War News

Last week the little red-brick city of York, Pa. (pop. 55,254) tingled with anticipation of Christmas. Under the evergreen trees and colored lights festooning Continental Square (the itinerant Continental Congress met in York while Washington was at Valley Forge 162 winters ago), York's people thronged the stores, spent more freely than in any winter since 1929. York's industries offered 10%, more jobs than last year. Payrolls were 20% larger. York had almost no relief problem at all. York was grinning with prosperity.

The last seven or eight Christmases have not been especially lush in York. Because of war and the fear of war, this year is different, as it is different in many other U. S. manufacturing cities. In the striking case of York:

>Its No. 1 industry, York Ice Machinery Corp., was last week very busy making refrigerator equipment for new U. S. warships.

>Its No. 2, an American Chain & Cable Co., Inc. plant, last month locked the public out of much of its grounds, went to work on a U. S. Government order for tank treads.

> York's No. 3, York Safe & Lock Co., has built some of the world's largest vaults, and during World War I built most of the U. S. Army's howitzers. Now York Safe & Lock Co. is completing a big plant addition for armament production, is hard at work building carriages for the U. S. Army's three-inch anti-aircraft guns. The carriages are so intricate that the dismantled parts take up 52 square feet of floor space, and the most that can be produced is ten or twelve per month. The company also had on its books a big Government order for tank armor.

> Read Machinery Co., Inc., producer of dough mixers for bakeries, had an order for 60-mm. trench howitzers.

> A. B. Farquhar Co., Ltd. (farm implements and hydraulic presses) was occupied with powder grinders and mixers for munitions plants.

> Among all of York's prosperous, loose-pocket citizenry, few were in more of a holiday mood than farmers from outlying Biglerville. Reason: Biglerville calls itself "AppleSauce Capital of the U. S." and the U. S. Navy had just placed an order there for several hundred tons of it.

As York provided an example of the change of fortune which war can bring to a U. S. town, one of York's businesses offered an example of what that change can mean to one firm.

In the early 1920s, Martin-Parry Corp. was a big U. S. manufacturer of commercial car bodies, for a few years grossed up to $5,000,000 annually. Its founder and president is tall, fretting, blue-eyed Frederick M. Small, son of the town's richest man, who went through Yale, returned to set up his own candy factory, and before he was 22 employed 200 men. Now he is 61, and since 1927 Martin-Parry Corp. has lost money every year. That year Henry Ford changed over from Model T to Model A, and Martin-Parry, with a big stock of T-style bodies and parts, took an inventory loss of at least $1,000,000. Meanwhile other manufacturers took to making their own truck bodies. In 1930 General Motors bought up the Martin-Parry bodyworks for something like $900,000. By 1932 Martin-Parry sales were only $29,141, and on the $29,141 the company managed to lose $184,739.

Tenacious Fred Small paid off some of his debts, continued in business producing drawn steel auto parts (windshield frames, etc.). He worked on a coating for steel sheets to make them appear less cold and metallic. His plant is capable of turning out 180,000 square feet of steel paneling per day, enough for 1,000 small home interiors, but the market for it has not arrived, although the paneling is being put into four Maritime Commission ships and into a new office building in Washington. So the business continued to lose up to $180,000 a year.

But one part of Martin-Parry's business is now going full tilt. Associated with Small in Martin-Parry is A. P. Buquor, who invented and patented for the company a piece of equipment by which the U. S. Army's principal light artillery piece --the 75 mm. (3-inch) gun built on an 1897 French design, formerly pulled by horses --has its old wagon wheels replaced by bump-absorbing, pneumatic-tired wheels, so that it can be motor-drawn at high speeds over rough ground without going to pieces. Martin-Parry's gun-carriage plant is working seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Nearly all U. S. light field guns, some 2,500, are equipped with their adapters. Last year Martin-Parry supplied 400 to the Canadian Army. (The Canadian expeditionary force, now equipping, may order some 250 more.) A few months ago Britain sent in two whopping orders for them, bringing her total to 2,500 units, $1,348,000. Holland also bought Martin-Parry adapters for her 6-inch field guns.

These war orders were already coming in 1938. They upped Martin-Parry's sales for fiscal 1938 (ending Aug. 31) to $326,730 from 1937's $77,567, reduced its deficit from 1937's $183,502 to $58,347. It was about the same for fiscal 1939: sales $371,395, deficit $58,748. Meanwhile the French Army has approved the Martin-Parry gun carriage. If France should equip all her light field guns with them she will require considerably more than Martin-Parry has sold to date.

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