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Forget 'What are your strengths and weaknesses?' If you want to get the real dope on prospective employees, ask job candidates these seven questions.
We’re finally at the point where Time Warner (TWX) is going to spin off AOL, which was originally the acquired in one of the most ill-conceived merger deals of all time. And now what happens? Comcast (CMSA) decides that it isn’t satisfied with creating a trend of increasing share prices. No, it sees a vacuum [...]
Hang onto this essential checklist, so you’ll know what to do when the time comes.
Chronicle file photoThe Continental Motor Co.'s peak employment during World War II reached 9,000 in 1944. The plant manufactured automobile, tank and aircraft engines for the war effort.When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called upon the nation and its communities to step it up to confront the threat of World War II, Muskegon marched into the front ranks.
In one of his famous “fireside chats” to the American people, President Roosevelt on Dec. 29, 1940, warned that the Second World War, then raging across Europe, could soon engulf the United States:
“The Nazi masters of Germany have made it clear that they intend not only to dominate all life and thought in their own country, but also to enslave the whole of Europe, and then to use the resources of Europe to dominate the rest of the world. … Never before since Jamestown and Plymouth Rock has our American civilization been in such danger as now.”
In order to prepare for the forthcoming ordeal, and in order to help its friends in the fight, chief among them Great Britain, America would need gear up production of war materiel and other vital manufacturing needs in order to prevent a Nazi takeover that could threaten our liberty.
To do so would require a greater effort than ever before.
“We must be the great arsenal of democracy,” Roosevelt said. “For us this is an emergency as serious as war itself. We must apply ourselves to our task with the same resolution, the same sense of urgency, the same spirit of patriotism and sacrifice, as we would show were we at war.”
Within a year’s time, America was not only at war with Nazi Germany and its ally Italy, but with the Japanese Empire, which would storm across the islands of the Pacific Ocean following their Dec. 7, 1941, attack on the Pearl Harbor Naval Base in Hawaii.
Cities across the United States took up the president’s challenge, but few met it with the enthusiasm and energy of Muskegon.
Muskegon, with its pre-war industrial strength just picking up again following the decadelong economic doldrums of the Great Depression, was poised to do its best.
When war and rumors of war spread in 1940 and 1941, civilian factories in Muskegon, like Continental Motors (later Teledyne and now L3 Communications), already were gearing up for the inevitable shift to war production.
Six months before Pearl Harbor and America’s entry into the war, Continental’s labor force had tripled to 3,250. A year later, the factory was planning to double its workforce again. Peak employment in 1944 reached 9,000 at Continental alone.
The war-fed prosperity spread to the rest of Muskegon’s supplier network. Sealed Power, Norge, Muskegon Piston Ring, CWC, Lakey and many smaller foundries boomed. Bearing manufacturer Kaydon was born in 1941 and grew quickly on the strength of war contracts.
Industrial orders were pouring in, but president C.J. “Jack” Rowe and his Continental team were up to the task: $11.4 million for automobile engines for the government; 6,000 new tank engines for the British. Later, Continental would build a new aircraft engine plant to beef up a production line that had already delivered high-powered performers like the Rolls Royce Merlin liquid-cooled engines for the Spitfire, the British fighter that won the Battle of Britain.
To man the enormous increase in factory and manufacturing output, recruiters roamed far and wide to bring in workers to pour the gray iron, make the molds and tool the machines of war.
One of these efforts resulted in the “Magnesia Connection” that saw poor Southern whites and minorities brought in by the trainload from the foothills of Kentucky and Tennessee, and from black-majority towns like Magnolia, Ark., and Highpoint, N.C. These tough, hardy workers came by the thousands and many stayed on as Muskegon’s minority population increased sevenfold by the end of the war.
Everyone did their part to help the war effort since just about everyone had a loved one or friend in the service. With access to peacetime luxuries severely restricted due to shortages, many did without, or substituted inferior goods for the real thing. “Meatless Thursdays” and “Victory Gardens” quickly became part of the lexicon.
At the same time, scrap drives for the military were cheerfully and enthusiastically carried out. Muskegon Chronicle headlines boasted of the collection of steel, paper, copper, aluminum and other metals. One scrap rubber drive filled 30 freight cars.
Defense bonds to fund the war were sold here by the millions. Baby bottle nipples were donated for use in Signal Corps radio sets. Leftover cooking fat was donated for making the glycerin used in explosives. Spare sweaters and old clothing were turned into blankets and other warm goods “for the boys.”
Our area’s production was so prestigious that Muskegon was the very first city in the nation to be honored with the presentation of the prestigious “M” flag (for “manufacturing”) by the War Manpower Commission. That presentation was made the week after D-Day, on June 11, 1944.
Muskegon also was honored by having a ship named after it, the USS Muskegon, a patrol frigate whose duty station was the mid-Atlantic until the end of the war.
World War II was a terrible struggle, but the war was won by the United States and its allies because of the support of communities like Muskegon County and especially the city of Muskegon.
The public debate over the future of fire services in the metropoli