing as a willing customer, ready to give business to anyone who will take it.
I haven’t much patience with the man who expects to have the business handed to him on a silver platter. I think it is unworthy of the business brains of the country that they should expect it. We never got in any other market as business men where it was handed us. We had to go out, advertise for it, and fight for it. And the fellow that feels somebody should be there with a contract to hand to him doesn’t seem to me to be worthy of our industrial life. When he complains about the specifications, the tightness of the limits, I’d like to have him stop and think that those munitions, those things that we are making, are for one purpose alone and that is to safeguard the lives of our men, in defense of our country. Most of those munitions, articles of warfare, are wasted, to be sure; but when one finds its mark you want to be sure it is good and does the job it is intended to do. And so I, for one, am uncritical of the limits and the necessities that the Services have put upon their products; and I think it ill behooves us to ask them to make any change which will make those products less valuable for the purpose for which they are intended.
Now, there is one great thing about this customer. Once he gets so he can trust you, once he finds-out you are reliable, he plays with you and he gives you a great deal of business. He doesn’t care what you do with it, how much you subcontract, as long as he knows that he can rely on you to get the job done. I hope that you will carry the word to businessmen, that they must use the same tactics upon this customer here, this gigantic customer, who is willing, waiting, and anxious to spread business throughout the country—that they have used on any market that they have heretofore successfully attacked.
Great Tide Rolling Up
You know what we are doing in Detroit. You have heard about the cut-downs in many places. There is a great deal of talk about subcontracts for the small businessman. I say to you as my personal opinion that within 6 months, no more, there will be scarcely any shop, any machine shop, any factory in this country that isn’t loaded. Because this is a great tide of business that is rolling up. It is a tidal wave in the big places today. It is going on up the stream, up the creeks, brooks, and into all our factories.
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Now, I would like to say to you something that I said very poorly the other day to a small group of gentlemen of your profession. This change-over, this necessity of our leaving our daily lives; this conversion, if you will—I find that there is a tremendous feeling on everyone’s part that it is forever, that we are never again going to make household articles, never going to be allowed to make automobiles again. Gentlemen, I think that is tragic. To my mind this thing is just another example of the old pendulum motion.
Some of our forefathers came here a long time ago, and they tried to raise grain and crops up in New England; and every once in a while the Indians, the French, and sometimes the English swept down upon them. They didn’t want to leave those crops, didn’t want to leave those homes. If my history is right, they left them with as much regret, as much bellyaching, as our fellows who are pulling away from the products of peace. But when the neighbors next door were scalped, they walked away from their standing grain and picked up the old musket and they went out and did a pretty good job of fighting; and when that job was done they came back and started farming again. They built this country.
Enemy Is at Our Gates
"Now, I think that is what we are up against today. The enemy is at our gates and we, too, have got to lay down the things we have worked for, the pursuits of peace—and we don’t do it willingly. We yap about it, and that is perfectly proper; but we lay them down; and we turn our hands to these things to which we have to turn; and we will do a good job. The quicker the better, and when it is over—and the quicker we do it the sooner it will be over—we will go right back to the jobs we knew and the work we were building for our country and our people. I like to have that feeling.
I think it is important that we all realize that we have become soft. It has been a long time since anybody has scared us; a long time since anybody has threatened us; and when that happens we have to turn away and pick up the thing we have to do and beat them.
Now, I would be very happy, if there are questions you want to ask me, to answer them to the best of my ability.
QUESTION: I find a great many people who manufacture materials used in industry are facing serious problems. For instance, a company making covers for glass jars in which food is preserved is finding difficulty in getting supplies rationed, and they took the attitude: either food is important or it isn’t important. If it is unimportant, why doesn’t somebody tell us so we will go over to manufacturing munitions? Is there a clarification of that policy coming along?
Mr. KNOWLSON: I think definitely a clarification of that problem is coming along. In Mr. Nelson’s set-up, as you know, he has what he calls a Requirements Committee, and at that point it is pictured that the various
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whole programs will be presented and balanced against the materials that have to be rationed. Now, it is a tremendous task, and there again this terrible element of time comes in. What was perfectly reasonable before Pearl Harbor is unreasonable today. And when you move up—in other words, if there were shelling at San Francisco—there wouldn’t be any question in any of our minds but what we must have airplanes tomorrow rather than food next month. The time element has to be taken into consideration, and the division of these very critical supplies, such as rubber, is something that is of tremendous difficulty. However, this committee consists—they are just beginning to function—of representatives of the Army, the Navy, the Lend-Lease, the Maritime Commission, the War Production Board, and I think that is all, and all these programs flow up to that place and all are corralled.
The policy is going to be straightened out.
Mr. WOOTON: In your own plants there has been a great deal of conversion resorted to successfully. I wonder if you would tell us just a little bit about your own experience in that.
Mr. KNOWLSON: I drop the role now of “bureaucrat at Washington” and will have to get back to the one I am more familiar with, a machinist in Chicago. Our own experience was perhaps colored by the fact that I am one of the fellows who lived through the last war and was a machinist then. And when talk about priorities and such things began to appear in the papers, I imagine 2 years ago now, I began to take them pretty seriously. And this remark that I have quoted to you of Mr. Kettering’s has always been one of my simple Bible beliefs, that it was the job of management to find out what it was going to do when it couldn’t do what it is doing now. And I can very easily see if the picture is going to be repeated—I have lived through the time that we had priorities before, couldn’t get this and couldn’t get that. I saw if we were going to keep on with our business, we would have to get into some work, with the result that we started in trying to find out what we could do most easily.
We were large operators of screw machines, and it was a rather fine type of rough work, I would say—experts in that sort of thing. We went into fuses. In the privacy of this group I don’t mind telling you that I lost plenty before I broke even on fuse work; but today I think our plant is a No. i fuse producer.
Services Are Good Customers
There again I want to say to you one point that I have learned out of my personal experience and that may be helpful to you all. The situation with the Services in this war is very different than it was in the last one. During the last war I suffered with fellows who had made wheelbarrows coming around trying to inspect micrometers; blueprints being changed; and tremendous difficulties in getting started. In this war, so far as my experience with both the Ordnance Department and Antiaircraft, which
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are the only two that I have had any great personal experience with—the Navy also—the drawings are fine; very few changes; inspection is fine; cooperation is great. And I ask no better customer to work for than thé Services. They have been great in every way. And production has flowed.
I have told this story before, but I think it is typical. After we got started on this fuse work, we had a certain amount of bickering between our own inspectors and the Government inspectors and Frank Ross, who runs the plant, came in to me one day and said, “This thing has got to go by the Government inspectors in the end, anyway. Why do we have boss inspectors? Why not let the Government men boss our inspectors?” It seemed a good idea. From that time we have never had chief inspectors of our own. We just take the Government inspectors and let them run our girls and run through the place. From that sort of thing it branched out so that I imagine today 80 percent of our output is either standard products going directly into the war demands, the Service demands, or direct contracts for munitions and for other material that we have never made before.
You know the plants of this country are coming out of this just as they did out of the last war, with a different concept of tolerances, with an ability to make things to closer limits and to make them out of better materials than we have ever had. We are going to see a precision of manufacture and a skill such as we never had before. That is a personal experience.
Mr. WOOTON: Mr. Knowlson, I wonder if you would like to react on an idea that one of our editors has. Mr. Philip Swain thinks there is an opportunity to certify some amateur mechanics, and as you are a mechanic I am going to ask Phil if he will outline briefly his thought.
Mr. SWAIN: I was just wondering if there were certain parts of certain machines—let’s say, pins in a tank—that were fairly simple parts. If we found out we could take a bushel of them, turn them, and repeat certain tolerances to an inch, bring them in, could the types and pieces be worked down by thousands of these little shops around the country?
Mr. KNOWLSON : I don’t think there is any question but that is true. And I think that the approach to that is coming from two angles. First, as you know, this Contract Distribution Branch, which was built up with an effort to try to get subcontracts and do that type of work, has done a good deal more than they are given credit for. They have really done a lot of constructive work and a lot of ground work in this picture. When a man gets a main contract that he has taken at a fixed price, you can’t expect him to subcontract unless he has to, at any prices that don’t come within his cost figures. I think that is obvious. Now, as the pressure of work comes on to the automobile shops, comes on to all our shops, our figures naturally include a certain amount of subcontracting and that is done. Now, in the general directives that are being issued for purchasing in the future, consideration is being given—going to be given—to the men who have to buy the least
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equipment and that in turn will spread this thing of bringing in the small shops with what they can do.
Again reverting—I keep jumping, turning, on account of my being a machinist out home, a desk man here—we took a lot of small parts from Packard to make these airplane motors that we are making. We had to start in making many things on hand screw machines that should have been made on automatics; didn’t have the capacity. Within 3 weeks we had 64 subcontractors, little fellows almost the size that you are talking about, who were roughing out pins and parts we were finishing on grinders. I think we will see that spread all throughout the country. If I were getting out a slogan today it would be “Uncle Sam needs your machine just as he needs your boy.” Every machine in this country is going to have to be put to work, just as every fellow who can bear arms is going to have to be put in the Army before we get through. It isn’t far away.
Mr. WOOTON: Mr. Knowlson, you have contributed very greatly to the sum total of our knowledge; We thank you so much for coming here and talking to us. It has been splendid. Our next speaker is down here in the Government trying to help with the bits and pieces program. He is Mr. B. T. Bonnot, and he is going to tell you How the Government is Helping Industry to Convert.
Mr. BONNOT: One reason for my being here may be that it seemed somewhat fitting to have on this program one of the so-called “little guys” of whom there are so many and about whose fate and fortitude and fitness so much is being said. Truly I am one of them. I am just a little plant operator from a typical industrial town in a typical industrial area-—Canton, Ohio. And perhaps I should, in the name of these hundred thousand so-called little fellows, record satisfaction in being permitted to participate. Even that can happen here.
