Abstract

The Reconversion Problems of Small Business

In the early stages of the war there developed a tendency to concentrate war purchasing and procurement in the hands of the U.S. giant mass-production industrial institutions in an effort to speed up war production. When that tendency was observed, a campaign was undertaken by several of the agencies of government to spread the work. Over a million subcontracts resulted, some of them fanning out from the prime contractor into a series of successive tiers of subcontractors. The U.S. war production today is bound up in a network of contracts and subcontracts reaching into every corner of the land and affecting over 70,000 plants. Unless properly safeguarded, mass cancellations on termination of the war would not only create confusion lad delay but might freeze the capital funds of many thousands of these plants.