SLOW RECONVERSION

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 149, 21 December 1945, Page 8

SLOW RECONVERSION

"PLOUGHSHARES INTO SWORDS"

The pace of reconversion of industry is slow. Some of the difficulties of reconversion are technical, but many of them are not. Sir Walton Benton Jones, chairman of the United Steel Companies, . who gave recently an impressive catalogue of the wartime achievements of the group—the details have been gathered together in a special booklet, "Ploughshares into Swords" — was able at the same time to claim that reversion to normal products did not involve any great disturbance of the organisation. Yet in the Lincolnshire enterprises of the group, for example, operations in the plate mills have been reduced by one-third.

The group is short of labour and short of materials. Returns from the forces and from <. wartime civilian work do not make "up for the loss of staff due to retirements. Improvements and extensions require special kinds of labour. The constantly growing application of machinery .needs larger numbers of maintenence craftsmen. The most skilled and essential young men who have been "reserved" during the war are now being called up to take their turn in the services. Supplies of coal are rationed, and the group's rations have been reduced and are inadequate. Supplies of. imported ore are insufficient. Supplies of machinery for replacements are difficult to obtain and slow in delivery. These handicaps are not peculiar to the company or to the iron and steel industry. They are common to industry as a whole. Sir Walter mentioned them yesterday only in order to point the moral that "the most important thing to do at. this time of crisis is to make the best of what we have, and not to allow our attention to be diverted too much by ambitious schemes for the future." Production for sale in the world's markets may be more important at the present stage, he points out, than producing for ourselves capital goods which may noi; become productive until the present gaping markets which we thereby neglect have been probably filled by others, who will by then have captured the goodwill which at present belongs to us. Evidently Sir Walter is fearful that priority may be given largely to reequipment at the expense of exports. Are we in danger of losing a sense of proportion? Though he expresses his apprehensions in the form of a question he obviously thinks that the danger is real. "In the race before us export sticks out a mile. House building follows close behind. Capital expenditure to replace machinery and plant which is not modern but which works seems to be lying third, some way behind." But Sir Walter would presumably hoi deny that the building up of export goodwill and re-equipment are complementary. The task is to strike the right balance.