Memphis Powder Mill

Full of the wishful conviction (after Versailles) that a world war was too horrible ever to happen again, the U. S. turned its back on $155,000,000 of Government investment in powder mills, sold out what it had built, and pocketed less than $15,000.000 in salvage. Result: when World War II came along, 21 years later, it had no more than a pip-squeak powder capacity, could not today come close to meeting its own wartime demand for powder for guns, large or small.

Until last week the Anglo-French Purchasing Board has had little to say about U. S. powder, either purchases or plant construction. From the board's offices at 15 Broad Street in Manhattan, the biggest powder deal to leak out involved a loan of $1,427,000 to Atlas Powder Co. for a new plant (TIME, March 25). But last week, while the most explosive battle in world history brought hell back to the Somme, the Allies announced a really big project: a $20,000,000 powder plant ten miles northeast of Memphis, Tenn., near the village of Millington.

Owner of the new mill and of the 5,000-6,000 acres purchased (for around $400,000) is Tennessee Powder Co. Its 1,000 shares of common are owned by the Anglo-French Purchasing Board. This week, while drillers worked on eight artesian wells to furnish 22,000,000 gallons of water a day (equal to Memphis' total daily consumption), engineers swarmed over the ground laying out the sites for more than 100 buildings, widely separated to cut down damage from explosion. Memphis businessmen calculated that when the mill begins operations about Oct. 1 it will employ around 5,000 workmen, may well be giving work to twice that number when it gets into full production on Jan. 1. To Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama and Mississippi cotton growers the plant water also good news because explosive for Allied guns will require thousands of tons of cotton and cotton linters (waste from ginning operation) as well as chemicals and some wood pulp.

Manager of the plant will be the No. 1 U. S. powder maker of World War I: E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. But fat with its expanding peacetime chemical business, and still smarting from the raking it took in 1934 in the Nye munitions investigation, Du Pont has shied away from powder-making for World War II. Hence the Allies' announcement of their new plant last week carried a careful proviso: while Du Pont will oversee both construction and operation of Tennessee Powder Co., it will have no part in its profits, will take only a management fee.

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