The Waterbury Democrat., 1942-07-09

I will get war contracts. The sad fact is that they will have to get real istic and realize that there are go- ing to be more business casualties l-perhaps 5000 or 50,000 of them
 AS mentioned in this space be- fore, the Small War Plants Corpo- ration, created as a branch of the War Production Board, is not going to solve the problem. It will help i some smaller. manufacturers get war contracts, but SWPC can really do nothing which the army and procurement services have not al- ready been empowered to do and which they have been doing for months. In fact, War Department finance officers have been going around the country, making speeches to Chambers of Commerce and groups of business men, telling them that if they needed financial help for retooling or expansion, the services were authorized to give a lift.
 MANY CAN'T DO JOB
 To force any appreciable number of these dislocated plants to keep going when they are not equipped to do a good job on war orders would be industrial oon-doggling of a serious nature, according to present WIPE thinking. Tn too many of these plants, the machine tools are not accurate enough to do the precision work required for military prcduction. To give contracts to shops of this category just to keep them busy would not only waste material but slow up production as well.
 Definite efforts are being made to spread war contracts to as many small plants. a possible. One fruitful method of bringing more plants into war production has been by re-examination and re- location of contracts. For instance, in reviewing contracts for making time fuses for shells, 1t was found that one such big contract had been given to watch company While this at first seemed like a notable conversion of a civilian in- dustry to war production, re- quires no specially accurate ma chinery. The precision tools and highly experienced machine op- orators of watch factory, how ever, were suited to the produc- tion of navigating instruments, range finders and other high &C., curacy manufacture. So the time fuse contract was reassigned to a lower quality works, and the watch factory is making precision instruments.
 OUT OF LUCK
 There will te more of this down. grading of contracts, but it can t take up all the slack in potential production capacity In general, pooling of small manufacturers in 8 given community to utilize all their skills and machinery on one war contract has not been satisfac- tory. In few communities where there has been good management, the pool has worked beautifully But there is no pattern applicable to every community. Sub-contracting where the prime contractor can pick his makers of bits and pieces and supervise their work, has done better. But even th's can not be used to put every lathe and drill-press to work.
 As usual, the small plant owners and managers who saw this com ing are making out all right. But factories that hung onto business as usual as long as they could then were forced to shut down by limitat tion orders, and now sit back waiting to be given something else to do, are going to be out ol luck. Tn the next six months the i small manufacturers are going te feel a terrible pinch, out in tht cold.