The Waterbury Democrat., 1941-10-14

SlOAM 1nduSCrlal factl1- ties and productive capacities that are being built up in the defense effort2
 Every General Motors division, un- der Sloan's "A. H. Plan," is under orders to study plans for after-the- war products, cheaper! products, which can be produced with defense plant machinery and factories, and by the vast influx of newly-trained workers who are now pouring into industry.
 Sloan doesn't think it's out of or der to give thought to this problem now. T think that If we don't, we may win the war but we will lose the peace" he says. After all, this whole effort is to preserve democra- cy and free enterprise. One means the other"
 NEITHER PLANTS NOR
 WORKERS CAN BE IDLE
 As Sloan looks ahead to this "After Hitler" problem, when the de- fense emergency is over, the country will find itself with @ vastly-increas- cd productive capacity, and with thousands of new workers in, in- dustry, plus thousands returning from military service. For those productive facilities to lie unused, for those workers to be idle, is in- tolerable. Tn one way or another, both are going to be used. If pri- vate industry doesn't do it.. public funds will, with resumption of spending,
 But what we will need then, Sloan believes, is ito produce more, cheaper and better products in that after Hitler time. That Is the way to increase consumption, not simply by spending more and more" Un- less free enterprise institutions are prepared to take up this problem after Hitler and lick 1t, there will be no alternative to returning to the government "pump-priming" which, in Sloan's opinion, has "froz- en the economy during recent years" Then, he believes, "some- thing serious might happen, in- volving the end of what we have known as the free enterprise sys- tenn"
 NEW MASS PRODUCTION
 INDUSTRIES HAVE GROWN
 Most people do not realize, for in- stance, what Is clear on any com- prehensive tour of the defense in- dustries. That is that this is not simple expansion, but the building Of entire new industries. The air. plane industry, as 0 mass produc- ton industry, for example, simply did not exist in l940. When you consider that In the Ford plant at Willow Run near Yipsilanti 1t is planned to employ e0,0o0 men build ing planes, the size of the new in- dustrial effort Is suggested. (There are only o0000 at River Rouge, the largest single industrial plant of to- day)
 Four billion dollars worth of new plants have already been construct ed or are building, and if the de- fense effort lasts until 1924 as 1t well may, 1t Is expected that 23,000,0 1000 men and women will be working in defense industries. Add to those three or four million demobilized from the army, and the size of the problem IS suggested.
 Ford has announced that he is go- ing right on making planes after the emergency.
 But what of the great tank plants, the long gun-assembly lines, the thousands of specially-designed ma chine tools which are dotting the country. Shall means be devised to use them for the benefit of the peo- pie, or will they lie idle while the national income falls from one hun dred billion dollars, down, down, to twenty-five billions while workless men desperately walk the streets?
 Much of the answer will depend on how many other industrialists are working, like Sloan, on an After Hitler" plan, and how successful their efforts viii be.