The Myth of the American Glamour Girl: A Real Story of Women in War Industry
The Myth of the American Glamour Girl: A Real Story of Women in War Industry Millions in Factories Solving Manpower Crisis, Mrs. Herrick Says By ELINORE M. HERRICK, Director of Personnel and...
...We are getting them now and they are proving up...
...The work is heavy and dirty...
...As has been pointed out many times, Alcoa took over the job of restricting production of the light metals, aluminum and magnesium, in America...
...be allocated plants with a rated capacity of 1.9 per cent of the country's total...
...A fairer peace-time price for both magnesium and aluminum would be 10 cents...
...A new pricing order was written and sent out dated December 1 which would have made the going rough if not impossible for Reynolds...
...they do admit, that the treasury would lose one year's revenue, but this loss would be spread over many years, and would not occur until the death or retirement of the taxpayer, and even then would be recovered by estate * taxes...
...We had no experience table to go by so naturally we had to proceed on a trial and error basis...
...Pay-asyou-go provides for weekly deductions from salaries, so that, as President Roosevelt remarked during his press conference of January 8, if you don't have the money in your pocket, you don't spend it...
...That explained how the new pricing order was a strictly Alcoa order...
...Dow had had to be bludgeoned into it and Alcoa was so fearful of what might happen that it made representations to buy out Dow...
...These deductions would be made in the same manner as social security or victory tax deductions, or, stated in another fashion, would operate as a payment of income taxes on the weekly installment plan...
...The plants make aluminum from a kind of day called "aluinite" and are owned chiefly by the Kalunite Corp., a subsidiary of Olin Corp., and located at JMaysville, Utah...
...The order would have reduced the classification of products made by Reynolds to an average of 15 cents a pound, while the classifications of products made by Alcoa—plus all those made in Canada—were to be continued at 17 cents...
...Wedding rings, watches, earrings and jewelry of all kinds are not permitted...
...His plan returns to the joyous upper-bracket income taxpayer a handsome 80 to 90 per cent of income after he had bade that income a resigned farewell...
...A B C—K $750 $0 — 1,000 0 — 1.500 34 2.3 2,000 120 6.0 2,500 207 8.3 3,000 289 9.6 5,000 746 14.9 10,000 2,252 22.5 15,000 4,052 27.0 25,000 9,220 36.9 50,000 25,328 50.7 75,000 43.820 58.4 100,000 64,060 64.1 250,000 194,000 77.6 500.000 414.900 83.0 1,000,000 863,900 86.4 This table reveals a not too surprising fact— the higher the income of the taxpayer, the greater the benefit derived from the Ruml plan...
...LCOA'S practical method of preventing the ¦**use by manufacturers of magjiesium has been by (a) arbitrarily causing magnesium to be priced one-third higher than aluminum, approximately cancelling out the advantage the metal enjoys by being one-third lighter, and (b) by a consistent campaign of villification which has convinced many purchasers that magnesium corrodes so easily it it worthless as a usable metal...
...His idea defeated at that time, he has advanced his proposal once more, aided greatly by a nation-wide barrage of publicity...
...Strong representations were made and Alcoa had to appease its German partner by'granting it the option of buying 50 per cent of the stock of American Magnesium Corp., which held the profitable fabricating patents granted to Alcoa by I. G. The German company eventually realized $500,000 out of this, but when I. G. had become a frank arm of German world policy, the Dow deal was highly cdmmended...
...We combined comfort with practicality in arranging this room...
...The taxes, • yon will pay in 1943 are to be applied against the income tax which would become due for the year'TSif.* At the end...
...Such records covering even seemingly trivial matters, are guide posts to the doctor and to the personnel office and indicate need for farther study of the individual problem...
...There were about 2,000,000 women engaged in industry when the last war ended...
...New problems crop up every day, but these were expected...
...Because Arcoa held the fabrication patents it was able to force Dow into this deal and able to impose its will to keep the price of magnesium plenty high—where it would not interfere with the highly profitable aluminum business...
...Then Alcoa made deal with Dow Chemical, which was designed to keep magnesium production within bounds, too, and which- promised little enough in profits for I. G. This deal was made on June 24, 1933...
...Lipstick and rouge are out, but we are experimenting on hand and face creams to prevent their skin from absorbing grease...
...And the Dow deal burned up partner I. G. Farben...
...Column B—The tax you will pay upon the net taxable income...
...We axe preparing a lunch menu with plenty of thought given to nutrition and vitamins, and let me point out that it will lean more to the longshoreman than the dainty tea-room side...
...had to depend upon the Aluminum Company of America to make it cheap and available...
...Recently there have been indications in Washington of a rift in the JonesAlcoa relations...
