Editorials recall events of the early ’50s

This is the second in a series of posts showing Harry’s editorials from the newspaper in Greenbelt, MD, in the 1950s. Greenbelt is a DC suburb founded in 1937 under FDR’s post-depression New Deal. The articles offer snapshots of Harry’s writings unknown to most family and friends he left behind, plus history lessons we can appreciate today.


December 4, 1952 
“Sunday, December 7”

Most of us think of December 7 as Pearl Harbor day, and truly none of us will ever forget that tragic day of history. Every year thousands of newspapers throughout the country editorialize on the occasion of this solemn anniversary, its meaning, its significance and its implications. It is a convincing reminder that we must never allow our defenses to so deteriorate as to become vulnerable to surprise attacks by a ruthless enemy. It is a warning and a symbol of the ghastly costs of unpreparedness. We have taken that lesson to heart. We are currently expending huge sums of money to build up our military strength, and the whole purpose of this buildup is to make it unmistakably clear to any potential enemy that it would be most unwise to attack us. The sheer horror of the damage that we can deliver with our atomic weapons should make anyone think twice before risking a war. And it is our hope that behind this shield of military might, our diplomats can work out with the diplomats of the world, a true and lasting peace – a world in which the threat of war can be completely abolished – a world without weapons – a world in which men and nations can settle their disputes in a meeting room instead of on a battlefield.

But in a way, perhaps, December 7, has an even deeper meaning for us in America. For it is also the symbol of another war – a war against an enemy far more relentless and implacable than mere man. It is the birthday of a great and cherished American tradition – the birthday of the Christmas Seal. On December 7, 1907, forty-six years ago, the Christmas Seal was born.

Today in millions of American homes the Christmas Seal with the red Double-Barred Cross is as much a part of the holiday scene as the Christmas tree or Santa Claus. It carries a message of hope and good cheer, that tuberculosis can be defeated if all of us work together. In the forty-six years since the first Christmas Seal sale, tuberculosis has been forced down from first to sixth place among the causes of death in this country. But despite this progress, tuberculosis today kills more than all other infectious diseases combined. It attacks 115,000 Americans every year.

Those who buy and use Christmas Seals are helping to protect themselves and their neighbors from this killer, which attacks without obvious symptoms. They are helping the voluntary tuberculosis associations acquaint more and more people with the basic facts about TB, with the need for chest x-rays in an effort to find TB early, when it is easiest to cure. They are supporting medical research in the development of better ways of treating and preventing tuberculosis.

This is part of the personal contribution millions of Americans are making during the Christmas season. By buying and using Christmas Seals they are helping to save lives and to reduce the suffering of their less fortunate neighbors. Dec. 7 is indeed a date to remember.

December 24, 1953 
“Decision for Darkness”

Most men are able to make the vital decisions in their lives without fanfare or publicity. The twenty-two young Americans who have elected to remain in Korea with their Communist captors have had the eyes of the world focused upon them while they were making up their minds. They had a chance to stand up and testify to freedom; instead they renounced their country.

It is hard to understand the thinking of these deluded Americans. They must have witnessed the treatment given their fellow prisoners who refused to fall for the Community line. They must realize the enormity of the lies they have been told.

The time may come when they will regret their decision. It is likely that when that time comes, however, it will be too late for them to salvage the liberty they have forfeited with apparent indifference.

Americans can sympathize with the parents and the loved ones of these men whose minds have been poisoned by the Communists. It is always tragic to look upon men who have turned their eyes away from the light and entered into the kind of darkness which can consume them.

December 24, 1953 
“Newspapers”

Harry and family in 1953

“How far that little candle throws its beam”, says an old poem. It could be paraphrased, if unpoetically, to read, “How far the consequences of a strike extend”.

The New York newspaper strike, which deprived the world’s second largest city of its principal media of information and advertising for 11 days, is a perfect example. Moreover, it illustrated how unique a place the newspapers hold in a community.

The strike was brought by a photoengravers’ union which has 400-odd members employed on the major New York papers. Actually, only 207 votes were cast in favor of the strike, but it was a majority. The papers, of course, could have appeared without pictures but other unions honored the engravers’ picket lines and made publication impossible.

As a result, some 20,000 people were temporarily forced out of work, and a very large payroll was temporarily suspended. And a huge amount of holiday advertising business was lost.

This was only the beginning. To most stores, the newspaper is the dominant factor in advertising. It is the top medium for visually offering goods to vast numbers of potential buyers. No one will ever know how much retail business was lost because of the strike but many store executives are sure it was substantial. Time was bought on radio and TV stations. But these media are of only limited value to retailers for the most part and, on top of that, relatively little desirable time was available.

New York City has 10,000 newsstands and about 2,500 of them shut down entirely. All of the rest, naturally, suffered from the lack of papers to sell, which are the backbone of the business. Movie theaters and sports arenas had no effective means of publicizing their attractions.

