The Wilmington morning star., 1944-01-01
Bv WESTBROOK PEGLER

NEW YORK,-The Van Dorm Iron Works
Co., of Cleveland, has very interesting idea
| for that brave new world of the future, at
tractively presented, in a page display adj
vertisment with art, in one of OUR more pre-
| tentious magazines of business and politics:
Maybe" says the Van Dorm Iron Works
Co., there's a postwar IDEA here for you
The largest Jail builders i'll America can help
you plan better construction for your post
war products.
'fYou never expected to find solution to
one of your postwar problems in jail cell,
did you? But there's one here for you if you
are looking for neSy ways OF building endur-
ance into your products of the future. Van
Dorm has been building Jail cells since 1878.
Today they're found in leading prisons from
Sing Sing to San Quentin and from Winnipeg
to Cristobal Our engineers pioneered the use
of tool-resisting steel for jails AMI have since
developed many of the most impregnable met
al designs ever produced. Our interlocked
and ter-loclsed cell construction is recog-
nized as providing maximum strength and
rightly. The fully seectve keyless locking
device which is the standard of efficiency
and safety for remote control Of sliding cell
doors is Van Dorm development
This took me rather by surprise as it may
take you, because it had never occurred to
me that jail-building d specially in which
anyone took such pride. Still we should have
known because, after ALL Sing Sing and San
Quentin at least in their newer buildings,
are handsome expressions Of highly special
lied ability and interest and firm which
has been building prisons since 1878 naturally
would look back like any other company with
noble tradition of improving achievement in
any other field. The illustration depicts a
giant hand holding aloft on the fingertips a
gem of a CELL apparently for single occupancy,
plain to the point of austerity but obviously
quiet challenge even to Basil Banghart
last reported in Alcatraz. who had boosted
that Joliet could not hold MIN and proved his
point by going away for a trip This hand
and this chaste apartment are imposed on
an outline map OF the United States with Van
Dorm jails and prisons dotted here and there
such as Auburn, N. Y, with 1914 cells, Mary
land pententiary with 800, Nebraska state
prison with 301 and San Quentin, 800
| Might I say, however. to the Van Dorm
people that for all their understandable pride
in their work and their eagerness to help in
building the brave new world of the future,
there is something slightly pessinnistic in their
almost joyous assumption that h e United
States will then need more ana stronger jails?
Have they any particular individuals in mind
as prospective tenants, considering the fact
that Hitler Mussolini Goering, Goebbels,
| Himmler and the blood-guilty Japanese will
be capital cases, or is it just that company
which has been building coolers for IS years
has formed certain impression of human
nature and is playing percentage for the flu
ture? Are they looking to a new school OF
war profiteeu to boom business for them and
do they anticipate in that brave new Vo1d
| there will be a new list of crimes adopted
from the political codes of of our good
neighbors?
At present, the Van Dorns are engaged 100
per cent in the production OF arnor plate for
tanks and other war devices and there is an
unspoken tribute to countless nameless yeggs,
bandits, murderers and racketeers, many of
them long dead in the soft remark that it
was the experience gained il housing them
| away which prepared this company to play
its part in the winning of this against
mans inhumanity to man. They, too then,
were doing their bit thousands of forgotten
sinners, long before the men were born who
are actually fighting the aggressors.
"You never expected TO find solution to
one Of your postwar problems in Jail cell,
did your
Well, it is an idea freedom from worship,
freedom from want and fear, freedom from
expense, debt and responsibility social Sc
curity, equality and limited freedom of ex-
preston, in Jail cell. Where else on earth
could such be found?