ARE WAR PLANTS EXPENDABLE?
Reuther, Walter P.
Are War Plants Expendable? By WALTER P. REUTHER THE Army and Navy Departments and the Ford Motor Company, on May 4, 1945, summoned the thousands of workers at the Willow Run Bomber plant to a...
...By WALTER P. REUTHER THE Army and Navy Departments and the Ford Motor Company, on May 4, 1945, summoned the thousands of workers at the Willow Run Bomber plant to a meeting on the plant grounds...
...Holden speaks of...
...If private management will operate Government-owned plants and provide jobs, workers and veterans say good—go to it...
...Moreover, these units and appliances will not be stuck in various corners of an already-built house...
...Postwar abundance and jobs for all, however, demand concerted effort and planning now...
...How many of them could afford to buy one now—for $7,000...
...In addition new marketing outlets will be developed through the growing chain of farm cooperatives and city consumer cooperatives...
...America's greatest postwar need and its greatest source of postwar employment is housing...
...With final victory, we can employ, through this 2-fold program, 6 million people who would be engaged directly and indirectly in the mass production and mass distribution of rolling stock and low-cost housing...
...And for $3,000 the mass production hoase will come fully equipped with an electric stove, a dishwashing machine, a garbage disposal unit, a refrigerator and an air conditioning unit...
...3. Lease plants to workers' producer cooperatives, to be operated as part of the program...
...In hearings before the Interstate Commerce Commission in November, 1944, one Government official testified that rail earnings were being held "at shocking levels in the face of the fact that the country is engaged in a terrible war...
...Fundamental .changes in both the railroad and construction industries are imperative...
...They are prepared, in addition, in conjunction with other civic-minded groups, to organize housing cooperatives in the various metropolitan centers to market as large a portion of the total production of Willow Run as possible...
...After the plant is in operation producing rolling stock and housing, they will explore the possibility of undertaking production of farm equipment and household appliances...
...The challenge to provide full-time employment must be met, and the time to begin is now...
...Shall we "reconvert" to an impossible "normalcy," surrendering again to the old cycle of boom and bust, feast and famine ? Or will we press forward in a peacetime offensive against the squalor, unemployment, and insecurity which have bred 2 world wars and can breed a third...
...Yet, mass production can give Americans a better house—for $2,500—than the $7,000 house Mr...
...How will America, in the days immediately ahead, convert the courage and will to win a global war into the intelligence and imagination required to make peace secure...
...Talk of "full employment," of "initiative," and of "resourcefulness" will ring hollow as long as plants like Willow Run stand idle...
...The Housing and Railroad Authorities will provide the administrative machinery to effect those changes, and to assure that they will be made in the public interest...
...The fiasco of Willow Run has posed the question: Where do we go from victory...
...These practices, resulting from a desire to protect vested interests in scarcity, or from efforts to achieve a measure of security in unstable industries, represent the chief obstacles to attainment of domestic and of international economic security...
...No conclusive answers to these pressing questions have been given in the councils of government...
...Half-way measures did not meet the problems of war...
...It has been said that they have traditionally built homes at Buick and Cadillac prices, whereas the great masses of Americans need homes at Ford or Chevrolet prices...
...The people did—what now...
...But if private management lacks the initiative or confidence to undertake this responsibility, and if the Government hesitates directly to operate these plants, an alternative solution must be found...
...if you don't want the vested interests to shut them down, re-elect the Democrats...
...While campaigning for Vice President during the last election, President Truman went into every major industrial area in the country and repeatedly said: "If you want these Government plants to stay open after the war...
...Private builders have never found it profitable to build homes for the millions of America's low-income families...
...A technical staff in the employ of the Authority, as engineering personnel are employed by the TVA, will encourage and accelerate the tempo of technological development in the industry, guiding the introduction of new discoveries in design, materials, construction, and safety devices...
...and secondly, it points the way by which we can convert the peoples' productive assets created during the war to provide abundance, opportunity, and security for the millions of fighting soldiers and production soldiers whose common efforts will have made victory possible...
...The Railroad Authority we propose, moving boldly into the center of the industry, may flutter the dovecotes of a minority of investors, but it will break the deadlock of monopoly and inadequate public regulation...
...It is conceivable that in the execution of such an over-all production program, some plants will be operated directly by one of the 2 public authorities, some by private management, and others by workers' cooperatives...
...The occasion was the presentation to the workers and the company of the Navy-Army "E" for excellence in production...
...They want action, results—jobs...
...We can, by means of this program, meet one-tenth of our national employment budget—60 million jobs...
...Mass production of modern housing will open this vast potential market and for the first time will place decent housing within the economic grasp of millions of Americans, just as the mass production of cars has placed modern transportation within their reach...
