Having suffered one military defeat after another since ther:outbreakof the second World War, and being none too confident in the remaining"t'l""""oll. nJ tho 'USSR, th" All•.,,, ""." /o7'Cl!d to t.alk mo7''' "mn m""." nEll"'t.the distant future, in which, they hope, the American armaments willco",,, ....to plallo Wh,at. l!h,a'1ll!1! ha1JQ thQ ura'lldiosQ pla'ns 01 the U'nitl!dStates of materializing?

NfJ Vlll$ w1ll wlld"nlitimu;t" "", c;apumly 01 dm"ric;..n iml",,,tTJI. Th"wealth of raw materials in the USA is known. But to what degree isAmerican industry, grown up in an atmosphere of plenty, prepared tofulfill the dema.nds Of tne politicians of its country fOT arms and mOTearms, for production and more production, not only for America, but alsofor her weal'ened allies? What is the mental attitude Of ind~tstry, andcan it cover its requirements in raw material, machinery, and labor?The interest of the whole world is focused on these questions and theirinfluence upon the initial speeding up of the American armament inclust·ry.They are dealt with in the following article.

Tho a."tl,o,· left Amorica. ahortly be/oro tho ot

CAN AMERICA DO IT? 331

published for 19,10 or 4.4 millionmotorcar:>, 2.6 million household refrig-erators, 1.G million washing machin "11 million radio, indicate clearly tohow gr a t a degree the factorie andworkshops of American industry 'werebu 'y with the manufacture of thesegood. Turnovers of such size notonly occupy the existing productivmachinery and teclmical equil ment ofan industry, but al 0 mean the tying-up of such raw materials as te 1,copper, aluminum, brass, cadmium,chromium, and others.

This trend of American industry caneasily be understood in a rich countryand in tim of peace. But it is note-worthy that it was not disturbed lJythe outbreak of the second World Warnor by the Lend-Lease policy of Roose-velt in ] 940, indeed, not even in 1941.As late as July 1941, General Motorsannounced that its sales organizationhad in the nine preceding months soldmore automobiles than ever before inthe history of the concern. Early' in1941 the refrigerator industry report-ed further increases in the numb r oforder, which \\ as 70 per cent higherthan the tlgure for 1940. Similarsuccesses in sal s were reported inother indu trie. This phenomenonwas all the more surprising as the'om e of Production Management"

the high st authority for supervisingnational rearmament, admitted at thevery same time that armament cle-li"eries were in arrears,

PO T-ll AR rvOfiBlf:S

The contradictory nature of thesen:purLs enable one to draw conclusionsa' to the fundamental attitude ofAmerican industry. '1 his is, moreover,confirmed by a pronouncement of Wil-liam S. Knudsen, the chairman of theOffice of Production Management, who,when asked whether American industrywere able to carry out the rearmamentprogram of the Government, answeredin the affirmath'e, with the reservationthat industry would-as had hithertonot been the case-really use to thefull its resources for rearmament.

The utterance made during thisperiod by representatives of industryonly serve to confirm that the chang swhich 1\11'. Knud en hint at had notyet taken place, At that time theindustrialist was occupied with theproblem of what would happen toindu try and its employment aft l'the war. How would the ·witch-ov· l'from war-time to peace-time indu trybe made at the end of the war '! 'I hiswas the question bein'" discussed every-where in industrial circles and \ hi 'hwas cho en a the suuject for th mainreport of the 1940 winter m ting ofthe Institute of El drical Engine l'S.In the autumn of 1941 the pre', r>-ported the planning of building activ-ities in 52 citie as a m asure ofpractical unemployment relief to bestarted when the war was ended.

