Government Official Outlines Plans For Industrial Needs, Outlay in War

The United States potential capacity to produce war munitions is recognized by the world to be "Unrivaled," it was stated today in an article in the Harvard Business. Review by Colonel H. K. Butherford, Secretary of the new national War Resources Board.

The base figures of American industrial production indicate that our facilities are fully adequate for probable war needs, and indeed that "there was ample unused capacity during the period 1920-35 to support a major war," Colonel Rutherford held. The United States is self-sufficient in most of the raw materials needed for munitions, and has begun to stock up on those whose importation might be stopped by war.

Industrial Cooperation

The national industrial mobilization plan relies in large measure on a spirit of cooperation, and Colonel Rutherford bestowed high praise on the attitude of American industry toward the industrial war plans of the government. The response to preliminary field studies and surveys by the War Department "has been a splendid tribute to the patriotism of American industry," he wrote. "A spirit of wholehearted cooperation has prevailed which has made the work of organization a stimulating force to the officers of the army responsible for industrial contacts."

Discussing the ability of the nation's industries to undertake the war load, Colonel Rutherford said that in a two-year major war "expenditures for the War Department alone might total $12,000,000,000-$4,000,000,000 possibly in the first year, and $8,000,000,000 in the second year, after industry reached its full power."

Among the few raw materials for munitions in which the United States is not self-sufficient are manganese, tin, rubber, tungsten, chromium, quinine, and others, Colonel Rutherford said. The estimates are that one year's national supply of certain strategic materials should be placed in reserve, and Congress has authorized spending $100,000,000 toward this end in the next four years.

Possible Labor Problems

Supply of skilled labor is another "critical problem" of the mobilization of industry for war, Colonel Rutherford said. Despite present widespread unemployment, there would still be shortages in many skilled crafts, and the government is considering giving encouragement and support to training and apprenticeship systems in industry.

In a seventeen-year survey of the munition potentialities of American industries, the War Department studied 20,000 plants and found 10,000 suitable for war production. Full cooperation was received from owners and staffs of the plants, many of them assuming heavy personal expense in aiding the investigation and making changes to fit the plants for war work.

"Big Stick Can be Used"

America's "answer to the threat of totalitarian war," he said, is the same as it was in 1917-18,--a reliance on what President Wilson termed "the spontaneous cooperation of a free people." He pointed out, however, that the "big stick" of coercion is "available for use on the recalcitrant if necessary."

The problem of actually converting America's peace economy to a war economy, will be left, under present plans, to temporary civilian agencies under the President, created especially for the work, and demobilized at the end of the emergency.

These agencies will have the tasks of directing the flow of materials, controlling prices, securing cooperation from industry, and administering foreign trade. They would also establish government corporations to assume business war-risks not reasonable to impose on private firms, as, for instance, supplying war credits, shipbuilding, power development, and war risk insurance.