Finally, of course, the public, which buys 5,000,000 copies a day of the New York papers, was discomfited. The news magazines diverted extra copies into the city, but there were not enough of them to meet the demand and they did not carry news with the local slant.

Whether or not the photoengravers’ wage and other demands were justified is a matter of argument. But there can be no argument about the fact that the action of a very small number of people in a case like this can directly affect the lives of many millions. New Yorkers, today, really appreciate their newspapers.

Look for more of Harry’s editorials in the next post on this blog. (Anyone can skim the newspaper archives at:  http://www.greenbeltnewsreview.com/archives/ )

Copyright 2017, Elaine Blackman

The aerospace industry’s role in World War II

Harry in 1997

I have memories from the 1990s of arriving at my parents’ house, and more times than not, finding my dad at the computer. Now I’m reading things he was probably working on when I interrupted.  

In the previous post on this blog, Harry recalled his personal role in an airplane factory, as a young man in the early 1940s. This week he gives the broader story of aircraft production. He wrote this article for the Aerospace Industries Association in 1994. 

The American aerospace industry came of age in World War II when it became the mainstay of America’s role as the great “arsenal of democracy.” Before the war, in September 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized it as a national asset when he called for the production of 10,000 aircraft a year. In May 1940, FDR upped the ante, calling for an annual production rate of 50,000 aircraft. The war actually began on Sept. 1, 1939, with the destruction of the Polish Air Force by Germany’s Luftwaffe. The war for the U.S. also began with an air strike when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, a “day that will live in infamy.” No war would ever be fought again without first seeking control of the air.     

It was General “Hap” Arnold’s vision that made FDR’s unprecedented goal possible. He saw the aircraft companies as prime contractors for a vitalized industry, able to subcontract with smaller companies, including the automobile companies, for components and subassemblies. William S. Knudsen, appointed by FDR to chair the National Defense Advisory Committee, which was responsible for military production, put General Arnold’s vision to work. He organized licensing arrangements so that production could be shared among several manufacturers in order to produce aircraft at the fastest possible pace.     

Governmental leaders may command, but it was up to the array of companies involved in the aerospace industry to respond and perform. They expanded at an unbelievable rate and the production of aircraft during the next few years represented an industrial miracle. Not to detract from the outstanding conduct of the war by our military services, World War II was a war of production, logistics and supplies. It was the genius of the aerospace industry, in many ways not generally known, that made the difference. Unlike the automobile industry, in which designs are frozen with only minor changes incorporated each year and major changes planned for a year or two in advance, aircraft production required a revolution in thinking. Design changes had to be constantly incorporated in the production program as wartime experience disclosed flaws and as the aeronautical engineers devised improvements. This innovative “flexible mass production” set a pattern for other industries.     

In Knudsen’s words, the U.S. “smothered the enemy in an avalanche of production ...” All told, the aerospace industry produced more than 296,000 aircraft of all types. By the end of the war in 1945, we were flying 26 different types of airplanes, none of which had existed six years earlier. In fact, the aircraft available at the beginning of the war were already as obsolete as the antiques of World War I. The air war was conducted almost entirely by planes that were built during the war. Some 50 major prime contractors were involved in this phenomenal production record, employing more than a million workers, with another 300,000 employed by subcontractors and two million more on related equipment.     

Progress in design and construction represented as great a miracle. Technology advanced with incredible speed, doubling and trebling the range and speed of fighters and bombers. The B-29, for example, was still on the drawing boards when the war began. The first production model was flown in July 1943. When the war ended two years later, more than 1,000 had been built in six new factories by four manufacturers.     

By the end of the war, jet and rocket engines were bringing about another revolution in aerodynamics and airframe construction. Planes had to be built able to pass through the sound barrier and the thermal barrier. At the end of the 1940s, a whole new world of flight was taking place in the skies. The pace of change was so rapid that the plane that broke the sound barrier in 1947, the Bell X-1, was retired to the Smithsonian as an antique less than three years later.     

During the Korean War in the 1950s, the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s, and the Gulf War in the 1990s, with a few smaller military actions in between, the aerospace industry continued to provide the advanced weaponry of modern warfare, and much more besides. In fact, through the “Cold War” years, the aerospace industry was a major contributor to both the national security and the national economy, with aircraft sales overseas the largest single American export. American built aircraft filled the military and commercial fleets throughout the world. At the same time, the sciences of missilery and rocketry saw remarkable advances, as well as the techniques of development and construction as vehicles, engines, weapons and accessories became increasingly complex.     

In the 1960s, in addition to meeting the demands of the Vietnam War, the genius of the aerospace industry, in collaboration with the government, started the U.S. on the space program that culminated with the landing on the moon in 1969. Today, the demand for ever more sophisticated equipment for military use, for more and better equipment for commercial fleets, and for the continuing conquest of space, signals the vigor of the aerospace industry and the importance of its contribution to the national well-being.

Copyright 2016
Elaine Blackman

 

If planes interest you, check out the book Harry co-wrote in 1994:

Flights: American Aerospace ... Beginning to Future