MANUFACTURING: Munitions Makers

Last week many an investor figured that the next production upswing will be led not by consumer-goods industries, but by the long stagnant, overcapacitied, capital-goods industries (see p. 71). Backing up this belief, the following capital-goods companies rehearsed their roles for a rearming economy:

>Pullman-Standard Car Manufacturing Co. (subsidiary of Pullman Inc.) was tooling up a division of its Butler (Pa.) plant to handle a $3,000,000 Allied order for 200,000 six-inch shell forgings (complete except for powder and cap).

>American Car & Foundry Co. worked on a $6,000,000 U. S. Government tank order, a 30,000-ton British order for shell steel.

>Pittsburgh’s Pressed Steel Car Co., with a U. S. Government educational order for 15,000 shell forgings of 75 millimetre calibre, has on order a new type of forging machine from another defense producer, Baldwin Locomotive Works. The new equipment will put shell production on an assembly line basis of 170-180 shells per hour.

>Dallas’ Murray Co., makers of cottonseed oil mill machinery, which has an educational order for 5,000 shell casings, considered ways of preparing for volume production.