TOO MUCH RED TAPE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXVII, Issue 68, 20 July 1915, Page 4

TOO MUCH RED TAPE.

Discussing tlio shortage of shells, London Truth lately remarked on the extraordinary lack of efficiency apparent in the organisation of industrial services. “Some two or three months ago.” it says, “the Local Government Board, through its inspectors. was making a careful census of municipal employees throughout the country with a view to discovering how many of them were capable of being employed on armament work. The result was that twenty or thirty thousand skilled metal workers were found to be available, and a list of their names and addresses was prepared and handed over to the War,

Office. The list was handed in about six weeks ago. but no appreciable re-

sult has followed, a hundred or two men at 'the outside having been recruited from the list for armament work. One would have imagined that the business committee with the pushful and goful Mr Bootli at its head would have promptly drawn directly upon this vast reserve of disciplined and capable labour. But instead of choosing the simple way. another department was called in and the Board of Trade Labour Exchange was entrusted with the job. The Labour Exchange method was to invite the metal workers to register their names in its books. The municipal employees already in secure berths naturally objected to enter themselves as out-of-works anxious for a job, so they simply ignored the invitation. Experts will no doubt be able to calculate what the loss of a month’s labour of 20,000 men is likely to be. But anybody can see that it is enormous and this loss ap-

pears to he entirely due to a desire to find a job for the Labour Exchange, in order that it may appear to he doing its ‘bit’ for the country. The men had' been found and w«re willing to do what was required of them, but red tape decreed that thev would onlv be permitted to serve the ;• country at the loss of their self-respect.”