Slipstream: the autobiography of an air craftsman

by Eugene E. Wilson

And while this was a problem of national interest, it had its focus in Southern California. Thousands of people had left their homes and jobs and migrated toward the setting sun there to do their several bits and incidentally enjoy the climate. Almost immediately, public officials sensitive to the reactions of the working class began proposing legislation to meet the problem; a ticket back home for the dispossessed worker and six months’ unemployment compensation were widely advocated. The fact that high wages had been paid them and that the thrifty could probably take care of themselves seemed to have been lost in the shuffle.

Looking back on this situation now, we can see how completely wrong the forecasts were. Most of those workers, having basked in the California sunshine, had already determined to settle there and could not have been driven out by an air raid. Their newly acquired mechanical skills would find ready employment in new industries. The war demand and the “total war” policy had drained all the pipe lines of consumer goods while the cold fear of the ’thirties had frozen the investment market and stopped the normal expansion of housing, plant construction, and so on. What the country really faced was a pent-up demand that would lead to a postwar boom, and a dearth of labor. The automotive industry, for instance, could expect to reconvert to a demand of unprecedented proportions; the aircraft industry, on the other hand, would face an overwhelming war surplus. The problem that faced the country was not that of unemployment; the real job was to keep alive a remnant of vital defense industry.

But this was not the problem before the War Contracts Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs and its chairman, Senator James E. Murray, of Montana. “Full employment” was the war cry of that era, and the C.I.O. echoed it through the halls of Congress. Full employment, it appeared, was the right of every citizen, and the government must guarantee it to him whether he wanted to work or not. Some industrialists applied similar thinking to their corporations; the idea of government-guaranteed corporate social security had prompted the creation of the NRA and the formulation of its monopolistic codes. Now labor unions on the one hand and trade associations on the other vied with each other in bringing pressure to bear on Congress to relieve them from the necessity for struggling to survive.

And so when Senator Murray extended us an invitation to appear at a hearing to be held on July 10, 1944, we decided to conform with the Speaker’s advice. The C.I.O. had tipped its hand in a circular distributed in advance, castigating aircraft manufacturers as profiteers who had averaged as high as 3,000 per cent on war contracts. Since we manufacturers were scheduled to make the first appearance and be followed by the C.I.O., it was a fair guess that we had been selected as whipping boys.

And so our association, using the air policy as its bible, prepared its case with a special slant at this matter of war profits. We divided our presentation into four parts, with a separate witness for each. I was to make the general introduction of the industry viewpoint, and submit our statement of air-power policy. J. C. Ward, president of Fairchild Aviation Corporation and a convincing witness, was to cover postwar national defense and the aircraft industry. Harry Woodhead, president of Consolidated-Vultee Aircraft Corporation, was to discuss the George-Murray bill, manpower demobilization, contract termination, disposal of war surplus, and reconversion. Joseph T. Geuting, chairman of the Personal Aircraft Council of the Chamber, was to discuss the role of personal aircraft in postwar readjustment.

When the hearing opened in one of the large committee rooms of the Senate Office Building, the place was crowded and the press table filled by Washington correspondents attracted by the C.I.O. handout. Senator Murray sat on the dais while the witnesses were called to testify from a table at his feet. This layout put the witness at something of a disadvantage and news photographers sometimes used it to get worm’s-eye shots of bigshots looking anything else but. I recalled one taken of a friend of mine in the Black investigation, and widely used by the press, in which my friend, who was really a good egg, looked like nothing so much as a praying mantis.

This inquiry, however, appeared friendly. It wasn’t important enough to warrant klieg lights or a radio hookup, but attracted the usual barrage of flash bulbs touched off at the instant best calculated to catch the witness with his mouth open or his guard down.

In my extemporaneous introduction, I pointed out to the Committee that we welcomed this inquiry and especially the Committee’s interest in postwar unemployment. We had taken the position early in the war that the government should permit us to earn enough money on war contracts so that we might discharge our responsibilities to employees terminated by the cessation of hostilities. We had had in mind that, by adjusting each case on its merits, and out of funds set aside from earnings for that purpose, the employer could handle the problem with fairness to the employee as well as to the public which, after all, was the customer in this case.

However, Congress had disapproved that procedure and, through the excess profits tax, the Price Adjustment Act, the cost inspection service, and all other controls, had so limited our earnings that we now had no funds available for the purpose. As a matter of fact, our companies had been so blown up by war demands that a sudden cessation of hostilities must inevitably wipe out all our resources before we could reduce our working forces in any orderly manner. In short, our problem was not one of war profits; it was rather a question of how to survive.

But while on the subject of profits, it might be noted that only recently the National City Bank of New York had printed in its Bulletin an analysis of profits as a percentage of sales of the several groups of industries doing war work. This report had shown that the aircraft industry ranked lowest of all industries, with a record of approximately 1½ per cent. The same table had revealed that the automotive industry, now busy manufacturing products designed and developed by the aircraft companies, had earned nearly twice as much. This fact had resulted from the automotive industry’s better tax base.