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> Apart from whatever is left of the aircraft industry, Alcoa plans to expand its railroad passenger car market, enter the hopper car and acid-carrying tank car field, make bus, truck and trailer bodies too.
Alcoa plans to sell 1,000,000 Ib. of aluminum yearly for shoe eyelets; more in typewriter parts, hair curlers, license plates, etc. etc.
But at what price all these post-war markets would add up to 1,100,000,000 Ib. a year, not even Alcoa knew last week.
General Electric. In Manhattan, General Electric's Commercial Engineering Manager David C. Prince* announced the establishment of a G.E. post-war planning committee. Mr. Prince does not believe that G.E. will have to shut down its expanded capacity after the war. (A large subcontractor, G.E. has expanded only 20%.) By January he expects to have post-war sales and capacity estimates from every G.E. department. His committee will then offset one department's capacity surplus with another's deficit, start planning at once for the use of any net surplus.
If every business would do this, he believes, the initial assumption upon which his plans are based—that defense employment levels can be permanently maintained—will become a fact.
Round Table. This week, many such post-war hopes, fears and plans were buttoned up in the nearest thing to an overall program yet. FORTUNE'S November issue revealed the "area of agreement" on "problems of the post-war transition" between 24 leaders in business, Government, labor and agriculture, who met for the Tenth FORTUNE Round Table. Their fundamental agreement: "That the U.S. can find jobs for its defense workers in the post-war period within the framework of the American system, if the country begins to lay plans at once." When the war is over, a majority of the Round Table favored 1) tapering off of war orders, with dismissal wages to aid reemployment; 2) a Government agency to supervise "economic demobilization," continuing as long as necessary OPM's and OPA's supply and price controls. Acting Bureau, of Labor Statistics Commissioner A. Ford Hinrichs described this agency's job as "priorities continued literally in reverse . . . favoring everything other than those [wartime] contracts." The Round Table also agreed with Defense Housing Coordinator Charles F. Palmer that housing is the best and biggest bet for post-war investment and employment.
In a longer perspective, they also saw reason for hope in new technological opportunities and in underdeveloped foreign countries. But they agreed that no postwar world would work unless inflation is ruled out now, the tax system revamped to encourage post-war venture capital, industrial research specifically encouraged (by Government grants). Most important need of all: "integration of the U.S. economic system . . . with that of the outside world," with the U.S. taking the lead in long-term financing, currency stabilization and lowering trade barriers.
The Round Table's favorite specific idea was advanced by G.E.'s Planner Prince: a "bank" of new inventions to be built up by U.S. corporations now, released after the war through a "national clearinghouse." Less popular were the views of a refugee French aluminum trust chairman who is now with the Brookings Institution.