DEFENSE: Getting Under Way

A preparatory hum spread through the U. S. last week. Army arsenals at Rock Island, 111., Augusta, Ga., Benicia, Calif., Frankford, Pa., Dover, N. J., Metuchen, N. J.; San Antonio, Tex., Springfield, Mass., Watertown, Mass., Watervliet, N. Y., Edgewood, Md., were put on a six-day week. Two shipbuilders (Bath Iron Works Corp., Federal Shipbuilding & Dry-dock Co.) bid-o build destroyers in 18 months instead A 24. The Du Fonts ar ranged to build and operate a big powder plant financed by the French and British (see p. 79). Chrysler Corp. was ready to produce bomb fuses, shell forgings. was prepared to convert plant space of World War I vintage to other munitions production. Aged (73) Tank-Designer Walter Christie popped up in Washington with plans for a tank to be hooked to an airplane and landed ready for combat. Aircraftsman Glenn Martin in Baltimore declared that all the established industry needs to get into real mass production is mass orders. Two men in charge of the dynamo whence all this humming proceeded were a white-haired young man named Edward R. Stettinius Jr. and a Danish, cat-stepping giant named William S. Knudsen.

Every morning at 8, Mr. Stettinius strode into the lobby of Washington's stately, white-marble Federal Reserve Building, hurried upstairs to a cool office. Usually he did not leave before 10 p.m. Mr. Stettinius last week quit his $100,000 a-year chairmanship of U. S. Steel to take the payless, possibly thankless job of supplying the raw materials for steeling the U. S. In an identical upstairs office sat Mr. Knudsen, who was last week given leave of absence from the presidency of General Motors Corp., to see that finished planes, guns, uniforms, shells, etc., are turned out at maximum speed and efficiency.

To Messrs. Stettinius & Knudsen went the big, full-time jobs. Most of their fellow commissioners also moved in last week. Sloe-eyed, calm-mouthed Dean Harriet Elliott of the University of North Carolina conferred with Federal officials interested in her job of consumer protection. Net impression about her job was that, for the moment, its functions will be delightfully vague. Agriculturist Chester C. Davis got a capable assistant, Paul Porter of CBS, publicly did little else. Railroader Ralph Budd (transportation) was heard to remark that he faced only one problem: an excess of facilities. Labor Overseer Sidney Hillman was still ill. Fulltime U. S. officials who are to share his job (mobilizing trained man power where it is needed) buzzed ahead without him on plans to train 1,000.000 civilians, find immediately needed craftsmen, school 45,000 civilian pilots for a year (through CAA). Hulking Leon Henderson kept his SEC office; he can watch price trends as well from one place as another.