Calculating Property Relations by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Human Geography, Business & Finance, Economics, Economic History
ISBN: 9780820350110
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 2016-11-01T04:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 6.1. Advertising War Department industrial facilities, 1947. Thirty-one government-owned plants are offered for lease.

Source: Washington Post, March 2, 1947, M5.

FIGURE 6.2. Steel plant advertisement, 1946. Like many others, the plancor in South Chicago operated by Republic Steel during the war is put up for sale by the War Assets Administration in 1946.

Source: New York Times, June 22, 1946, 10.

FIGURE 6.3. Plant Finder, 1948. The Plant Finder listed the surplus government-owned industrial plants that were available for sale to private industry.

Source: Plant Finder: A Buyers’ Guide (Washington, D.C.: War Assets Administration, February 1948).

The federal campaign for selling its industrial facilities was tied to the calculations manufacturers made about their company’s postwar development. With the winding down of wartime production and the reversion to peacetime conditions, industrialists reformulated their plans for the future. Many hoped that the combination of government regulation and private enterprise would kick-start a virtuous cycle of industrial growth. If this was the case, new factory space would be required, and one source of space was government war plants. In this spirit, the WAA worked to incorporate surplus factory space into the calculative thinking of industrial executives. To this end, the agency proclaimed that surplus defense factories would benefit both the state and industry: “Every Government-owned plant put to work by private business means new opportunities for profitable American enterprise and cuts the cost of your Government.”24 Federally owned industrial facilities were reframed as critical elements of industrial growth and private enterprise.

Despite its success disposing of the most saleable properties, the WAA had a much more difficult time selling more specialized factories. By late 1947 the problem had become serious, and the agency needed to find a new strategy. This was made clear when Jess Larson, the WAA administrator, told Congress that “the more marketable surplus real properties have been disposed of, leaving those properties that do not readily attract buyers.” The agency was forced to reevaluate its plans for disposing of the remaining plants, which involved reviewing what it knew about surplus factories, reassessing the plancor marketability, and rethinking disposal plans. To this end, a study of “the marketability of plants for their intended or for other uses” allowed the agency to revise the methods of disposal in the light of plant dismantling, scrambled facilities, and the national security clause.25 The rethinking and reorganization of what to do with difficult-to-sell factories led Larson to introduce new disposal methods.

The most successful was the use of auction companies. Lacking the appropriate expertise, the WAA turned to private enterprise to fill the gap. Desperate to dispose of factories, the agency looked to experienced auctioneers. In much the same way that mobilization agencies sought the expertise of industrial engineering companies to design, build, operate, and evaluate plancors, the WAA looked to the specialized skills of auctioneers to dispose of factories. Private auction houses had, among other things, “extensive facilities for promotion and market contact,” qualities that the agency lacked. The auction method was first tested on a Continental Motors plant in Garland, Texas, that had made tank engines.

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