...However, this cant be true for our higher salaried taxpayers, for they have been limited in 1943 to salaries of $67,200 ($26,000 after taxes) by Presidential decree under the Economic Stabilization Act of 1942...
...By dint of determination and much publicity Which assailed Alcoa, he was able to get into the business and...
...His plan proposes that we forget taxes on 1942 income...
...WPB, and WPB's Arthur Buker, thought better of it and the order was cancelled...
...Only time will tell to what extent women will go toward solving the serious manpower shortage in the United States, but I will venture the opinion that we will nt be found wanting...
...But the threat to Alcoa that Alcoa has feared longest and worked most consistently against is from magnesium, a metal one-third lighter than aluminum and much easier to work from a production point Of view...
...There is no room for glamor...
...a way of shifting from the present system of paying taxes on past income, to paying on current income must be evolved...
...The benefit derived by the small man however is picayune compared to the magnificent returns accruing to upper-bracket taxpayers and the treasury's loss...
...Small wonder, then, that publishers and other high income taxpayers have been singing the praises of Beardsley Ruml so vociferously...
...You can turn the hose on them...
...This proposal has again been advanced, this time in Congress, and once more has received a chilly reception in the newspapers...
...Being consistent in all things, Jones loaned money to Aluminium, :Ltd., 83Tr owned by Alcoa, at 3r<- to enable ^ihem to manufacture aluminum for export to the United States...
...As a matter of fact, when I toured the Todd Erie Basin Dry Docks in Brooklyn on my first day with the Todd Corporation, I learned I was the first female to set foot on the soil since the yard was opened in 1869...
...A couple of days before the order was to take effect he went to Washington and threatened to make a public scandal out of it if the order were put into effect...
...Until this crisis, those fields were strictly masculine...
...Before we hired our first woman worker, we outfitted an attractive restroom where the girls can spend part of their one-hour lunch period...
...The technical schools have got to get over the notion that a woman can't absorb and practice a technical education...
...For war work, we prefer women whose husbands, fathers, sons, brothers or sweethearts are in the armed services...
...But the facts of daily life at Alcoa give quite a different picture...
...The home ** —both city and country—the school, the '•leisure class"—which will probably be wiped out of existence by this war—the professional woman who left industry for marriage, the women whose jobs were wiped out by priorities...
...But alumina is also a chief ingredient Of common clay...
...So, we seek a certain amount of maturity, over the age of twentyfive, although our minimum is twenty-one...
...Hearings were held at which the testimony of "aluminum,experts" was taken...
...While the hiring and training of women still is definitely in the experimental stage, we have been able to arrive at some conclusions...
...StJch a taxpayer would receive a cash refund of $21,800...
...U7HERE are they coming from...
...AWOMAN, due to her physical makeup, may not be able to perform all the heavy tasks that a man can, but when it comes to brain work and most of the other tasks involving use of the hands or the body generally, a woman can do as well as a male in just as much time and in just as good fashion...
...The first and most important is that the scheme is practical...
...This Is Your Tax Chart: Column A is the taxable income of a married taxpayer with no dependents...
...Closer scrutiny of Ruml's plan, however, repeals some startling data...
...The Ruml argument that no lo^s in treasury cash revenue would result from his plan is true enough, bat only if taxpayers' Incomes far 194$ are not less than 1942 levels...
...During the last war, when Alcoa was the sole producer, the price of aluminum quadrupled...
...If the Ruml plan is adopted, future citizens of the United States may well look back upon it as the greatest tax raid ever perpetrated upon the treasury of this country, mitigated only ever so slightly by the vast number of persons who were "in" on this grab when compared with the small numbers who have shared in the other national sea ad ail in our history...
...Pay-as-you-go taxation is a needed reform, for taxes this year will be burdensome, and not easily paid out of current income...
...Herrick Says By ELINORE M. HERRICK, Director of Personnel and Labor Relations, Todd Shipyards Corporation HPHE manner in which American women have * answered the war emergency call by stepping into the difficult ship repair and shipbuilding industries, offers another admirable example of their versatility...
...The Ruml "pay-asyou-go" plan is a misnomer, because pay-asyou-go, as explained previously, is a concept entirely apart from Ruml's proposal, although popularly associated with it in the public mind...
...and chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, first advanced his plan prior to the passing of the current Tax Act in October, 1942...
...But the tT«h was that almost from the start, finan'¦ally, I. G. Farben suffered at the hands of Alcoa—because, Alcoa didn't like the looks of Magnesium and wanted to let it die...
...of 1943 adjustments are to be made for corrections between your actual tax hill and such payments as you did make during the year...
...Having achieved a current tax basis in this manner, taxpayers would be ready for pay-as-you-go deductions from pay envelopes beginning in 1944...
