Columbus Columbus

"There's nothing amazing about what I've done. There are thousands of guys in the country who could do the same thing. Let more little fellows like myself have the subcontracts and you will really see the defense program roll. Even the machinery problem won't bother them. Those fellows can make their own. . . ."

Homer Clayton Price, who said this, is turning out $60,000 worth of aircraft accessories under subcontract for Cleveland's Pump Engineering Service Corp. (which makes hydraulic parts for Martin bombers). He is doing it with machine tools he built or converted himself. His factory is the dining room, kitchen, laundry, one bedroom, and garage of his middle-class Columbus, Ohio home. Two of his 22 employes are ex-convicts whom he met at the Ohio State Penitentiary.

No jailbird himself, Homer Price was superintendent of the Pen's machine shop. Thither last spring went a representative of Pump Engineering with the offer of a $30,000 subcontract. Homer Price agreed, took a leave of absence, borrowed $3,000, began converting his hillside home into a machine shop. Since precision machinery for aircraft parts was nowhere to be found, he made his own.

He redesigned a 50-year-old pipe-threading machine into a milling machine, a 40-year-old spindle drill press into a vertical milling machine. To start production he hired five Ohio Pen ex-convicts. Three of them, a burglar and two forgers, have since left him for better jobs.* His other employes include students from Ohio State's engineering school, a neighbor, a penitentiary guard on vacation, and his wife. By last week they were on a three-shift, seven-day basis, and Price's home-built machinery has increased to five lathes, three drill presses, three milling machines, three grinders, a press, a power hacksaw. His original subcontract has been doubled.

Only his house has suffered. Its ground floor is all factory. The second floor is part factory, part office, part living quarters. On the third floor is all the furniture crowded out of other rooms.

Slow-spoken Homer Price was orphaned at eleven, at 16 went to work as a machinist. During World War I he machined for the U.S. Navy; after the Armistice he got his job at the Pen. Because his wife and daughter were interested in outboard motor racing, Homer Price in 1923 bought a bench drill press and lathe, installed them in his dining room, made parts for outboard motors which he sold commercially. (That is how the Cleveland Pump people heard about him.) His wife "is more at home in a machine shop than in a kitchen," can do any job in the shop. She also pops the corn with which Homer feeds his own hobby: crickets. He keeps several hundred around the shop, singing in time with the power lathes.

* Other Ohio State Pen alumni: Trainrobber Al Jennings, Bankrobber O. Henry.

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