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The year's No.1 technological achievement owed nothing to war. But when Du Pont made nylon a commercial reality, they not only invaded the silk-hosiery business but gave Irving Air Chute Co. a new non-Japanese source of parachute cloth.
Rubber could no longer be taken for granted in 1940. Standard Oil and Goodrich built plants to make synthetic rubber (which is no trick) and to make it cheaply and in tonnage (which is). Meanwhile, among hundreds of unsung corporate pioneers, Champion Paper & Fibre made newsprint from Southern pine, and Dow Chemical extracted magnesium from the sea water that laps Freeport, Tex. What may yet prove the year's most useful discovery was less romantic: at South Bend, Studebaker was testing out a turret-lathe that could turn one shell a minute.
The worst that could be said about U. S. Business in 1940 was that the defense boom took businessmen by surprise. It was not their boom, and they joined it with reluctance. The last time the economic controls shifted to Washington, the aftermath was not pleasant. In 1940, they prudently remembered 1921.
At year's end, interest-paying New York Central 4½s sold at 58. That meant a yield of 8% to anyone willing to buy those bonds—a sky-high yield for 1940, even before taxes. Their price discounted every economic horror imaginable, including a peace depression which might put roads like the Central into receivership. If the war and defense lasted, the bonds were safe from everything but inflation. What they were worth depended on your view of the future. The price of Central 4½s was Business' prevision. Since Business no longer controlled the future, its view was glum.