Wheels within Wheels

For 65 days the big Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Co. plant at West Allis, Wis. had been strikebound. Not a wheel had turned on $45,000,000 of defense orders. Late last week about a third (2,500) of the plant's workers went back to work--at the request of the Navy and OPM }. What effect did this one shutdown have on U. S. defense? Iron Age found that the Allis-Chalmers strike had hampered the work of around 30 firms and projects, more than a third of all defense contracts. The Allis-Chalmers strike had held up work at:

> Ford Motor Co.: because of a shortage of compressors and turbines for its new airplane-engine factory.

> Bendix Aviation: vacuum pumps for testing carburetors.

> Bethlehem Steel, Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding, Pusey & Jones, Los Angeles Shipbuilding: turbines for 25 partially built destroyers.

> Aluminum Co. and Reynolds Metals: production equipment for widening the aluminum bottleneck.

> U. S. Navy yards: switch gear units.

> Ingersoll-Rand (precision gears, etc.): electrical equipment.

>U. S. Army's Wright Field: switch gear units; Langley Field: compressor units.

> Hercules Powder: steam turbines.

> Du Pont (munitions): electrical equipment.

> General Motors (airplane engines, shells, machine guns, trucks, etc.): generators and other electrical equipment.

> Carnegie-Illinois Steel, Bethlehem, American Rolling Mill, American Steel & Wire, Republic Steel, National Lead, Mesta Machine: synchronous condensers, generators, switch gear and electrical equipment.

> Bonneville, Shasta, Boulder, Parker, Colorado-Big Thompson and TVA power projects: transformers, generators, turbines.

> Panama Canal: pumps.

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