SKEPTICAL CAPITAL

Capital saw no good pro pects ofprofit in the situation obtaining.Doubts were expressed on all sid'sregarding the advisability of increasingindustrial capacity by enlarging theexisting plants. If one bears in mindthat the problem of the ovcrcapaci tyof industry had for years been thesubject of discussion in industrial circl sand with the general public, and thatthe lack of balance between productionand consumption was constantly giv nas the main reason for unemploymentand the continual feeling of crisis inthe American market, one can under-sland that the factory 0\\ ners showedlittle SYIl1 pathy for the Government'sdesire for enlarged uljJi.lcl Ly. Therewas no inclination to invest, so theinitiati\e wa left to the State. Thesame re:traint was expressed in theunaccommodating terms of paymentdemanded by exporters from thei l'customer, from which it \Va mainlythe outh American countries who hadto suffer.

The Stock Exchange confirmed thissituation with increasingly low levelsin share and bond quotation q • Thedownward tendency of the New

.332 THE XXth CENTURY

York Stock Exchange, which had not:stopped since the beginning of theEuropean conflict, ran parallel to the-skepticism of financial circles and "theuncertainty of industry. When inAugust 1941, after days of surmiseand expectation, the news of the famousmeeting between Churchill and Roose-velt on the Atlantic was released forpublication, the New York Stock Ex-·change-a barometer famed for its.accuracy in reflecting the mood of thebusiness world-reacted with a mini-mum turnover. And the specter of the.constantly rising national debt continuedto overshadow everything.

RAW MATERIALSNO OBJECT

In presenting this situation we haveoutlined the mental attitude of Amer-ican capitalism. But even presumingthat the pressure of present times andthe growing concentration of power inWashington will succeed in overcomingthe existing egoism and the passiveresistance of the capitalists, there stillremain obstacles of a technical nature.How is the raw material situation?To what extent does the machineryexist for such gigantic armamentorders as have been announced byWashington? How much human laboris there available to carry out theseplans and to run the machines7 Howis the industry of the United States,running at such high speed for peace-time requirements, to be stopped andset in motion again for war require-ments?

Let us first consider the question ofraw materials. Every industrial prod-uct is made up of raw material andlabor. Hence the efforts of engineersare directed toward designs that canbe manufactured with a minimum ofmaterial and a minimum of labor.Every improvement of a product at-tempts to decrease either the con-sumption of material or the share oflauor. American and German engineer-ing have approached this goal bydifferent roads. American productsrepresent an expenditure of material

unlimited in both quantity and quality,with a minimum of labor. Germanproducts are marked by a minimum ofraw material, while the expenditure inlabor is generally higher than inAmerica. In other words: Americanindustry places unlimited raw materialsat the disposal of its engineers, ,ifthrough the use of them the engineerssucceed in reducing the working hoursinvolved; German engineering, on theother hand, saves raw materials evenat the cost of more labor.

REDUCE THE LABOR!

The development of such a trendoriginates in the raw-material andlabor situation of a country. In theUnited States it was given its impetusby the existence of great wealth inraw materials. Such a trend, however,in the long run influences the entiretechnical thought and structure ofindustry. The American developmentis expressed in the greater share ofmaterial in almost all American prod-ucts, in comparison with the sameproducts of German origin. The mostpopular American car weighs 1.3 tons,compared with 0.85 tons for the mostpopular German car. The best-sellingrefrigerator in the United Statesweighs 300 pounds, as against the 165pounds of the largest-selling model inGermany. Transformers of German con-struction are up to 40 per cent lighterthan American models, even 50 percent lighter as regards their oil con-tent. Similar differences in weightcan be found in other manufacturinggroups.

Hence, in making comparisons, thefigures for raw-material capacitiesshould be adjusted in accordance withthe fact that American industry manu·factures a smaller number of turbines,generators, pumps, steel constructions,etc., from a given quantity of rawmaterial, as obviously the material.wasting constructions of Americanindustry cannot be redesigned overnightto save material. American and Germanengineers have been educated to differentways of working by the trend in the

334 THE XXth CENTURY

development of their industries. TheGerman designer spends three quartersof his time thinking about how to saveraw material, while the Americandesigner spends three quarters of histime attempting to reduce the share oflabor in his construction.

