The Waterbury Democrat., 1944-03-13

been built to manufacture planes tanks, ships, guns and other mater. ialS of war. Three-fourths of thi new productive capacity has been built and is owned by the govern ment, one-fourth financed by pri- vate capital. The question i. what to do with the Is billion dollars worth ! of government-owned pants, now operated under lease to private management.
 Proposals for disposal of these government-owned war plants are numerous and varied:
 LOCK UP, SELL, LEASE, TRADE Lock them up the day the war ends and throw th~ key away, so that they won't be placed in com petition with private industry. This idea is modified to the extent of keeping the plants in a standby condition till the next war comes along.
 Sell them cheap and let private industry out of it's own ingenuity find new uses for them. Charge off the loss as necessary cost of the war.
 Let the government operate the plants as a kind of glorified WPA at a loss if necessary, to provide useful work, instead O. leaf raking, for the unemployed.
 Let manufacturers trade in old and less efficient plants, then scrap the old plants.
 Lease them to private industry, keeping them under government ownership.
 All such proposals smack pretty much of the idea that all this new productive capacity will be post war liability for which the taxpayers will in the end have to pay. Any idea that these government war plants represent an asset which can be cashed in on is thus dismissed too easily. WEBS planning division has es- timated that 30 per cent of these new plants have little or no value for the production of peacetime ar- ticles. Another 30 per cent can be converted to useful peacetime pro- duction. The remaining 40 per cent, says WIPE, is capable of producing metals, chemicals, tools and indus trial equipment which should find postwar markets.
 PLANTS NOT A TOTAL LOSS
 Using those figures as a basis for conversion possibilities 1t can be seen that there is no need for writ ing off this whole expansion of in- dustry as a complete loss.
 Latest group in Washington to come out in favor of making the fullest possible use of G. these facil- ities is the powerful Truman Com mittee in the Senate which, in its annual report, brands as selfish and self -centered all arguments that the plants should be shut down or that the operators of those plants today should be paid profits which would enable them to build up reserves for postwar operation.
 The question as to whether gov- ernment- built plants are to be closed, says the committee, must be decided squarely upon the issue of whether the United State is to re- turn to 1889 when they were nine million unemployed anC five million less workers, or whether there is to be full employment for everyone who wants to work, regardless of whether the plants are publicly or privately owned, to maintain and improve the American standard of living by mass production of needed goods.
 As a basis for disposal, the com mittee proposes that all plants not needed by the War and Navy De- partments be sold at cost of con- struction, less the percentage by which the cost of war construction exceeded the probable cost of peace- time construction.