Lesson in Problem Dodging

Lucky indeed is the U.S. small businessman who neatly straddled war problems and priorities with the simple formula of 50% peace business, 50% war business. Such a man is Long Island Girdlemaker Max Kops, whose Nemo Corset Co. last week was making WAAC girdles, Army flare parachutes and Medical Corps supplies on one hand, doing a flourishing peacetime business on the other.

Nemo started making corsets and brassieres 48 years ago, had smooth sailing except for batting down its reputation as a "heavy women's house" and finding girdle names that punsters could not twist into something nasty. It got into war work ten months ago when the elastic shortage mildly upset peacetime business and the Medical Corps was hunting for someone to make quantities of tourniquets, straps, tapes, etc. Then it picked up orders for 60,000 WAAC girdles (flesh-tan, 280 sq. in. of elastic, four 2 1/2-in. garters), some 50,000 Army flare parachutes to boot.

Nemo is strictly a family affair and Max Kops is clam-shut about sales and profits. But that his company is prosperous is obvious: in the Long Island plant alone (other plants: Canada and Britain), a record 600 women are hard at work, and the company has never borrowed a cent. When war ends Girdleman Kops can switch around a few machines, lay off his wartime help--pick up his peacetime girdles where he left off.

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