The Bright Side

FOR several months past there has been a growing feeling of uneasiness among some people in the aircraft industry as to what the future holds for them. Repeated announcements have made it clear that the front line military aircraft as we know it today is not likely to have much of a part to play, and this has been coupled with pronouncements by successive Ministers of Supply that some nationalization of the industry must be brought about, preferably by the selective placing of contracts. The industry has had a reputation for instability because of its immense expansions during two world wars, which were followed by violent contraction. The problems of administering such fluctuations are touched upon in this issue in a paper by E. J. BROSTER entitled ‘Productivity in the Wartime Aircraft Industry’, but it is to be hoped that the interest taken in this paper will be in its approach, for these problems were the product of war. War, although it brought this vast increase in the industry's size, has never been in its best interest, and the high proportion of the aircraft firms' capacity which has been devoted to military work has always seemed to us a danger. We therefore consider that the steady expansion of the industry since the postwar cut‐down, particularly on the civil side, accompanied by a change in the type of work called for in weapon production for the future, should be signs of an increasing stability.