MANPOWER: Famine & Feast

For three months Seattle’s Boeing Airplane Co. has been frantically hunting for 9,000 more workers to boost lagging Flying Fortress production (TIME, Aug. 2, et seq.). Scouts were dispatched into the Middle West to lure workers to Boeing; the War Manpower Commission asked Puget Sound shipyards to lay off some 14,000 men; patriotic Seattlites went from door to door begging housewives to take jobs; a giant rally was held in the University of Washington stadium. Result: last week Boeing was swamped, had to turn job-seekers away. Boeing still needs some 5,000 to 6,000 workers, but job-seekers simply poured in too fast for assimilation until certain job classifications are built up and new production schedules go into effect. Thus Boeing was in the excruciating position of a starving, toothless man being offered a thick steak.