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For this plant-doubling, Aluminum Co. set aside $150,000,000 of its own money, earned 1940's gold medal for silent, voluntary expansion for the Defense program. Its soft-shirted, soft-voiced management took the Revolution in its stride. When a new TVA appropriation came up last summer. Aluminum men, who knew they would need extra kilowatts if Defense lasted, helped the Administration lobby it through Congress. Yet the year's end found even Aluminum, Co. behind on deliveries. Sadly it prepared an advertising campaign for the peacetime customers it wants to keep. The copy: "If you find it difficult at the moment to get all the aluminum you want when you want it, you will know that aluminum has gone off to defend your home and country."
Minnesota Indians had to stop making beaded moccasins. Their supply of beads from Czecho-Slovakia was completely cut off.
Ultimate beneficiaries of a confidence boom are the consumers. For a time, excitedly watching their spending theory get its first real test, some New Dealers boasted that consumption would get the long end of this boom too. But 1940 killed any hope that Defense spending might be a short cut to plenty and graceful living. The imminence of rationing in steel, in aluminum, in tools, in a dozen lesser consumer-goods necessities made 1941 look like an uncomfortable year. In 1940, consumers did benefit; 1940 produced more guns and more butter. But 1941 would have to produce still more guns and—perhaps—less butter.
In threading the narrowing gap between capacity and Defense production, none footed it so featly as the automakers. As soon as the President called for 50,000 planes, people figured Detroit would make few cars that year. But before anyone could say whether or not Detroit should have the necessary tools, its retooling was already under way.
When Detroit's production lines, as though fleeing conscription, raced down the last quarter at 120,000 units a week, pessimists anticipated an inventory accumulation. Yet sales were too fast for dealers to keep more than one month's stock on the floors. Meantime the factories, still dodging priorities, managed to get in some advanced retooling (more facelifting) for the 19425. Having led every U. S. boom since 1921, Detroit could not be counted out of 1940-5. And it managed to keep its arms work (G. M. contracts alone totaled $400,000,000) as a sideline to its consumer market.
If consumers bought new cars partly in fear of priorities, they bought other things because they had money to spend. Retail sales in 1940's last quarter ran about 10% ahead of 1939. Sears and Montgomery Ward, whose sales reflect farm buying, set new sales records in 1940—10-15% above 1939
In Buffalo, Barcalo Manufacturing Co. made and marketed a combination screw driver, screw cap wrench, punch opener, hammer, bottle opener, cutting edge and slot-to-make-a-can-pouring-lip.
Charles Kettering has often said that U. S. industry lived for more than a decade on the fruits of its World War I research. The 1940 Revolution subjected Business still more to the rule of politics, but it spurred such technological advances as have made U. S. Business great.