MANUFACTURING HISTORY – A look back in time

POST-WAR RE-ADJUSTMENT: DREAMING OF AN ALL-AUSSIE CAR

It is now post-World War Two, and Laurence, worried about the re-adjustment of Australian industry, becomes convinced that he is one of the few in Australia who could perform the job of facilitating an Australian-made car.

During the later stages of the War, I began to worry about the huge post-war re-adjustment that would face Australia. Memories of the depression of the thirties were still very fresh in my mind, and I hadn't forgotten that swift “little depression” that hit nearly everyone-and knocked me out of my thriving little motor business-in 1922, only three years after the First World War. All the circumstances the experts had blamed for both depressions seemed likely to occur again when the Second World War was over. There would be a bit of a boom at first to fill the pent-up demand for goods, and then, I thought, would come the slump, and with it, financial chaos, and misery. I would walk through the munitions factories teeming with busy people turning out shells and torpedoes, aircraft and guns, and I'd find myself thinking, “What will they do for jobs when guns and bullets aren’t wanted anymore? How will this country find work for them? And for the hundreds of thousands now in the Services?” It would be necessary for industry to make a quick change-over from war to peace-time production. Houses, by scores of thousands, would be needed, and they would require fittings: stoves, baths, sinks, fans, furniture. That would absorb a lot of workers. The need for consumer-goods would provide employment for many more. But to give the economy stability, it would be necessary to keep busy the smaller factories then engaged in producing components for war requirements, and to attract great numbers of migrants to Australia after the war. Migrants who would provide that extra workforce for the big job of reconstruction and development - a great and new peace-time project would have to be started: a project that would employ many thousands directly, and give jobs to thousands more in ancillary industries. The project seemed obvious: a completely made-in-Australia car. Long before the war started, I had been convinced Australia should be making its own car. During the war I was even more convinced we would be risking a national economic disaster if we did not make it. And, perhaps presumptuously, I saw myself as one of the few in Australia who could get the job done. From an employment point of view, the making of motor-cars provides endless jobs. A car is like shoe-leather: both begin to wear out from the day they first hit the road. So there is scope for a big industry making replacement parts, which must go into operation almost as soon as the first cars come off the assembly-line. The experience our factories had gained during the war, and the equipment that had been put into them to enable the production of the machines and weapons of war simply had to be kept going on peace-time work when the war requirements had ended. A person trained in large-scale manufacturing looks at the finished items in quite a different light from the uninitiated. A visitor to a motor plant or munitions factory would see a truck or a car, a motor or a machine-gun coming off assembly-lines. The manufacturer would see those same items as so many component parts, each one turned, milled, pressed, cast, or forged to minute dimensions and tolerances. There is little difference, then, in the problems involved in manufacturing components into the parts that go into a machinegun, a sewing-machine-or a car!

Laurence’s dream would be fulfilled in 1948. A mere three years after the end of World War 2

During the war, GM-H factories, like scores of other manufacturing plants, learned new skills and achieved production targets that would not have been dreamed of before the war. Each plant, while contributing to the war effort, was giving invaluable experience to its staff which, if intelligent use were made of their skills after the war, would enable the plant to carry on and grow stronger in peace-time work. Knowing this, I automatically associated all the processes of munitions manufacture with the requirements of peace-time carmanufacture. The war had broadened and sophisticated the natural skills of the Australian technician. There would now be no technical shortcoming which could prevent or delay the all-Australian car. The Secondary Industries Commission had been set up by the Curtin Labour Government to investigate methods of ensuring a smooth transition of war industries to a peace-time basis. It hadn’t taken many sittings of the commission for its members to realise how important was the task they had tackled. And it did not surprise me that they had come very early to realise that car manufacture held the key to post-war economic stability. The climax to all this quiet planning of mine came in the early months of 1944 when J. K. Jensen, who had been appointed chairman of the Secondary Industries Commission in November 1943, said to me, “Look, L.J., I can see a nasty void ahead when the war is over. I believe it is absolutely essential that a car should be made in Australia. How are we going to do it?”

To be continued…