Campus War Plant

The louder WPB and the military clamored for arms and ammunition, the dourer became stocky, ruddy President Harmon Lowman of the Sam Houston State Teachers College in Huntsville, Tex. His school had a half million dollars' worth of manufacturing equipment, and plenty of potential manpower--and nobody seemed to see the connection. Probably hundreds of other U.S. vocational schools were in the same willing but unable condition.

President Lowman appealed to the Texas Chamber of Commerce for help. The Chamber called Army Ordnance. Ordnance sent a man to Huntsville, got back a surprising report: he had found equipment and manpower enough to turn out 10,000 steel bomb-fin assemblies a month (with the boxes to ship them), plus sizable quantities of tank gears, canvas gun-covers, gas masks and other auxiliaries.

Last week an emergency bill authorizing Sam Houston teachers to manufacture munitions was swiftly approved by the Texas House committee. Six college instructors have already been qualified as supervisors by the Army. The students (179 boys, 521 girls) who choose to work two to four hours a day will be helped by seasonally idle farm hands. Wages will be union scale.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.