The Waterbury Democrat., 1942-12-21

ASAMAssM 'eF~ lous time in the potential of light metals and plastics.
 The papermakers are exploding the fihers of wood pulp and recom- pressing them into gears and gad- gets which they say will outwear steel The coffee planters in Brazil are casting their excess into plastics in an amazing variety of shapes and forms. The chemists and chemur- gists and capitalizers of plentitude and waste everywhere are at their '-pcch's great chance like bear at bee tree, so that in the lifetime of most of us the average American family will enjoy ampler and more satisfying living standards in terms of cheaper and better hous- ing. more conveniences and leisure, better education and health-than ever before.
 You know what is happening in fuels and in the utilization of them. The compact and efficient Diesels of the type that power the stream liners are, in smaller editions, driv- ing tanks, submarines, tugooats, auxiliaries, trucks, and busses in such quantities to meet war needs that production this coming year will reach a rate more than twenty five times that originally projected Ill peacetime for two years hence; and with the absorption of engineer ing and tooling costs involved in such production you can guess how much more widely available this ! low-cost power will be, when peace comes, than was originally contem- plated.
 Again, the l00-octane gasoline ca- pacity we are getting means, with the ligh TT metals, a world of small CT motorcar engines of higher pow er and lower costs-and the gas oline technicians already say they have in their laboratories fuels three or four times as powerful as our present l0-cctane gas.
 This is mere highlightl4g, a mea- ger sample of what will be. Con- sider, in addition. the possibilities of centrifugal casting, powdered metallury, heat-toughened and flex- lble glass, the r',w and astonishing developments in black light, elec- tronics, radio and television, the in- teresting advances being made in demountable and prefabricated dwellings, in dehydrated foods, in the whole science of nutrition.
 To speed and to ensure the com ing of these things, we are recruit ing, developing, and maturing under the forced draft of war necessity the greatest source of new wealth which any country can have our stock of young managerial and ex- ecutive talent.
 For dozen years this group has been cramped, frustraJ., unproduc- tive, under the paralysis of the de- presSion. Now it has suddenly sprung to action, it's faculties chal. lenged, its energies released and ex- l panGed.
 ROAD TO PERFECTION
 The process is something like this to be specific: Normally 15,000 men work at Buick, say, on one type of 1 product. Today the men who di- rected and managed that personnel are being swiftly spread thin oyer a personnel calculated to reach 40,- GOO. and making whole varic / of new and unfamiliar things. And these new things are unprecedent- edly and ineXorably fine in design quality, precision, materials. No ! barriers of cost or completion stand between them and perfec- ticn. New plant layouts, new machines, new alloys, new toler- ances, new techniques, new prod ucts, new training requirements - all these are crowding the heads and aspirations of these managers. They are in an edu- cative hothouse, and they are burgeoning like nobody's business.
 By the same token. the rank and file in industry is experiencing a similar regeneration. I suppose 1 before our enemies are beaten down | ten million or more men and wom- en, above and beyond the normal industrial personnel. will have learned a trade. most of them, a machine trade. They will never be the same.
 From the dread and uncertain state of being a person lacking method and capacity. frightened and adrift because he has no in- ternal reliances or assets, each becomes sustained and aspiring by pride of craft, dignified by the consciousness of being pro- ducer, and will never again be content until he has found an out let for his skill.
 Something of the same sort of growth will be found in most Of the young men who enter the Army. The six or eight millions of them who come back will not be the inept young gaffers who went away. They will have learned some truths serviceable and grave - how to handle themselves. how to handle other people, how to Handle the speclalties they dealt with in the service-and they'll be on the prod. wanting to get set and get ahead