Doing their Bit

VII

“THEIR BIT”

I have spoken already of “The Room of the Old Men,” one of the finest samples I have seen of a patriotic endeavour by the workers to be up and “doing their bit” for the country and the Front. The Room is part of a National Factory that was commenced upon only last July. The men in it are skilled mechanics and engineers, doing the work which only skilled men can do, work without which a munitions factory cannot run. They are nearly all old men, men who had retired from their trade eight or ten or twelve years back, who, after a good long life of hard work in the shops, had taken off their overalls and laid down their tools, as they thought then, for good and ever. The manager took me round amongst them and introduced me to them and gave me a chance to speak to them and tell them that I hoped to let the Front know of their plucky retackling of their old jobs. Old as they were, up to the oldest of them – 68 he proudly admitted to – they were doing a full and hard day’s work. One man in that room, for all his rough, toil-hardened hands and work-stained clothes, is worth his £20,000. Another when he dropped his trade had invested in “a little farm well filled” and worth its thousands of any man’s good money. And that man works each day in the factory from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and before he comes in from his little moorland farm, and at night after he returns to it from his day’s work, he milks his cows, and feeds his chickens, and settles up the odd jobs that must be done each day upon a farm. All the Old Men felt exactly the same way about the War. They were too old – very regretfully they were too old – to do their bit in khaki at the Front, but they were glad and thankful for the chance that was still left to them to do their bit in the shops. The manager, a local man himself, knowing the district well, when he took up the munition work went over in his mind all the old and retired mechanics he could remember. He went round to them and put the facts straight to them – the Front was held up for munitions, a National Factory was being started in their town, there was a sad lack of the skilled men that they, skilled men themselves, well knew were necessary, and – would they come? Would they? They were ready, then and there, to put on their caps, and walk back to the works with him, and start in on the job. And there they are now. The general manager, by the way, was deservedly enthusiastic about his Old Men and their fine effort, but he said exactly nothing at all about his own. That I discovered, by questioning, from the Ministry official who was showing me round the district. He told me how the general manager had been running a business of his own, but had left it when the word went round for business men and practical men to help the Munitions Ministry, how the works had been got together, how machines had had to be found and tools made, how the working of an industry quite new to him had to be learned first and taught to others afterwards, how under his planning and guidance the factory had been set running, how efficiently and fast it was turning out the work, how the Ministry in London had admitted the usefulness of workings and figures furnished by him, and, finally, how all his work had been and was being done without a penny of salary or recompense. It isn’t a bad “bit” for one man to be doing.

In startling contrast to the Room of the Old Men I was introduced to the works manager – aged 22. His is an old head on young shoulders, however, and I heard much of his share in the factory’s “bit.” “Takes his job serious, does our works manager,” I was told. “When we were puzzling out ways o’ work he used to sit up nights thinkin’ shells, an’ go to ’s bed dreamin’ shells. Took it that serious, couldn’t see a joke if ’t poked him in the eye.” And the works manager just grinned and let it go at that.

It was in this same factory, by the way, that I met one of those inspectors who in all factories pass the completed shells as correct, and who, in this instance, was an ex-cheesemonger. Amongst these same inspectors you can find ex- all sorts of trades and professions, from actors and acrobats to schoolmasters and sausage-makers. There was a question raised in Parliament recently about these men, and a good deal of would-be wit was expended on the folly of employing such amateurs to act as experts. But, after all, I see no faintest reason for the gibes. The work these men are doing is not impossible or even difficult for an intelligent man to learn. They have to pass gauges over the shell and the shell must fit all the gauges. They have to see that no flaw or crack is visible, that varnish is smooth and even, and so on. There is nothing, I should say, nearly as difficult in finding flaws in a shell as there is in making the same shell – and the shell has been made by once unskilled hands or “amateurs.” When all is said and done, the very great majority of munition-makers to-day are amateurs, although they have each become expert on their own work – as the inspectors have. The British Army that is going to whip Germany presently is composed almost solidly of amateur soldiers, of just the same ex- this, that, and t’other trade and profession as the munition workers and inspectors. And, when you think of it, many Members of Parliament are themselves amateurs at their job, or were not long since, and were also ex-all-sorts before they were M.P.’s. I don’t see why they should fling stones at the amateur inspectors who, like everybody else on this game, are only doing their best to “do their bit.”