...But this decrease was not because military necessity demanded cheap aluminum...
...A ship-building and ship-repair yard are about the last places you would expect to find women working...
...If this is set too high or if Alcoa has another patent tending to control magnesium up its sleeve, it may agair...
...Alcoa Battles Magnesium Groups to Control Light Metals, Key to Future By DAVID A. MUNRO II "jkTATURE made aluminum plentiful," says Alcoa's advertising, but nature and the U.S.A...
...The Ruml "pay-as-you-go" plan has been so widely publicized that the new Congress was barely in session before its tax experts issued cagily-worded statements approving the principles...
...For example, a married taxpayer with no dependents who received a salary of $100,000 in 1942 would pay a federal income tax of $64,000 on March 15...
...In a shipyard, the uniform must be warm, for you cannot put a ship under cover...
...The initiation of pay-as-you-go taxation is complex, and it is this problem that the Ruml plan attempts to solve...
...On his limited 1943 income of $67,200, the maximum he could earn, the tax would amount to $42,200 (assuming that the tax rates remain unchanged and allowing for the Victory Tax...
...She can't or wont, keep her mind on her work...
...Besides Alcoa's 'titanic struggle with the courts, it is fighting the battle of price...
...The furniture is bamboo and the covers are made of sailcloth...
...profitably curtail the production of both aluminum and magnesium...
...In a war year, with record-breaking budgets to be met out of record-breaking tax collections (personal income tax collections for 1942, it is estimated, will reach over $7.000.000.000>, it ia a reprehensible act, morally at least, to shrug off 1942 taxes, passing this burden on to future taxpayers of this nation on the basis of a mortality table...
...I'HE early I. G. Farbenindustrie was wholly interested in profits, and the later, or Hitler I G. Farben, was interested in political advan"8* for the German state...
...Dow Chemical has also opened up a big plant in Texas to extract magnesium from sea-water...
...Already we have learned that women are typed for certain jobs, that just like their male companions, they, as individuals, cannot do any old job...
...It began some months ago when WPB decided that aluminum prices were too high...
...On the pricing Side, it is felt that Dow could have profitably sold its by-product magnesium at 5 cents...
...At the start of the war, aluminum production stood at about 300,000,000 pounds and magnesium at 10,000,000 pounds...
...Recruiting of women shipyard workers to fill gaps caused by the drafting of men into the armed forces, is being accomplished rapidly...
...But the key to the future of the light1 metals in America is the interpretation the courts will put on the "reasonable" royalty for making and fabricating magnesium...
...Under these conditions, taxpayers who received salaries of more than $67,200 will actually receive cash refunds from the treasury...
...It is also true that the small taxpayer will also receive a "gift" of 1942 taxes on his income, and therein lies the fertile ground for selling the Ruml tax plan to the public...
...The women must wear safety helmets and thick-soled, high-cut safety shoes...
...It is interesting to note that Randolph Paul, able tax expert of the treasury, proposed during the 1942 Senate tax hearings on the Ruml plan that income taxes I on incomes up to $3,000 per year only be forgiven...
...All this has been carefully weighed by Alcoa's friends at court, Arthur H. Bunker, head of the Aluminum and Magnesium Division of WPB, and Jesse Jones, master of America's money...
...Beardsley Ruml, treasurer of R. H. Macy & Co...
...By the terms of the consent decrees demanded of Alcoa and signed by it and subsidiaries, both the production and fabrication patents are now available royalty-free for the duration and must be licensed at "reasonable" rates to all applicants thereafter...
...The newspapers, however, displayed little enthusiasm for this proposal, virtually smothering this version of pay-as-you-go taxation with silence...
...Meanwhile German aluminum production hit acme undetermined high which, in the words of the AntiTrust Division, "exceeded all other nations of the world...
...This would mean that the halcyon "light metals future**'' of America wi if be still-born, the military future of America will again be left vulnerable to a witless corporation able and willing to carry out the industrial dictates of a potential enemy...
...at Tacoma, Wash...
...In doing so, they have disproved the theory that woman's place, is in the home...
...If a ring catches in a piece of machinery it's apt to rip off a finger...
...In its profit-seeking 'tage, in the ;1920's, I." G. Farben came to America with a series of patents for the production and processing of magnesium...
...At first, we weren't certain they'd be able to master the work because the shipyard business not only calls for manual labor but demands a high degree of technical skill...
...At this point, it becomes necessary to draw a clarifying distinction...
...A series of Anti-Trust actions have broken up all the agreements between Alcoa, Dow and I. G. Farben...
...Price is a hot potato...
...Jones, through his Defense Plant Corporation, handed Reynolds a handicap of a $53,350,000 lean at 4% interest, whereas the plants built for Alcoa were wholly charged to the GovernHient and Snly leased to Alcoa...
