Double Feature in Houston

Major Charles Dinwiddie, Army Provost Marshal in Houston, Tex., strode into the Texas Washer Co.'s plant not long ago and didn't like what he saw. Texas Washer makes fins for Army mortar shells, but Major Dinwiddie could find not one armed guard around its plant. Whereupon Owner Wayne A. Baird grinned at the irate Major, told him to "walk through that door." As Dinwiddie obeyed, Baird pushed a button and every one of Texas Washer's 100-odd workmen dropped his tools, trained a sawed-off shotgun at the startled officer. "Just double duty," said Baird. "Every employe his own guard, and they all can shoot, too."

Double duty is Wayne Baird's middle name: for more than two years he has been doubling on war work with his friend Anthony R. Engler, owner-manager of Texas Specialty Co., whose tiny plant backs up to Baird's. Elderly Wayne Baird's plant used to turn out small metal parts for oil-field machinery; elderly Anthony Engler's made toys. But in October 1940 they landed a joint $200,000 shell-fin contract which they executed with such success that last month they snagged a new one. This time it was for $1,000,000--about 40 times their combined annual volume in peacetime.

Baird and Engler contrived to do all their war work without one penny of Government funds for new equipment. When they needed new machines they rigged up their own Rube Goldberg contraptions (Baird is proudest of a crane he made out of pulleys', sash cords and weights from Texas Washer windows). They bought their materials jointly, ran production lines from one plant into the other. Recently they were thrilled to hear that they were due for an Army-Navy E to reward their joint efforts (the first dual plant award in the U.S. and the first Ordnance award in the Houston area).

But Baird and Engler, who both have terrible tempers, almost came to blows deciding whose plant to use for the ceremonies, whose could fly the E flag thereafter. Major Dinwiddie intervened with a Solomon's solution. Next week their neighborhood movie house will play a new kind of double feature: on that neutral ground the Army will present an E flag apiece to Wayne Baird and Anthony Engler.

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