Factories at Work

A special train carrying 452 pallid, cadaverous, sick and wounded French war prisoners ground into the Gare du Nord last week, bringing a stench of decaying, living flesh to Paris. Six trainloads of healthy French flesh on the hoof left France for Germany. Pierre Laval's plan of exchanging three French workers for one war prisoner was functioning. Frenchmen had become domestic animals, weighed and traded and shipped.

The Plan was worked out with German thoroughness and handed to Laval. German factories' requests for labor were sent to recruiting service bureaus, in both Occupied and Unoccupied France, which referred them to French factories whose workers came up to the desired specifications. Here lists had already been made up of all men between 18 and 50 with fewer than three living children. For every 25 workers, a foreman was taken; for every 50 workers, an engineer. The entire group then proceeded to Germany to take over the operation of a factory or shop.

Last week several hundred thousand French workers had received notices designating them to go to Germany, with contracts to be signed within 24 hours. Recruits underwent medical examinations. Germany wanted only healthy meat.

Pagan Nazis still observed the rule: "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn." French workers were promised good wages in Germany. Their families in France received compensation from the French Government: six million francs a day for the 150,000 workers designated to make up the first contingent. War-risk insurance for these Frenchmen in Germany was also paid by Vichy. French taxpayers were not only footing the bill for German soldiers policing France, but were helping to pay Frenchmen for working German industries.

French industrialists were instructed to replace deported workers with unskilled recruits. After a period of training this raw labor would be ready to take its turn in the Reich. Continuous labor exchange would tend to standardize industrial technique in the two countries.

Bad Response. Laval pushed the plan feverishly, prodded by German threats, complaints and taunts that France had not earned "the right to a happy future in Hitler's Europe." But the response was bad. Workers disappeared just before they were to entrain for Germany. A bomb destroyed the Lyon recruiting offices on the Boulevard Garibaldi. At least ten officials of the Vichy Labor Ministry resigned in protest and despair. Workers in the big Renault plant near Paris struck in protest against the forced recruiting. They were idle for three hours, until the Germans threatened to shoot 50 hostages in the factory courtyard. Then they went back to work making tanks for Hitler's armies in Russia.

France was restless and labor shipments to Germany were behind schedule. Laval wheedled an extra 15 days--until Nov. 1 --to deliver the first 150,000 workers.

Wheels Were Turning. Europe was enslaved, but Europe was functioning. Every day French workers left for Germany. Munitions works, tank factories and chemical plants in Germany, in Czechoslovakia and in France itself were working, turning out guns for Hitler. Efficiency was increased by the standardization of processes and parts, by the pooling of technical information and laboratory facilities. No trade barriers or trust monopolies existed to stop the flow of goods and services from one country to another.

Hitler's new order of slavery was producing. The Children of Israel made bricks for Pharaoh for many generations until a great leader with a great idea led them to freedom. Last week there was no great leader in France. And the assistance the French people had been led to expect from other enemies of Hitler had not arrived.

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