The Waterbury Democrat., 1942-01-16

~oo" SclSNelm, winch
made 100 900 passenger cars a year.
you would think that when the
German government took over both
plants you would get the greatest
example of efficiency in conversion.
A lot has been told about that. Now,
here is what happened:
THE truck factory was taken
over in toto, and has been working
"a hours day, seven days week
ever since.
"The passenger car factory that
had $4,000 employees was shut down.
The men were carted everywhere.
The forging machines were put to
work making small forgings and
airplane parts and 1000 women were
parts. That made total OF about
put into plants making airplane
1000 people out of the $4,000 they
had before. The balance were carted
away to some other place"
This statement from Knudsen,
made before Congressman Tolan's
committee investigating defense mi
grafton, may give tip on some OF
the difficulties to be encountered in
the conversion Of the auto industry
to total war production, which is
being doomed SO enthusiastically by
the Washington amateur production
experts who have now become more
numerous than military experts.
1t is Knudsen's belief that the
;,I, IS Ii
manufacture has not been success
full, and that direct subcontracting
by the procurement branches Of the
services would scatter responsibility
and require thousand inspectors
to follow up the execution Of the
subcontracting And the danger of
the theory of exploding "a model
plane or tank and having various
manufacturers produce parts is that
when the product is assembled, ac-
cording to Knudsen, "it might ex-
plode the wrong way"
NAZI PILL PUSHERS
All kinds of slick efforts are be-
ing uncovered to beat the BLACK
list" barring Latin American firms
supposed to have Axis leanings
from trading with United States
concerns. One of the smoothest was
used by drug manufacturing COM
pany supposed TO have important
German connections.
When this company was prevent
ed rom making shipments of pro-
prietary pills and medicines to the
German agents below the Rio
Grande, it hurdled the restriction
by preparing concentrates of the
drugs and shipping them by air in
small packages valued at less than
$40 each. Export licenses aren't re-
quired for shipments valued at less
than $40, SO the stuff went through
in a hurry and there was nothing
that could be done to stop it.
Next step was simply to set up
factory in Mexico. The concen-
trates were diluted and properly
mixed, and from the Mexican plant
could be shipped at will TO dummy
receivers in other Latin American
countries, who then turned the
products over to the old distribu-
tors.
THE CORK SINKS
Washington Lawyer Tommy Cor
corans reputation as great miracle
worker and fixer was thrown fol
a loss recently in one case which
the eX-brain truster tried to handle
One of Tomy's prize clients was
company with considerable business
in South America. trading with
firms which were blacklisted Tom
my tried to get the names of these
agents removed from the list of
blocked nationals and made one call
in the Commerce building with that
objective. The net result was that
when the next blacklist was pub
lished, the names Of other agents
of his client were added for the
first time.
TIRING JOB
The problems of rctreading tires
continue to pile up. Best guess now
is that there are about 4500 shops
in the country equipped to retread
tires, and they have about 10000
machines available to do the coun-
try's recapping job. Working "a
hours a day. each machine can re-
surface six new tires. Allowing for
breakdowns and few holidays, the
maximum capacity would be about
20 million tires a year.
Normal tire production has been
about 48 million year, so there is
less than half enough equipment
available for the job Each unit or
mold takes about a ton of metal
but since steel is under priorities
control there may be no ALLEGATION
for additional retreading equipment
FAST RUBBER
Two systems of planting and har-
vesting guayule must be tested this
year before any definite estimates
can be made as to how much raw
| rubber can be obtained from this
California bush. Under the one
system, if $4,000 acres are planted
to guayule this year, then harvested
for seed and replanting only, at the
end of four years there might be
harvested $4,000 tons OF raw rub
Der. The rule of thumb is one tor
OF rubber per acre after four years
That's too slow. So new plan
ming method may be tried whereby
the $4,000 acres planted the flrs
year will be robbed" and forced tc
yield more. The yearling plants will
be harvested, yielding only half {
ton OF rubber to the acre, or 37,50(
tons the first year.
The seed will then be taken fol
nursery stock and replanted b,
| croWdinp in some 40 600 OR Sod