In a rifle cartridge factory I saw girls who were examining the brass cartridges for defects. A girl would take a handful of cartridges and roll them rapidly one after another across her palm, and, quick and constant as the motion was, she missed no slightest fault. Some defects, indeed, were so slight that when I picked up some of the rejects I could see nothing wrong even on close and slow examination until the girl pointed out a tiny scratch, a rough dot, an almost invisible dent or bulge. There can be no hope of finding expert engineers (if that is what the M.P.’s want) as inspectors here. The cartridges are pouring from that factory at a rate of millions a week. Walking about the works, you see girls shovelling brass cases with a thing like a big coal-scoop into the capacious maws of hoppers to machines that joggle and jolt the cylinders into their back teeth, and turn and solemnly chew them over, and slide them out in a clicking and tinkling stream, with one more operation performed on their way to completion. Everywhere you may meet full barrels of cartridges wheeling round, or standing in rows, or being emptied and filled; you can see miles of ribbon-like brass bands sliding under punches that chop round discs from them, watch the discs running in hundreds from machine to machine, each machine giving it a punch in the passing and pressing it more and more into its finished stage. You may watch long ropes of lead running off fat reels into and through the machines which chop it into lengths and shape it into bullet-cores which stream along to meet another converging stream of nickel cases and become one with it; and pour on further to join up with the brass cartridges after they have run through the filling factory and had the cordite pushed in and sliced off and a wad rammed on top. And the surging torrent of completed, capped, cordited, wadded, and bulleted cartridges that sweeps into the packing-rooms and out from the factory is so largely the work of “amateurs” that there are about ten new hands employed for each one of the old hands that used to man the works. And when that factory is completed it will be turning out 5,000,000 cartridges a week – mainly by the hands of “amateur” girls swept in from all over the country to “do their bit.”

It is true that the professionals in machine-making have done much to smooth the path of the amateur. Some of the semi-automatic and automatic machines are so wonderful that one might imagine them endowed with life and professional skill themselves. I have watched, fascinated, the work of a screw-making machine which, after turning the tiny thread, reached over a steel finger and thumb, picked up the screw, lifted it back to a new position and jammed it there for another tool to slide forward at the precisely right second and cut out the cross-nick on the screw-head. There are automatic lathes which seize a steel or brass rod pushed within their clutch and chop it up and make shoulders and grooves and screw-threads on its outside, and drill out the centre and put another and different sized and shaped set of carvings on the inside, throw out the finished part, pull in the metal rod, and commence work afresh on it. Some of these lathes have five or six tools running and each performing its part in turn on the fuse or shell part. In one small-arm factory there is a huge room full of these automatic lathes all whirring and grinding away at their hardest. And the men in that room are so few that one hardly notices them and has an impression that the shop is cheerfully running itself. Actually there is one man to each ten machines, to keep the long brass or steel rods passing into their busy wheels and tools, to maintain and regulate the flow of lubricant which runs constantly on each cutting tool. In this factory there are automatics drilling out the rifle-barrels, the drill pressing in so far at a time, when the machine carefully withdraws it for a busy little steel hand to poke forward and fussily brush off the grit and chips and clear the drill, which then slides smoothly back and goes on with its job. A stream of oil runs on each drill, and something like 1,000 horse-power is required for nothing but the pumping of this oil to the rifle-drilling machines. The factory is turning out 8,000 completed rifles and over 300 machine-guns a week now. And, after the usual fashion, it is busily preparing to add heavily to its output. About twelve acres of new floor space have already been added to the works, and new floor is still being piled on floor, filled with another tossing and churning sea of machinery as fast as it is made ready, and driven up into its top working speed at once. On top of the one room packed with workers and machines the builders are at work on another room, laying the concrete floor, riveting the steel girders of new walls, putting on another new roof. And the moment the floor is down and the roof on and the steel skeleton complete, in come the men who erect the overhead shafting and fill the windows with glass – I might say fill the walls with glass, for each shop is nothing but a glass-sided box – and start to erect the machines. Each of the new glass boxes is about 600 feet long by 40 feet wide, and there are whole blocks of them erected or with the builders hard at work turning another roof-top into the floor of still another shop. It is plain that the present output is going to do some tall climbing very soon.

