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Page 23
Some day, perhaps, this "new industry"--as our ancestors talked of a "new
learning"--this swift, astonishing development of industrial faculty among
our people, especially among our women, will bear other and rich fruit for
England under a cleared sky. It is impossible that it should pass by
without effect, profound effect upon our national life. But at present it
has one meaning and one only--_war_!
Talk to these girls and women. This woman has lost her son--that one her
husband. This one has a brother home on leave, and is rejoicing in the
return of her husband from the trenches, as a skilled man, indispensable
in the shop; another has friends in the places and among the people which
suffered in the last Zeppelin raid. She speaks of it with tight lips. Was
it she who chalked the inscription found by the Lady Superintendent on a
lathe some nights ago--"_Done fourteen to-day. Beat that if you can, you
devils_!"
No!--under this fast-spreading industry, with its suggestion of good
management and high wages, there is the beat of no ordinary impulse. Some
feel it much more than others; but, says the clever and kindly
Superintendent I have already quoted: "The majority are very decidedly
working from the point of view of doing something for their country.... A
great many of the fuse women are earning for the first time.... The more I
see of them all, the better I like them." And then follow some interesting
comments on the relation of the more educated and refined women among them
to the skilled mechanics--two national types that have perhaps never met
in such close working contact before. One's thoughts begin to follow out
some of the possible social results of this national movement.
[Illustration: A Forest of Shells in a Corner of One of England's Great
Shell Filling Factories.]
[Illustration: A Light Railway Bringing Up Ammunition.]
II
But now the Midlands and the Yorkshire towns are behind me. The train
hurries on through a sunny afternoon, and I look through some notes sent
me by an expert in the great campaign. Some of them represent its humours.
Here is a perfectly true story, which shows an Englishman with "a move
on," not unworthy of your side of the water.
A father and son, both men of tremendous energy, were the chiefs of a very
large factory, which had been already extensively added to. The father
lived in a house alongside the works. One day business took him into the
neighbouring county, whilst the son came up to London on munition work. On
the father's return he was astonished to see a furniture van removing the
contents of his house. The son emerged. He had already signed a contract
for a new factory on the site of his father's house; the materials of the
house were sold and the furniture half gone. After a first start, the
father took it in true Yorkshire fashion--wasting no words, and
apparently proud of his son!
Here we are at last, in the true north--crossing a river, with a climbing
town beyond, its tiled roofs wreathed in smoke, through which the
afternoon lights are playing. I am carried off to a friend's house. Some
directors of the great works I am come to see look in to make a kindly
plan for the morrow, and in the evening, I find myself sitting next one of
the most illustrious of modern inventors, with that touch of _dream_ in
manner and look which so often goes with scientific discovery. The
invention of this gentle and courteous man has affected every vessel of
any size afloat, whether for war or trade, and the whole electrical
development of the world. The fact was to be driven home even to my
feminine ignorance of mechanics when, a fortnight later, the captain of a
Flag-ship and I were hanging over the huge shaft leading down to the
engine-rooms of the Super-dreadnought, and my companion was explaining to
me something of the driving power of the ship. But on this first meeting,
how much I might have asked of the kind, great man beside me, and was too
preoccupied to ask! May the opportunity be retrieved some day! My head was
really full of the overwhelming facts, whether of labour or of output,
relating to this world-famous place, which were being discussed around me.
I do not name the place, because the banishment of names, whether of
persons or places, has been part of the plan of these articles. But one
can no more disguise it by writing round it than one could disguise
Windsor Castle by any description that was not ridiculous. Many a German
officer has walked through these works, I imagine, before the war, smoking
the cigarette of peace with their Directors, and inwardly ruminating
strange thoughts. If any such comes across these few lines, what I have
written will, I think, do England no harm.
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