Limited Reconversion

Canada opened the door a cautious crack to industrial reconversion this week. The Wartime Prices and Trade Board canceled its order forbidding or limiting manufacture of 67 categories of civilian goods containing metal. Included: bathtubs, wheelbarrows, steel-shafted golf clubs, baby carriages, bobby pins, stokers.

This did not mean quick and big production. WPTB Chairman Donald Gordon repeated his "Don't be a grabber'' plea (TIME, Sept.11). But plants equipped to turn out the metal articles could now go ahead and turn them out if they could find men and materials left over after filling Government orders. WPTB added: prices must be kept at 1941 levels.

Chairman Gordon also tossed out a challenge to private enterprise: "The Board must assume that expansion of civilian "output will take place within the framework of a system which relies mainly upon private enterprise. . . . Industry must now proceed vigorously to develop [its own] plans . . . for providing jobs for the hundreds of thousands of people who will one day cease to produce supplies and munitions of war."

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