Hagerstown Gets Hot

Little Hagerstown, Md. (pop. 31,000) last week went on showing the big U.S. munitions makers how to do things.

The burghers of Hagerstown and officials of the local Fairchild Engine & Airplane Corp. had faced two problems: how to keep the war from wrecking the town's economy, and how to make a lot more airplanes without building a lot more plants.

In many towns the city fathers watched the gates of peacetime factories swing shut, watched denimed workers move away to war-industry towns. Not so in Hagerstown.

Fairchild, which had moved into the town in 1929, by 1941 had half the city's employable workers on its payroll, wanted more workers to make more airplanes. The city fathers were men of methodical minds. They cut the problem down to size. The city had workers. The city also had dozens of war-distressed factories.

Cows and Pipe Organs. Fairchild shopped around and the burghers helped. Here was a plant wrapped in graveyard silence, there an empty garage. Artisans could be had for the asking. Soon many a converted machine shop began displaying the Fairchild emblem. Airplane parts in a trickle, then in a stream began flowing toward the main plant.

An exhibition building, which housed mild-eyed Holsteins and Jerseys during the annual Hagerstown fair, was fitted with jigs, converted into a production area for riveting bomber wings. The windows had to be boarded over during the racing season: as the sulkies sailed by on the oval track across the way, workmen dropped their tools to watch.

Typical of the converted plants was the Moller pipe-organ factory. Not a few of its hands were hired by old Mathias Peter Moller Sr. 30 and 40 years ago. Now they fashion wooden training-plane wings, finished exquisitely as only sparse-thatched, hump-shouldered cabinetmakers can finish them.

In all, Fairchild acquired 33 plants, 17 under lease, 16 under subcontract. It owned three. Commented Richard Schley Boutelle, vice president and manager, "We didn't buy a damned thing outright."

And last week nine-tenths of Hagerstown's employables were on the aircraft company payroll, directly or indirectly.

Not all is beer & skittles for Fairchild. Products of its nuts & bolts empire must be trucked to its assembly lines. And truck tires are scarce. Artisans trained to work in leisurely style with meticulous care will not adjust themselves to wartime manufacturing tempo. Fairchild argues (in vain) for more wood-butchering, for less craftsmanship.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.