Evening star., 1941-07-06
Single Powerful Defense Head
Held Greatest Emergency Need
Civilian Demands and Non.Essential Projects
Absorb Necessary War Materials,
Prominent Industriast SAYS ..
By J. Leonard RebIogIe.
Written for The Alliance

| debt may be 100 to $50 billions of dol
lars, and we will be unable to continue
the tremendous relief expenditures of
the last seven or eight years.
| Obviously, the most effective method
of accomplishing results is an immediate
| curtailment of automobile manufacture
by at least so per cent of our present
production. This industry is by large
margin the greatest consumer of iron,
steel, aluminium, copper, rubber, lead,
zinc, nickel, magnesium, manganese and
many other strategic materials. In the
first four and one-half months of this
year, we produced 100000 motor cars
more than in the same period of last
year, which is, in my opinion, an mex
cusable performance and in no way con-
sistent with our present defense neces-
sites.
This country now has approximately 80
per cent of all the automobiles in the
world, and a temporary restriction would
not materially affect the public, as there
are many millions of good secondhand
automobiles stored throughout the coun-
try. The restriction would force auto
mobile plants and workers into the pro-
duction of aircraft parts, Army tanks and
other vital defense needs, in which most
of them are already partially engaged.
Relief for Railroads.
The railroads are now demanding
about 100000 new cars, which would re-
quire approximately 100000 tons of
steel, needed for shipbuilding. This
great increase in car equipment probably
could be avoided by the elimination of
the tremendous burden of hauling the
raw, semi-finished and finished products
to and from automobile plants.
In the face of this situation, and rapid
depletion of our inadequate supplies of
raw materials, the Office of Production
Management is now requesting the steel
industry to increase its capacity by
100000 tons of ingot steel annually.
This project is in the same category as
the Florida ship canal, Passamaquoddy
and the St. Lawrence Seaway, all of
which are of doubtful value. and none of
which should be seriously considered at
this critical time.
Our existing steel capacity is about
90OOO0O0 ingot tons. which is approx
mately half of the worlds steel produc-
ton. A 10000 OO0-ton increase would in
volve great ore coal and limestone de-
velopment, thousands of cars, locomo-
tiveS, new dock facilities, 30 new lake
vessels for iron ore, 1900 by-product coke
overs, 18 blast furnaces, 100 open hearth
furnaces, slab mills, looming mills, plate
mills, finishing mills and vast electric
power and steam development.
War Needs Are Under Capacity.
1t is very plain that from the stand
point of national defense, the proposed
increase in capacity of our steel produc-
ton has no justification whatever, but is
based on an estimated increase of steel
for civilian consumption, on the eXpecta-
ton of an increase in our national in
come, which certainly, in time of war, is
very poor basis for such an increase in
productive capacity.
Hitlerism cannot be eliminated by
wishing for it, nor can it be done as
Side-issue on business as usual" basis.
1t demands an immediate and "all-out"
effort. Anything less than this will re-
suit in a tragic and disastrous failure.
Field Marshal Won Hindenburg, in his
memoirs of the World War, referring to
the part played by the War Industries
Board of the United States, said 'her
brilliant, if pitiless, war industry had
entered the service of patriotism and had
not failed it. Under the compulsion of
military necessity, a ruthless autocracy
was at work, and rightly, even in this
land at the portals of which the Statue
of Liberty flashes its binding light
across the seas. They understood war!"
Will the German historians of the
present war say, They were unwilling to
subordinate their personal comforts to
the national welfare; their great produc-
tive capacity was not fully and efficiently
utilized; their business as usual policy
was responsible for their own unpre-
paredness and, as we predicted in 1910,
their promised aid to Britain was too
little and too late; they did not under
stand war!"?