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What the War is Doing to Us1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
Extract
There is by this time quite a literature on the war economy. With the one exception of the recent symposium by Professor Steiner and his associates, most of whom are connected with the University of Indiana, all of the longer treatises on the subject discuss the war economy in abstract terms or on the basis of the experience of the First World War. These treatises served a useful purpose and were the only books on the economies of war which could be written at the time; but they now seem unreal, because this war differs so greatly from the prior struggle. The University of Indiana book, dealing as it does with concrete problems of present war, is up-to-the-minute and excellently done in all respects. It does not attempt, however, to do what I am venturing: a brief, overall picture of what the war has been doing to the United States.
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- Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1943
References
2 Steiner, George E. (Ed.). Economic Problems of War (New York, 1943)Google Scholar.
3 In the year following Pearl Harbor, actual disbursements for war purposes totalled 46 billion dollars, but more than 15 billion dollars was expended in the 18 months of defense preparation which preceded the attack of the Axis Powers on the United States.
4 Steiner, , op. cit., Chapter 13, p. 6Google Scholar.
5 Estimates of the Bureau of the Census.
6 The Census Bureau has estimated that New York State has lost a half million in population since 1940. Losses in population have also occurred in most of the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain States. In contrast, great gains have been registered in Michigan, California, Texas, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Washington.
7 In all manufacturing industries, average hours of labor are now around 43 hours per week, but the average in war industries is considerably higher, in many of them exceeding 48 hours per week. The short hours in non-war industries, which bring down the average, are, in part, attributable to shortage of materials and Government restrictions.
8 See Black, John D., Parity, Parity, Parity (New York, 1942)Google Scholar.
9 President Roosevelt recently reported to Congress that non-war expenditures have been reduced by more than 35 per cent since 1940. This is mainly the result of reduced W.P.A. and other emergency expenditures.