[Film about WWII Industry 1943]

[Music] Listen. Do you hear it? That is time ticking away, disappearing into eternity, adding minutes, hours, days to all our yester years. Time lost is never found again. It goes like the wind, like the tides waiting for no men. [Music] Like electricity, time is of the moment only. It cannot be stored. Its energy is instantaneous. It must be used now or not at all. This very second will never come again. By losing present time, we lose all time. There is no other time than now. By time, all things are produced and judged. Production is man hours, man minutes, man seconds. They add up those seconds, those minutes, those hours. They add up to man days, man years, and men's lives. Men's lives. There's a responsibility. Men's lives hinging on production. Hinging on the right gun, the right tank, the right plane, the right ship, the right material being at the right place at the right time. There's a responsibility. Whose responsibility? The foundry mans, the riveters, the order clerks, the shipping clerks, the foremans, the draftsman, the machinists, bookkeepers, welders, typists, inspectors, managers, assemblers. Whose responsibility is it to get things done on time? Ask that of Bob Lockhart, why don't you? Bob Lockheart, Marine Private First Class, to whom time means nothing forever more. In Famascan, island of Madura, in the South Java Sea, who's responsibility? Ask that of Andy Fletcher, why don't you? Andy Fletcher, Chief Bosen's mate, for whom time ended at 119° 11 minutes 33 seconds east, 14° 21 minutes 40 seconds north. Ask the children of Mrs. Clark, why don't you? Paty and Tommy, three and six. You'll never know. 30 or 60 since bombers came out of the dawn. Whose responsibility? Whose responsibility is it anyhow? Surely someone has the answer. You over there. How about it? Whose responsibility is it, mister, to see that we win this fight? We got generals, ain't we? An admirals and an army and navy and air force marines, ain't we? Yes. Sure. We've got the men. All right. Fighting men, all of them. Of America, of Canada, Australia, Britain, China, the Netherlands, of all the United Nations. Millions of two-fisted men eager for battle. But bare fists won't win this war. Empty hands, empty stomachs, empty skies, empty oceans won't win this war. This is a war of machine guns, of rifles, of bullets, grenades. This is a war of jeeps and scout cars and halftracks, of anti-tank guns and trapno, of mortars and howitzers. This is a war of food stuffs, food for our fighting men, food for our allies, food for the homeront, food to feed lovers of liberty. This is a war of things like parachutes and life rafts, helmets and shoes, pup tents and shovels, and a thousand other items of supplies. This is a war of dive bombers, of long range bombers, of interceptors, of fighter planes and transport planes. This is a war of battleships, of cruisers, destroyers, carriers, mosquito boats and landing boats, of tankers and cargo ships and troop ships. This is a war of machines. This is a war of production. All out production for all out war production now this minute. This second to do the job that must be done. It's a job of speed and more speed and more speed. A job of using time now to fight time lost. Time lost. What becomes of it? What does it add up to? It adds up to this. It adds up to unmade ships and unmade planes, unmade tanks and unmade guns. A million plus necessities with which to fight and win this war. Unmade. It adds up to Batan and Corodor, Hong Kong and Singapore, Burma and Java and Greece and Holland and Belgium and Poland and France. It adds up to the children of Mrs. park the children and women of China, Malayaia, the Philippines, England, Denmark and Norway, the low countries, Latvia, Czechoslovakia. It adds up to Andy Fletcher, Chief Posen's mate, and the men on destroyers down in the China Sea, the men on the cruisers down in the Java Sea, the men on the freighters down in the North Sea. It adds up to Bob Lockheart, Marine Private First Class, and the men of Dunkerk and Small Yansk, Hchow and Palumbong, Luzan and Borneo. Wait a minute. Can you hear me? Yes. Who are you? Bob Lock, the fellow you've been talking about. There's something I want to tell you. I've been thinking. I've got plenty of time for that. You know, plenty. And I've been thinking of how it's the little things that add up. The little things that don't seem too important one by one, but add it all together mean defeat or victory. Like the nail, remember? For one of a nail, the shoe was lost. For one of a shoe, the horse was lost. For one of a horse, the rider was lost. For one of a rider, the battle was lost. Yep, that's how they add up. Those little lost things. Those little lost things like seconds and minutes. I saw a chart once when I was a Milham. And here's how it went. When 6 million workers lose one minute a day each, there's 100,000 productive hours lost in that single day. When 100,000 productive hours are lost in a single day, there have been 34 work years lost between sunrise and sunset. Between sunrise and sunset, you can win a war or lose a war between sunrise and sunset. A captain once told me that just one extra plane might swing the balance of power to victory. Think of all the extra planes that could be made from all the minutes that are lost between sunrise and sunset. Plenty, I'll bet you. Plenty. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. Maybe my number was up come what may. But I'd have sure liked it better if I could have knocked down that flying monkey from the sky before he got me. And I might have too, if only. If only. Well, it's kind of hard to know where to start exactly. You see, turning out this stuff for war is more than only one plants doing or one shop doing or one man's doing. It takes a lot of plants and a lot of shops and a lot of men and women all geared in together. All of them moving like clockwork. And no matter where a man or a woman works on the production line, in the accounting department, the clerical department, the estimating department, the drafting department, or anywhere else, each of their jobs has to dovetail perfectly if schedules are to be maintained. I suppose that where my number first started to be up was when Molly McGiver, a typist in the clerical department of a prime contractor, got a call from her boyfriend. Well, I don't see why you can't use Eddie McCracken's car. He's got a Zcard, hasn't he? And besides, how would I look all dressed up and going to a party on a bus? Well, all right, but if we've got to take a bus, we'll have to leave earlier, and that'll hardly give me any time at all to dress deep. Now, while Molly was fretting, her boss had received a rush order from Ordinance in Washington about changes to be made at once on a new AA gun that was destined for us. So, the boss called in Molly and dictated instructions to be airmailed that night to a subcontractor, giving specifications for immediate changes to be made in production. Typing those specifications took time. And remember, Molly had a big date for that night, so she rushed to get done and made lots of mistakes. Well, correcting mistakes that you make when you're careless just doubles the time that you'd spend being cautious. So, she added an hour to time lost already, and that caused more trouble. The order went air, but it missed the last pickup till later that evening, and that was too late for delivery next morning. See how it's growing? That snowball of lost time, and the bigger it gets, the more danger it had. But let's follow the order after it got to the factory. It arrived in the third mail at 2 in the afternoon. And though it was marked rush, the girl in the mail room thought otherwise. It just went in the pile with the rest of the stuff marked for Murdoch, the order clerk. Now Murdoch's okay, but he's Gabby. So along about 4:30, when he wasn't far off from that order marked rush, he thought of a story and had to go tell it to Sweeney. And that reminded Sweeney of a story. And then Murdoch told another. And before you knew it, 15 minutes had slipped away. By the time Murdoch got back to work again, it was 15 minutes closer to quitting time, and he was still 20 minutes of work away from that order marked rush. Guess what happened? Of course, it stayed on his desk until morning instead of reaching the shop superintendent in time for the night shift to start on. So, that was a second day long. No, a third because the night shift equals a day of work. And nobody seemed ever to think of the difference that even a minute can mean when you're fighting a