STATE OF BUSINESS: Autos or Ammunition?

Lined up on the same side of a Washington table last week were some strange partners. The C.I.O. Autoworkers' Boss Walter Reuther and other auto-union leaders sat with General Motors' President Charles E. (for Erwin) Wilson, Michigan's Governor Mennen Williams and top auto executives. Across the table sat mobilization Directors Charles Edward Wilson and Manly Fleischmann. The automen, union officials and governor had teamed up to protest cutbacks in auto production.

Cutbacks had already put 125,000 people out of work in the Detroit area. DPAdministrator Fleischmann warned there would be more—and unexpected—cuts soon. Word got out that he plans to cut auto output from 1,000,000 cars in the first quarter of 1952 to 800,000 cars in the second. Furthermore, Fleischmann would give automakers only enough copper for 640,000 cars. If the new slash goes through, said the automen, unemployment in the industry would double. Said G.M.'s "Engine Charlie" Wilson: "It would amount to a political, economic and social crime."

The trouble is that not enough defense orders have yet come through to take up the slack in the auto industry. Furthermore, much of the industry's defense work is done in plants outside Detroit. Walter Reuther argued that mobilizers should let the industry turn out 1,000,000 cars a quarter until fall. By then, he thought, there would be enough defense work so that drastic auto cuts could be made. Now, said Reuther, the auto industry is being unfairly treated in its low allotments of copper, steel and other scarce metals. Said he angrily, and somewhat fatuously: "I know they are still using brass cuspidors on battleships."

Mobilization Boss Wilson held out little hope for relief. Sooner or later, conversion to war was bound to cause temporary unemployment. What irked such Democratic politicos as Governor Williams was that it would hit hardest in an election year. Wilson promised to appoint a task force to study Detroit's problem, and see if he couldn't give the auto industry more metal in the second quarter. But when it came right down to it, said DPA's Fleischmann, "the choice is between autos and ammunition."