The Waterbury Democrat., 1942-07-01

which was only $22 million for the entire year, that's wonderful. It means that in May, 1942, the coun- try's 100-odd machine tool builders turned out over five times as many pieces of metal working machinery as the industry turned out in the whole of the bottom depression year, and nearly as much in that one month as in an average $50 million year.
 Yes, that's wonderful, but it's still not good enough. In February, 1922, machine tool production re- quired was placed at $2 billion worth for the year. Though the rate of production has been going up every month, from 10000 units in Feb ruary, to 24000 in March, to 25 400 in April and 29,500 in May, $2 bil- lion worth of machine tools year mean 500,000 new units a year or over 41,00O a month and the in- dustry is still quite a way from that goal
 COLOUR
 WEEK
 Whats wrong? Recent figures of the Bureau of Labor Statistics in- dicate the industry as whole is still averaging only 60 hours a week. The theory of putting the industry on three-sl1ift, 168-hour work week is still theory. Some of the big plants have attained it, but lot of the smaller ones haven't. Not enough machine tool makers for one thing, and certain independence among them, for another. If some skilled workman is assigned to the second or third shift, he is too like ly to say, "Why should I, when can go to some other plant and get a job on the first shift?" A lot of the men now making machine tools had never seen one year ago. The training program has been tremen- dous, but it has not been licked. Shortages of special steels and alloys have interefered, too.
 A vast amount of missionary work has been done by the ma chine tool division of WIPE and it's engineers to encourage greater use of plant facilities, more ex- tensive sub-contracting, develop ing new sources to build con- plete machine, financial relief on plant expansion. But the job of machine tool production has been confined largely to the firms that were in the business before the defense effort began and there has been too little or too late con- version of other industries capable of machine tool production.
 CROSS
 CRITICISM
 There Is a possibility that new machine tools were over ordered. While Army and Navy procurement officers have criticized WIPE for failing to step up machine tool pro- duction as fast as the services wanted it. Army and Navy have themselves been criticized for ap- proving too many high preference ratings on new equipment, and not insisting on more ub-contracting and wider use of existing equipment
 That situation was partially cor rected in May, when WIPE took over control of machine tool allo- cations, assigning 75 per cent of all new tools to use by U. S manufacturers of war supplies the remaining 25 per cent being for foreign purchasers. Sending machine tools abroad under lend lease has cut down the supplies available to U. s. factories.
 Another relief, reducing the size of the bottle to the size of the bottleneck, is WIPES current sur vey of new facilities. If it is de- termined that there will not be sufficient materials to keep going some of the new plants being planned, building of those new plants may be stopped. Machine tools ordered for those plants could be diverted to other uses.