|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 18
"But there is much more than money in it," says the kind-faced woman
superintendent, as we step into her little office out of the noise, to
talk a little. "The girls are perfectly aware that they are 'doing their
bit,' that they are standing by their men in the trenches."
This testimony indeed is universal. There is patriotism in this grim
work, and affection, and a new and honourable self-consciousness. Girls
and women look up and smile as a visitor passes. They presume that he
or she is there for some useful purpose connected with the war, and
their expression seems to say: "Yes, we are all in it!--we know very
well what _we_ are doing, and what a difference we are making. Go
and tell our boys ..."
The interest of this workshop lay, of course, in the fact that it was a
sample of innumerable others, as quickly organised and as efficiently
worked, now spreading over the Midlands and the north. As to the main
works belonging to the same great firm, such things have been often
described; but one sees them to-day with new eyes, as part of a struggle
which is one with the very life of England. Acres and acres of ground
covered by huge workshops new and old, by interlacing railway lines and
moving trolleys. Gone is all the vast miscellaneous engineering work of
peace. The war has swallowed everything.
I have a vision of a great building, where huge naval guns are being
lowered from the annealing furnace above into the hardening oil-tank
below, or where in the depths of a great pit, with lights and men moving
at the bottom, I see as I stoop over the edge, a jacket being shrunk upon
another similar monster, hanging perpendicularly below me.
Close by are the forging-shops whence come the howitzers and the huge
naval shells. Watch the giant pincers that lift the red-hot ingots and
drop them into the stamping presses. Man directs; but one might think the
tools themselves intelligent, like those golden automata of old that
Heph�stus made, to run and wait upon the gods of Olympus. Down drops the
punch. There is a burst of flame, as though the molten steel rebelled, and
out comes the shell or the howitzer in the rough, nosed and hollowed, and
ready for the turning.
The men here are great, powerful fellows, blanched with heat and labour;
amid the flame and smoke of the forges one sees them as typical figures in
the national struggle, linked to those Dreadnoughts in the North Sea, and
to those lines in Flanders and Picardy where Britain holds her enemy at
bay. Everywhere the same intensity of effort, whether in the men or in
those directing them. And what delicate and responsible processes!
In the next shop, with its rows of shining guns, I stop to look at a great
gun apparently turning itself. No workman is visible for the moment. The
process goes on automatically, the bright steel emerging under the tool
that here, too, seems alive. Close to it is a man winding steel wire, or
rather braid, on a 15-inch gun; beyond again there are workmen and
inspectors testing and gauging another similar giant. Look down this
shining tube and watch the gauging, now with callipers, now with a rubber
device which takes the impression of the rifling and reveals any defect.
The gauging turns upon the ten-thousandth part of an inch, and any mistake
or flaw may mean the lives of men....
We turn out into a pale sunshine. The morning work is over, and the men
are trooping into the canteens for dinner--and we look in a moment to see
for ourselves how good a meal it is. At luncheon, afterwards, in the
Directors' Offices, I am able to talk with the leading citizens of the
great town.
One of them writes some careful notes for me. Their report of labour
conditions is excellent. "No organised strikes and few cessations of work
to report. Overtime is being freely worked. Little or no drunkenness, and
that at a time when the average earnings of many classes of workmen are
two or three times above the normal level. The methods introduced in the
twenty years before the war--conference and discussion--have practically
settled all difficulties between employers and employed, in these parts at
any rate, during this time of England's trial."
After luncheon we diverge to pay another all too brief visit to a
well-known firm. The managing director gives me some wonderful figures of
a new shell factory they are just putting up. It was begun in September,
1915. Since then 2,000 tons of steelwork has been erected, and 200 out of
1,200 machines required have been received and fixed. Four thousand to
5,000 hands will be ultimately employed.
All the actual production off the machines _will be done by women_--and
this, although the works are intended for a heavy class of shell,
60-pounder high explosive. Women are already showing their
capacity--helped by mechanical devices--to deal with this large type of
shell; and the workshop when in full working order is intended for an
output of a million shell per annum.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|