The Ypsilanti daily press. (Ypsilanti, Mich.) 1928-1962, 1941-01-14

] Ills deSOCldltS III
VIM. s. Knudsen the Office OF
oduction
Management are finding this out.
Compared with their job selec-
tive officialdom's task is easy.
The selective service OUTFITS
dealings are with young chaps who
were hardly out Of short pants
when the 1914-'lS fight ended.
They don't know. at first hand. q
thing about military preparation.
warfare and what follows 1t. Most
OF them don't mind being selected.
Some actually like it; it's a novelty.
Director Knudsen's OPM has to
do business with a crowd Of hard
boiled industrial oldsters, for a
man usually doesn't attain their
kind Of a magnate's rating until
he's tolerably mature. Well. the
last war was in their generation
alright. They're fully acquainted
with what accompanies that sort
of thing. Still more to the point,
they know its aftermath, having
lived through a spell Of it once.
personally.
Large scale preparation for war,
or defense, is o. k. for the indus
tries-while II lasts. They make
considerable money out of their ac-
tivities; perhaps too much, though
the OPM is doing its best to guard
against that this time. They en-
large their plant capacities and as
sumo that they're corkingIy pros
porous.
That is. that's what they as
sumed during and for while after
the first World war They assumed
It because there hadn't been a pre-
Tous war recently enough to warn
their 1914-'1S ownerships that it
was a phoney brand of prosperity.
Memories Vivid
In due course 1t blew UP, and
that was sufficiently lately for the
industrial magnates to recall, in
fullest detail. all the particulars of
the crash and subsequently pro-
longed depression. Never again."
is their motto. About so years
hence there probably viii be e-..-
other generation who'll fall for a
huge expansion demand, just as
this generation Of EN- did in 1914
Is. But not today's generation.
To be sure, the government Is
doing its best to guarantee indus
try against such another slump as
It was just recovering from when
our current preparedness campaign
set in.
Nevertheless, our big industrial
lists remain skeery.
That's the main reason for our
much discussed production lag.
OPM functionaries are saying
Britain also hints at a maritime
compact with us that looks good
specifically, but which has joker
in IL.
The British have a stable mer-
chant feet engaged in cargo car
rying on the Pacific and up and
down the South American coast.
John Bull needs these ships to
transport supplies between the
United States and his own island.
We. on our part, have good many
merchant craft tied up, doing moth
ing. because our neutrality law
prohibits them from venturing into
belligerent waters. which they had
been navigating until the war
started and such waters became
belligerent
Well, suggest the British, why
shouldn't we put our idle vessels
into the Pacific and South Ameri-
can trade. leaving them free to re-
call John Bulls bottoms from these
distant sea routes. to ply between
his ports and ours?
OF hand it strikes one as rea-
sonable.
There's a Hitch
But the joker is that j. Bull re-
ouires an assurance that Uncle
Sam will get out Of the carrying
trade on the Pacific and South
Americanward and return it to
him at the vars end.
This was a very sensitive Anglo
American subject at the end Of the
last war. While the conflict was
raging and the British merchant
feet was badly handicapped in
maintaining its far-fung world
service, we built quite a formidable
Yankee mercantile marine Of our
own. which grabbed a good bit Of
Britain's overseas business. The
war finally being over the British
thought We ought to scrap our
ships and pay theirs for carrying
our freight and passengers. They
were decidedly resentful because
we didn't do It. Now they'd like a