Business & Finance: Still No Victory Models

For months U.S. citizens have been titillated by talk of “victory model” consumer durable goods—goods made on a standardized, materials-pinching basis by a few small “nucleus” plants in each industry while bigger competitors converted to war production. Last week, however, it looked as if victory models were a mirage.

> WPB ordered all U.S. typewriter production after Oct. 31 concentrated in tiny Woodstock Typewriter Co. But it also announced that Woodstock’s entire production (23,000 machines a year) will be reserved for the Army & Navy.

> WPB ordered the minuscule manufacture of the only victory model—a practical, standardized bike—to stop on Aug. 31.

Fact is that WPB got around to victory models just when it couldn’t find enough metals to keep military production at capacity.

Nonetheless, WPB’s little fireball, Joseph L. Weiner, who heads its Office of Civilian Supply, is pounding away on plans to concentrate in a few plants all metal-consuming civilian production that has not already been stopped for the duration. To guide him, he has a Don Nelson statement of principle declaring that the nucleus plants should be small ones in areas that have little war business and a labor surplus (like New York City), plus good power, warehouse and transportation facilities. Best bets last week on which industries Joe Weiner will try to concentrate first: farm equipment, porcelain, enamelware, furniture and office machinery, caskets and cutlery.

Don Nelson gave the brushoff to knotty individual problems like maintaining trademarks and normal distribution channels, compensating plants that end up with neither war work nor civilian production. He called these headaches “secondary” to the war effort. But when Joe Weiner gets down to cases, such problems are apt to hold up victory models as much as material shortages themselves.