The United States tensus shows that the firms, even the firms employing less than 250 people, as of the 1940 census, employed over 48 percent of the workers, paid out over 43 percent of the wages, and produced over 47 percent of the dollar volume of profits. The 1939 Department of Commerce census of manufacturers divides 184,230 manufacturing companies into 447 separate groups or classifications. That averages 412 per group.
Now this major program of conversion by industries we all concede must go forward and will go forward vigorously. And it will produce solid and worthwhile results.. Yet because of the sheer limits of human capacity and other limitations such as the technical characteristics of an industry, the geographical distribution of the plants, what we might even call the psychological factors of competitive attitude—all of these things will in some degree interfere with the mobilization on time of all of the open and needed facilities in these 447 classifications.
The whole proud structure of civilization is aflame, and to save it we must develop maximum effectiveness on all fronts now. By whatsoever means
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let us attain the utmost conversion by industries that the timetable and the talent will permit, and simultaneously let us see to it that every other possible step is taken to match idle machines or open machines, and requirements. For, while the more technical definition of conversion means retooling, tooling for a different product, we should perhaps now and until the very hour that peace returns think of conversion in the broadest sense as the quickest possible utilization of every available machine-hour in producing the needs of war, be it through retooling or machine substitution or adaptation, or the old job-shop type of operation on general purpose piecing machines.
Perhaps conversion must even reach down into the home and the hobby group. A little while back the editors of one of the popular magazines devoted to that field came in and said, “We have got an awful lot of flying folks scattered throughout the hobby shops of America. An estimated 300,000 such shops with hobby equipment. Probably a million men and women working in those shops. These hobbyists are itching to get into defense. What can we do about it?”
We- said they had a case, of course; any talent of that kind should be thoroughly catalogued as rapidly as possible; and we joined them in preparing a little questionnaire and story which ran in their magazine about 3 or 4 weeks ago. Over the last 10 days replies have been coming in by the hundreds per day, and a lot of very interesting things.
Hiding the Hobbies
The job of digesting the replies is voluminous. Out of about 15 characteristic cards, I pulled these five. The first one, a stevedore in Los Angeles, was making model gas planes, model gas racing cars, steam engines, and a big racing car. And there was a painter from West Virginia who had his miniature motors, electric clocks, automobile projects; a barber modeled racing cars, engines, instruments, and telescopes. Then there was a dishwasher who made home-made radios and gun parts. Then a machinist in rural Ohio who offered a little shop of 4,000 square feet at no cost whatsoever for the duration and guaranteed to supply 25 close tolerance workers at reasonable wage rates. That is the kind of thing that little hobby survey is kicking up.
Now, we all know the cost advantages which flow from careful planning, streamlined layouts, complete tooling, and precision controls. But we still face the clock and the calendar in this war job, and they force us to supplement our preferred master production plan in all those phases of the war problem that are burning for immediate solution. The production of many new plants already is magnificent, and we are profoundly proud, all of us. But for many others, unfortunately, the first output is still many months away, and under the cold impartial spotlight of time we face the urgency of production now. Now, despite the higher costs, despite the inconveniences, despite the higher percentage of rejected work. We still have no choice.
We must move along with the equipment that is now oiled and ready and
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running rather than arrive too late because we wanted the advantages of a smoother, a faster, streamlined train being prepared for its major trip next winter. If a child becomes desperately sick in our home at midnight tonight, shall we send for our favorite family physician who is fishing in the Gulf of Mexico, or shall we do the next best thing and call promptly an available substitute? If a raging fire breaks out in the United States Capital, shall we brush aside the Washington fire-fighting equipment and wait until the units which someone has summoned from New York and dre more modern can arrive to do the job?
Can9t Afford to Wait
To await the favorite doctor, the superior fire-fighting units, or the big rescue ship is obviously foolhardy nonsense. And so, too, it seems to many of us in this grim, bitter challenge of the war program, it is utterly indefensible to postpone any heedless hour any action required to put every last useful tooling into the victory forces of industry. We use our automotives and bullets to move troops back into service. For our plants, businesses, buildings, people, and all, let’s make double sure we follow through on the whole industrial front.
We all know that war procedures and peace procedures are not identical, because in this war it is ruthless outsiders around the world doing the scheduling and writing the specifications. In facing realities, you men know so clearly what we must do. We must use everything we have, plus everything we can quickly build or get our hands on. As Mr. Batt said last week, weapons produced a year from now will not help us hold the outposts now under siege. Only weapons produced tomorrow can help. The specialized single-purpose tools, synchronized, streamlined, balanced production on the assembly lines, unfortunately do not spring up overnight. That 2 million tool-room hours were used to make ready in one plant is not startling to you men, but to the public at large its significance is not so clearly understood.
Decentralized Handling Planned
The mobilization of the secondary plants must in most cases come from the subcontracting channel, whether we call it “pooling” or “brood-hen technique” or “farming-out” or “bits and pieces,” or what not. No one can longer dispute the value of subcontracting, because every firm in America is using it extensively now. The quick, worthwhile, additional achievements in this field of subcontracting must and probably will depend upon the pursuit of decentralized handling—and this particularly through the medium of the War Production Board field officer, the offices now numbering 116. This decentralized activity of the WPB field offices is not a procedure to supplant but rather to supplement the direct action being taken now by the prime contractors. In England, with an area in England, Scotland, and Wales amounting to less than our State of Idaho alone, they have found this decentralized clearinghouse control absolutely indispensable.
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The productivity of this decentralized Federal set-up will, in turn, depend (a) upon the clarity and thoroughness of the field office policy and procedures, coupled with the quality and diligence of the personnel; (&), upon the alertness, diligence, resourcefulness, and the stamina of the officials or owners of the secondary, non-war-working plants; (c) systematic, all-out cooperation by the big prime contractors and their major subcontractors, and perhaps even the arsenals, in a Golden Rule teamwork relationship with the assisting secondary concerns.
We are confident that this War Production field office set-up will in the future more rapidly be accepted for what it is really set up to be, an all-inclusive job clearing house, or an official war work exchange to which the prime and the major subcontractors will regularly report in adequate detail their current subcontracting possibilities or needs; and from which the potential subcontractors in turn will perhaps once each week receive a digest, coded as to source, guarded as to confidential information, of all such opportunities arising within the week within the area. Such bulletins, in modified form, are now published in 32 major area offices. For the prime contractors, this routine provides (if all-inclusive and supported by both sides), first, a wider choice of sources and, therefore, increased capacity or better quality of work, or both; second, a preliminary, careful presifting and sorting of the subcontracting applicants through the field-office knowledge of these applicants and their control of the detailed job taker and the identity of the source of the work; third, a reduction in direct field expense by the prime contractors’ own representatives in their intensive, independent searches for sources; fourth, a saving in staff time now used in reviewing the secondary plant representatives who circulate in considerable numbers in their search for subcontracting jobs.
Help for Secondary Plant»
For the secondary plants, such routine provides, first, a chance to take intelligent initiative in its own behalf to fit itself into the war job, because when he receives regularly an area catalogue or a job digest a secondary plant official can carefully sort out from such digests the most effective lines of service, then check the more detailed elements of the jobs with the proper field office of the Government, and there verify his preliminary judgment, and, having taken these two steps, be put in touch with the private contractor who listed such jobs. Second, this system would also provide the secondary contractor, when it embodies the clearance of all the subcontracting job data currently developing in the area, a chance to limit his travel and his telephoning and his follow-up to only the selected live situations. And by such concentration he, in turn, more quickly will become a war work producer. For both groups, such a procedure parallels, if I may submit, the simple help-wanted, job-wanted experiences of everyday civilian life, where any firm that wants help and cannot find the applicants in the employment manager’s file defines the jobs and has them listed in the
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columns along with the listing of other firms of the area, and through the medium of the public press of the area publishes such needs.
The job seekers, in turn, study these classified, help-wanted ads and seek out the firms they think they can best serve. Jobs and men are thus matched. In quite the same manner it is urged that we match subcontracting jobs and plants through the War Production Board field office, by war work bulletins all coded as to source and guarded as to confidential elements. It is quite strongly believed that tremendous progress can thus be made in building up the production of the parts and the pieces and the subassemblies so sorely needed so soon.
To Meet the Timetable
A half-hearted participation, or intermittent use, will undermine the system, block its proper function, undermine or isolate many useful tools, or force their transfer or perhaps even jeopardize critically the whole Victory Program. Idle plants that ignore this facility, once it is thoroughly set up, are going to be of very doubtful value either to themselves or to the country. To be sure, costs may be higher through subcontracting, and there are more, perhaps, supervision and inspection difficulties; but again, despite all these things, there is no other way that meets the timetable on Mr. Nelson’s desk. Orders must flow to every shop where they can be handled, with usable products soon being the only remaining important criterion.
And as Mr. Harrison stated recently, “We must exhaust every possibility of bringing work to the tools before we move the tools.” Men work best at their accustomed machines, in their home towns and under familiar supervision. Internal dislocation, housing problems, and other social and military complications arise from an undue concentration in crowded industrial centers.
Now, as the caliber of the secondary plants, let’s be fair; keep in mind always that in general versatility, resourcefulness, stamina, or patriotic devotion, few of them need yield strokes to any other group. Many of the big companies of today were also small during the last war; and one person out of every four in the United States today is reported to depend for his job upon one of 14 industries unknown 50 years ago. So it seems, after all, to be just about as imprudent to underrate or overlook the lesser companies as it was to underrate the Japs. Truly, conversion, all-out conversion, then, is our goal. We must convert men and machines, plants and industries to war work. And no less vigorously, it seems to some of us, we must with the help of men like you also convert our all too common collective complacency into a tough, daring, disciplined war unit. This twofold conversion can and will save America-—and does anything else matter!
Mr. WOOTON: Col. Frank J. McSherry, Deputy Director for Labor Supply and Training of Labor, War Production Board, will speak to us on “What the Government Is Doing to Work Out the Problem of an Adequate Labor Supply.”