~

AN EXAMPLEOF SPECIALIZATION

America boasts of a steel capacityof 81 million tons. This is a veryimpressive figure, especially in times ofrearmament. However, these 81 milliontons contain an especially large share ofthe products mentioned before as "aidsto personal comfort," since they consumelarge quantities of steel plates andsheets. This is a typical example ofhow a manufacturing group hasdeveloped its own raw material andspecial machinery, namely, specialrolled steel and continuous strip mills.

The purchasing price of such a stripmill is between 10 and 20 milliondollars. It represents, therefore, theexpenditure for a battleship. With alltheir special gadgets for the difficultmanufacture of flawless, thin plates,these plants are among the most com-plicated and expensive technical con-structions of modern heavy industry.The Americans have developed thisbranch of industry to an astonishingperfection, and they possess far morecontinuous strip mills than Europe inproportion to the steel capacities ofthese two continents.

Nothing would be more obvious thanto make use of these valuable machinesfor the newly arisen tasks of rearma-ment. But here it becomes apparentto what degree the advanced speciali-zation and mass production have in-fluenced the construction of machinesand apparatuses. The investigationsmade by the Government showed thatthe use of. these strip mills for themanufacture of urgently needed shipplates and armor plates would only bepossible after considerable changes inconstruction, which would require notonly time but also special workmen

and large quantities of iron. Of course,the block rolling-mills can still be usedfor the new purpose; but the adjoininglarge strip mills cannot, in view oftheir advanced specialization. It isonly by realizing these difficulties inchange-over that one can understandthe beated discussions that took placelast summer about the question of in-creasing the already gigantic steelcapacity of the United States whichhad formerly never been fully utilizedin peace time.

FOR AND AGAINSTEXPANSION

Equally competent experts and rep-resentatives of the Government spokefor and against the expansion of thesteel industry. Those in favor of ex-pansion were of the opinion that theredesigning of the existing plants wouldbe so difficult and require so much timethat it would be better to erect entire-ly new plants, even if there were noprospect of their being used later on.The opponents of expansion backedtheir argument with the claim that theconstruction of new plants would, forthe time being, mean no increase inproduction. On the contrary, thedemands upon labor and raw materialsduring the period of new construction,estimated at two years, would meanadditional consumption. These twoyears, however, might be the decisiveones. To increase the steel capacityby 10 million tons, it was calculated,the construction of the necessary newplants would consume 4.1 million tonsof steel.

The question of increased capacityhas also a financial side. Consideringthe high cost of the machinery neededfor steel production, the financing ofan additional production of 10 milliontons represents a vast undertaking.The amount of capital required forthis expansion was estimated at 1 to1.5 billion dollars. In this connectionthe financers of the steel works recalledformer false speculations. The lastexpansion, which had been completedin the economic crisis of 1932, had led

CAN AMERICA DO IT? 335

to only 19.5 per cent of the capacityof the American steel works being usedin the same year. Even in the follow-ing years, from 1933 to 1938, the steelindustry was never employed at morethan 50 per cent of capacity.

ALLIES MUST SUFFER

The continuous strip mill is anexample of the development of Americanmachinery as a result of the preferencefor the manufactures of mass produc-tion. It shows how, through large salesfigures, special plants came into beingwhich in their method of production arebound rigidly to the final product. Thedevelopment of American machine toolstoward single-purpose machines repre-sents a trend which dominates theentire sphere of machine manufactur-ing. Multispindle drills, special weldingmachines, turret lathes, and shapersare to be found in many industries.An American author recently gave asthe reason for the difference betweenGerman and American machine-toolconstruction that the German designershad, even ten years ago, always bornethe manufacture of armaments in mind.Things are not as simple as this authormakes them out to be; however, thedifference-which in reality originatesin the different trend of developmentsin the engineering of both countries-does exist in so far as it applies to thedisadvantages of the one-purpose con-struction for the present situation.

The one-sided employment of Ameri-can machinery through the manufactur-ing methods of mass production is animportant factor in the getting underway of the American armament industry.It is no wonder that the Americanmachine-tool factories are flooded withorders far beyond their capacity. Theoveremployment of the machine - toolindustry is an indication of the extentof adjustment in all factories. Howgreat a shortage there was is shownby the embargo placed by the AmericanGovernment last year on the export ofmachine tools to Russia. Today it isno secret that those machine tools wereplaced in American plants during the

first attempts at expansion. The demandfor machine tools was so great thatno other way out could be found thanto confiscate the orders of·a future allyin order to get the American factoriesgoing.

