Report Outline
War Economy and Industrial Concentration
British and German Concentration Programs
American Concentration Plans: Postwar Prospects
War Economy and Industrial Concentration
Concentration in Civilian Goods and War Industries
Shortages of labor, raw materials, and factory space and the urgent necessity of making the most effective use of all available resources have forced Germany and Great Britain to adopt drastic programs of industrial concentration. Similar factors are now operating in the United States to produce a like result.
In Great Britain concentration to date has been limited to civilian goods industries. Many of the factories which formerly turned out civilian goods have been converted to the production of war materials; others have been utilized for storage space; still others have been closed entirely. In general, the larger factories have been converted to the manufacture of war goods, leaving a greatly reduced number of small plants operating on full-time schedules to produce essential civilian items. The contraction program has eliminated hundreds of small firms in the distributive trades in addition to the thousands previously forced out of business by rationing. Germany is applying concentration to armament as well as to civilian industries and the indications are that Britain will soon adopt a similar program.
War Concentration and Peacetime Rationalization
Basically, but with important differences in application, wartime concentration of industry is an intensification of the peacetime process of “rationalization” fostered for many years by certain segments of industry in advanced manufacturing nations. The factors determining current concentration programs stem from the war needs of nations, whereas the factors determining peacetime rationalization grew out of the competitive needs of industry. |
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