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Colonel McSHERRY: On January 17 President Roosevelt outlined what was originally called the “Victory Program” and is now called the “War Production Program for 1942.” It involves 60,000 airplanes, 45,000 tanks, 20,000 antiaircraft guns, and 8 million tons of shipping. I trust you will all note that in these particular fields the industries of this country at the outbreak of our preparedness program were very small indeed. You can recall the aircraft industry in the fall of 1938 and early 1939 employed but 23,000 production workers.
You can readily see the problem that faces us today as far as labor supply is concerned. It has been estimated that to meet this production program, that by the end of this calendar year, we must add 10 million additional workers to war production industry. These 10 million additional workers must be obtained at the same time that the military workers are withdrawing 2,200,000 workers from the labor market. It is roughly estimated that these workers will come from the following sources: 7,900,000 from non-essential production and services; 400,000 from self-employed; 400,000 from agricultural communities; 1,500,000 from the unemployed; and 2,000,000 new workers that will come into the labor market. It is estimated that in these industries that we are discussing approximately 37 percent of the workers must be skilled. That is what we call machinists, implement makers, and the man who requires considerable time in an apprenticeship course to develop his skill. Thirty-eight percent are semi-skilled, single-skilled, such as machine operators, riveters, sheet metal workers, and so forth. The remaining 25 percent are unskilled, in the helper’s class or rough labor.
Need for Shilled Workers
Now our problem—and conversion is just part of it—is finding these 10 million persons and finding the skilled persons or at least placing the skilled persons that are available where they can do the most good for the War Production Program, and training new ones. Even a year ago we were short tool and die makers. At least we had requests for tool and die makers from many industrial concerns. We have many more requests today for tool and die makers. Sometimes it seems as though we will never meet the program because of lack of this particular skilled craftsman.
Right now we have in Detroit and in Michigan, and in the centers where automotive plants are being converted, a tremendous requirement for skilled tool and die makers, jig makers, and so forth. For instance, Ford alone to convert his plants to war production requires 6 million man hours of work of tool makers and jig makers. That is 3 thousand tool makers for a whole year. That is quite a problem in itself. As you know, the automotive industry has contracts now approaching 12 billions of dollars, and more are in sight. The employment in the automobile industry in May of last year was something on the order of 545,000. When these companies get into war production they will employ between 8 hundred thousand and 1 million persons; it may be even a greater number if additional contracts are awarded and the tooling can be done.
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Tool Makers Wanted
What can we do about these tool makers? In Detroit today a representative from one of our large aircraft manufactories is seeking 450 tool and die makers and jig makers from that area for one of the large plants on the West Coast manufacturing B-17 airplanes. They have been stymied in the production of their planes because of the labor situation and they cannot make the jigs without these skilled craftsmen. At the same time we are developing a big plant in Michigan under Ford management which will employ 100,000 people, and these tool makers are needed there. It necessitates a program in the war production industries similar to one that is being carried out in many plants.
One of the big tire companies is manufacturing antiaircraft gun mounts and there is a complicated gear mechanism necessary. They were short tool and die makers and machinists and they started on a training course right in their own plants, breaking in young men for 6 weeks or 8 weeks, to develop a skill in operating a single machine such as the lathe operator or a milling machine operator or a specialty machine operator. At the present time there are 10 to 12 of these operators or lathe hands to each tool maker in their shop, and their production is stepped up practically equivalent to the number of men employed.
Now, that is the way that the tool and die makers’ problem will have to be met in this country. In the conversion problem, when plants are being converted from nonessential to defense production, we have a layoff of workers. That layoff of workers creates a rather unique unemployment problem. The man loses his job through no fault of his own but through Government curtailment. The man may lose his seniority rights if he accepts employment in some other concern. To take care of that we are working out a nationwide policy on protection of seniority and other rights of workers leaving a nondefense industry to accept employment in a defense industry.
Would End Bad Features
The original program worked out in Detroit has several bad features, in that if a man accepts employment in a defense contractor’s shop and is later on recalled by the original employer, the man that gave him this temporary employment is inconvenienced by losing a man whom he may have spent some time training. The probable outcome of this angle that is being worked out will be that if a man leaves the employer and accepts ‘employment in a defense industry and is trained for a job, he will stay there for the duration. If he isn’t trained for that job, he can be recalled by the original employer when and if he has defense work for that skilled worker to perform. At the present time Congress is considering a bill for benefits for these displaced workers. There is considerable opposition to the bill because certain business people feel that this is a Federalization or the first step in Federalization of employment compensation, and it looks very doubtful at present whether the bill will go through.
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The Government has maintained several training programs to assist these industries in converting from nondefense to war production. The Office of Education has established short, intensive courses in over 1,200 schools, where preemployment training is given. The courses last from 2 weeks to 8 weeks, sometimes 10 weeks; the initial skills are developed in the prospective worker, and he can take his place on the production line. It is planned that he will be given training on the job and he can supplement the training on the job by courses in these vocational schools after working hours. At the present time there are 130,000 preemployment students and about 175,000 supplementary students taking these courses. The courses are varied, covering the whole category of skills necessary for war production.
In addition to that, the Office of Education is conducting courses through the engineering schools of the country to develop engineers and also to improve employed technicians and professional men. There are some 101,000 engineering students in that program at the present time. I think that the TWI program (the Training Within Industry program), which Mr. Dooley will describe to you later, is a most important training program.
Use Voluntary Methods
Obviously, up to the present time, it has been necessary to conduct all programs and all movements of labor on a voluntary method. In some States we have been successful in moving skilled workers from civilian industries to war industries. As the requirements for the war industries increase for these skilled workers it will be more and more necessary that we do get more skilled craftsmen from nonessential industries for these war industries, particularly the expanding ones and the new ones. As a result it will probably be necessary, first, that we get Executive orders which will make the Employment Service more effective in transferring labor and placing labor where it can be of most use to the war effort—and, of course, if that isn’t strong enough and the time comes that we must place labor where it is absolutely essential that something be produced, it may be necessary for us to secure legislation and have a controlled labor market. Of course, none of us want that, but it is something that may be in the future, and I think we can all give consideration to it and watch and see if it is necessary. It has been found to be necessary in the other countries that have been all out for war, and if we can avoid it we will be an exception to the rule.
I would like to leave one thought with you, that you might carry home with you, and I think many of you would help us, and that is that management—and top management at that—must appreciate the labor problem that is confronting it. Top management often gives consideration to plant facilities and machine tools and raw materials, and everything in the world but labor, and they leave the labor supply to some personnel officer. Now, with the tightening of the labor market and the shortage of skilled workers that is going to develop, it will be necessary that each and every plant in the country develop a good training program—an upgrading program of its workers to take on jobs requiring higher skills than that with which they
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are now working, and also breaking in new workers. The training- programs conducted by the Government can help, but they cannot replace the training that is given on the jobs, and the size of it will be so great that no schools, no outside agency, could be built up in a limited time to do the job. Now, if we could get top management to take an interest in their labor supply and their training problem as they do in all the other problems confronting them, I think they can meet the labor requirements during the next calendar year.
Mr. WOOTON; Now, we are going to hear from Mr. Channing Dooley, the chief of the Training Within Industry Branch. He is going to talk on “Training Within Industry for Conversion.”
Mr. DOOLEY: I would like to get your minds for the moment away from the word “school” in the sense in which we ordinarily think of it. Right now, I want you to think of management’s program of training on the job as carried on by the average foreman and his assistant. The Labor Division, under Mr. Hillman, has set up through this Training Within Industry which Colonel McSherry mentioned a Federal organization which has 22 districts, presided over by a man borrowed from industry who is experienced in this kind of work. He has a staff of anywhere from io to 40 men that he, in turn, has borrowed from plants in his vicinity to give part time. He also has a small staff of one or two or three paid men to do a lot of leg workmen who have had some experience and whom we have trained in our training to carry the message.
Fundamentally, the principle we are working on is to carry the message from a few companies who have done a swell job to those who are new at it. The first thing we did was to call a number of conferences a year and a half ago with some very large firms, at least firms who have been doing this sort of training on the job of green people, to find out how you go about it to direct a green, inexperienced person to do skilled work.
Well-Drilled Staff
Now the figures at the moment are that we have 61 specialized instructor directors. They are men who go out and show other men how to teach other men to teach. These men have been exceedingly well drilled. We have found men who know something about it in the first place. They are very carefully picked, and we have drilled them in this process, and they, in turn, have trained over 1,200 other men who can go into plants and teach foremen how to instruct. At the moment nearly 25,000 foremen and lead men have had this instruction, and we haven’t yet had a single flare-back as to the value of the process.,
I have a letter in my desk from a company in Baltimore. These are the facts. He writes a letter to his personnel man, saying, “I have attended the Institute put on by the TWI. I came back and drilled 15* of my lead men in the process of breaking in new men. Within 2 weeks’ time in this particular operation (which was called a swing grind operation) we have
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had no spoiled work, no accidents, no broken tools, and no lost time; and the increase in production has stepped up to such an extent that the vice-president in charge, who didn’t know that this process was going on, sent word down, ‘How come?’ ”
We have got hundreds and hundreds of stories of that kind. These 25,000 foremen and lead men who had this instruction in how to instruct have been from just a little under a thousand plants, which represented an employed force of over a million and a half. Our job, I want to impress, on you, is to do this one thing. Whatever the man or the woman may be, however the circumstance that may have brought him to his work, we can help industry bring him up to highly skilled production in an amazingly short time by doing three things—showing the employer how to do three things: first, that his job, if it is only a small job in compass, in area, may require tolerances of the highest degree, but it is just one thing to do; and, second, that he is instructed; and, third, that the man who instructs him knows how to instruct him.
Function of Management
I would like to generalize just two or three sentences more from that to see if you folks would agree with and would care to promote the idea that this process of training is a fundamental basic function of management. No longer can we say to any man, I don’t care how skilled he is, “Bill, here are some tools and some steel. Make this gadget.” It is a cooperative effort, from engineering down to inspectors, and it is up to management to explain and direct and show with extreme accuracy and care and patient discipline, of course, but with emphasis on helping everyone in his shop to understand exactly what they are to do.
