The Waterbury Democrat., 1941-04-19


 fort. It explains why, according to assistant Secretary of War Ro- bert P. Patterson, more than three fourths of the worker in U. s. defense industries are today em- ployed in plants working only one shift. And 1t explains why 9l out of every 100 men in the machine tool industries have to work 10 hours overtime every week. The country with the worlds greatest industrial machine and the worlds best public school system has fall- en fiat on Its car.
 EXCUSES
 BARRED
 Everyone is to blame. Manage ment for not having a trained re- servo of manpower. Labor for a silly system of restricting appren- ticeships, limiting the number of youngsters who could learn skilled trades. Relief officials for putting men to raking leaves and manicur- ing roads when they should be been learning something useful. Politi- clans for being shortsighted. You, mo and the rest of the general public for allowing this to go on.
 The man who has been given the job of seeing that something Is done to correct this sltaution, is kindly, tall, blue-eyed, graying colonel of anti-aircraft coast ar- tllery, Frank J. McSherry, who has been assigned from the army general staff as director of defense training. Ills office is under the Federal Security Administratio ton and he has under his wing the de- fense industry vocational training activities of the Office of Educa. ton WPA and IVA, co-ordinat- ing their school projects with the U. s. Employment Service and the new training within industry" program of the defense effort.
 This industry program is under Charming Dewey, Socony Vacu- um's personnel director who, at a dollar Q year and with % district offices headed by dollar-a -yearers, gives plants advice on schooling men for better jobs, moving them up from ordinary jobs to higher skillS where there are still greater shortages.
 Colonel Mcsherrys head Is an amazing library Of statistics and, once started, he pours forth Q stream of figures on American shortage of skilled labor for de. fense industries 50 pitiful 1t makes you weep. It isn't just 6 shortage of manpower there are still six million unemployed - it's the lack of workmen. who can do the jobs required.
 SHOCKING
 SHORTAGE
 U. s. Employment Service Is com- pleting 6 months drive to register workers. It has raised the number listed to five million. but in that number 1t has found only 185,00O workers competent to take jobs in the 393 key industries, fewer than 26 900 competent for the 100 top in- dustries, and in i2 industries none at all.
 Bureau of Labor Statistics esti- mates that in the next year two million workers will be put on the payrolls of defense industries. Aircraft manufacturers, employ ing 23000 men in 1888, will need 308,000 men when plants under construction are completed. ship yards, with 125,000 workers, will need 100000 more, and so on.
 Only solution for this problem is to send the country back to school - trade school - and that's what's being done, literally. More than 300 trade schools are being run in three shifts, 24 hours q day, SO great is the demand for skilled workers - in a hurry. Plants on two-shift production are turned Into schools for the third.
 Douglas Aircraft, in Long Beach, Calf, needing 10000 workers for Q new plant, interested the city in acquiring a three.story building which was turned into Q trade school with 1900 students e day.
 Los Angeles took over garage to train 250oo shipyard workers. Murray Body in Detroit, needing 5000 men for Q new airplane parts plant, has Q school for 1,700 @ day. Wright Aeronautical's new plant in Cincinnati must soon have l20 trained men week for 75 weeks. Buick and Studebaker's new en- zine plants in Chicago will need l2,000.
 Trained men - not ordinary un- skilled day laborers - are needed, so If you had an idea of catching the first train, don't till you know what It's all about.
 Real head of this vast back-to- school effort is the vocational ed- ucation system of the states, CO., ordinated under Commissioner John M. Stakeholder of the U. s. Office of Education. Starting back in 1917. under Q $7 million fed- eral grant later raised by $l4 mil- lion, all of which must be matched by appropriations from the states, this vocational education system could reach only 60,000 students Q year. The framework was there, and supplemented by some $66 million in new defense appropria- tons, USOE is doing a job. For the year ending June 30, l941, 1t will turn out million men trained for a defense trade.
 Next year, 1t hopes to make 1t three million.