The Waterbury Democrat., 1943-09-13

be re-employed till private business is ready to go to work again.
 But the best estimates available indicate that federal works projects could take up the employment of only about two million new workers in the first year, and what is that when compared to the Army and Navy of 10 million which must be demohilized and the additional 10 million workers in munitions and war production industries for whom new jobs will have to be found.
 That throws the greater part of the burden of postwar planning on others - the state planning, the local community planning, and the planning of private industry itself. But before going into that, there must be considered another factor in the situation, which is the re- conversion or the disposal or the peacetime utilization of the SIS billion worth of new plant capacity which has been built during the war. Fourteen billion dollars worth of this is government owned. Alto gether, 1t represents 40 per cent increase in U. s. plant capacity over pre-war levels.
 As most of these new plants rep- resent greater efficiency and higher technological development than the old, 1t would be economic folly to consider closing down these new plants so that the older, less effi- cient plants would continue in pro- duction. Yet here IS definite gov ernment responsibility to decide how these new facilities will be con- verted to peacetime use.
 WHAT ABOUT CONTRACTS?
 Also, there is government respon- sibility in determining Q sound pol icy on cancellation of war contracts If plane or 6 ship or c tank or a gun is 10 per cent finished, should 1t be completed2 Or should the parts be scrapped2 And who gets paid how much for what7 Taking all these things into consideration, you begin to see what Q tough nut to crack this postwar problem really Is.
 National Resources Planning Board, in all its postwar reports and research, has emphasized de- centralization of post war planning and the need for action at every level. Many of its mi-confldential reports. restricted as to circulation, have been in the nature of trial bal- looms sent to city and to state gov- ernments and to private business trade associations like the National Association of Manufacturers. Aero nautic Chamber of Commerce and the Committee for Economic De- | velopment, to stimulate their think ing and get their varying points of view. Whereas there were only a few states with planning boards at the beginning of the war, today there are 45 and the number of city planning boards is in the hundreds. LOCAL LEADERSHIP
 AS an example of how these local communities are going about their postwar planning, take the case of Denver. There is huge small arms plant there, operated by Reming- ton. It employs thousands, but after the war, what good is 1t? Remington doesn't want to operate 1t. What Denver is trying to work out is 8 scheme of breaking the big plant up into smaller units with central ized power and light and janitor service, adapting 1t for smaller in- dustries. Similar plans are afoot in Buffalo, Salt Lake City the Puget Sound area, shipbuilding, aircraft, aluminium and magnesium produc- tion centers.
 The overall requirement is that all this effort be pulled together not by regimentation-bu by lead ership. Charting the course for this leadership in effecting the transi- ton from war to peace is the one big job the National Resources Planning Board had not completed when its work was stopped by con- gressional cutting of of its funds.