Week after World War II got under way last September the U. S. Army decided to do something about its gas-mask situation. To bolster its own gas-mask assembly plant at Maryland's Edgewood Arsenal it asked U. S. manufacturers to bid on a new assembly plant to turn out masks for Army use. Winners of three contracts were not among the nine U. S. commercial gas-mask makers. They were Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., Firestone Tire & Rub ber Co., and Johnson & Johnson, biggest U. S. surgical-dressing maker.
Last week, on a site next to Chicago's Municipal Airport, workmen broke ground for...