CHEERFUL CAVEMEN

Opotiki News, Volume X, Issue 1041, 28 October 1947, Page 3

CHEERFUL CAVEMEN

WORK UNDER MOUNTAINS BETTER THAN OUTSIDE FACTORIES Factories in Sweden employing thousands of workmen have gone underground, where they were burrowed deep into granite mountains when a German onslaught was expected. And, surprisingly, it lias been discovered that they pay. Industrialists now declare that any new factories they plan may well go underground for reasons of efficiency and economy. Maintenance costs are low- there Js no exterior painting no roof repairing, no window washing. Except in tiie most extreme winter weather the temperature is constant and no heating is required. 1 visited the underground fae tory of tie Bolimlei-Munktell plant m central Sweden where 5,999

workers arc employed, writes Ralph Wallace in the “Washington Post.” They make agricultural machinery, Diesel engines, and toolst. Our ear deposited us before an innocentlooking farmhouse at the foot of a hill. But when the hinged walls of the house swung open like garage doors, a passageway lay before us wide and high enough to admit the biggest trucks. inside the factory I rubbed n:y eyes in astonishment. Above lay forty to eighty feet of rock, yet huge rooms stretched into the heart, of the hill, Workers swarmed around lathes; overhead cranes ambled along the ceiling; nearby, the bellow of aeroplane engines under test was muted to a whisper by the sound-absorbing walls. The whole

plant had been blasted from solid granite and 'completely equipped in less Ilian two years. The ceiling, dynamited into a Gothic arch, is so strong that no pillars are necessary. Two air inlets, cut through to the top of the hill,, shut instantly at the’ pressure o F a button; engineers believe that lead baffle plates, placed in the inlets, would absorb radioactive particles from any atomic bomo bursting nearby and give safety. The workers expressed a decided preference for cave factories. “The air is always pure, always flic same temperature, and draught-less,” one man said. “I used to get colds every winter —now 1 never have them.” A foreman told me that tests had proved that workers’ eyesight was actually better in the caves because of lack of sun glare. Swedish experience is that underground working makes for economy and efficiency, while conditions ail exceptionally cheerful.