The Chronicle-star combined with the Moss Point advertiser., 1945-08-10
ingalls, BroziIian Contract

The Brazilian governments award of a $~383lO,OOO con-
tract for IA ships to the Ingalls, Shipbuilding Corporation
is about the most significant item of industrial news this
community has received since the building of the yards here
over five wears ago. 1t means that we have a shipbuilding
industry here that can hold its own in bidding and producing
in the markets of the world; which can meet the older ship
yards of the United States and Great Britain on equal terms
and carry off an impressive share of the business. This is a
fact of great Importance not only to Pascagoula and Jackson
county, but to the whole South. That the other states accept
it as such is evidenced by the prominent front-page display
which the news of the Brazilian contract was given in news
papers like the New Orleans Times Picayune and the Mobile
Register.
The South as a whole got a tremendous economic
shot-inthe-arm during the period of wartime construc-
ton but now. with the end of the war in sight. 1t faces
the typical crisis of a patient who has adjusted himself to
the use of stimulsnts but who must now go 1t on his own.
AZ a general rule the heavy Industrial contracts were let
in areas like Detroit and the big steel centers of the east.
Most of the big war money that flowed into the South
went for army camps. training fields. ordnance plants
and other activities directly dependent on the war. and
only a few of which will be needed after the firing has
ceased. Needless to say. we are faced with a serious dis
trubancs of our wartime standards of living and in the
level Of our employment until and unless we can start
sufficient home industries and attract others from the
crowded east to replace the army and government paw.
rolls that have brought the first general prosperity the
South has known since the days of the Flush Times" and
the cotton boom in the generation before the Civil War.
The chief exception to this pattern of purely military and
temporary expenditures have been a number of Southern
%shipyards that have appeared from the coast of Maryland to
Texas. And probably no yard is in better shape for the shift
from wartime building to bidding and building in the post
war commercial field that the Ingalls, shipyard here in Pas
cagoula, a fact borne out by the $~100,000,000 backlog of con-
tracts the yard now holds for Army sea-going dredges, for
a Moore Mccormack fleet and for the Brazilian ships. Many
OF. the oInef DOulnefn yafuS constructed Tor the building Oh
emergency wartime Liberty ships, will disappear when the
need for Liberty ships is over and the yards primary pur-
pose has been fulfilled.
The community is fortunate that the Ingalls, yards were
constructed from the beginning with a view toward perma-
nent operations. And we fervantly hope that the yards sue
cess i'll a Southern background, with Southern labor, will
give other manufacturers the example and the confidence
to plan for permanent operations and to strike out on their
own in the competitive market after the golden flow of war
time contracts from Washington has dried up. That is what
it will really take to begin to solve the economic and social
Ills OF a poor and obsolete economy, which has only dawdled
along While other sections were dpVelODlnp rich FARMING and
industrial Backgrounds.
We have been assured for a long time by Ingalls, Off
Gals that the yards are here to stay" and we have believed
all along that they were right. But having seen the sawmills
come and go, and the deserted shipyards after the last war,
there was always the apprehension that the war would again
change things. Thus the news of the large Brazilian con-
tract brings a great mood of reinsurance to the business life
of the community, and will probably be the go" signal for
nome building and commercial ventures that were being held
IN allegiance until some clear idea of the postwar future of
P~ascagoula could be had. Certainly thousands of workers
who felt that the postwar years might see them back on
low income farms will now begin to think of themselves as
having become permanent members of the rising Southern
industrial class. And though most of them will remember
their farming days with some nostalgia, to most there will be
a reinsurance that they can look forward to the industrial pay,
the telephones, the paved streets, the schools, and the more
stimulating background of a permanent shipyard town.