The Wilmington Morning Star

DEFENSE PLANTS FACING SHORTAGE OF TRAINED MEN

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Executives, including shipbuilders and aircraft makers, conferred with Knudsen, Sidney Hillman, associate director of defense production; secretary of labor Perkins and other officials.

Opening the conference, Knudsen revealed that the seven billion dollar lease-lend program, together with orders yet to be placed for U. S. defense articles, would mean an increase of at least 60 per cent in the activity of the war materials industries. The total of orders placed to date, he said, called for more than 18,000,000,000 man hours of work.

"We've got to go into production in America on a scale that has never even been approached before," the ruddy-faced, whitehaired production chief asserted.

"Our need for machinery," he said, "our need for ships, our need for propulsion machinery for ships and tanks and planes is so great that upon you will rest the responsibility of training more people in the shortest possible time in order that we may meet the deliveries that are so sorely needed both here and abroad."

The shipbuilding yards furnish one example of need for workers. Knudsen said. If the number of skilled workmen has to be spread out thinner in order to lay the keels of more ships, he said, the results may not be satisfactory. He then urged shipbuilders specifically to "give every skilled man three helpers to learn his work" so that when the time for expansion comes there will be labor supplies available.