SHEFFIELD LABOURS AND LOOKS FORWARD

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24901, 14 June 1946, Page 6

SHEFFIELD LABOURS AND LOOKS FORWARD

BRITISH STEP If-

[By JAMES LANSDALE HODSON ]

London, June 6.—England looked very lush jahd green on the dull day that I travelled north. By the time I was approaching Chesterfield the horizon was dirty silver and the canopy overhead blackish-grey, heavy with threatening rain, the colour of smoke. The landscape changed. There was a colliery on the right and from the yard, with its medley of waggons and locomotives, a dozen puffs of stwm and smoke arose in bursts, as though soundless explosions occurred. On my left were two small conical hills of pit refuse bearing straggling, thin vegetation; Mid a third slag heap was smoking in patches from a Are m the refuse, not yet out. I noted, as of old, patches of water lying red as rust, and small fields wherein stand huts built of odds and ends —evidence of this northern habit, formed in war time, of “making do.” We ran past scattered stacks of pig-iron billets, pale-brown m hue, like faggots of wood, brown touched with grey and blue. The furnace, with Its old grey sheet-metal-sides, had at midday half a dozen gold lights shining like infinitesimal stars, and from various pipes plumes of steam spurted. The darkness inside was suddenly broken by a flare fountain of pretty sparks. The iron mill had a new and mighty crane, big as those in the shipyards building leviathans. It is a grim pKice, this northern midlands, and there’s not much beauty to be found ip Sheffield, this city I was bound for, this city as famous for its steel as Essen was or Pittsburgh is; this famed steel that Chaucer knew (for he made a Canterbury Pilgrim carry a Sheffield whittle in his hose); this steel which has made the saying ‘right Sheffield” as good a mark of quality as «A 1 at Lloyds/’ No, not much beauty in Sheffield, but raciness of character and warmth of heart, and dry humour, the last exemplified by two furnacemen riding home in a tram. The seat was none too wide and the smaller man, having been edged off once or twice, looked up at his burly companion and said: “It’s a pity they don’t charge fares by weight.” The giant looked down and said slowly: •'Good job for thee they don’t. They’d never stop tram tq pick thee up.” I spent yesterday in an engineering shop I once visited soon after its roof was blown off in winter by the Luftwaffe, when the machinemen then carried on in sou’westers and oilskins. Even now the roofs not back to normal, and yrork goes on in perpetual electric light. Three or four hundred part-time women and married women whose husbands have returned from the war have now' departed in the post-war reshuffle and men from the war afe coming baqk. One who worked on the bench and became a naval engineer officer is now ip the drawing office; a major from the Army has become a safety-device officer and hasn’t yet lost the habit of writing reports to his superiors. The Answer is Output This engineering works, with 1300 people, has well over a million pounds worth of orders, and these people who never put in less than 53 hours a week during six years of war are hard at it. The output is rising and is

probably SO per cent, of what it was al its best. So the works manager told me. He thought this rising curv, pretty general in engineering. But I could personally understand the ris* being slow, with food rather worst bread rationing looming up, cigarettj scarcer, and income tax eased but little.. The works manager spoke ■ the foremen and the men in growth Di 4 they agree that the pre-wt standaid of living was too low? fig they realise Britain had lost moZ '£500.000,000 sterling a year in oversea dividends now gone forever—capital spent in paying for the w«r> Did they want to ensure the suecesi of new measures for better educatS better health and medical servicw more social security? And if so, how was it ail to be done except by hrh-v output? The workshop committee, on which sit the management and men’s lesdeix shop stewards, sports assoeiatidJ drama society—these are part of ths modern industrial set-up. “• The New Sheffield At least one new factory is bain* built to produce cutlery on somethb--nearer mass-production than ShetHeU has known hitherto—a factory to em ’ ploy 1000 hands. And one or 12» heavy steel firms are wondering how they’re to find space to extend, H flier wish to, for the existing Sheffield never planned, and the railways uZ canals and rows of houses often hem work in? Maybe the plan for Sheffield will help this plan, to bring soru beauty and order into the city Bien spurred on by the blitz which has 13J parts of the town in ruins like ancient Rome. The first steps to give statutan authority to the plan are just bS» taken, and concurrent with that ’liav hope by the month’s end to haw i® . temporary houses finished, and by flu year’s end 1000 permanent ones, soim of which will certainly be carried the site in sections and hoisted into position in chunks, more or less e Kaiser built ships in the U.S.A. But those 1500 are but a morsel if th» need: 14.000 names are on the waiting lists; 36,000 houses are planned Fin* things are being done. Of 2000 acre, for housing, 600 acres are devoted S schools; so there’ll be lots of oa»' space. Sheffield has its lively minds—cm for example, controlling the libraries' which are striving to teach children about to leave school how to use those tools of knowledge, books, and eSbee. ially how to use the central library with its commercial and U-chr.ioti departments, in addition to its tending and reference sections. Children are Shown over that library and taught how to use catalogues, how to find what they want, how to use encyclopedias, various dictionaries, year books and almanacs, and the wealth of the 530 reference books that lie an open shelves. Meanwhile Sheffield goes on, with' its slogging, hard work, furnace, flaring, myriad chimneys polluting tte air, steel and rails and engineering goods. And thoughtful citizens km and there ask if the Government not decentralise some of its departments and send them to the city te help increase the middle-elasa a which Sheffield’s a trifle short