...It was renewed in November 1938 and became one of the key props to the Hitler policy of curbing the production of essential defense metals in possible enemy countries...
...Through its friend Arthur Bunker, Alcoa attempted last month to take much more direct action...
...Debunking The Ruml Plan New Scheme Seen as Large-Income Tax Grab By PAUL FREEHUNG A tax-conscious citizenry has been attracted lately to various plans for "painless" taxation...
...and Henry Ford, the extent of whose accomplishments in this field has never been discovered or announced...
...Women have been known to work in airplane and munition factories and the like, but never before in our history were they called upon to build and repair ships...
...And when that niche is found, they clean up, and I mean just that—they set an example for care and industry that ranks with the highest...
...Working conditions are not the pleasantest— the women have to work out in the open and they have to be dressed for it...
...This order is strictly a safety measure...
...We keep detailed records as to the reasons why a woman visits the dispensary...
...We have found, too, that the glamorous young thing won't do...
...R. S. Reynolds, head of Reynolds Metals, didn't take it lying down, however...
...Most important of those who have been induced to go into the magnesium business are Henry J. Kaiser, whose Permanente Metals Corp...
...Higher salaried individuals would receive correspondingly greater refunds...
...That gives them an emotional urga Safety is one of the most important items on the shipyard "must" list...
...But since the war the forces behind magnesium have multiplied even more than those behind aluminum...
...If too much is paid for aluminum, it will enable the new little companies to establish big reserves...
...Olin also has * "primary aluminum" plant—which means finished aluminum...
...This confusion has been greatly enhanced by recent newspaper editorials and stories...
...The program is proceeding ahead of schedule...
...In that way lies profits and security...
...But this would depend upon simultaneous production and sale of the other derivaties of sea-water...
...At the present time, taxpayers pay their income taxes a year after receiving (and often spending) the income upon which the tax is based...
...Safety is more than just having an adequate first aid dispensary...
...One of the main supports of the aluminum monopoly is Alcoa's control of high-grade bauxite...
...The heavy shipyard industry presents entirely different problems from the aviation, radio or bombsight business...
...It provided that Dow would make all the American production of magnesium, as a by-product of its brin#^prdcessing operation in Michigan...
...These looked like' something any American company Would be glad ito exploit for a profit...
...Advocates of this plan assert that the treasury would lose no cash revenue, since on March 15 of the this year you are paying taxes anyway...
...It must not sop up grease and it must not be inflammable...
...The Dow deal was never altogether satisfactory...
...Column C—Percentage the tax bears to the net taxable income...
...But the above acts are already irrevocably on the books...
...P' years after I. G. turned its patents over ? Alcoa, nothing happened...
...This represents income after all allowable deductions, but before the personal exemption of $1,200...
...extracts magnesium from dolomite by the new "Hansgerg Process...
...Franklin W. jOlin, one of the family which owns Western Cartridge Co., determined to go , into the manufacture of aluminum from clay...
...The restriction on the production of magnesium, inevitably tied to the quantity of brine processed, meant little profits in the German company...
...If too little is paid for aluminum, Alcoa itself won't make the profit it should out of war...
...Nature did indeed do its best to make aluminum plentiful, but the Alurain-.-m Company is doing its best to make : it expensive—and rare...
...In addition, it requires scientific personnel direction...
...THE drama surrounding-the price order of ¦ December 1 is one of Washington's strange untold stories...
...And if it were commercially feasible to make metalic aluminum out of common clay, the world-wide control of bauxite would have no validity as a means of maintaining monopoly...
...German magnesium production exceeded 100,000,000 pounds...
...rather, their physique and mentality fit them for some particular type of work...
...To begin with, it is interesting to show how much income tax would be forgiven to taxpayers in different income brackets...
...It was .because of the presence, of Reynolds Metals :Con»pony and Olin Corporation—both new to the aluminum business—in the field...
...If we continue at our present pace, the figure will be close to 7,000,000 when this conflict is over...
...Developing women shipfitters, tinsmiths, carpenters, welders, burners, electricians, machinists, firemen and crane operators, requires a touch of the beautician, stylist, dietician, interior decorator and disciplinarian...
...But the experts were all Alcoa men...
...But they are drawing the praise of their fellow workmen and their foremen for their punctilious attention to duty and the earnestness and thoroughness with which they go after their work...
...During this war, fortunately for the safety of our cities and our citizens, it has come down...
...Women as shipyard workers have proved their worth...
...It was through magnesium that Alcoa originally became allied to German companies and started the downward •piral which ended in its carrying out commer^•1 Policies desired by the Hitler government...
Vol. 26 • January 1943 • No. 4
