00:00:00 Industry on parade. A pictorial review of events in business and industry, produced each week by the National Association of Manufacturers.

00:00:24 Here's a scene that has long since ceased causing any surprise. The womenfolk washing dishes made of plastic. Dishes that bounce when they drop to the floor. Hard to realize it, but it was only ten years ago that the first pound of polyesterine plastic was sold.

00:00:43 And it was sold by Arnold Martinelli, at left, at that time a salesman for Monsanto, and now the owner of his own firm, the Rogers Plastic Corporation of West Warren, Massachusetts.

00:00:56 In a ten-year-old industry, a six-year-old firm is a veteran, and already Rogers is a leader in the production of household wares, which are molded on machines like this under a method called jet injection.

00:01:13 The molten polyesterine is forced into precision molds under great pressure, and immediately hardens into the exact shape of the mold. Mr. Martinelli, who himself operated the first machine his company bought, can still hold his own on the production line, and occasionally does.

00:01:32 Here we see coasters being packed for shipment, and in a matter of minutes the line could be producing water tumblers or tomato slicers, bread boxes or pitchers. It's this rapid adaptability, together with the attractiveness, usefulness, and low cost of the plastic itself, that has made this industry one of the fastest growing in the nation's history.

00:02:02 The future of plastics is bright indeed, and Rogers is a company that intends to stay out in front, broadening still further its already extensive line of products made of plastic.

00:02:13 Hard to believe, but here's a factory in New York City that can turn out 5,000 tanks and 10,000 jet planes in a single day.

00:02:31 Working with classified blueprints from the Defense Department, the Comet Metal Products Company can produce 5,000 ships, 2,500 trucks, and 500 artillery pieces at the very same time. If you haven't already guessed, the tanks, planes, ships, and guns produced here are miniatures, but they aren't toys, and they are perfect scale models made from the blueprints of the real thing.

00:02:54 There can be no mistake about any detail, for these miniature instruments of warfare will serve an important purpose. They'll be used in training our fighting men to distinguish friendly ships, planes, and tanks from those of the enemy. Also in helping the high brass to recreate the picture of a military situation many miles away, giving them a three-dimensional view of an operation.

00:03:24 During World War II, the little Comet Metal Products plant was under a 24-hour security guard, and the precautions once more are beginning to tighten up. How any small boy would like to be turned loose in this factory!

00:03:42 But this is serious business, and when Uncle Sam says, send us more tanks, more ships, more planes, he isn't kidding. For in their own way, these tiny models of the genuine article can also help save the lives of American fighting men.

00:04:02 The National Plastic Products Company plant at Odenton, Maryland, a firm that plays one specialized part in the manufacture of a product that makes life a little easier and better for all of us.

00:04:19 Arriving at the Odenton factory daily come tons of a white plastic powder called Saran, made from petroleum and brine pumped out of deep underground lakes in the south. The Dow Chemical Company produced the Saran powder. Now National Plastic Products will further process it, add pigments, and extrude or spin it into a fiber that can be woven like cloth.

00:04:42 Here National Plastic Products will not do the weaving. It sticks to the job it does best, leaving earlier and later phases of the manufacturing operation to firms that have the expert know-how in those fields. Out of the extruders come heavy strands of plastic, which cooled in water and drawn out, to become thinner and thinner.

00:05:05 Finally, the Saran becomes a strong filament, 15 thousandths of an inch in diameter. It can now be handled in much the same manner as you would handle thread, but its color is built in, and it has uses to which thread could never be put. Now it moves on to another city in another state for the next step in its development.

00:05:25 The Lumite Division of the Chicopee Manufacturing Corporation of Georgia is the company that finally transforms the Saran into products that will be used by the consumer. First, some of the fiber is rewound onto bobbins that will shuttle back and forth in the weaving to make the cross strands. Other spools are put on a creel to be rewound onto much larger rolls. They'll feed the fibers that run longitudinally.

00:05:52 Chicopee has had long experience as a manufacturer of cotton cloth, so the changeover to weaving plastic fabrics was accomplished with a minimum of confusion.

00:06:02 About once every two days, the roll of Saran thread for the warp must be renewed, and a mechanical tyer joins every strand in only a few minutes. It's here, for example, that a company like Lumite is able to take advantage of knowledge gained in generations of practice in a live field.

00:06:30 Once everything is ready, the loom goes into action.

00:06:33 And the end product, not cloth as you think of it in this case, although elsewhere in the plant, the plastic is woven into fabrics for a variety of uses.

00:06:53 This is insect screen cloth with some surprising advantages over the usual screening materials.

00:06:59 Completely rust and corrosion resistant, it requires no protective painting since its color is built in.

00:07:06 Strong, light, and taut, the armed forces preferred it above all others during World War II, especially in the tropics.

00:07:13 Now, even when used in areas right near the water, it's doing a standout job for the American homeowner.

00:07:22 Around this particular household, where there also appears to be a shortage of manpower, it's Lumite screen cloth to the rescue.

00:07:37 The communists would like to see inflation cheapen our money until it isn't worth the paper it's printed on.

00:07:45 Cheap money means less value for our savings and insurance.

00:07:49 That's why the communists would like to see cheap money create economic chaos.

00:07:54 But we can curb inflation and strengthen our dollars if each of us will avoid borrowing to buy unnecessary things by saving all we can, not wasting materials,

00:08:04 and by supporting policies which increase our industrial productivity and by insisting our government does likewise.

00:08:11 A sound dollar means a strong and free America.