JUNE WILL BRING the second national wartime conference of the dealers in used and rebuilt machinery. A year ago and for the first time in history, 200 members of the industry met in a two-day session which through the exchange of information and ideas unquestionably contributed considerable impetus to the nation’s war effort.
This year’s agenda will consist largely of additional discussion of ways to disseminate information that will still further advance the war effort and will also provide a program of study on postwar surplus machinery, a problem to which the members will be able to contribute an accumulation of experience incomparable to that of any other branch of industry.
Government and industry in general recognize the aid which the used machinery dealers rendered in helping to “plug the gaps” in the production front when “bottlenecks” were our greatest bugaboo, especially just after Pearl Harbor. These stories of plugging the gaps have been told time and again and are well known to all war contractors.
However, there is one significant fact which has seldom been mentioned and which is spotlighted by the purpose of these wartime conferences. Ever since the used machinery industry came into prominence in the economic scale there has been evident an unprecedented cooperation among the dealers and rebuilders of machinery and equipment. If a dealer on the West Coast needed a critical tool he could contact a dealer on the East Coast and usually obtain it with a minimum of delay. Many a production job was expedited months in advance by means of this cooperation and practice and the knowledge which dealers have accumulated over a long period of contact with each other. Few other industries can show such a remarkable record of practical cooperation, and no other industry can surpass it.
In the prewar days this practice and cooperation was in vogue on even an international scale. England, Russia, France, Holland and practically every country in Europe, excepting Germany, called upon the American market for tools with which to manufacture the implements of war. And these nations did not call in vain.
Trade conferences usually bring forth many constructive ideas, and invariably they bring about a far better understanding among the people identified with these conferences. We are sure that the second national wartime conference of the used machinery industry will produce an even better spirit of cooperation directly beneficial to the nation itself.
