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In declaring a national emergency three weeks ago, the President said: "We will have a very rapid speedup in the production of military equipment. Within one year, we will be turning out planes at five times the present rate of production . . . Combat vehicles will be coming off the production line at four times today's rate . . . Production of electronics equipment for defense will have multiplied four-and-a-half times."
That sounded like a fairly rapid speedup; actually, it wouldn't be. Quintupling present plane production would mean about 15,000 planes a year, about 5,800 more than one month's production at World War II's peak. Military electronic production is small; quadrupling it will be an easy job for the enormous new electronics industry. (In 1950, Motorola's $175 million output of radio and television sets alone was about equal to the output of the entire radio industry in 1940.) Combat vehicle production is also negligible. At year's end the U.S. had only 1,000 tanks on order, and was producing only a small number of combat vehicles. Despite all the Washington talk of stratospheric increases in arms production, the cold figures on orders and published estimates hardly bore them out.
Without any precise goals set for war production, the Government began to cut back civilian production by stepping up the stockpiling of such vital materials as cobalt (for radar), copper, columbium (for jet motors) and aluminum. Since the size of the stockpiles is a military secret, no one except the stockpiles knew whether they were too big or too small. But they had already brought about some fairly deep cuts in civilian production—and would obviously bring many more.
Playing by Ear. For lack of copper for radiators, automakers decided to cut their previously planned first-quarter production in 1951 by anywhere from 15% to 25% (which would still put it above 1950's first quarter); appliance makers planned to cut production 25%; TV makers were cutting about 15%. The cuts had already brought manpower dislocations: thousands of skilled workers had been laid off civilian jobs—and had no war jobs to go to. Said Stewart-Warner's white-thatched Chairman & President James Knowlson: "Business doesn't worry about being converted to war production. It only worries about being liquidated in the process."
Under Charlie Wilson's prodding, contracts were now rolling out faster from the Pentagon: G.M. got the job of building Republic's Thunderjet fighter planes; tank orders went out to Chrysler, G.M. and American Locomotive; Kaiser-Frazer got the job of making Fairchild's Cng troop-carrier planes at Willow Run. But it would be months before the companies got into actual production. And the great majority of businessmen who had no war orders and didn't know how long they would be able to make civilian goods could only plan their 1951 production and sales by guess and by God. "All we can do," said Hot-point's President James J. Nance, "is play the thing by ear."