Untouched If Not Vast

The "millions and billions by 1943" keynote of America's war is based in turn on tales of our immense store of natural and industrial resources. Given time enough, the story goes, we can outbuild and outshoot any nation on earth. But reassuring though it sounds, it has a catch, in the form of several ignored but potent factors. First, we ignored the possibilities of a Japanese East Indies or a German Empire. Second, we ignored that Axis technological methods have left us behind in many fields. The third, and most correctible factor is that, through mere inertia in American industry, a crucial proportion of our "resources" are going to waste.

Take the plastics industry, for example: the source of airplane frames, tank windows, gas masks, gun stocks, an war goods in general. At present it is limited by lack of methanol and acetone, which, like explosives, are made from starch. But in spite of our "vast and untouched" resources it is the United States and not the Axis which feels the pinch. We have been depending mainly on sugar as the source of the mow scarce starch, gathering only one per cent of the possible yield from corn. An attempt not so long ago to industrialize potato starch was ruined by foreign competition which our neighborly State Department encouraged. Germany, on the other hand, has stocked up with the stuff by barter, and Japan and the Dutch East Indies have plenty.

We are dry on alcohol, also a solvent without which the chemical industry is helpless. We could ferment it from wheat, barley, or rye, although, through sheer inertia, we stick to molasses, although Germany has been fermenting potatoes for two decades. And only the Axis has bothered to distill it from coal or wood.

There is no lack of shortages. We lack pig iron and scrap iron, as a result of our former Far Eastern appeasement policy. We lack metallurgical coke except in a few spots. We lack rubber because, unlike Germany, we make our whole synthetic supply from petroleum, although there is no chemical reason why we should. It merely happens that the rubber patents are owned by the petroleum companies.

The Germans., with less to start with, have robbed us of our edge by utilizing every possible source. Our shortages, however, are not of things that could be used. They are nothing that cannot be fixed by an initiative equal to that of the Germans.