Detroit evening times. (Detroit, Mich) 1921-1958, 1942-05-28
Bomb Makers
Case Typical
Of America
Year Ago He Operated
Paper Plant in Midwest
BY PAUL MALLON

made some OF the incendiaries
which General Doolittle and his
70 Americans dropped on Japan.
His is another Of the inside
stories of how this country won
the first battle of the war, the
battle of production.
II is the same inspiring tate
explaining why nearly every
phase of our production is al
ready ahead of its blueprint
schedule. America simply did
not know how good il was until
il got started.
This Midwest wallpaper maker
appeared in this column nearly
a year ago. Then he had been
an assistant to Donald Nelson
and yet could not get a govern
ment contract for defense work.
He spent eight months trying to
find out what his plant could
make.
Personal research brought him
finally to the conclusion that not
many people. know how to load
incendiary bombs. His company
set to work to find out every
thing anybody knew about the
subject. Blue prints of what
they thought they could do were
submitted to the war depart
ment and approved.
Conversion of the wallpaper
plant into a bomb factory was
not started until last winter. A
circus tent had to be erected to
cover construction work on one
new building, because of the in
tense cold.
ESS than month later, a
II conveyor line was installed.
The plant was ahead of schedule
the first month and has contin-
ued since to increase the gap.
Originally it was figured the
shells would cost 40 cents apiece.
In production, it was found the
cost could be lowered to 80
cents, and more recently it has
been lowered further by i'm
provements in methods.
One improvement was the per-
lection of a typically ingenious
American riveting machine TO
do work formerly done by hand.
Girl workers simply dump the
rivets into a hopper. step on a
lever and the riveting is done.
The management says the
girls are working lot harder
on bombs than they worked on
wallpaper.
Much information about our
success on this front is censor
able, which explains why our
own appreciation of our accom-
plishments is so restricted.
Names, places and inventions
can not be fully given yet, but
there will come time, when this
victory will be acknowledged as
the greatest industrial triumph
of all history, testimonial to
our way of life (Which they said
was outmoded) and to our inge-
nuity and patriotism (which
they said were soft.
Labor deserves as much credit
as industry, judging from the
rather full evidence at hand. In
West Coast plane plant. for
instance, production jumped 25
per cent in the first week. after
Pearl Harbor, for no apparent
reason. Investigation traced it
solely TO the workers working
harder.
Psychology in war production
is just as important as raw ma
terials. Shortage of American
energy would be an unbreakable
bottleneck (as France found.
THE only machine without
which you cannot produce,
even if you have all others, is the
mechanism of human enthusi-
asm. There have been some
strikes and some slowdowns.
They were disgraceful.
But the country can have
pride in the fact that since
Pearl Harbor. labor, as a whole,
has been putting pressure on
m anage ent for speedups.
Labor, as a whole, is doing the
job.
The evidence shows about 8
per cent of our unanticipated
arms production is due solely 10
cessation of labor stoppages and
strikes in one form or another.
Testimonials TO American me-
chanical ingenuity on this COM 4
munlqueleSs front. continue TO
pile up upon those recently cited
IN this column:
A certain metallurgical engi-
neer has discovered and put into
successful operation new spin
ner process for making shells, by
which loading capacity at the
plant could be increased 1000
per cent Eyes sir, 1000 per cent? =.
A new process for making
artillery gun barrels is in use
which will enable us to make as
many barrels in month as Eng
land has produced Since the war
started. The process does away
with casting.
Just like the wallpaper manu-
facturer are thousands of others,
including:
The Upper plant which makes
gas masks; hosiery mills and a
bed company which do likewise: