Manawatu Evening Standard. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 17, 1940 THE SUPPLY MINISTRY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 118, 17 April 1940, Page 6

Manawatu Evening Standard. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 17, 1940 THE SUPPLY MINISTRY.

The colossal task undertaken by tlie British Ministry of Supply in equipping thousands of civilians as soldiers and navymen and maintaining them on active service, as outlined by the Minister in charge of the Department (Dr Burgin), has revealed a phase of the nation’s war effort upon which little light has been shed. True, the people have been well informed of the preparedness of the great war machine, but even the information about, the tremendous factory output that has been achieved in providing equipment, munitions, and arms does not convey an adequate idea of the enormous strain that was placed on industry to enable such production to proceed so rapidly. The adaptability of the nation’s industry—backed by the fine spirit shown by employers and artisans alike —has made possible a transformation that is producing a telling effect in the war effort, a transformation that is being perfected to the highest degree and which in the end will be largely responsible for victory. In the production of war needs on a mammoth scale the task is one beyond the ordinary scope of skilled labour. The highest quality of workmanship is essential in every unit of production needed in wartime, particularly in armaments, in which precision of manufacture may mean life or death to the men using them. To turn out thousands of guns, millions of rounds of ammunition or shells, - torpedoes and mines in large quantities, steel helmets and the like, and in the shortest space of time possible, calls for the employment of many semiskilled and unskilled men and women, and the key to this subject lies in the tool-making trade, to which Dr Burgin has made appropriate reference. In the past large quantities of machine tools have been obtained from the United States and Germany. The latter source, of course,, was closed by the outbreak of hostilities; the supplies from the United States were increased, but not at a rate adequate to cope with Britain’s needs. In the early days of the war the jig and small toolmaking - capacity of the country was subjected to the utmost strain; the highly skilled craftsmen who made not the actual armaments but the equipment for their fabrication worked all hours available with a splendid spirit and will. But until the equipment came out of their hands in the toolroom the main machineshops of the various plants could not get going, and all the men and women machine operators whose' work is ancillary to the actual machining appeared _ in the unemployment statistics. Now the equipment is ready in large quantities and units calling for The most careful manufacture are flowing out of the factories in mass production on a scale

that must be the envy of an enemy who is faced with the additional problem of supplies of raw materials, a matter which is of a great deal less concern to the Allies. It is this achievement of the key industry of toolmaking that has enabled Britain, in a measure perhaps not yet fully appreciated, to place in the field, on the seas, and in the air her great power to free the world from Nazi barbarism. The skill of the best artisans has been multiplied thousands of times by the transmitting of it to the machine tended by the semi-skilled or unskilled worker. The men who made such a transformation possible are serving The nation no less valuably than any other.