THE MEN WHO FIGHT FAMINE

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 249, 9 July 1918, Page 6

THE MEN WHO FIGHT FAMINE

* . WITH THE ABMY OF RIVETERS. (By Alexander M. Thompson, in the "Doily Mail.") Mr. Hugh Laing, who lately wrote Lie praise of the Bhipyard workers to "The Times," told me to-day, in reference tc Lord Pirrie's further calls upon the exertions of the men, that "the limit ol shipbuilding output is the capacity ol tho riveters." That is ovidently the ultimate truth of the problem. To defeat the German submarine pirates: we depend upon all sections of tho shipyard workers. Every man is essential—carpenters, platers, caulkers, smiths, engineers. But of all the crafts eugaged in the great common enterprise the riveters are probably the most scarce, and their highly skilled labour is absolutely closed to dilution, The ship's rivets are fixed by squads of four; there is a right-hand wielder oi the hammer, a left-hand man (there it especial scarcity of lim), the holder-up, who acts as invil at the other side of the plate, and the grimy juvenile Prometheus, or heater-boy, who carries and stokes the portablo basket of fire, blows the bellows, and heats tho rivets. Ac these ore wanted he hauls out the redhot, spluttering metal with a pair of tongs and flings it with a fine recklessness among the legs of his superiors. The startled bystander thereupon pricks up his ears for languoge of corresponding temperature, but the men, as unperturbed as if firo wore their native clement, swiftly snatch the blazing rivel to its place, and then begins an amazing danco of hammors, a rhythmic quicktime two-step, a measured and precise oriss-croBS banging and clanging, with fierce pyrotechnic illumination of showering iparks from the angry battered point of fire. How the riveters miss hitting each other with tho swiftly whirling hammers: is a wou-der. How they osfoid being blinded by the sparks and flashes ol red-hot metal is a mystery. I know that they do catch bits of fire-dust in their «ycs, for it happened to one man wliilc J. watched. The pain must.have been intense, but he took it \as a commonplace incident of the day's work. -Tho men stand under the keels of ships witli backs bent to hammer rivets above their heads. The draught along the tunnel of the "berth" is intensely chilling, and "colds on the top of colds ' aro a chronic feature of tho job. Othei men, the' holders-up, He /in cramped positions in narrow manholes inside the ship, with hammers tightly held between tho feet, resisting tho pressure ot the outside hammers with tense strait . of arms and shoulders. I am told of squads which can _ knock . down" 700 rivets between six in morning and five in the afternoon. Each i man gives an average of -10 "bals to ■ each rivet. That makes 28,000 strokes ol , tho hummer'in tho day, and the holder- . up endures 50,000. Other squads only . manage 100. In the case of the heavy [ 1 Jin. rivets 220 a day is considered a hnc performance. , When tho dny is done the men can [ scarcely stand up straight. "My arm is I so sore at nigtit," says one umii. that i I can hardly wash myself. Yet when • asked in an emergency to continue worn throo nights a week till nine o clock, a s •shipbuilder tolls me, not ono man refused or grumbled. "But," added their employer sympathetically, "there s not , much left, in a man after'six o clock, f "Slacking?" disgustedly protested one c rivefor, "with half a pound of meat a week—when we've time to get. it! Oui only Blacking's in the belly-band." iii sonio of the yards much of the riveting is dono by compressed air pressure. A shipbuilder assured mo that this process saved a third of tho time and employed one man less per squad, i Another considered this estimate exag"crated, but thought tho saving fairly 6 represented by tho fact that the adoption of pneumatic hammering evolved f three squads out of two. A tnird ship- '• builder had tried compressed air and discarded it as too costly. Hut riveters are scarce, and the life ol tho nutioii depends on riveting; one imagines tha n this is scarcely a matter in which oosl counts.