The Waterbury Democrat., 1941-10-31

uAAC RAO6A0AAA AAAuy
 EdsOn not be adopted in its entirety, this does serve to show how Odlum is thinking about his job.
 The suggestions came to the Tru- man committee in rather unusual fashion. Odlum, recalled to make second appearance before the Tru- man committee, gave an hours teS- timony on the issue when Truman asked for solutions, saying it was high time little common sense was used in tackling this situation. Odlum lugged his memorandum with his papers in thick, battered leather case overflowing into a bun- dle of papers wrapped in butchers paper and tied with string. The sug- gestions had not been typed but were merely roughed out from Od- lum's associates to pick to pieces. | Whether the program could be carried out under government pro- cedure was something Odlum had not yet satisfied himself upon, but when Senator Truman offered to take responsibility igor their presen- tation, Odlum proceeded to read from his penciled yellow sheets. TWO PER CENT WOULD
 KEEP 10 PER CENT
 | In summary, Odlums ideas for the relief of small business boil down like this:
 l. Until June 30, 1942, set aside in a separate category firms em- ploying fewer than 20 people. These little companies are the backbone of American industry, says Odlum, and while it is difficult to convert them ] to defense production, these 130- 900 little business employ 10 per cent of the workers. And to keep them going for the next eight months would take only per cent of the available raw materials suppy. 2. Plants that are catalogued by Army and Navy as known or poten- l tial producers of defense materials should be left to the supervision of the armed services. These plants would be the bigger companies, the | III SOllIl dSUOA0 Ol IIlC portant sub-contractors. When pro- posals to expand any of these plants are made, approval should be given only when it is known there are no other idle plants available to do the job.
 3. Creation of the foregoing two divisions would leave to the Defense Contract Service the intermediate field of 30,000 or more plants for whom there should be allocated an emergency pool of raw materials to keep these plants alive until they can be converted to defense produc- ton. Odlum believes that the supply of raw materials needed to keep these pulants alive would not be i great, but six months will be re- quired to make the shift from civil lian to defense production.
 A. Provide for expansion or con- version of plants on defense work through financing by either a special federal fund for loans or through a partial guarantee-say 0per cent on private loans from commercial banks. The interest rate on these guaranteed loans could be low al- though the mortality of such f1nan- cing may be high and thel overall loss of the conversion or expansion may reach $25 million or $50 mil- lion which will simply have to be charged off as defense expendi- ture.
 5. Authorize Army and Navy to advance money up to 30 per cent of the contract price on the signing of the contract. This would permit prime contractors to make their plant expansion or conversion as soon as the order was placed, instead of making the contractor borrow money for expansion and wait for completion of delivery on his order to repay it.
 Now all this may be a good bit in the nature of thinking out loud, but it has the merit of being a program to meet this situation and prevent the death of 10000 or more perfect ly good American small businesses. DIGGING
 DELAYS HIM
 "Ill be on top of this job in an- other two months" Odlum confessed to Truman. Right now, his time is of necessity taken up 95 per cent with drugery and spade work, leav- ing only per cent for doing the things he should be doing, including the scribbling in pencil on long yell low sheets of paper of programs which will work.
 Coming into the defense organiza- tion with budget for all OPM ac- tivities already adopted, Odlum found to his chagrin that he does not have the funds to do the job assigned him.
 But within Odlum's limit of two months - by the end of the year - Defense Contract Service will be growing all over the country. ex- banding its force from a present 400 to perhaps 4,0O0. the assumption be- ing that 400 men can do 10 times the work of the 400 T think" said Truman to Odlum. you're on the