Get Sore, Get Results

Of all the civic beefing-fests and sub-contracting-klatches caused by the fact and fear of priorities unemployment, one in Toledo last week gave the most hope of results. Toledoans were sore. They had sent Washington an ultimatum: come to the meeting and do some explaining, or stay away and be blasted. Washington came. Even the Army was there, and even the Army made some commitments.

Toledo, with 500-odd industrial plants, had $60,000,000 in prime defense contracts (Willys-Overland, Electric Auto-Lite, Spicer Manufacturing) and $65,000,000 in subcontracts. In a city like Toledo, that is chicken feed. Toledo is chiefly a partsmaker for Detroit; and with Detroit auto production scheduled for a 48.4% curtailment in December, Toledo's 51 parts plants felt the blow first. Auto-Lite had laid off 1,500 men because Chrysler would need fewer ignition systems, batteries, instruments. Of Toledo's 54,600 industrial workers, 4,000 were already out of jobs. In the next six to nine months, another 100,000 Ohio workmen would follow them--according to an estimate last week by 0PM itself.

So Toledoans got sore. In the Hotel Secor ballroom last week they formed a solid labor-capital phalanx. Chunky, aggressive Charles E. Swartzbaugh (electrical appliances) was there with representatives of 88 other Toledo firms. Kenneth Cole of C.I.O., John M. Froehlich of A.F. of L., Earl Streeter of the Mechanics' Educational Society were there too.

Before the meeting began Toledoans had blocked out a plan for a pool of all the city's industrial facilities, headed by a committee which would bid on defense orders, then farm them out to Toledo plants. But although such a plan had worked in towns like York, Pa., it had never been tried in a big industrial city like Toledo. Toledoans were gloomy. Washington had talked & talked about pools and subcontracting, but talk was cheap.

The meeting changed Toledoans' minds. Head of the Washington delegation was Alex Taub, a former Chevrolet and Vauxhall (British G.M.) production engineer who--experting for OPM and SPAB--has been in the front lines of Washington groups fighting for more subcontracting. With Taub was a group of Army men headed by Major J. B. Maderis of the War Department's contracts distribution branch. Both Taub and Major Maderis gave the Toledo plan their blessing. Major Maderis committed the War Department to a policy of breaking up big orders into their smallest workable units to help spread them to cities like Toledo. Taub told the manufacturers that it was "hope less to come to Washington in twos and threes, each presenting a small fraction of the major problem." But he promised that Toledo could count on defense orders as soon as it got organized as a single factory --machine shop under one roof, punch presses under another.

Significant was the fact that the Army let Subcontractophile Taub speak for the entire Washington delegation. When Floyd Odium's new OPM subcontracting division was set up four weeks ago, the Army and Navy--longtime foes of subcontracting--showed no indication of going along. Both planned to keep their own "subcontracting" branches (which had done as much to prevent subcontracting as to encourage it) independent of Odium. But last week in Toledo it appeared that pressure from hundreds of Toledos over the U.S. had finally broken Army and Navy resistance. The little manufacturer could expect more of a break from now on.

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