AUTOMATIC CONTROL •..

At that time, however, it was onlya matter of starting the program ofnaval construction approved by Con-gress, that is, the construction ofwarships, naval planes, docks, hangars,etc., with the necessary workshops.The United states certainly possessesan important machine-tool industry;yet she had to seize the Russian ordersfor the extension of her Navy. Howmuch greater must be the shortage inmachine tools now that the programhas been enlarged to include a hugeair fleet, motorized divisions with 40,000tanks, a complete new merchantmarine, the machine shops and ship-yards necessary for this, and otherurgent war requirements.

The American method of productionand the products it preferred havealso exerted an influence on Americanlabor, its schooling and numbers. Thetendency of American engineering toreduce the share of labor has led notonly to the development of single-purpose machines but also to thepreference for automatic control. Theensuing simplification in running themachines made it possible to employunskilled workers and women. To-gether with this the demand for skilledlabor decreased.

• •. AND THE LACKOF SKILLED LABOR

In American industry there are nospecial arrangements for schoolingskilled labor like the German apprenticesystem. The usual practice is to let aman learn his particular job in theplant. The same is true for engineers;they too must undergo a lengthy train-ing within the plants before they areproperly employed. During the de-pression years, that is, up to 1940,

336 THE XXth CENTURY

however, the expenditure for trainingthe younger generation had beengreatly curtailed in all branches ofindustry, and new employment hadbeen reduced to a minimum. The re-sult is that now, at a time of greatestdemand, the supply of skilled labor ismore limited than ever.

This situation can partly be blamedon the attitude of the American factoryowner, who was willing to pay a highpremium for automatic control in hismachines, not only to reduce laborhours, but also in order to becomeindependent of skilled labor. And itis this anti-social attitude of thefactory owner which is the basis forthe engineer's important decision as tothe apportioning of the human and themechanical elements in his technicalconstructions.

MEN AGAINST MACHINESThe extraordinary successes of the

Japanese against the Americans andBritish have placed the importance offighting spirit and human courage asopposed to weapons and armament inthe limelight of discussion. No betterexample than the Battle of Hawaiiand the sinking of the Britishbattleships off Malaya could be givento show that the right or wrongdistribution of duties between men andmachines may mean the differencebetween victory and defeat. There areparallels to this example in the fieldof industry.

One can either make a rolling millcompletely automatic, leaving the run-ning of it to. unskilled workmen whoonly have to press a button at thecontrol table now and again, or one canplace more simple machines in the

hands of skilled workers whose ex-perience replaces the work done byautomatic instruments. The productof the automatic machine is not neces-sarily always superior to the productfrom the hands of the worker. Thiscan only be decided in each individualcase. But it is certain that the ex-aggerated use of automatic controlreduced mechanical skill and decreasedthe number of skilled workers in theUnited States.

LIMITS OF SPECIALIZATION

Summing up we can say that speciali-zation as developed in American in-dustry has, through its one-sided pref-erence for one group of products, ledto a condition of inflexibility. Thisinflexibility applies to the training oflabor, the !,!xisting machinery, and eventhe production of raw materials. Tothis must be added the handicap thatAmerican constructions and the entireAmerican industry are wasteful in theuse of materials.

Today we read about a quota systemin the distribution of raw materialsin the USA. Aluminum and chromium-plated steel are being replaced by plasticsor porcelain. The manufacture of auto-mobiles is being stopped. In the landof plenty, gasoline and rubber are beingrationed.

So, in the end, the United Statesherself, in a remarkably rapid change-over, has supplied the most convincingproof for the claim that an engineeringsystem designed to save raw materialsshows the way into the future. Forthe American people, however, the lateawakening to these facts represents agreat hindrance on the dangerous pathof war which they are treading today.

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