Progress Report

In his third quarterly report on defense this week, Mobilization Boss Charles E. Wilson let drop some bad news. The rearmament program is lagging so badly that the peak in expenditures, originally scheduled for next July, will not be reached until October, 1952. Most of the lag, said Wilson, has been caused by temporary bottlenecks in fabrication and assembly, not by manpower or raw materials shortages. In the last three months, he estimated, deliveries of military goods rose by one-third to $5 billion. Wilson expects them to double within the next year.

Nevertheless, overall expansion of the economy to take care of the arms burden is having its troubles. Some $631 million of new steel plants have been put in place, or one-third of the planned steel expansion--but so far the rise has come largely in finished steel plants, not the more urgently needed blast-furnace capacity. The electric-power industry, with $2 billion of new capacity installed, is still only one-third of the way to its goal. The $500 million planned expansion of the aluminum industry, dependent on more electric power, is only 14% complete.

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