5.+The+Role+of+Industry

Tyler Deresky 10/20/08  Name: John Jacobs Job: News Reporter DOB: 3/12/1914 in Ohio Interests: I like to collect rocks and climb mountains ** The Role of Industry ** http://www.house.gov/forbes/images/images/chart3.jpg || The role of the industry is very important now after the Great Depression because America entered itself into World War II. World War II seems to be very good for the economy and for jobless families that lived in America. Arms and machines need to be built as quickly as possible for the military so people without jobs are now getting them fast. Automobile plants are being shutdown and within weeks tanks, planes, boats, and command cars are being built (Wilson 564). The automobile industry isn’t the only industry that has stopped working on their actual product. Factories across the United States have stopped making their goods and converted over to making goods for military needs (Bernanke 27). For example bedspread manufactures are noow making mosquito netting, soft-drink companies converted from filling bottles with liquid to now filling shells with explosives, and mechanical pencil producers are beginning to make bomb parts. Now in 1944, nearly 18 million people are laboring in war industries even with the draft. This is three times as many workers than in 1941 (Wilson 565). More than six million of these new workers are women. As many men are going out to war the women have started to fill in and work for military industries. Many businesses feared that women weren’t going to be able to work as well as the men but the women are proving them wrong and are becoming more popular to hire because their pay is only 60 percent of men’s pay (Wilson 565). Manufacturing output and employment is being transformed by the switch to a war economy. Military demands have stimulated the metalworking trades, vehicle production, aircraft manufacturing, and the chemical and petroleum industries (Addy 15). The industry is playing a key role in both getting the United States out of the Great Depression and helping produce war goods for World War II.  Works Cited Addy, J. __The Industrial Revolution__. Essex: Longman Group, 1976. Bernanke, Ben S. "Employment, Hours, and Earnings in the Depression: An Analysis of Eight Manufacturing Industries." //American Economic Review// 73 (1983). Wilson, Louis and Woloch, Nancy et al. __The Americans__. McDougal Little Inc. 1991.