Forget Holiday Sales -- Struggling Retailers May Turn to Defense Contracts to Keep From Going Under

By Nick Turse, Tomdispatch.com. Posted December 16, 2008.

A top player in lethal technologies back then, Whirlpool is now among the tiniest defense contractors. While, in recent years, the company has ignored requests for information from TomDispatch.com on their dealings with the Pentagon, records indicate that last year, for example, it received just over $105,000 from the Department of Defense, most of which apparently went towards the purchase of kitchen appliances and household furnishings.

Similarly, Whirlpool's predecessor in the flechette game, International Harvester, is now Navistar International Corporation. Navistar Defense, a division of the company, remains one of the Pentagon's stealth "billion dollar babies." But while it did more than $1 billion in business with the DoD last year, Navistar appears to have been building vehicles for the Pentagon, not creating anti-personnel weaponry. There are, however, companies that can't seem to say goodbye to lethal technologies.

National Presto Industries

National Presto Industries traces its history to the 1905 founding of the Northwestern Iron and Steel Works in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, according to the Business & Company Resource Center. By 1908, the company was making industrial steam pressure cookers and, in 1915, began making models for home use. On the eve of the U.S. entry into World War II, the company entered the arms game when it scored a multi-million dollar contract to produce artillery fuses. Even with that deal in hand, it was reportedly on the verge of bankruptcy when its new president, Lewis Phillips, landed a series of other lucrative military contracts.

In the early years of the Cold War, about the time Whirlpool was getting into the flechette business, National Presto Industries had just introduced "a revolutionary new concept in electric cooking… a complete line of fully immersible electric cooking appliances employing a removable heat control" -- and was about to launch "the world's first automatic, submersible stainless steel coffee maker." The company was also still churning out war materiel.

In 1953, National Presto announced plans to build a multi-million dollar plant to produce 105mm artillery shells. In 1955, it was awarded millions to make howitzer shells for the Army, and the next year, millions from the Air Force for fighter-bomber parts. By 1958, company President Lewis Phillips would declare, "The future of this company in Eau Claire and hence the security of our jobs here is now almost wholly dependent upon defense contracts awarded by the U.S. Government." When the Army cancelled its contracts with Presto in 1959, Phillips lamented, "With little or no notice, this Government decision has forced us completely out of the manufacturing business here in Eau Claire."

The tough times didn't last. Soon enough, National Presto returned to the fray, benefiting from the disastrous American war in Vietnam. From 1966 to 1975, the company manufactured more than two million eight-inch howitzer shells and more than 92 million 105mm artillery shells. In Vietnam, 105mm shells would kill or maim untold numbers of civilians, but it was a boom time for National Presto, which took in at least $163 million in Pentagon contracts in 1970-1971 alone for artillery shell parts. Finally shuttered in 1980, the company defense plant was kept on government "stand-by" into the 1990s, a sweetheart deal that earned Presto $2.5 million annually for producing nothing at all.

As the Vietnam War wound down, National Presto turned back to the civilian market with a series of new kitchen gadgets: in 1974, the PrestoBurger, an electric, single-serving fast broiler for hamburgers; in 1975, the Hot Dogger; and in 1976, the Fry Baby deep fat fryer. In 1988, the company introduced its wildly popular SaladShooter, followed in 1991 by its Tater Twister potato peeler. When sales of its SaladShooters, corn poppers, pressure cookers, deep fryers, and griddles became sluggish, however, weaponry again proved a savior.

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Nick Turse is the associate editor and research director of Tomdispatch.com. His first book, The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives, an exploration of the new military-corporate complex in America, was recently published by Metropolitan Books. His website is Nick Turse.com.

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