WHO OWNS THE U.S. WAR PLANT?

In terms of ownership, this is the shape of the war plant that the U.S. has contracted for between June 1940 and February of this year--by which time materials shortages were ending plant expansion. No New Deal grab for power but hard-money business logic dictated the mounting blocks of Government ownership in the nation's new manufacturing capacity--from 41% in petroleum to 99.6% in explosives. In terms of dollars, the U.S. Government has financed some 85% of the entire program. Private capital financed as much expansion as it would have in normal times. The Government naturally shared most in building plants which have the least peacetime use and value.

In terms of capacity (based on prewar dollars), the new plants add some 25% to the value of all U.S. productive facilities before the war. But the addition is concentrated: in steel, for example, it amounts to about 8%, and almost one-third of that is privately owned.

The burning question is: Who will own the Government's $14 billion share in the U.S. war plant after peace comes? Private industry now operates almost all of it. Thus far the Government and industry have put on an Alphonse & Gaston act: in speech after speech Jesse Jones has begged businessmen to tell him what they would like to have him do with the plants his RFC owns; just as emphatically, private industry has asked for a statement of Government policy --any policy--so that its postwar planning can begin to make sense. Jesse Jones does not want to tell business he will sell the U.S. taxpayer's expensive plants for 10-20-c- on the dollar. He knows the plants may be worth only that in peacetime, but such a statement would be political suicide. Similarly, private capital does not dare, as yet, ask the Government out loud for such a bargain sale.

Nonetheless, business and Government must blueprint the disposal of these war plants before war ends, if their conversion to peacetime production is to be accomplished in a hurry--or perhaps at all. For until that problem is solved the U.S. cannot get on with answering the really crucial question: how to use U.S. productive capacity so that full employment in peacetime becomes a fact.

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