H.~lla

emphasis placed on the postponement of men engaged in fire brigades, hospitals, and other industries and services of particular importance in preparation for defence or in emergency. Reducing Yields from Later Ballots. —The combination of decreasing fitness, increasing appeals and an increasing proportion of appellants postponed from service, has led to a rapid decrease in the yield of men to the forces from each 100 men called up. The following figures show the trend :—

* These figures do not, of course, contain any allowance for wastages, time-lags, discharges from camp, the use of Grade II men, or other marginal factors, and so cannot be taken as a true indication of the yields actually made available from each ballot. They do, however, show the trends of those yields. Significance of the above Ballots.—lt would be entirely incorrect to imagine that, because the calling-up of men has'now been completed (except for the periodic calling-up of the inflow at the youngest age), the country has been drained of all its resources of man-power within the military ages. Far from it. Each ballot which has been gazetted has merely brought a further body of men before Medical Boards and Appeal Boards, so that only those who are fit and available at the time are actually posted to camp. As the ballots have proceeded into the older and more responsible classes of men, a greater and greater proportion have flowed into the classes of (i) unfit men called by ballot, and (ii) fit men postponed from service. From 400,000 men who were of military age when the war started, or have since attained that age, 160,000 have been withdrawn, but 240,000 remain. The progressive reduction which has been found to occur in the proportion found fit is not necessarily a disadvantage to the war effort as a whole. Its real significance is that an increasing proportion of the men called for service pass to Man-power Officers for direction where necessary into essential work, instead of to Area Staff Officers for posting to camp. This important fact has often been lost sight of in discussions regarding the effects on industry of holding ballots. Particular mention should be made iti this connection of the last ballot in which married men (with children) aged forty-one to forty-five were called up. Not only has this ballot resulted in these men being medically classified and the examination of their availability for service put in train (a precaution which may yet turn out to have been of great importance), but also they have through the same machinery been brought under examination as regards the essentiality of their work, thus avoiding a special registration merely for this purpose. (See next section of this report.) 13. THE INTRODUCTION OF INDUSTRIAL MOBILIZATION As mentioned earlier, the problems arising from the circulation and enticement of labour in the industrial field were being studied for several months prior to the change in the situation in December, 1941, and the general outlines of the new measures of control as they have since developed had already been recommended in two reports dated 10th September and 28th November, 1941, respectively. Broadly, these measures have involved—(i) The restriction of outflow of labour from essential work: (ii) The registration, interview, and direction of workers into essential work : (iii) The restriction of inflow of labour into non-essential work : (iv) Frequent consultations with representatives of the major industries and the collection of statistical information, for use as a guide in the formulation of policy. Attached to each of these measures was a whole constellation of secondary problems such as the determination of the exact coverage of the various measures of restriction, registration, and control, and also the conditions of their application (such, for example, as the provision of a guaranteed week in undertakings declared to be essential, the provision of travelling-allowances and compensation to persons directed into essential work, and the treatment of absenteeism in essential industries), as well as the evolution of much new legal and administrative machinery and procedure. The development of these measures is more fully described in the accompanying report of the Industrial Man-power Division, and it is not proposed therefore in the present report to enter into a detailed discussion of their growth and organization. What should be made clear at this stage, however, as a part of the more general account of the Dominion's man-power organization is that it was the prospect of full-scale mobilization to meet the threat of invasion which actually carried the bulk of these measures rapidly into effect. It may be of interest to place on record the following extract of a joint departmental report entitled " The Industrial Effects of Complete Mobilization," dated 26th December, 1941. " The establishment and proper functioning of Man-power Utilization Councils connected with the important industries, the establishment of District Man-power Officers to control labour movements, the registration and interviewing of women, and their direction one by one into essential employment—these and all the related steps, some already authorized by Government, some still awaiting authority, can by their very nature only move forward by a process of steady growth and evolution, rather than by a single stroke. A sudden mobilization might well result in a short period of intense maladjustment and difficulty within industry before these remedial steps have had time to bear fruit."

13

Percentage Percentage of these * Product—i.e., Unadjusted Ballot No. placed in available—i.e., not postponed Percentage (Grade I) Grade I. by Appeal Boards. yieldod to the Forces. 14 65 63 41 15 57 58 34 16 53 50 27 17 48 45 22 18 44 42 18