Word: reuthers
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Last week many a laborite, many an other citizen simply concerned for defense, boiled & roiled over the cold shoulder which Washington seemed to give ClOman Walter Reuther's plan for planes (TIME, Dec. 30). President Roosevelt gave it a polite brush-off at his press conference, indicating that Mr. Reuther's proposal to use idle automobile capacity for aircraft manufacture was just another idea. From the National Defense Advisory Commission, whence any action would have to come, there was nary a peep. Automakers in Detroit said nothing, inspired thumbs-down stories in the press...
...Walter Reuther said: "Normal methods can build all the planes we need-if we can wait until 1942 and 1943 to get them. But the need for planes is immediate and terrifying. We dare not invite the disaster which may come with further delay...
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...
...Reuther? Walter Reuther is no Ford, no Knudsen. Neither is he an ignoramus about the automobile industry. A skilled tool-&-die maker for 13 years. he was once good enough to be foreman of a Ford tool-&-die shop. Meantime he studied economics in a university night school, later taught toolmaking in Russia. China, Japan, now knows the automobile industry union-side...
...lugged the bare bones of it to Washington. He so impressed C. I. O.'s Murray, Labor's Defense Commissioner Hillman, and Assistant Secretary of War Robert Porter Patterson that they asked for specific documentation, a complete report. Last week after this potent trio had reviewed Walter Reuther's report, Phil Murray passed it on to President Roosevelt...