From the Richmond Times-Dispatch, 4/13/1942, p. 6, c. 5

Manufacturing Resources of Old Dominion to Be Used In Expansion of War Industries in the United States
By Harrison Blake
North American Newspaper Alliance

As the capacity of the industrial North to produce the implements of war reaches a point where further expansion is becoming increasingly difficult, the army and navy and the War Production Board are seeking to utilize more fully the less abundant manufacturing resources of the tobacco and cotton belts. This once easy-going, aristocratic capital of the Old Dominion is soon to be buzzing with activity.

The local ordnance office has just established a procurement planning section which will comb the State for unused facilities and, working with the WPB sub-regional office, will help in the conversion of these plants to war production.

In Virginia tobacco is king, and Richmond is the tobacco capital. The metals industries here have been concerned chiefly with the manufacture of machines and other products used in the tobacco factories. There were makers of machines for the making of cigaretts; a large firm whose product was tinfoil, and a division of the American Can Co. furnished the containers for the flat boxes of 50 and for pipe tobaccos. A good third of Richmond’s 18,000 industrial workers were the happy servants of this single industry.

No Let-Up in Leaf Work

There is no let-up in tobacco manufacture, but the attendant metals industries, dependent so largely on tin, lead and steel (“tin-foil” is made chiefly of lead), have to find other things to make – and are doing so.

Apart from a Hercules Powder Plant and the Solvay Process people (chemicals), the only “natural” war industry in Richmond is the century-old Tredegar Iron Works. During the War Between the States Tredegar was the arsenal of the Confederacy. In its rolling mills, driven by water power, it rolled the armor plate for the Merrimac, and in its foundries cast the cannon and projectiles for the Southern armies.

Today Tredegar is an important unit in the arsenal of democracy and devotes 75 per cent of its capacity to the manufacture of munitions for modern war. The other 25 per cent goes for railway equipment and horseshoes, both of importance in our new war economy.

Proof Projectiles Made Here

Tredegar, still using its old waterwheels for power, is making tens of thousands of proof projectiles for the army and the navy. A proof projectile is used for “proofing” guns, and extensively in the navy for target practice. It is a cast replica of the real thing, but costs far less. It reproduces exactly, as to dimensions, weight and center of gravity, the steel shots and shells used in actual combat.

Virginia industries have had a hard fight to get war contracts but now there are any examples in which energy and ingenuity have been rewarded. The firm that made cigarette-making machines is now making a a flash-hider for machine guns. A plastic concern whose product was fountain pens is about to take up finishing operations on die cast fuse parts and assemble fuses, and the Virginia Braid Company of Charlottesville, which used to weave braids for the drygoods trade, has an order for nearly 3,000,000 yards of parachute cord, worth $179,000.

The Richmond Engineering Company, which made welded fuel oil tanks and similar articles in heavy-gauge steel, is now welding tank hulls for the Baldwin Locomotive Company of Philadelphia. These hulls are bulk and heavy; transport of parts from Philadelphia and of the welded hulls back again is quite a problem but, as an officer in the ordnance office said, “We have to get the welding done where we can.” This is a good example of how the pressure of work in the North is providing work for the South.

[remainder of article goes on to laud other industries in Virginia and Richmond and was not transcribed – MDG]

• Prev
• Next