Evening star., 1942-06-07
War ADVANTAGES
OF Big Business
Under Fire
Congressional Efforts
For Little Fellow
PubIicize Trend
BY FRANK MacMILLEN,
Wide World Business Editor.

NEW YORK, LIne 6-Present
congressional efforts to help the
little fellow" meet wartime prob
lens pointed up today the way war,
with its demands for huge guam
titles of food, clothing and weapons,
has tended to thwart the efforts of
Government agencies to check the
growth of bignesS.
War manufacture demands ability
to handle huge quantities of steel,
copper, cloth and foodstuffs armies
require. ~
Despite a variety Of attempts to
spread war work to all. the larger
concerns have been called on for
most of the munitions, for the flow
of guns, tanks, planes, ships and
bullets must be tremendous and con-
slant.
The War Production Board re-
Gently pointed out that four COM
panies each held $1,000, 900, 900 or
more in war contracts and account
for 81 per cent of all, while a bare
100 concerns held 76 per cent Of all
awards of $50 900 or more.
Now Congress is considering a
measure which may make 1t virtu-
ally mandatory for war agencies to
give contracts to small enterprises
capable of handling them.
Economists, attempting TO figure
out the postwar business picture,
wondered If it might mean a re-
versal of the wartime favoritisn to
bignesS, which in itself was re-
versal Of the trend Of nearly q
decade.
Heavy Taxes Cited.
For years, they pointed out, there
had been increasingly stiff levies on
size and restrictions on growth:
Chain store taxes, graduated steeply
upward with increases in units; cor
porate income taxes, taking larger
and larger percentages as profit to-
tails rose: the wage-hour law, ex-
empting tiny shops; the death-sen-
tence utility law, which was intended
to break up into compact units the
huge, sprawling electric power and
gas systems; antitrust actions.
With war and during the period
when America was turning to war
materials manufacture bigness be-
gan to have its compensations.
A manufacturer accustomed to
turning out millions of units OF a
given product in peacetime had the
know how" the machines, the labor
force and the capital necessary for
making war goods.
The gadget maker, while he often
got subcontracts and occasionally
loans for plant expansion, wasn't
able TO mass-produce.
For Joe Doakes' machine shop
could turn out almost any con-
trivance-might even build a tank
from scratch, If given time and tools.
But time and tolls were short, and
the big motor maker was ready to do
1t sooner.
The Doakes Wholesale Grocery Co.
hadn't the capital, the business ac-
uuaintance nor the transportation
facilities to fill Army contracts that
strained even the ability of the huge
supplier who had been accustomed
to shipping trainload after trainload
of foodstuffs.
So it went in clothing. shoes and
personal equipment for soldiers in
Americas Army.
Soldiers Couldn't Wait.
The soldiers couldn't wait. their
uuartermasters couldn't accept sup
plies piecemeal.
There have been notable eX.
ceptions, smaller businesses which
caught on to war production quickly.
Here's the way the Smaller War
Plants Corp" a Government agency,
is shaping up as Congress tries to
ease the plight of the little fellow:
The corporation would have $780,.
100000 capital from which to make
loans for war conversions.
WPB Chief Donald Nelson would
be empowered to permit an es-
sential amount of by-passing OF
antitrust and trade commission
regulations to permit combinations
capable of handling war jobs. And
Ito put teeth in the bill" as Rep
resentative Patman, Democrat, Of
Texas, commented-when Nelson
certified a small concern or group
as equipped to handle specific
contract, the job must be awarded.
The corporation also could act as
the prime contractor. passing out
subcontracts to the actual factories
to do the work.
Only under such method. some
economists claimed, could the little
fellows survive the shutdowns
forced on them by war-created
shortages of metals and other ma
terials for the things they made
in, neacntinne