Down Again

The shortage of steel caught up with the automakers last week. Some 50,000 autoworkers were laid off. Chrysler, Dodge, and Plymouth final assembly lines clanked to a stop; General Motors closed two body plants; and Briggs Manufacturing Co. shut six body plants. Most plants which still operated slashed production schedules.

This week auto production is expected to drop to around 50,000, from the 70,000-plus average this spring. With luck, the painful climb to volume production could start again in ten days. But automakers, who had pushed production in the first three months of 1947 to a postwar high of 1,144,526 units, doubted that they would do as well in the second quarter.

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