How many instances there are—we know there are in our daily lives— where each man doesn’t quite know what he is to do. I heard a story yesterday where the superintendent said to the foreman, “The production is lagging over in that shop. You ought to do something about it. The fellow over there doesn’t seem to be on to his job.” The foreman said, “I know that, but I told that guy five times to do it.” The superintendent said, “Have you been over to show him how?” “Hell, no,” he says; “he ought to know how.” That is the way we were all brought up. I grew up in the Westinghouse shops that very way. Lots of fun, but with patience and in time we somehow survived. There is no more time! We must get down and show people exactly what they are to do. There is no more time at the moment to take the large laborious patience to explain to everyone why he is doing it. That will come later. Right now you do this job because this is the way to do it, this is how to do it. We’ll show you how to do it, and we will do it with the goods tomorrow.
"Upgrading" Yields Results
In Chicago last fall there came to our office a manufacturer of surgical instruments making incandescent lamps the size of a grain of wheat. The
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quantity of orders he had scared him to death. He didn’t know where he was going to get any more skilled people. He said, “It takes a year to train a woman to make all those little parts.” We helped him on it, and in 3 months’ time he sent a package of lamps and said, “These were made in 3 months by green women.”
It is the responsibility of management from the standpoint of production to practice what is called “upgrading.” That is merely a device whereby, in the case of the man who has done a fine job on a drill press, the foreman says, “That fellow I don’t have to worry about. He just always follows instructions, and he is a swell kid.” That ought to be to the foreman the first sign that that fellow is good for better things. And when there is an opening in front for a shaper, a little more complicated job, break that fellow into the new job. I don’t know how you are going to get operators for complicated milling machines unless you promote them from the simpler milling machines; promote those fellows from the shapers and on down the line.
We have men grinding valve stems to ten-thousandths of an inch with no trouble at all; it is a simple operation compared to other grinding operations; and by learning to grind those operations, they have become qualified to be moved on to a higher one. One foreman said to me the other day, “You mean that every time there is a vacancy I should break in three new men?” Just that. If there are three vacancies you don’t go out to an employment service and say, “Send me three new trainees,” and train one on a drill press, one on a shaper, and one on a milling machine; but you move those fellows up and bring in three fellows down at the bottom; the lowest fellow is the helper.
It is a little bit more difficult, more time-taking at the moment, but that is a way to. build an organization which in the end will not only produce production in quantity at the moment but will stimulate the whole group of men; because a large number of them are stepping up the line, and you have to have coming out at the top every month, or every 6 months, a few men who by this process have become pretty much all-around mechanics. In fact, it is advisable in a large shop, anyway, to pick off a few of those men who are capable of being moved along and make them a special proposition and give them the full, round, 4-year apprenticeship training. There is no conflict between this upgrading of specialized workers and apprenticeship. It merely means how many of each you need; and where you need thousands of the upgraded, specialized workers, you will need a few of the all-around men trained at the top.
Mr. WOOTON: I have been hearing what a good job Mr. Dooley is doing down there. Now I have got some first-hand evidence of it. I am awfully glad what he said was taken down, because that just makes a bang-up article for papers in a good many fields.
Our next speaker is Mr. Eli L. Oliver, the chief of the Labor Relations
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Branch. He is going to speak on “Union-Management Arrangements for Orderly Transfer From Civilian to War Production.”
Mr. OLIVER: The first and fundamental difficulty we face in the problem of union-management arrangements is the same in character as that which confronts every other part of the war effort. Our problem is one of conversion of attitudes, of managements’ and unions’ alike, from that of normal peacetime relationships to the urgency and the pressure of the war conditions that are upon us.
The general problem of labor supply in the conversion of American industry to war purposes has been outlined very ably by Colonel McSherry. As he has told you, there must be in war industries by the end of this year 15 million men and women workers. A substantial part of them were never in industry before; a substantial part, although a much smaller part, did work in those industries which were strictly war industries. In earlier months the production of ammunition and of battleships had been carried on to some extent, but by far the greater proportion, the overwhelming number of this 15 million total, will have to have been transferred from nonwar production to war production.
Many Kinds of Transfers
Now, those transfers are of many different kinds and many degrees of severity. There is, first, within a single plant, a transfer of occupation—a man who has been working on one kind of job is transferred to one with which he is wholly unfamiliar. There have been transfers, there will be many more, from one employer to another, of workers engaged in war production. There have been transfers, there will have to be many more, in location; men employed in one State, one city, one section of the country will have to be transferred and employed in another. These shifts will in some cases assume the proportions of mass migrations. In other words, they will be simply individual, accidental. All of these shifts and a great many other kinds are going to have to be carried through if we are to get the army of men'and women workers we need for this war production effort, and we will have to speed it up terrifically this year.
At the present time a very large part of the workers who are going to have to be transferred, and many of those who are already engaged in war production, are covered by trade-union agreements. Now, it is characteristic of trade-union agreements, as I suppose most of you know if you have had any dealings at all with the men engaged in the production of your own publications, that they fit to a very considerable extent the industries and the shops to which they apply. If you were to go back into your own printing establishments you would find the agreement of the printing pressmen had certain particular clauses which applied only to printing pressmen and which were utterly meaningless as applied to linotype operators, and vice versa. That is generally characteristic of trade-union agreements, so that the agreement now covering the workers in those plants to be converted
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will probably be largely inapplicable when they become war-material producers.
Specific Bargaining Units
In addition to that, the agreement covers specific bargaining units and is with a specific particular union ordinarily. Neither the union, nor the bargaining unit, nor the occupation, nor the plant or employer are going to continue as they were through this process of transfer; and the problem of making the adjustment involved in that kind of a reorganization would be a terrific one under the very best circumstances. So that you get some of the dimensions of the problem when you realize that the great bulk of American industry being converted is covered by trade-union agreements and must after the conversion, if we can possibly bring it about, have orderly, stable labor relations, not only with a minimum of danger of stoppage but with an elimination, if possible, of that kind of unrest and dissatisfaction which finds even some expression in inefficient and low quantity of production.
We must get the best possible labor relations in these war production plants as they get into the production of war materials we need. These plants, starting out from scratch, have, of course, neither employees’ organizations nor collective-bargaining arrangements. This is particularly true in the ordnance plants as they begin operations. Grievances arise, and we are having problems that come from the plant that the workmen in these new plants have no way of handling their grievances. In some of the plants being converted we are having problems which arise out of the fear of the employer that the new plant cannot be operated under the old trade-union agreement in accordance with the National Labor Relations Act.
New Problems Arise
We have had, for example, just recently, a large plant which had been engaged in the production of automobile materials, converted now to the production of airplane engines, and the employer feeling that he could not continue the agreement, which had been in effect with those same employees before the conversion into the new plant, after the conversion. That caused, of course, a very great amount of discontent and unrest among those workers who felt that their trade-union arrangement was simply going to carry over into the new plant. We have had instances in which expanding plants, adding new sections, new departments, new buildings, found it very difficult to enter into the kind of arrangements which would carry over the existing trade-union agreements into the new set-up.
The expansion and the conversion and the starting of new plants will . present to us the problem of facilitating the arrangements by which under the new production program that plant will be able to proceed without fear or danger either of stoppages or slow-downs or inefficiency or low quantity of production. Among the kinds of transfers that will give us difficulties in making our union-management arrangements are those, first, within the
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same plants, the change from civilian to war production. We have had instances like this: where a section of a given plant on civilian materials is curtailing operations because of the shortage of raw materials, or because of a plan of conversion. They curtail under existing union agreements, and they are paying off, naturally, the youngest men, those with the shortest service record. As they expand their operations on war materials, the first men to be employed are, naturally, those who were first to be let off from civilian production. That results after a brief period in the man who was the youngest in the old plant being the oldest in the new plant.
Entirely apart from what that will do to normal trade-union arrangements by which the senior employee is supposed to be kept employed longest, whereas now, under this situation, the oldest man is the man left out in the street—entirely apart from that, from the standpoint of war production it is all-important that the oldest men be retained and be kept in war materials production to permit the release of the younger men for transfers to other areas, because the younger men can more easily transfer, having fewer responsibilities and being less deeply rooted; or for use in the armed forces of the country. We have faced that problem of rearranging the seniority basis so that a man who is senior employee in civilian production becomes senior employee in war production.
Fears for Future Job
Moving from one to another plant presents many other difficulties. Normally, the man who has been working on civilian production has the fear, as the employer has had the fear, that at the end of the war emergency there would be a sudden and complete letdown. The employer fears that the converted plant would be idle on his hands. The worker has feared that the job he is leaving, the civilian job, is the one that will be continued after the war effort, and he will be over here in a war plant let out and completely without hope of future employment. That problem we have naturally tried to meet by arranging to protect the seniority of the individual worker in the plant from which he came. We have had to transfer many workers, naturally, from the civilian plant to the war materials plant, within the same locality and sometimes halfway or all the way across the country. We have sought to arrange and to assist unions and management in arranging for the retention of the employment rights of the worker in the plant from which he came, so that when the war emergency is over and the man is let out from a war production plant he may return to his original job and be assured at least of whatever employment possibility there is in that original employment.
We have had among the other problems of transfer that of taking people from relatively essential industries into war production plants. You may have read—I suppose most of you did read—something of the discussion in the newspapers about the transfer of railway workers from the railways into the direct production of war materials. The railway industry has about 400,000 men of the kind of skills that are most necessary for war production
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plants, particularly in their shops but also in the maintenance of way and structures forces; a great many metal workers; a great many men—carpenters, bridge builders, car machinists. All of those types of railway workers could be used to very good advantage, sometimes with retraining and sometimes with very little retraining, in the production of war materials. Of those 400,000 men, the railways had about 80,000 classified as helpers, but who had actually been working on the railways in direct association with highly skilled men for 8 or 10 years, the great bulk of them, so that while classified as helpers they were unquestionably very thoroughly familiar with most of the operations upon which they have been engaged.