...The program will be both comprehensive and flexible...
...We propose that the Congress set up 2 public authorities, similar in organization and function to the Tennessee Valley Authority: a Housing Production Authority, and a Railroad Equipment Production Authority...
...The program must meet three minimum requirements : 1. It must establish an equitable wage pattern...
...3. It must operate in a manner to protect the Government's investment...
...Ford) applied to the plant was "expendable...
...Creation of Housing and Railroad Authorities similar to the TVA is important not only because Government-owned facilities are adaptable to manufacture of rolling stock and housing, for which there is a great Botential market...
...THIS policy of drift has culminated in the spectacular case of the Ford Willow Run Bomber plant, * which stands, in the Summer of 1945, as a colossal $90,000,000 monument to our failure to plan for peace...
...advance the specific offer to organize a workers' producer cooperative at Willow Run, for the manufacture of prefabricated low-cost housing and modern light-weight railroad rolling stock, under the program outlined...
...In such an atmosphere aggressive minorities win selfish victories at the expense of the general welfare...
...Henry Ford II took the occasion of this celebration to inform the Willow Run workers that they were no longer needed...
...The additional re-deployment burdens being placed on our already inadequate railroad equipment threaten not only to impede the war against Japan, but also hold the danger of hopelessly jamming up our railroad arteries with disruptive consequences to shipments of foodstuffs and other essentials of domestic stability and reconversion...
...On every hand, there is a disposition to drift into peace without coordination of effort or direction of energies...
...Since their heyday in the last century, the railroads have vigorously fought against public regulation...
...i * * * 1 IN this spiri£, the workers of Willow Run plant, as represented by Bomber Local 50, UAW-CIO...
...Thomas S. Holden, president of F. W. Dodge Corporation, a construction statistical organization, has pointed out that building costs generally have risen more than 30 per cent since 1939—making a $5,000 pre-war house cost between $6,500 and $7,000 now...
...Of these unprecedented earnings, they have retained over 75 per cent, paying out less than 25 per cent in dividends before reserves...
...There can be no escape from the necessity of taking action on Willow Run, and on the entire sprawling industrial empire of Government-built war plants...
...There will be 3 methods of plant operation: Each of the 2 authorities will be empowered to: 1. Lease plants to private manufacturers, to be operated as part of the program...
...It is easy to drift into unemployment and scarcity...
...Whether we scrap them or use them—or leave them standing as rotting monuments to the philosophy of scarcity and to our fear of abundance—the choice we make will thunder down the years, shaping and shadowing our future for generations...
...Each plant could contribute to the total program as do plants in the B29 heavy bomber program...
...2. Directly operate Government-owned plants...
...How-many of the millions of American families living in slums and substandard homes could afford a $5,000 house in 1939...
...1 AMERICAN workers and returning GIs will not be impressed by academic debate of economic theory, or by endless debate on the question of ownership of industry...
...they will be built into the house in the process of construction, to meet the latest standards of convenience and efficiency...
...In the words of TNEC Monograph 26, Economic Power and Political Pressures, "While paying lip service to the principle of public regulation, the railways . . . have done everything in their power to avoid it, or at least to control it in their own interest...
...A nation that has spent billions to bomb homes must have the courage and imagination to spend billions to build homes...
...This plan proposes that first things be put first...
...America must make the decision, now, to gear the great government-owned war facilities to the needs of peace...
...A heavy bomber had been rolling from the plant every hour for more than a year...
...The word he (Mr...
...2. It must provide a good, low-cost product...
...They will not meet the problems of peace...
...And there will be no escape from the consequences of our action...
...Within 90 days after a "go" signal the plants now being cut back and made idle can be turning out rolling stock which will make possible the speedy re-deployment of our armed forces from the European to the Pacific theaters of war...
...Its first objective is to facilitate re-deployment and to meet the unemployment problem during the immediate transition period...
...The railroad and construction industries are flagrant examples of areas in which these celebrated virtues, freedom and enterprise, either have not prevailed er have been perverted to license and piracy.' " * * * IT is common knowledge that the railroad companies have made vast war profits...
...These public corporations will be authorized to operate Government-owned war plants as they become available in a comprehensive program for the manufacture and distribution of low-cost housing and modern railroad rolling stock...
...Retail sales will be through existing distributors and local retailers...
...The colossal W'illow Run plant, whose Liberators had helped shatter the mighty Nazi military machine, was to be abandoned...
...Those who would protect free enterprise must realize that too often it has been neither free nor enterprising...
...Willow Run is the test case of our intentions...
...Such authorities are needed because immediate and aggressive Federal action in these 2 sectors is essential as part of a coordinated attack on widespread restrictive practices throughout the economy...
Vol. 9 • July 1945 • No. 30
