Factories for Allies

Almost as casually as it would ship a tanker full of aviation gasoline or a freighter full of strategic materials, the U.S. Government is now shipping to its allies entire plants to manufacture the goods on the spot. Though that may sound like a Gargantuan job for the overburdened U.S. Merchant Marine, actually such shipments can often save both space and time in the long run. Last week's news of factories being knocked down for shipment to the United Nations:

> Near Detroit the machinery of Henry Ford's $5,600,000 "world's most advanced tire factory" is being dismantled for shipment to Russia. An integral part of River Rouge, it was designed on a streamlined rubber-freighter-to-finished-Lizzie basis five years ago. Its sale is a happy one for all concerned: the U.S.S.R. will gain a steady supply of more than 1,000,000 tires a year; the U.S. Government will fulfill a year-old promise to deliver such a plant to Russia, and Henry Ford will get Lend-Lease cash for a peacetime plant he no longer needs.

> A new $1,900,000 Douglas Oil & Refining Co. refinery at Gardena, Calif. (partly owned by Douglas Aircraft's Donald Douglas) will be turning out high octane gas in and for the U.S.S.R. within the year.

>A 35,000-kw. generator at Southern California Edison's Long Beach plant was subjected to "a friendly seizure order" by WPB (to avoid legal delays), will be followed by a second unit within the month. Southern California Edison will get in return a new 80,000-kw. turbogenerator now being manufactured--and the U.S.S.R. will get its additional power supply that much earlier.

Word has leaked out of grandiose U.S. Government plans to ship idle plants to under-factoried Latin American countries. Already shipped (to Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, Mexico): six small textile mills, a blast furnace, a storage battery factory. Some Government enthusiasts were talking rosily of finding as many as 500 plants that U.S. owners would be glad to sell to eager Latin American buyers (no effort is being made to take plants that are not willingly sold), but lack of shipping is apt to limit that sharply. Nonetheless, where a U.S. plant can provide an essential commodity that would otherwise have to be continuously shipped in manufactured form, U.S. authorities would now prefer to send the whole plant in the first place.

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