A PLAN FOR PLANES

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:

"Young man, I wish you were selling used cars for us."

"Used cars!," squawked Mr. Reuther.

"Yes," 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.

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.

When Henry Ford talked about "1,000 planes a day" last spring, the U. S. quivered to attention. Mr. Ford now hopes to have a new aircraft engine factory ready by next fall, produce 4,500 engines by mid-1942. If Mr. Reuther had his way, Ford Motor Co. would probably not be building a new plant. Instead Ford would be turning unused space, men, machines in his own and other manufacturers' plants to aircraft production. So would all the other automakers, to manufacture aircraft and engine parts for which their facilities were best fitted. Everybody would be in one big and perhaps unhappy family, working under a nine-man board (three for Government, three for Labor, three for Management).

All the Day Idle? Walter Reuther's statement that the booming automobile industry had any idle capacity or labor was news to most people. Planner Reuther cited three empty factories in Detroit with 554,000 square feet of idle space. He named companies (Fisher Body, Chevrolet, Ternstedt) which had recently laid off skilled workers or put them at unskilled labor, declared that not more than half the industry's total capacity was actually at work. He also assumed that individual auto-makers would have to be compelled to pool their resources and talents, perhaps delay their own new models while 12,000 to 15,000 tool-&-die makers worked on equipment for aircraft production.

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; to experienced aircraft makers would be left the job of producing more complex bombers.

And who is 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 out.

His idea originally was his own. Several weeks ago he 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.

Aircraft and automotive technicians doubtless could shoot some holes in it. None could quarrel with the fact that U. S. aircraft production of military combat planes up to last week had failed to reach 500 a month, much less 500 a day. None could fail to welcome fresh, aggressive thinking.

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."

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