Evening star., 1927-10-09

emergency. All this is being surveyed. so that
the Nation may know its reserve industrial man.
power.
This is extremely valuable also during peace
davs for il will show how the labor market
be stabilized by disclosing where labor should
be distributed and leveled out to prevent localized
unemployment and where the reserve reservoirs
of labor located
In regard to power-to obey the implied man.
date of Congress that the future must not see
such heart-rending power shortage as there was
around Niagara Falls and Pittsburgh whlle the
youth of the land was Drawing the Hun sheils
and desperately in need of explosives and other
munitions from home with which to give de-
cisive American answer-a complete electflc-po"er
survey of the United States has been made by the
Army Engineers, working with the Natlonal t-iec'
trio Light Association and other super trade Or
ganiza tions. AS part of it's system of public
works the United States Government is gong 70
see that sufficient power is available for every
factory throughout the 4S States that may be
called upon to produce in times of emergency.
The surveys thus far made show that if we utilize
peace-time industry intelligently there will be
little need for wartime facilities.
The transportation blockade during the World
War, with hundreds of ships laden with sorely
needed supplies that could not put to sea for lack
OF fuel and factories that had to shut down also
for lack of fuel because loaded and empty freight
cars from all points of the compass were barri-
caded around principal factory districts and
ports of shipment, with the Government eventually
taking all Of the railroads physically and
scrambling them in almost hopeless tangle,
with terrible uneconomic oss-a depression Of
SIS 600 900 900 in railroad values--wl happen
again.
Plans have been drawn by the War Department
and the Association Of Railway Executives for the
control, but decidedly not the management, of the
railroads by the Government in such emer-
There
to give right of way to the most essential re.
uuirements in the order of their Importance and
carefully routed to avoid any bockades. This
priority system will be used as a club whenever
necessary. For example, il steel is needed for
some essential, and a manufacturer of pleas
ure automobiles refuses to stop using it for non
essential product, he will quickly find that he
cannot get single carload of coal to run his plant
or a single freight engine to deliver his
pleasure product for profit. Through control of
priorities industries essential to the war
time effort of the Nation be controlled.
The plans about IS per cent
pleted for the wartime procurement of all articles
the Army will need.
ALLEGATIONS have definitely been made to $4,000
plants. The contracts have been placed with them,
which tentative and unsigned, but actually
in their hands, to be signed and sent in to the
centralized control in the War Department just
the minute that Congress says, WAR is declared"
So the whole Nation will be ready to start to-
gether, with the factories and the civilians know
ing what they have to do-and let the Army fight.
An important peacetime by-product Of this
industrial mobilization program is that it is caus.
ing industry to analyze its problem, just the
War Department is analyzng its problem, with
keener understanding of the needs of everyday in
dustry and the propagation Of plans to better
meet them
With industry and it's co-partner, labor, know
ing just where they stand, what they are
quired to do; with disturbance minimized and
with assurances of raw materials, power and trans
hrc
ized but the net peace-time result will be to take
a large part of speculative gambling out of the
real needs of the peope-the essentials of life.
X X X
But the War Department is not resting with
this establishment of businesske procurement
program. 1t has learned few lessons
from the World War experience In the last
practically every article the Army used had to
be made expressly for it, because it required some
thing just little different from that made