The Army Joins Up

One big obstacle to subcontracting has always been the indifference of the Army & Navy procurement officers. The men who sign the contracts preferred to do business with firms they knew, left the little owner of a few lathes out in the cold. Last week it looked as though all that might be changed. Army Ordnance itself was out after the little man.

Major Gen. Charles M. Wesson, Chief of Ordnance, recently directed his 13 district procurement offices to expand their local staffs of civilian engineers and management men, by at least five. Their function: to show small manufacturers how to do Army work and how to get Army orders. Furthermore, said the General, big Army contractors should be drafted to act as "big brothers" to these little men, by lending out their own engineers.

Since every district ordnance office can sign contracts up to $5,000,000 (and any number of them) without GHQ approval, the 13 chiefs can mobilize a lot of idle plants if they want to. Not planes and tanks, but the hundreds of supply items needed for Army arsenals, armories and the Aberdeen Proving Ground make up most of their orders. The new scheme is designed less to promote subcontracting than to find more and smaller prime contractors for these simpler products. But in the course of meeting and coaching the little men in its district, each civilian ordnance staff can help the big suppliers find subcontractors too.

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