Who Can't?

Americans were sick & tired of the word can't. They had heard it over & over: monotonous and nerve-jangling as a broken phonograph record: we can't attack until 1943; we can't get help to China; we can't open a second front; we can't get the raw materials.

Americans had listened patiently to the learned arguments of the can't-do-it experts. But now, at long last, millions of them were rebelling against the pessimists.

Center of the revolution was big, bald Engineer Henry J. Kaiser, whose motto has always been: Who can't? Kaiser had gone to Washington with a big, bold plan to build 5,000 cargo planes and lick the shipping shortage--the kind of vast, impossible vision that Americans love. At Washington's hands, the vision had suffered shabby treatment.

Kaiser was a proven miracle worker on great dams, in his great shipbuilding yards. Yet the Army & Navy refused to see an ounce of sense in his new idea. For two weeks he had to fight the stubborn-nest opposition. Even after he won a go-ahead signal from Production Boss Donald Nelson (TIME, Aug. 17), the Army & Navy still scoffed.

But this week Kaiser went back to his West Coast bailiwick with something more important than a half-won victory over the brass hats. He had set the nation's imagination on fire; even in stolid Washington the flames crackled and spread.

In the halls of Congress up rose Oklahoma's Senator Josh Lee, to tell what his Military Affairs subcommittee thought of cargo planes and the men who scoffed at them. Senator Lee had always been an Administration stalwart, slow to criticize an official word or deed. Now his words sounded as if a new, fighting spirit were abroad on Capitol Hill:

"Everyone appearing before the committee favored increasing the production of cargo aircraft, but there was a defeatist attitude on the part of some. A defeatist attitude is not warranted by the facts.

"It was said there is not enough aluminum. It was said there is not enough chromium. It was said that we do not have enough steel. It was said we cannot produce enough motors.

"No doubt these critical materials present problems, but all of them can be solved. They must be solved. . . .

"The Government could collect all the automobiles in used-car lots. The Government could take the iron railings from around yards, balconies and estates. The Government could take the chromium plated and nickel-plated fixtures from homes. If it were done without favoritism, the American people would approve it. More than that, they would applaud it."

Up rose Wyoming's Senator Joseph C. O'Mahoney with a hope and a prayer: "Week after week and month after month we wait for the aggressive leadership of which the Senator speaks. . . ."

Columnist Raymond Clapper examined the record of Kaiser's trip to Washington, noted that there was nothing in writing to insure Kaiser's plan a chance, decided that Washington had insulted the American spirit. Wrote he in white anger:

"[Kaiser] has been given the sly brush-off. All he has to show is two mealy letters from Donald Nelson. . . . Both are signed with the same rubber stamp. I have examined the letters and they say nothing. The rubber stamp is genuine. The faint outlines of the shoulder of the stamp show in the ink blur around the alleged signature.

"This Government is full of experts. They must know whether the plan is worth serious effort. If it is, then for God's sake why doesn't Washington get behind Mr. Kaiser with an honest effort instead of brushing him off with a rubber-stamp letter? If the plan isn't worth any effort, then send Mr. Kaiser back to building ships, which he does with such speed.

"Don't waste the time of such a valuable man. Why kid a man who has his production record? Why kid the public into thinking Washington is behind him when nobody there has any intention of raising a small toe to help him? . . . This is a piece of monumental fakery."

Yet there was no anger in Henry Kaiser's mood this week. He well knew that Donald Nelson's rubber-stamp signature was affixed after Nelson, worn out by the duties and bickerings of his office, had gone off to the Adirondacks for a few days' rest. He still had full faith in Donald Nelson's promise and his own ability to meet the conditions--that he must build his planes without using raw materials that the Army & Navy need.

How Come? And since raw materials were the limiting factor, Henry Kaiser was off on a new trail that might do more for the war effort than 10,000 cargo planes. The Axis, with far less natural wealth--for example, probably less than 13,000 of the world's 170,000 tons of nickel production--was doing all right. How come that the United Nations, with the other 157,000 tons of nickel and great resources in other metals, were doing so badly?

To this great question perhaps Kaiser could learn the answer. His men were already prospecting the West for nickel and chrome deposits that were too expensive to work in peacetime, but might prove a godsend in war. His Permanente magnesium plant in California had proved a flop so far: its Hansgirg carbothermic process was still so full of "bugs" that production after nearly a year was only a fraction of the amount promised. But he had some new units coming in at Permanente, and was starting production at a new magnesium plant using the better, safer ferrosilicon process.

Now Kaiser planned to go to the aircraft industry to see if he-could get its help in an over-all survey of shortages (raw materials and--even more important--parts) which are holding up airplane production. No layman could say, with assurance, that Henry Kaiser could either build cargo planes or help crack the materials bottleneck. But all Americans except the can't-do-it experts were ready to cheer him on. The nation was spiritually starved for pungent, racy men who laugh at difficulties.

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