Jobs, Not Money

With a gleam in his eye, Shipbuilder Henry J. Kaiser sat down before the Senate's Small Business Committee. Said he, with no preliminary hems & haws: Congress had not yet set a decisive policy governing the disposal of over $15 billion in Government-owned war plants; it is high time Congress did. Forthwith, Mr. Kaiser laid down what he thought that policy should be. The key point: the Government should sell the plants with the primary aim of creating jobs rather than wringing out the last possible dollar for itself.

In short, said Mr. Kaiser, prospective buyers should be required to guarantee a minimum number of postwar jobs, be responsible for the operating capital. But the plants should not be sold as soon as they are no longer needed for war; they should be leased first, with an option to buy, after the employment guarantees had been made good.

This lease-guarantee arrangement, Shipbuilder Kaiser thinks, would put big & little companies on a more even footing, e.g., a small company gambling on its ability to find markets might guarantee more jobs than a big company. Furthermore, well-heeled big companies might not be able to snap up the best Government plants by bidding high, then close down less efficient plants of their own. Nor would the Government, with peacetime operation as a guide, put too high a price tag on plants, thus scare off all purchasers, great & small.

Said Henry Kaiser, summing up his plant-disposal doctrine: "You can try to get the most dollars out of them, but you will find you will get the greatest value if they provide employment."

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