A Problem In Transfers
The railways, knowing that there was a tremendous expansion of transportation in prospect, and the railway unions knowing the same thing, faced the fact that the individual railway worker laid off only for a week or month or 2 months sought a job very frequently in a plant producing war materials; but when the railway shops resumed operation, for however brief a period, they wanted to call that man back. They might call him back and use him for 2 or 3 days, and he would lose his job in the war plant and would still be without employment at his skill in the railway industry.
It is clearly possible in the railway industry, if they were to follow the training program that has been outlined here by Channing Dooley of bringing in new men and upgrading those who are in the service, to release a very substantial part of their skilled workers. The project under way has been to bring about, through union-management agreement on the railways, a situation whereby the individual railway worker or groups of railway workers, if that can be arranged, can go into war production plants assured that during the emergency their employment rights would be preserved, so that they might return to the railways after this emergency is over.
I had brought to my attention yesterday a situation in which two shop men from western railways had migrated so far away as to get employment in the Charleston, S. C., Navy Yard. They were employed there and were on leave of absence from their railways. The railway management refused—said that the union and the management were agreed in refusing— further to extend the leave of absence of those two men, and that they must now return to the railway shop. Well, it would be relatively easy for that railway shop, for any railway shop, to take in two green men at the bottom and promote their helpers, train new men to take the place of those two. But to take two men out of the Charleston, S. C., Navy Yard at this time is a thoroughly unjustified thing. We hope to be able in that specific case, of course, to make the necessary arrangement that their leave of absence can be continued. That is only a specific illustration of what is to face us in -terms of 100,000 men in that and closely related industries.
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Seek Peaceful Solutions
A great many more difficulties áre making it necessary that we call upon American labor unions and managements with labor organization agreements to discuss with each other, to discuss with Government representatives, and enter into agreements which will facilitate this process of transfer from civilian production to the production of war materials. The problem became most acute when the conversion of the automobile industry began to affect labor-management relations, particularly in the Detroit area. As a result of that beginning of conversion we saw the outlines of all of these problems. The labor organization representatives and management representatives were in Washington discussing, meeting with respect to certain of the other problems of the industry. It was then suggested that there be a meeting of representatives of the unions and of the management to discuss this question of union-management arrangements for the conversion of the industry in its labor aspects. A meeting of that kind was called in Detroit. Representatives of the labor division of the then Office of Production Management called that meeting. At it were representatives of the larger automobile corporations—Ford, Chrysler, General Motors; óf the smaller automobile corporations—Packard, Hudson, Murray-body, and corporations of that class, as well as of the parts manufacturers. A committee of the national union attended that conference.
As a result of that conference, which extended intermittently over a period of about 3 weeks, a program of six major points was developed to cover this conversion and transfer of labor from civilian to war purposes. It had as its basic principles, first, the protection of the seniority of men who were transferred from civilian to war production, so that they might return after the war emergency to their original employment with their rights unimpaired. It covered the transfer of skilled men, providing not just that a man might transfer but if he couldn’t be given full employment at his trade where he could utilize his full skill that he should then be free to seek employment in a war production plant, and that the employer would recognize his right to transfer with full protection of his seniority, so that he might return after the emergency.
Protected Employer in Recall
It protected the employer in the recall of these employees. Among the points was one which provided that if the original employer first producing automobiles and other civilian goods were to get into the production of war materials eventually, at that time the employer would have the right to call back the worker who had been released for other war production. If the worker didn’t then return to his original employer, his seniority rights would be cancelled and he would lose the opportunity to go back to his original job after the emergency. These and several other points of the same character were covered in that series of conferences. Subsequently, by agreement between the union and General Motors Corporation, and between the unions
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and other corporations, these statements of policies were converted into what is in fact a part of the trade-union agreement in the industry.
After the automobile conference, at the request of management and of unions, similar conferences were held; for example, in the Akron area, dealing with the rubber industry, conferences similarly comprehensive and similarly effective in concluding union-management arrangements for the orderly transfer of union and nonunion people from civilian to war production. A similar conference with not quite the same kind of result was held in the farm equipment industry, and there have been local conferences which developed within areas rather than within industries, providing for the same kind of general arrangements to take care of the types of problems that I have outlined here.
We come back to the same thing with which I started—the essential problem is one of converting the attitudes of management and of labor organizations alike from those of the ordinary processes of peacetime to the accelerated and orderly and aggressive attitudes necessary in wartime— aggression not within the Nation and between groups but rather toward foreign enemies against which both labor and management must unite to defeat. If that conversion could be accomplished more speedily, we might effect with greater rapidity the change in industry from civilian to war production. It must be recorded, though, and I am very glad it is true, that within the last few weeks both labor organizations and managements involving these union-management relationships have shown a spirit of cooperation with each other and cooperation with the Federal Government in accelerating all of the necessary arrangements for these conversions. The animosities between the labor organizations and their employers and between the different groups of labor have gradually melted down and are disappearing under pressure of the needs of war. We expect that process to continue to grow to a point where the problems of labor relations will have become infinitely more easy.
QUESTION: From these last three speeches it is quite evident that there is competition between the armed forces and industry for manpower. How do we resolve this conflict between the Selective Service and the demand in industry for trained men?
Colonel McSHERRY : As you probably know, the President is now working on a manpower allocation board. The job of allocating the manpower of the Nation will naturally be the job of the manpower allocation board. At the present time there is no conflict between the requirements of industry and the requirements of the military services. Eventually there will be decided conflict between the requirements of the military services and the requirements of war production industries, as the military forces are built up, and they must be built up with men, young men, men of good physical condition and of the very type that industry wants. In the past many of our new industries have been built with men of this caliber. These indus
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tries do face a problem at the present time. It isn’t serious yet, but if we build an army much larger than contemplated during the present year, many of these young men who are now in war production industries must be withdrawn.
Will Employ More Women
To meet that problem we must employ women. At the present time we have about 2 percent of our war workers in war production industries that are women. England has 40 percent. There is no question but that the war production industries of this country will add many women during the next year, and probably in the future the percentage will be even greater. The Selective Service, under General Hershey, has been very generous in all of its policies toward war production industries, in providing policies which grant deferment to men considered essential to that particular plant.
At a récent meeting in Chicago, where there were some 600 personnel managers, the question was asked, Has the Selective Service in any way taken men from you—taken men from you and you were dissatisfied with its decision? There were nine hands raised, and upon questioning these individuals six of them stated they had not asked for deferment. So, actually, there were just three cases out of 600 in which deferment worked adversely toward the personnel of that particular plant. The priorities in manpower will also be determined by this manpower allocation board, arid that will be priorities between industries and perhaps between plants of a given industry; and those problems must be solved in that manpower allocation board.
QUESTION: Have union agreements very sharply restricted the hours men may be permitted to work? I would like to know whether any thought has been given to having those hours increased, or just what is the situation in that respect?
Mr. BONNOT: We have had that kind of problem arise many times. In every instance where it has arisen in my knowledge we have had no difficulty in bringing about an agreement for extension of the hours of workers. The most difficult of them all was in mining of copper, where we had a local union posting a fine of $10 for men having to work overtime. The reason given by the union was that there were a great many unemployed and until the unemployed in that area were absorbed it would try to penalize any man working more than a full normal week. That fine was eliminated. I don’t know any other instances of that character in the country. Wherever any has arisen, as I said, we have had no difficulty getting it corrected.
QUESTION: What plan has the Government in operation, or in the planning stage, for avoidance of the forced conscription of labor from one firm to another, one industry to another, one section of the country to another? Assuming that as rapidly as possible most all firms will be geared as closely as possible to war work?
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Colonel McSHERRY: The first part, in a problem of this nature, is to determine the requirements. We are making a survey, which will be completed within the next few days, of the requirement of all war industries that they go on a three-shift basis at the present time. Second, we must know what we have in the way of skilled workers, particularly those workers in the critical occupations. Under plans at the present time we are going to make an inventory of all the manpower of the country from 20 to 21 and from 36 to 45, which will take place Monday. We have a form which will be sent to each of those individuals the following week to be filled out, to indicate their qualifications for some sort of a job in the war industry. Later we plan on sending out the same inventory form to all men between the ages of 45 and 65 and younger men who are now registered in the draft, that is, the men between the ages of 21 and 36, with the determination that with the available skilled-labor supply there must be some form of allocation of the workers in those critical operations to those war industries that are most in need of such workers.
On Voluntary Basis Now
In some States that is being done at the present time by voluntary methods. In Connecticut and in Oregon, through cooperation of management and labor unions and employment service, they are actually transferring workers from nondefense industries to war industries. We must do that on a voluntary basis at the present time; and when that type of effort fails, then we must go to some form of controlled labor market. Now, the determination by the War and Navy and Maritime Commission of the priorities on plants, industries, and areas will determine what our efforts will be toward transferring these skilled workers to those plants, industries, and areas, and at the present time we can only do it on a voluntary basis. There is no law, there is no Executive order, that would give us the authority to force such transfers. England has found it necessary to go all the way; and, of course, we know Germany has been all the way for a long time; and the chances are that we will have to at a later date, if the war continues and our war effort becomes greater; then it is certainly going to be necessary for us to have a controlled labor market.
QUESTION: Well, the chances are, if it is a long war, forced conscription will be almost a necessity?
Colonel McSHERRY: That, I think, is quite logical. For instance, Germany had 12 million skilled workers, as far as work production for its war production industries is concerned, when the war started. The total employment in manufacturing industries in this country was something on the order of 10,600,000 2 months ago; probably a little over 11 million at the present time. Obviously we have got a long way to go in spreading out our skilled workers. Far more than Germany did, because our potential capacity for production, the ultimate capacity, is much greater and we will have to use that capacity if we are going to win the war.
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Mr. DOOLEY: I might supplement what has just been said with the one word—training. I had lunch today with an executive of the Lockheed company, who says that everyone of their skilled tool and die makers is busy, not at his trade, but instructing 6 or 8 or io fellows around him. He is a little gang boss multiplying himself. In Texas, the Consolidated Shipbuilding Co. is perhaps a year and a half old. I was there 2 weeks ago. They have 6,500 men working on the construction. That is outside the office force. The manager told me he didn’t think there were over 100 men in that yard who had even been in a ship plant before. They had made their own forms, with the help of the vocational schools in that area around there, given their own training on the job, developed their own force—mechanics, riveters, welders, outside machinists, inside machinists, electric pipe benders, sheet metal workers, and the whole works. Any of you could go down there and see it. They would be tickled to death to show it to you. It will amaze you what can be done with training.
