The daily monitor leader. [volume] (Mount Clemens, Mich.) 1942-19??, 1942-12-22

y
space than I can get from $4,000
acres of plantation"
On the new industries side, we
are just about to enter the plas-
tics and light metals age. Our
capacity in aluminium is on the
way up from 800 million pounds
year to somewhere near a
scheduled 3 billion pounds a
year, and in its raw state alum
mum is twice as plentiful as
iron. Our magnesium output in
crease is also up by 1000 per
cent or more.
LIGHT METALS ABUNDANT
What this can mean as con-
tributor to a new economy of
plenty can be visualized from
the fact that magnesium is avail
able by oceanfuls; it is many
times more abundant than such
old and useful stand-bys as zinc,
lead, copper, and nickel COM
bined.
1t is not visionary to say that
before we are through, this
shift to light metals may be as
consequential as the shift from
the bronze age to the iron age.
Think back to a time much lat
er than that, and recall how
steel ushered in an era of un-
precendented ogress and
wealth that changed the face of
the earth and refashioned the
social and political ideologies of
mankind. And already steels
day is passing the meridian.
Around the corner is coming
new and fabulous time in the
potential of light metals and
plastics.
The papermakers are explod-
ing the fibers of wood pulp and
accomplishing them into gears
and gadgets which they say will
outwear steel. The coffee plant
ers in Brazil are casting their
excess into plastics in an amaz-
ing variety of shapes and forms.
The chemists and chemurgists
and capitalizers of plenitude and
waste everywhere are at their
epoch's great chance like a bear
at a bee tree, SO that in the av-
erage time of most of us the
average American family will
enjoy ampler and more satisfy
ing living standards - in terms
of cheaper and better housing,
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 eff
cient Diesels of the type that
power the streamliners are, in
smaller editions, driving tanks,
submarines, tugboats, auxili-
aries, trucks, and buses in such
quantities to meet war needs
that production this coming year
will reach a rate more than Is
times that originally projected
in peacetime for two years
hence: and with the absorption
of engineering and tooling costs
involved in such production you
can guess how much more wide
ly available this low-coSt power
will be, when peace comes, than
was originally contemplated.
Again, the 100-octane gasoline
capacity we are getting means,
with the lighter metals, a world
of smaller motorcar engines of
higher power and lower COSTS
and the gasoline technicians al
ready say they have in their lab
oratories fuels three or four
times as powerful as our pres
ent 100-octane gas.
This is mere highlighting, a
meager sample of what will be.
Consider, in addition, the posi-
bilities of centrifugal casting.
metallurgy, heat-toughened and
flexible glass, the new and as
tonishing developments in black
light, electronics, radio and tele-
vision, the interesting advances
being made in demountable and
prefabricated dwellings, In de-
hydrated foods, in the whole
science Of nutrition.
To speed and to ensure the
coming of these things, we are
recruiting. developing, and ma
turing under the forced draft of