The U.S. Army handed civilians a welcome Christmas present last week. Under the needling of the Senate's Mead Committee, the Army declared $400,000,000 of its stocks surplus goods, promised that they would be made available for sale immediately.
Many of the items were of little civilian use: scabbards and bayonets, helmets, etc. But many of them were just what many a businessman wanted: 11,937 trucks, 2,000,000 Army blankets, 500,000 yards of lining for clothes, 3,632 tractors, millions of feet of iron pipe (which builders have been clamoring for), 82,000 flashlights and mountains of...