Mr. J. A. AHLERS: Before concluding, may I read this statement into the record, in connection with Mr. Bonnot’s talk on how to convert industry. As I understand it, the conversion program must include every available piece of machinery and equipment in the United States. In our industry we have a group of the most resourceful mechanics in the world. Not production-line mechanics but mechanics who must depend on their own skill and knowledge for their livelihood; men who learned the machinist’s trade, toolmaking, and machinery building. This is the automotive service and repair industry.
One automotive repair shop alone is hardly more than a dot on the industrial horizon, but in the aggregate—70,000 repair shops, 30,000 car-dealer shops, and about 4,000 automotive jobber shops—the industry represents a machine and productive capacity of national importance at this critical time. These shops, in addition to being manned by top-ffight mechanics, are equipped with some of the finest precision machinery and tools available—lathes, drill presses, internal and external grinders—machinery used for maintenance and repair, but instantly adaptable for production of a wide variety. Frequently, this equipment is overlooked by manufacturers holding defense contracts, who have to transport subcontracted parts for many miles to have work done and returned.
What Small Shops Can Do
A small automobile repair shop in Ohio was able to supply a large manufacturer nearby with a couple of thousand knurled handles for some kind of military unit. The repair man built his own plug gages, knurling tool, and lathe fixtures, and turned out perfect production. Another auto repair shop in Ohio is using his bushing grinder to finish grind hollow pins for aviation equipment to within two-tenths of a thousandth inside and three-tenths outside with his cylinder grinder, at the rate of 14 per week.
Obviously, these examples serve to show how obscure equipment, nor
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mally used an hour a day in the maintenance industry, can be pressed into production service to relieve and expedite the production of a larger manufacturer’s equipment and capacity. The manufacturer shouldn’t overlook this particular source, because as soon as the average American learns to keep his car off the street—which he is not doing today but which from necessity he must shortly do, if not by the end of 1942—there will be a great many garages, car-dealer shops, and other shops idle.
Mr. WOOTON: Would you like to comment on that, any of you gentlemen? I recall at one of our previous meetings we had a British Labor Union representative who suggested that every garage, every tool ought to be in use in America; that there was no garage in England that wasn’t working on some small part or doing some sort of work.
Mr. BONNOT: Mr. Chairman, during this last week we have had a request for the organization of labor in the garages in Minnesota, that we call a conference of them and their employers in order to facilitate the conversion of their equipment and their manpower to war purposes. That is right .along the lines of that question.
(The conference was recessed at 4:30 p. m.)
EVENING SESSION
“CONVERT OR PERISH”
Address delivered February 13, 1942, at Conversion Conference, Business-Paper Publishers and Editors, by Sir Clive Baillieu
Sir CLIVE BAILLIEU: Conversion is not a new thing under the sun. It is as old as history. Boiled down to its essentials it is simply doing the best with what you have in order that, in the grand old American tradition, you can get there first with the most men and machines.
I have been asked to speak to you tonight about conversion because we in Britain have had a good deal of experience at it during the last three years. I would like to be able to claim that we were pretty clever to start so soon, but in conscience I cannot. Circumstances, I am afraid, more than any sublime prescience, forced us to convert our industry to war production with all our might if we could ever hope, even by 1943, to get the jump on the enemy, to smash back at the ugly Nazi thing, whether Swastika or Rising Sun, on his own ground. It is therefore with humility and gratitude that I look upon such men as Nelson, who, long ago, long before the infamous morning at Pearl Harbor, were championing the cause of mass conversion.
Perhaps if we review the British experience at converting whole industries, some of the heartaches and headaches, thè bottlenecks and the growing pains that we encountered can be prevented here.
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Four Major Steps
Our shift from normal civilian operations to all-out war production was accomplished in four major steps. First, outright Government control of all essential raw materials. Second, drastic limitation of consumer goods. Third, concentration of essential civilian manufacture in the fewest possible factories. And fourth, complete Government control over all factories, warehouses, and machine tools.
Let’s consider the first step—control of raw materials—for a moment. Within a few hours after the war broke out, the British Government took over all stocks of such essential materials as steel, nonferrous metals, aluminum, timber, cotton, wool, flax, hemp, jute, silk, hide, fertilizer, sulphuric acid, ammonium nitrate, paper and paper-making materials. The experience of the first World War had taught us that an island which depends to a large extent on imports of raw materials must be a veritable Scotchman in doling them out in time of war. Furthermore, we had learned that the most efficient way to control and direct production was to control and direct the raw materials. This was, in a very real sense, conversion of our economy to the hard facts of war as a preliminary step to conversion of our physical plant.
We were already building new plants, as you have been, for production of aircraft and other weapons, and we had prepared plans for a network of additional plants, strategically located. But then another hard fact rose to torment us. The 1939 soldier needed three times the equipment that the 1914 soldier needed. We would never get our armies into the field if we relied on new plant facilities.
Skimmed the Cream First
And so we plunged into conversion. Just as a miner exploits the handiest vein first, we skimmed off the cream of our industry, the plants that could swing into war production with a minimum of retooling and replacement of machinery and retraining of manpower. For example, locomotive shops were commandeered to produce tanks, just as, in this country, the Baldwin Locomotive Works at Eddystone was among the first to build tanks in the United States. As another example, the rubber and silk-stocking industries were put to work to make barrage balloons, those Mae Wests of the London skies.
The next move taken was to limit the production of consumer goods. This program reduced imports, thereby freeing cargo space for war materials; conserved raw materials; and released labor and plant facilities for war production. Limitation orders, similar to your own, were clamped on 17 main classes of consumer goods such as textiles, cutting production by 45 percent. By September 1940 further reductions were enforced in home consumption of woven textiles and silk goods, while, at the same time, every effort was made to maintain exports in order to get money to buy more guns, food, and raw materials.
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The third step, concentration of civilian manufacture in a few plants, came about in this way. Beginning in 1940, the Board of Trade, similar to your Department of Commerce, made a monthly census of 24 industries to find out where idle labor was available, what products, and how much, were being made for what markets, the size and type of the premises, and how many hours a day the plants were idle.
Idle Plants Converted
Thus, each month, we had an over-all picture of our productive capacity. We knew where the idle men and machines were and where men, machines, and plants were engaged in nonessential production. And we set about converting the idle and nonessential plants to war work. The supply ministries were given detailed descriptions of the facilities so that war goods which would entail a minimum of change-over and labor training would be made in each one. Furthermore, contracts were diverted from overloaded industrial areas to those other areas.
In December 1940, consumer goods were subjected to even more drastic limitations. Quotas for obvious luxuries, such as cosmetics and musical instruments, were slashed to 25 percent of normal. For the bulk of consumer goods, the new quota was 33 percent, while for more essential goods, such as knitwear and corsets, the quota was 50 percent of normal.
In other words, all British industry was given the choice of specializing in production for export and essential home production, or converting to war work, or extinction.
In March 1941 what we call the nucleus system was made mandatory. The most efficient plants in a given industry took over the entire load in order to free every possible man, machine, and square foot of plant for war production. This step immediately released 150,000 machine-trained men and women for essential jobs and hundreds of thousands more later on. By the end of 1941, one-quarter of the entire civilian population of the United Kingdom had been shifted into war production, in addition to the millions who were engaged in war work before these steps were taken. More than 1,000,000 women who did not work in peacetime had been put to work in ammunition factories, and, sad to relate, one-fifth of all the population were forced to leave home and family because they were ne:eded elsewhere.
A Planned Migration
This forced migration was not thoughtlessly done. It was carefully planned ahead of time. For example, Factory and Storage Control was set up under Sir Cecil Weir to compile a “doomsday book” of all plants in the Kingdom having 3,000 or more square feet of space, which were not engaged in war work. No private firm could acquire a new building or no new business could start up without the approval of this agency. Furthermore— and a vitally important point—no company engaged in war work could
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construct new plants until this agency had declared that suitable facilities were not available.
For example, a producer of tanks is jammed up because he can’t get enough magnetos. He wants to build a new plant. The Control examines its list and reports back that there is a usable building in Town A and that either an ample labor supply is available or that there is sufficient housing for an imported labor force. Needless to say, manpower, materials, and time are not wasted on building a new plant.
Here is a specific example. In 1941 we badly needed more milling cutters. The situation was acute. A plant engaged in making ladies’ shoes was selected for conversion. Experts said we would be lucky if we got it into production in a year. Exactly 37 days later the first batch of cutters was produced. In a few weeks the plant was turning out 3,000 weekly, and today it is clipping along at 8,000 a week. That case was duplicated thousands of times in 6 months. Five thousand plants, having more than 50,000,000 square feet, were converted, and by now the figures would be even more impressive. Another 30,000 plants are ready and will be drawn into the war program as fast as is humanly possible.
Moreover, vast storage facilities have been commandeered in strategic areas, away from docks and factories. Food, munitions, and raw materials all are dispersed in 10,000 factories, halls, houses, barns, stables, quarries, and, yes, even piggeries.
Pool for Blitzed Plants
In addition there is a reserve pool of strategically located factories and warehouses which can be made available immediately to factories blitzed out of existence. The pool comprises 3,000,000 square feet and it is a heartening experience to see the workers of a bombed plant move into a new one and get on with the job.
Another essential link in this system of wholesale conversion is the Machine Tool Controller. Periodically, a census of every usable tool in the Kingdom is made, and all broken or worn-out tools are repaired and reconditioned. The Controller allocates all machine tools. You can’t get a single one, no matter how much money you’ll pay for it, unless, for example, the Ministry of Aircraft Production certifies to the fact that you must have it to produce propellers.
