Detroit evening times. (Detroit, Mich) 1921-1958, 1941-10-28
Doubling
Arms Plays
With Disaster
PeriIs al Production
sefNCiviIian Use
BY PAUL MALLON

WASHINGTON. Oct. 2s.-
w This vague new official talk
about doubling our armament
production makes good victory
propaganda. but it will be easier
TO converse about than to do.
Pieced together from various
recent suggestions Of Mr. Roose-
welt and the war department
(and interpolated by necessarily
anonymous officials) the plan is
this:
Our arms building calls now
calls for expenditure of S45,-
600, 100000 in the next two years.
We are to double the amount
aRd Spend 100000, 100000 Can
aS1ount greater than was earned
byNvery man. woman and child
in the United States last year,.
WE ARE to start toward this
w doubling within the next
two months and hope to accom-
plish it in 1943. two years hence.
1t is not to be a bulk program
laid down in one proposal, but
submitted piecemeal from time
to time. First items will be
tanks and planes.
Mind you, we are not in
creasing our present production
which is relatively nothing
merely our anticipations for the
future.
And. of course, figures are not
to be given out on the numbers
of planes or tanks we will pro-
duce each month. Such figures
have now been banned by ex-
ecutive direction. So no one
will know the disparity between
our production and our anticipa-
tons until ii is all over.
THE defects in this vision are
L obvious. Take the tank pic
ture for typical example, To
double the expected output, you
will not only have to double the
size of factories now manufac-
turing tanks but also vastly in
crease capacity of steel plants.
Both are now operating at
utmost. The construction job
would require years.
But the administration is
working up scheme 10 short
cut that delay. 1t was limited in
SPAB Director Donald Nelson's
speech in Chicago. Mr.. Nelson
merely said civilian users of
steel land other needed mate
rialst must skimp.
What he meant was that
there will be no new auto
mobiles, refrigerators, washing
machines. electric vacuum clean
ers and houses (other than de-
tense houses) available a few
months hence if the doubling
promise is carried out. Those
officials who are serious about
carrying out the idea say that
by next Summer none of these
and similar durable-consumers
rVAnIc mill In
60 FAR the government has
~ been taking only what il
could reasonably expect to use
from normal business for its
armament program. Under the
tank program il would have TO
take all--and then some.
The prospects of what this
would do TO the life of the
country are so fantastic as 10
be inconceivable ahead of real
ization. Certainly every one in
the automobile business would
he making tanks or be out of
work.
What of the retail auto deal
ers and statesmen with only used
cars left? What of prices?
What of transportation with the
railroads denied steel and new
trucks unavailable E?
esettettsfy,- even the beginning
OF the new program cannot be
realized without a breakdown of
business as we know il now.
Where is the money TO come
from? Even if the program
pushes the earnings Of the peo-
pie national incomel up 10
$4,000, 100000 by 1943, the
rate of spending would take half
Of II. Further taxation cannot
furnish this kind of money.
Neither can borrowing. The
threat of monetary initiation
thus becomes involved.
REHIND this explosive new
- con ception Of what is
needed is a change of official
outlook on the war They say
now that Hitler must be de-
feated in battle (see Ickes' last
speech. They have apparently
abandoned the theory that he
can be squeezed out by eco
nomic block ade. Pessimism
about Russia exists. The official
rumor is around that the Nazis
will strike through the Caucasus
into the Iran and Iraq oil fields
this Winter.
BY this reasoning the conclu-