Aluminum Spot

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Along with its many other ills, the U. S. defense program last week suffered from elephantiasis. Like the $12,000,000,000 already voted, and additional billions soon to be voted, defense was too big to be seen whole. More contracts for more munitions, more factories, more shoes, more everything; an amorphous new Navy, measured in hundreds of thousands of non-existent tons; a new Army with millions of men as yet uncalled, unhoused, untrained, in scores of unfinished cantonments—all these were paper monsters, as vast and vague as the future itself. Still lacking was a point of focus—a fact, an incident, a report sharp enough to be seen, simple enough to be grasped.

Unhappily for defense (and for the millions who worried about it), most of the points of focus were in places where something was wrong. Many things were indeed wrong with the hastily conceived, prodigiously swollen, still disorganized defense program. But not everything was wrong.

The lag in aircraft and engine production was easier to see than the intricacies of such production, the technical strivings to make better planes and make them faster. Delayed Army camps made headlines, exposing stupidities and mistakes; the camps that ran on schedule were as unnoticed as the majors, colonels, contractors, carpenters who somehow surmounted Army bureaucracy, bad weather, bad unions, bad luck, and got their particular jobs done on time. Many a "lag" was in fact no lag in actual production or planning, but a confession that somebody had promised the impossible.

Collared Bottles. One point of focus last week was on the U. S. aluminum supply. This spot gleamed like a skillet in the sun. As usual, 1) something was wrong, 2) the immediate point was a small spot on a large fact. The fact: the U. S. must have more aluminum (for airplanes, engines, ships, trucks, many & many another defense item) than it has ever before produced.

What people actually saw was a statement about aluminum. Said tiny, independent Northrop Aircraft Inc.'s General Manager Lamotte T. Cohu (in Los Angeles): "There simply isn't enough aluminum available. . . . [It is] bound to affect other aircraft concerns." Mr. Cohu was explaining why he had just cut his factory working day from 20 to 16 hours (in two shifts). His explanation shortly stirred up a rumpus.

Sensitive to such reports were two potent but obscure brothers: Edward K. and Arthur V. Davis, respectively president of Aluminium Ltd. of Canada and board chairman of Aluminum Co. of America, which has a near-monopoly of the production and fabrication of aluminum in the U. S. and Canada. Also touchy was Defense Commissioner Edward R. Stettinius. Reason: instead of trying to stimulate emergency competition, he has preferred to recognize the facts of aluminum life, deal with ALCOA for defense.