The Waterbury Democrat., 1941-03-03

LdkeIl OVeT LIle aluminium com
 Edson pany, but 1t will be darn close to it. And 1t will mean that O. P. M. will have taken over control of every pound of alu- minum the company turns out, whether as ingot pigs or as sheets, bars, castings, finished machined parts or pots and pans.
 Unloaded, the order books of the company will be taken up to the offices of the priorities section of o. P. M. and there, in some com- plicated procedure not yet figured out by either the government or the company, the experts from both will determine just who gets how much aluminium for what purposes.
 In the allocation, airplane man. ufacturers will be allocated suffi- cient aluminium for their require- lnents. Other defense industries will get their share. If there is any eft over, 1t will be spread out among private industries making ice boxes, vacuum cleaners, door stops, ash trays, pots and pans. If, however, an ice box manufacturer says. You've gotta give me 50 many pounds or I'll have to lay off my force" his plea will be heard and he will be given enough to keep running. But only for a time. The ice box maker will be told that he'll have to redesign his product so that he'll use other materia.s---other met als or. even plastics. Consequently over the long haul you may sec some brand new industrial design In articles of every day life.
 SOUNDS THICK, tAi .. AND TT Is
 But the big idea will be to keep individual industries from piling up reserves of stock for their own busi- ncsseS shooting up the price and creating scarcity and confusion all over the country. Priorities certih- cates will be issued to the manufac- turers who get the major consign- ments of aluminium. These will be graded under n code beginning with A. going through All, A-2, A-1.a, A-2-a, and so on through A.10. Army and Navy Munitions Board will grant these certificates direct to prime contractors and first sub- contractors. The PrioritieS section of o. P. M. will pass them out for all manufacturers below the first sub-contractor. ".,"n ','a
 If all this sounds a bit thick and complicated. you can be assured that It Is, but It's just the kind of business you'll have to get used to as this defense sl,eedup gets thicker and thicker.
 When the aluminium company bookkeepers bring in their order books, 1t will take eight good strong men to lug them around. First time they come in, they may not bring in the whole works, but pre- liminary abstract or sampling, just to see If 1t meets the Priorities di- visions requirements.
 Once the routine Is established, the inspection will have to be made every month. Aluminium Company of America now gets some 10000 10 l5000 orders a month, totaling 40 million pounds a month. It sells for them l7 cents pound for 'in- gots to $l a pound for finished machine parts, so the business the government will be overseeing will be some pace between $6,800,000 and $40000, ,000--say $20,000,000 a month, conservatively.
 Here is government stepping into business in big constructive way, You can't Hist that on a sheet. of paper" as one expert Iiaively sug- gested, and mail 1t in for a checkup. It will take time to analyze all this supply and demand, and If there be any excuse for the existence of economists, this should be 1t.
 COOPERATE
 OR ELSE
 The case of aluminium is present. ed here in detail because 1t is the first of the critical materials which is being dealt with in this manner, and because it gives a specific exam pie of what the Priorities division of o. P. M. under E. R. Stettinius, Jr., has for its job. AS you can see it's no breeze and 1t will make the dollar a year boys earn their salt
 Aluminium is only one of some 40 items, mostly military supplies now on the critical list" as they call it. of materials in which there are definite shortages. Machine toolr, magnesium, zinc, copper are a few of the most important, Sooner or later this aluminium rig marble may have to be applied to the full 400 and maybe more.
 All private industries handling critical list items must cooperate in the priorities. program. Govern ment price fixing is around the corner if they don't. It has already been applied to machine tools and aluminium scrap. Those were feel- CTS. trial balloons. They didn't cre- ate much of stir in the business world: you can look for others. And for the benefit of any indus tries that may not feel like co-op- erating. 1t might be mentioned that under the Selectiye Service act the government has the power to con- fiscate industries. Yes. business got dFn ffkh tnN