Army in Overalls

At 1 a.m. one night last week, a seedy young man darted out of a subway station in downtown Brooklyn, stationed himself at the doors of a grimy brick building at No. 131 Livingston St. Soon others, some in spruce business suits, some in greasy overalls, some old, some young, lined up behind him. Through the night they waited. The line lengthened down the block, curled around its four sides. As day broke and the line sweated in the July sun, functionaries of the New York City Board of Education arrived, hurried inside the building to begin interviewing applicants for the U. S. industrial defense army.

It was a bewildering job. The Board had announced that it wanted 10,000 men, either 1) employed mechanics, or 2) unemployed (registered with the State Employment Service) with some machine experience, to be put through ten-week brush-up courses for work in U. S. armament factories. Many an applicant wanted to know how much he would be paid while studying (answer: nothing). Many another, eager to serve Uncle Sam, had given up his job to enroll. Among the applicants were night watchmen, janitors, clerks, boys who had never worked. Housewives phoned to recommend their husbands, explained that although the husbands were not mechanics by trade, they were handy around the house. Garment workers mistakenly enrolled for a course in pattern cutting, learned that it dealt with cutting machine parts, not underwear. Some applicants arrived on the run to take "machine-gun practice," found that a radio announcer's tongue had slipped: he meant machine-shop practice.

Up to the recruiting desks marched 5,000 the first day, nearly 20,000 by week's end. About a fifth were mechanics. These were promptly sent to twelve schools for individual instruction. The schools ran two shifts: 8:30 to 3 for the unemployed, 6 to 10 p.m. for men who worked by day. Meanwhile, the same story was repeated in about 100 other cities, which this summer are to turn out some 150,000 finished machinists, lathe hands, welders, aviation mechanics, electricians, radio technicians.

How and where they were to be used was still undetermined. New York City's officials consulted labor leaders and employers in defense industries on how many men were needed, got no clear-cut answer. In Washington, Defense Commissioner Sidney Hillman, in charge of labor training, surrounded himself with an array of coordinators, directors, advisers, stock takers. Already abandoned was President Roosevelt's plan to conscript 1,500,000 trainees for industrial defense. There was a sharp dispute over whether a shortage of mechanics existed: A. F. of L. claimed that an incomplete survey in 33 States by the Social Security Board showed there were 657,000 unemployed skilled craftsmen; employers claimed that they were shorthanded. A partial explanation (offered by U. S. Labor Statistician Isador Lubin): geographically, workers and jobs had not yet got together.

Also in dispute was the kind of industrial army needed. Some educators favored an army of all-around mechanics; others, an army of specialists. The New York Daily News campaigned for an army of one million "sergeant-mechanics" to man a Nazi-style war machine.

Many and various were the schools that had a finger in defense training:

Public Vocational Schools: Normal output: 500,000 machinists, etc. a year. To be enrolled for short emergency courses in the next year: 750,000 additional.

CCC: Present enrollment: 200,000. Proposed by Sidney Hillman: to add 160,000 to CCC and 300,000 to NYA, train them to run and repair tractors, build roads and bridges.

Apprentice Schools: Operated by a few large plants, training a few thousand technicians and mechanics. Examples: Pratt & Whitney (enrollment: 272); Curtiss-Wright Technical Institute (enrollment: several hundred Army Air Corps men, 1,000 civilians).

Army Technical Schools: Enrollment: several hundred soldier-mechanics. Chief schools: Chanute Flying Field (Ill.), Lowry Flying Field (Colo.), Camp Holabird (Md.), Scott Field (Ill.).

As Messrs. Hillman & Co. last week sought to bring order and unity to all these independent, hit-or-miss training efforts, it appeared that the toughest job in U. S. defense preparations might be harnessing the nation's willing man power.

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