Word: knudsen
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Walter Reuther's plan was on a braver, broader scale than Mr. Knudsen's proposal to put the industry's mass-production brains on the job of making aircraft parts, on the grounds that its actual machinery and assembly lines are no good for making airplanes. Broader too was his assertion, backed up by extensive arithmetic, that the industry already has enough idle men, machines and floor space to turn out 500 fighters a day within six months...
William S. Knudsen is grey-haired, bulky, ruddy. Walter Philip Reuther is rufous, pint-sized, pale. Messrs. Knudsen and Reuther first knocked their heads together when one worked for General Motors, the other for the C. I. O. autoworkers' union. Frazzled after a tough bout with a union committee in Detroit, G. M.'s Knudsen once glared at Walter Reuther, barked...
...said Mr. Knudsen, "used cars. Anybody can sell new cars...
Walter Reuther did not take the angry compliment as an offer, stayed with his union. Now he directs its activities in General Motors plants. Last fortnight he bounced into Washington with an idea for sale-free. He wanted to give it away to Defense Commissioner Knudsen, President Roosevelt, anybody else who would use it. His idea: let the U. S. Government take the automobile industry in hand, mobilize its vast capacity for aircraft manufacture...
Aircraft and automobile manufacturers alike were sure to echo William Knudsen, say that automobile factories and machines could not be adapted to manufacture aircraft. But Mr. Reuther pointed out that two automobile body makers (Murray, Briggs) had already contracted to make aircraft parts, that General Motors was producing parts for its Allison engine in a Cadillac shop in Detroit. By compulsion if necessary, by maximum coordination in any event, he would multiply such examples a hundredfold. Furthermore, he would restrict the industry's aircraft production to a few standardized types. These would be mostly trainers and single-engined fighters...