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But the smaller fry who make up most of the industry were not production-minded. Rich, pink-cheeked Bomber Builder Reuben Fleet of Consolidated Aircraft, sensing the uncomfortable pressure of his biggest customer (the Navy) complained of the "risky margin" of 2¼% at which he might be forced to make planes. Having got some new plant as a gift from the British, many planemakers wanted a similar gift from the U. S. By year's end, U. S. aircraft was in an obvious mess. This month little Republic Aviation laid off 50 men because it could not get parts. Deliveries for the year were about $625,000,000; are now running around $55,000,000 a month. At that rate, it would take the industry over five years to put its $3,500,000,000 backlog in the air.
Its German source cut off, Tahiti began buying tattooing machines from a man in Los Angeles.
The aircraft makers' best alibi was the machine-tool industry. It too began the year as a little industry, and though it more than doubled its 1939 sales to over $400,000,000, it remained so. When the planemakers began dumping real volume orders on the machine-tool market in February, Niles-Bement-Pond (one of the biggest of the lot) could call a mere $9,000,000 backlog the biggest in its history. Most toolmakers resisted defense-expansion pressure as much as they could, wanted instead to ration their customers. Automen, normally the biggest machine-tool customers, began to worry. So did the British, who got about a fifth of the industry's 1940 production.
By year's end the industry had expanded its floor space 30%. But its backlog was growing faster, was equal to about a year of capacity operation. On Dec. 4 a large new list of machine tools was subjected to export priority control. Bill Knudsen scolded the industry for not doing more subcontracting. Meanwhile, investors showed less interest in machine-tool stocks than they might have if their low capitalization had not marked them for plucking by the excess-profits tax.
The City Council of Burlington, N. J. complained that Pennsylvania Railroad trains were breaking the city speed limit of 5 m.p.h. A police sergeant clocked them as high as 15 or 20 m.p.h.
The railroads were not a bottleneck in 1940. But debate raged as to whether they would become a bottleneck in 1941.
From the first, the railroads insisted they could handle any traffic load the defense boom might produce. When Burlington's Ralph Budd joined the Defense Advisory Commission, he did not seem worried either. In July, when traffic had risen to over 700,000 carloadings a week. Commissioner Budd urged the roads to fix up their bad-order cars, keep them below 6%. The Administration wanted him to force orders for 100,000 new cars at once, 500,000 by 1942. Mr. Budd preferred not to interfere with rail managements.