GLOW & SHADOW

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 September 1942, Page 4

GLOW & SHADOW

IN BRITISH WAR FACTORIES WORK THAT NEVER CEASES. SPLENDID BACKING FOR MEN AT FRONT. LONDON, May 29. In the furnace room of a gun and armour works somewhere in Britain I have been watching the smelting of steel that would eventually emerge from the factory in the form of antiaircraft and land guns, or warship and tank armour. High pressure flames leapt from round the edges of the smelter doors. Vast complex fur-nace-charging machines moved noisily about. Flitting in the glow, the faces of the workmen were alternatively shadowed and unreally aglow. Twenty-four hours a day for seven days a week those furnace rooms—replicas of innumerable others in Britain today —present this scene, and outputs are mounting. Security reasons forbid giving actual production figures, but here is a comparative table that was worked out for me by the managing director of this firm: If we represent this factory’s output for 1939 by the figure 4?, the figure for 1940 will be 64, and for 1941 nearly 10. To date in 1942 there has been a 20 per cent increase on that rate of progress. Many of the men in this factory work 72 hours a week as hard as they do in Russia I don’t doubt,” as one of them put it. A turner who was finishing the muzzleend swell of a 14-inch naval gun told me he had not had a free week-end for months. Others spoke of working every Sunday for nearly two years. They have constantly to adapt themselves to the changing needs of war. In this factory a shop for making deck and other naval armour plates weighing from half a ton to forty tons, now makes tank armour plates weighing only a pound or two. This means that the cranes, originally installed for heavy stuff, are now lifting innumerable lighter loads a great increase of work for the men. The best steel smelting sand used to come from Belgium, but with the German occupation of that country supplies, of course, have ceased .and local sands have to be used. This sand s little “body” makes for harder labour in such tasks as repairing furnace floors. The war scarcity of alloys has called for much modification of treatments. As a precaution against the escape of the betraying furnace glare in the blackout, the entrances to some sheds have tunnel extensions of galvanised iron. Roofs previously open are now. kept closed with a consequent increase of heat and lack of ventilation. In one of these sheds I saw drophammer men making the initial stamping out of 3.7 anti-aircraft guns at the rate of twelve in 24 hours. The pre-war daily rate was about two. The men earn good money. Peace time bonuses at this factory averaged 25 per cent above wages. In 1940 under the first pressure of war work they were 44 per cent.; this year they are 54 per cent. But with income tax. rationing, highly taxed goods, and limitation of supplies the value of the high earnings are greatly reduced. There is little or no absenteeism. The products of their labour being so intimately related to the actual business of fighting, the men have a sharp awareness of the vital importance of their work.

A fitter working on a heavy howitzer told me that if a man takes a day off others “make a song about it, like you never heard.” Many of the smaller parts of guns

are completed by women. Some seem little more than school girls. All make excellent machine-minders. They boast that they can beat most of the men. All these workers dislike propaganda of the “go to it” type. “We don’t need to be urged to go to it,” I was vehemently told. Our men at the front all over the world want the stuff we are making. We know without being told what’ll darn well happen if we don’t give it ’em.”