PRODUCTION: The Key to Rearmament

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Pots & Pans. Such machines take months to design, months more to make. Because of their special uses, they cannot be mass-produced. Even such standard products as milling machines (see cut), which bore, grind and shave metal, are virtually handmade. Cincinnati Milling turns out only ten or twelve a week. Tool builders are beset by shortages of such components as bearings, valves and clutches. Said one New England toolman: "You hate to see a machine standing there, all completed except for a lousy little electric starter. You not only can't deliver it to the man who needs it, but you lose floor space while it's standing there." One of the worst shortages is labor.

Washington, slow to realize the importance of machine tools to rearmament, refused for months to give the industry priorities or adequate price schedules. (One top production official made the fantastic statement that the industry would "get the same consideration as any other voters. Machine tools are no more important than pots & pans.") A series of recent orders (TIME, Aug. 6 et seq.) has changed all this, but there is still vast confusion at the top over how many tools are actually needed, and who should get them first. Says Fred Geier: "If they would just go away and leave us alone, we could do a better production job."