The Controller has power to seize any machine needed for more essential work and to direct the pooling of machines which are not being used full time on war production. In other words, the factory, the manpower, the tools, and the materials all are allocated to speed up this vital job.
“That’s all well and good,” one might say, “but what happens after the war? What happens to the business of the companies that are changed over? Won’t the nucleus plants emerge with all the business when the war is over?”
Yes; those things can happen. They happened in Germany after the last war. That’s where I. G. Farbenindustrie came from. But in Britain
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every possible safeguard has been taken to protect the individual firm. For example, if Glamour Hosiery, to invent a name out of air as thin as that which nylon comes from, is converted, the nucleus hosiery mills don’t get the Glamour customers. The Glamour sales staff remains on the job, supplied with stockings by the nucleus. The trade name and the personal contacts with the buyers are maintained.
And in post-war reconstruction the same agencies that now swing a plant from toy balloons to barrage balloons will be there to reverse the process.
Made Rapid Progress
One of our gravest fears in the beginning was that, even if we converted a plant, production would not come even close to matching the production in plants that had been making munitions for years. That has happened in some cases. But we have been astounded by the production records the great majority of the converted mills have rung up. You see, they didn’t have preconceived notions about what couldn’t be done, and how much a man ought to produce in a day. We have hundreds of cases in which converted plants are outstripping established firms. I told a friend this story the other day and he answered: “Yes; that happens often. One of my superintendents went away on vacation, and while he was away a bright young assistant moved some of the machinery around and promptly doubled production. When the superintendent got back, I asked him about it. He scratched his head and drawled:
“Well, the dam fool just didn’t know you couldn’t do it that way.”
There’s only one thing that can lick conversion, and that’s the “you-can’t-do-it” attitude. We can do it; we have to do it. It’s not a rosy, easy road to victory. There’s no such thing. It’s a hard, back-breaking, brainfagging road, a road full of ruts and rocks and mud and ice and sweat and sacrifice. But the important thing is that it is a road and it is going in the right direction. It’s the shortest line between this critical hour tonight and the hour when once again free men can live in a free world.
Well, where do we stand? What does the scoreboard say? How many hits, how many errors? Let’s talk about the errors first. Long years in business have taught me that a few minutes spent in analyzing mistakes are worth a day of gloating over successes. So let’s look behind the scenes for a moment and see what we in Britain should have done and what we didn’t do, and what we didn’t do soon enough that we should have done.
Start Was Late
First of all, we didn’t get under way with conversion soon enough. It was not until Dunkerque that “business as usual,” “peace in our time,” and all those ostrich catchwords were swept out of sight and mind by that challenge, hurled across the channel, that we would fight on the beaches and on the streets, house by house, yard by yard.
Next, not having, as we should have, realized that every man, machine, and shilling would have to be thrown into the breach, we were not ready
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to move with the speed and precision that we now know was needed. We didn’t get tough rapidly enough. We didn’t tell every plant owner that it was “Convert or perish.” There was too much ’asking and conferring and not enough doing. We hesitated to disrupt whole industries, to move thousands of men and women from their homes to distant foundries. We didn’t cut consumer goods right down to the bone in one bold stroke, but lost precious time and materials whittling them down little by little—precious time and materials that we could not afford to lose.
And, lastly, we didn’t have one over-all production boss. Personally, in normal times, I don’t like bosses who wield arbitrary authority. But in war there is no other way. You can’t have eight strokes in the boat or 11 quarterbacks on the team.
And so, as you can see, we learned our lessons the hard way. We made lots of mistakes, were guilty of many wrongs. That’s the plain unvarnished truth, and I believe that in a democracy we oughtn’t to kid ourselves. There are the cards on the table. Look at them, study them, and if you wish, make use of them.
Now, let’s look at the other side of the ledger. How far have we come along this rocky road of conversion?
Production Curb Rises
I cabled London yesterday for an up-to-the-minute answer to that question, and this is the answer. Thanks to the conversion program, we are now meeting our production quotas, and the curve is climbing week by week as newly converted plants shake down and scores more swing into operation. Without conversion, we should be hopelessly behind. With conversion, we are producing twice as much every day as we did in the last war.
Conversion made it possible for us in 1941 to ship large numbers of our own airplanes to the fighting fronts in Russia, the Near East, and the Far East while receiving many from our Allies. [Remainder of paragraph containing figures on planes and tanks deleted. Information may be found in original speech.]
Within a few months, certainly by the end of this year, the flood of armaments from your great industries will have surpassed ours. Then, in truth, the old story of “too little and too late” will be only a bad dream. Then we shall be able to smash back on every front, from the steppes of Russia to the Philippines.
The first industry we took over entirely was the automobile industry. During the first 11 months of the war, two-thirds of its capacity was converted in making army trucks, scout cars, airplane engines, and components. The other one-third was permitted to continue passenger-car production in order to make use of parts and materials on hand and to hold the labor force in the plants pending complete conversion. In July 1940, all new cars were reserved for essential ■ civilian needs and exports were slashed 90 percent and later eliminated entirely. By August 194°? 100 percent the
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productive capacity of the automobile industry was engaged in war work. It still is and will continue to be until the war is over.
Radio Industry Converted
The radio and television industry, which normally produces 2,000,000 sets annually, was converted with almost the same speed and is now manufacturing radiolocation instruments, telecommunication apparatus, and various secret devices. The industry now produces only 150,000 radio sets a year, and these are all for the Government.
Women have been trained to do that work, thereby releasing skilled workers and technicians for other war work and for maintaining military communications. Since February 1941, no radio tubes have been available for civilians, and consequently thousands of private sets now are useless.
The most recent figures I have for other industries are out of date today, for they carry through only last summer. But perhaps they will serve to show you that we’re taking conversion in dead earnest.
Forty-eight percent of hollow ware industry production was devoted , to such articles as steel drums, mortar bombs, seaplane equipment, field cookers, stirrup pumps, boom defense gear, flare parts, depth charge cases, and aircraft pressings.
Seventy-five percent of metal furniture industry production was in jogs and gauges, gun mounts, tank parts, bomb tails, statistical machines, heavy and light bomb carriers, wireless, and aircraft parts.
Sixty-nine percent of lighting fittings industry production was in reconnaissance flares, fire-fighting equipment, depth-charge pistols, oxygen-breathing apparatus, primers and fuses, and gun-carriage components.
Eighty-nine percent of machinery industry manufactures was in hand grenades, mine sinkers, tank parts, machine tractors, parachute harness fittings, parts for smoke shells, searchlights and locators, and Army trucks.
Toys to Machine Guns
Seventy-three percent of the toy industry production was in Vickers machine guns, detonator shells, ammunition boxes, Lewis and Hotchkiss gun sights, barometric detector units, instructional aircraft models, tools and jigs, gas-mask eyepieces, antitank and pontoon bridging equipment.
There are many, many more. In fact, run through the whole range of industry and today in the United Kingdom you will find not one that is not in whole or in as large a measure as possible in war production or ready to swing over to the victory program. It is an impressive spectacle. It reminds me of a fine old character who was the jack-of-all-trades in the town in which I once lived. He pulled teeth and mended spectacles, mixed a tonic for your croup or built you a house. I went to his shop one day and asked him if he could make a particularly fine bit of grillwork I wanted for my home. His calm serene eyes looked at me for a moment, and, without as much as a glance at the pattern, said:
“Sure I can make. I can make anything.”
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The genius and the will and the hands that built your Pittsburghs and Detroits, together with the peoples of all the United Nations, have in their power tonight the opportunity to turn the oncoming tide of destruction. But it will take every machine, not some of the machines, and every man and woman, not some of the men and women, to do the job.
We must dedicate everything we have, regardless of the sacrifice involved, to the main job of winning this war, and, through winning, merit the opportunity, not to exploit the vanquished as they surely would exploit us, but to apply the same genius which now converts our machines to the building of a better, nobler, fairer world.
HOW THE BRITISH CONVERTED
Address delivered at Conversion Conference of Business-Paper Editors and Publishers, February 13, 1942, by Charles Hitch
Mr. HITCH: The shift in emphasis in the British production program after Dunkerque has, I think, very special interest for America today. In a sense Pearl Harbor was our Dunkerque. I do not mean to suggest that it was a disaster of the same magnitude, but it did give us something of the same sense of urgency. It made possible severe restrictions in civilian supplies. It enabled us to adopt a really large-scale program of armaments production; and, as in England, this program has to be undertaken in circumstances which force us to rely to a great extent on the conversion of civilian industry.
Before Dunkerque the British placed chief reliance on the construction of new facilities. Aircraft was built in specialist plants by aircraft firms or in “shadow factories,” which were aircraft arsenals built and operated for the Government on an agency basis by automotive firms. The British Admiralty utilized much the same sources of supply that it had in peacetime. In the case of Army supplies, orders for general stores and equipment were placed with firms which produced peacetime products so similar that it would be misleading to call the shift conversion. The production of ordnance and tanks was centered in the Government ordnance factories and specialist plants. Bomb and shell parts, ammunition, and items of that sort were produced in converted plants, as were many components of guns and tanks, but the total production program for Army items was small and conversion and therefore affected a relatively small sector of British industry.
"Bit» and Piece»99 Came Cater
I find a widespread opinion here that after Dunkerque the British Government deliberately adopted and carried through a program of conversion based on “bits and pieces” subcontracting. Nothing of the sort occurred. What was true was that only after Norway and Dunkerque was the magnitude of the job of production fully appreciated, that the production program was expanded accordingly, and that circumstances were such that the
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expansion took the form of conversion rather than the construction of new facilities. In Britain after Dunkerque, the most obvious necessity was to push aircraft production to the limit of capacity. The next was to undertake for the first time the large-scale production of tanks. In the case of many other items, it was necessary to expand production many fold and at the same time.
There were three reasons why the expanded program had to be based on conversion. There was, first of all, the time factor. The job had to be done quickly, however inefficiently, with whatever tools were at hand. Secondly, the shortage of building labor and materials was so acute that only a fraction of the new facilities required could have been constructed. There was, thirdly, the danger of air raids, to which large specialist plants are particularly vulnerable. Conversion was clearly the only practicable alternative, and contracts and subcontracts were placed with tens of thousands of firms, large and small, which had previously been engaged on peacetime civilian production.
I am going to give you my impression of the method used by the British to bring these civilian plants into use. It is not the only method which could have been used, and it is quite possibly not the best. It involved placing major responsibilities on industry, and it is arguable that if the Government had played a major role in guiding conversion and organizing subcontracting, some of the wasteful use of productive capacity and transportation which resulted could have been avoided. It is, on the other hand, possible that if the Government had attempted to administer such a policy through its own agencies on a comprehensive basis, the expansion of production would have been disastrously delayed. The British method did achieve results and achieve them quickly. One of the most impressive production stories of the war is that of British tank production. Starting in the middle of 1940 with no possibility of constructing tank arsenals and with the capacity of the firms best equipped for tank production more or less fully utilized for other war purposes, the British have had to base their program on the facilities of literally thousands of civilian firms, no one of which produces more than a small proportion of the total value of any tank. British tank production figures are, of course, a secret, but Lord Beaverbrook’s recent statement to Parliament gave some indication of the measure of success which has been achieved.
Finding Each Other
In the main, with exceptions which we shall discuss later on, main contractors and subcontractors were left to find each other. I am using the term “main contractors” in a very loose sense to include the Government ordnance factories, the “shadow factories,” specialist firms, such as Vickers and the aircraft companies, and the large civilian firms, for example, in the automotive industry, which had already been converted to war production prior to Dunkerque. The Government greatly expanded its orders, fixed delivery
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dates, which main contractors could not meet without expansive subcontracting, and left industry to do most of the rest. All the large main contractors had subcontracting departments which used every conceivable device to find capacity. Some held exhibitions of sample parts. Many, such as Rolls Royce, put their agents in cars laden with parts and drawings and sent them on the road in search of capacity. All used their extensive knowledge of British metal-working industries, for subcontracting has always been very extensive in Britain and has always been expanded in periods of prosperity under pressure of orders. Once the capacity was found, main contractors gave assistance of many kinds to subcontractors, guiding their conversion, instructing them in new techniques, and helping them to secure unfamiliar or controlled materials.
By no means all of the initiative came from the side of the main contractors. Thousands of small firms in England today are busy on war work because they found the department or the main contractor who needed them. Nor was instruction all one-sided, especially where techniques had been worked out in specialist plants. Civilian firms were able to suggest alternative techniques just as satisfactory or, from the point of view of large-scale production, more so. Many war items are being produced today by different methods in different civilian plants, each plant using the technique to which it is accustomed, or for which its plant was most easily adapted.
Organized Production Groups
Another way in which small firms have helped themselves has been by the organization of production “groups” in localities, usually under the leadership of “parent” firms. The parent firm secures contracts or subcontracts on behalf of the group, organizes production and the joint purchase of difficult materials, etc. It must be admitted that most such groups were not successful, due either to the incompetence of the parent firm or to internal jealousies, but a few were outstandingly successful and are now producing a large quantity of war material to the complete satisfaction of the Supply Departments. One in particular which contains more than a hundred machine shops, most of which employ less than 25 workmen, has given the lie to the charge that small firms are necessarily wasteful of skilled labor. This group uses a proportion of skilled labor considerably lower than that used by large firms engaged on the same work and employs more than 50 percent women.
The role of the Government, while very important, might almost be described as auxiliary. It took various measures to put main contractors in the mood to subcontract and civilian firms in the mood to convert. In addition to attempting to create the right atmosphere, the Government has provided a certain amount of financial and technical assistance and has tried to tie up the loose ends which resulted from large numbers of firms making their own arrangements.
The problem of encouraging the specialist firms to subcontract was
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solved by a combination of exhortation and compulsion. The Ministry of Aircraft Production was the only Government department which required its contractors to subcontract a fixed portion of their work, and it stopped doing so after Dunkerque on the grounds that the same percentage was inappropriate for all plants and all types. The Supply Departments now deal with each casé on its merits and instruct firms which they think are doing too little subcontracting to do more. The fact that practically all contracts for aircraft and important types of ordnance are negotiated insures that the wishes of the department will be respected.	-
Financial Aid Speeded Program
The provision of capital assistance also gives the department a powerful lever to force subcontracting. Instead of providing the main contractors with new plants, it forces the contractor to find capacity elsewhere or, when it does not exist, creates the capacity elsewhere by providing capital assistance in the form of balancing tools to potential subcontractors. The Government has not tried to induce subcontracting or conversion by contract terms, but it has tried to remove those features of contracts which would stand in the way.
In order to make it possible to use the capacity of inexperienced or ill-equipped firms, it pays them substantially more for the same product than it pays firms specially equipped for that purpose. It is also attempting to fix contract terms which insure that it will not be less profitable for main contractors to subcontract a component than to make it themselves. Probably the major factor in putting main contractors in the right mood to subcontract was the scale of orders after Dunkerque. The big firms were loaded and overloaded with orders and assigned delivery dates which théy could not meet without large-scale assistance from outside. Subcontracting might have been forced on main contractors without overordering, but overordering insured their wholehearted cooperation.
- Encouraging civilian firms to convert was achieved by methods similar to those employed here. Before the war and in the early months of the war, there was a good deal of reluctance on the part of firms to give up their normal peacetime lines. By the time of Dunkerque this reluctance had been almost completely overcome by the course of the war, by drastic restrictions on the supply of steel and other materials for civilian production, by the “limitation of supply” orders which reduced manufacturers’ sales of numerous products to a fraction of prewar, by the licensing of sales of machinery, and by other restrictive measures. It is roughly true in England today that any firm still engaged in civilian production is producing something so essential for the welfare or morale of the population that it could not be converted without damage to the war effort.
Once specialist and civilian firms were in the right mood, the Government left them very largely to their own devices, but a certain amount of supervision was exercised to bring the right firms together and to insure that no suitable firms were overlooked. Main contractors were provided by the
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Government with lists of potential subcontractors, i. e., firms which on the basis of their prewar production or their equipment seemed to be suitable for producing components of the type and precision required. The Board of Trade, which was mainly responsible for cutting civilian industry, worked out in conjunction with the supply departments a so-called “keeping-step” policy. When as a result of its restrictions it freed capacity in a firm which appeared to be suitable for war production, it provided full details to the supply departments who decided whether it could be used and, if so, how and for what purpose. If they decided it could not, they notified the Ministry of Labor, who directed its labor to other plants, and the Controller of Factory and Warehouse Accommodation, who used its space for storage.
Rely on Field Organizations
For the purpose of tidying up, the Supply Departments have found that they must rely upon extensive regional or field organizations. It is easier to define what the regional representatives do not do than what they do. One of their principal jobs is to assist contractors to find the capacity they need in civilian firms, particularly in the case of bottleneck items. Ordinary pressing and stamping capacity is in surplus supply in England and contractors are able to satisfy their needs without much trouble, but certain kinds of machining capacity are so short that their location and utilization require the combined energy and ingenuity of the main contractors, the relevant Supply Department, and the field organization. In the case of many of these bottleneck items, ordering and scheduling of deliveries is now undertaken by the Supply Department in order to prevent undue pressure on the limited capacity and the accumulation of unbalanced inventories.
The job of tidying up has been facilitated during the past year by the local Clearing Centers or Capacity Exchanges organized by the regional representatives of the Supply Departments. Each Capacity Exchange keeps under constant review the loads of machine tools in the firms (usually 500 to 1,000) in its area, and attempts to “marry” the overloads and underloads. In the London area where these Exchanges were first organized, they have been successful in breaking thousands of capacity bottlenecks, most of them small, but in the aggregate very important.
Finally, the Government has provided assistance of many kinds to converted firms. In general, it has paid the whole or the major part of the cost of new capital equipment. Its regional officers have provided technical advice. While it does not supply working capital, it has very largely reduced the need for it by making very generous progress payments to main contractors on condition that they be passed on promptly to subcontractors.
Conversion is a very broad term which I have been using in a loose and general sense. It is difficult to give examples of conversion in British industry which are at all typical because of the wide range of kinds and degrees which one finds. Lists of firms showing prewar products and war products are apt to be misleading. I can tell you, for example, of a stove
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company which has changed over to the production of grenades, land mines, bombs, and shells, but this company is using almost nothing of its prewar equipment except floor space and management. At the other extreme, a company which produced shoe eyelets was able to change over to the production of airCraft rivets on a very large scale with almost no new equipment whatever.
Firms Undertake New Jobs
There are numerous examples of firms undertaking work for which they apparently had no qualifications, but which they were able to do successfully by a modification of design or of technique. The automobile companies have very successfully undertaken the production of aircraft wings and fuselages by methods, completely different from those used by the specialist aircraft companies. Certain types of mines had in the past been made exclusively by hot metal processes. They are now made very expeditiously and on a much larger scale by firms which work only with cold metal. There are, of course, certain things for which very few civilian firms can achieve sufficiently high standards of precision, but British experience indicates that the difference between this war and earlier wars in this respect has been much exaggerated. With the right design and with sufficient ingenuity the great bulk of the components of war products can be produced by civilian firms with civilian techniques.
Despite the general view that the British method was essentially one of conversion and bits and pieces subcontracting, I think that most British officials believe that Britain converted too little and too late. Large quantities of material and labor were wasted in building new factories when floor space was available in old, in making new machinery and machine tools when old ones could have been commandeered and adapted. Conversion has many advantages besides the obvious direct saving of time, material, and labor. One of the greatest is that it enables labor to be employed at home and where housing, transportation, and other amenities are already in existence. In theory, new facilities could be located where the labor supply will become available. In practice this is extremely difficult, and in England in many cases they were not. As a result one of the great problems there at present is providing tolerable living conditions for workers required in new plants. If there is one single lesson of British experience from which we in this country should profit, it is that to produce the most war equipment in the shortest time with the fewest really bad headaches, it is necessary to convert to the maximum possible extent.
U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
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