I find that my available space is running short, while I have still left untold much that I have seen, so I must be content to assure the Front that I have covered the ground of munition work more fully than these writings may indicate. I don’t think I left any department of the work untouched. I saw the making of bombs and grenades and air-torpedoes, trench-mortars and bomb-throwers – cheerful things some of these too, throwing bombs and winged torpedoes of impressive size with accuracy for hundreds of yards – shells, innumerable shells, from the pill, standing man-high and measuring about four feet round the waist, that “Granny” throws, down through all the sizes of the twelve-inch, and of “Mother’s” fit, to the fodder for the ubiquitous 18-pounders and Four-point-five “hows,” and still down to the fancy sizes for the anti-aircraft and the pretty little one-pounder pom-poms. I saw all shapes and sizes of guns too – massive, lengthy monsters in stages running from the huge rough castings to the smooth shining and polished tubes, fat-bodied squat howitzers, and, laid out in rows, many field-guns, and, ranked in battery upon battery, many more light Q.F. and machine-guns. There was an aeroplane factory where at least a score of ’planes stood in various stages, from one completely built and ready for her engines, to those still only in dismembered finished parts, to say nothing of the piles of parts in the making. Here alone the one firm I should have supposed were turning out more finished ’planes per week – battle-’planes and observing-’planes and fast-flying scout-’planes – than all our armies could find a use for; and yet there are, even to my own knowledge, several other ’plane factories.

So that you may take it I have made a full and comprehensive round, have satisfied myself in order that I might fully satisfy the Front that all their munition wants are going to be satisfied up to and over the hilt. I can only finish the report of my observations with the same assurance as I began it – we are never going to be short of munitions again; spend them as fast and hot and heavy as we can, the workshops can make faster than the Front can use; and the longer the War runs the more completely we shall be armed and equipped to wage it. All this seems certain and positive if – it is the only “if,” although it might be a big one —if the war-workers continue to do their share, if they play up and back us in playing out the game.

VIII

THE GREAT “IF”

In my previous chapters I have told the Front what I could of the rising tide of munitions, of what they may expect from the gigantic effort that is at last being made in war work. I have said, judging from what I have seen, nothing can stand against our armies and the torrent of shells and munitions they will assuredly have from and after the spring – if the war-workers play out their part. That is the one and only “if,” but in the war works I have seen and heard some indication that the “if” still remains, and now I want to say a word, as one who went through that first winter and a year at the Front, to the workers at Home, to ask the men in the trenches to write home to any and every man or woman they may know in the war works and urge them to every possible effort as I here urge them.

There is every evidence, and evidence that is under the hands and before the eyes of the war-workers, of the enormous amount of munitions now forthcoming. What I am anxious to impress upon them is the enormous amount the Front wants and needs if it is to get a fair show. I have no wish to belittle – even if it were possible – the war-workers’ efforts, but I do want them to understand that they cannot afford to slacken that effort for a single day if an adequate, a really adequate supply is to be maintained at the Front. A new National Factory and its workers may be justly proud of their output of 5,000 shells a week, and think they are doing enormously well if by the spring they are trebling that output. But let them remember this – one single insignificant battery of Field Artillery can fire away that present week’s output in one day, a Brigade of Field Artillery can use that week’s trebled output of 15,000 shells in the day again. The workers may fairly argue that their factory is only one, that dozens, scores of other factories are each turning out as many or more shells. But so at the Front are there many guns and many batteries. Has the average worker any idea how many Field Batteries there are in the Army to-day? I may not say, but it is common knowledge that the batteries run into very large numbers, and are going to take many shells to feed, are going to keep the war-workers sweating again to keep the guns going. In the battle-lines of the Western Front – I should say battle-line, because, even if a thrust is being made on any one part of a few miles, it means that an attack must be made strongly along the whole line to prevent the enemy knowing where the main attempt is being made – there are a prodigious number of guns employed. At a distance behind the infantry trenches the ground is simply packed with guns and batteries. Hitherto we have hardly had the guns going full pelt for more than a day or two at a time. We have no wish to anticipate any such spasmodic and unsustained efforts again. On the Western Front, or the Balkan Front, or any other front, when the real Big Push comes we must look to see a battle fought fiercely and desperately week after week without a pause. We want to see the Germans hammered out of one position, pressed hard and close and hurled out of the next, driven hard again, battered and pushed in and battered and thrust out again and again, treated, in fact, in just the sort of fashion they used against the Russians in the Eastern drive. We can only do that as the Germans did it – by the use of overwhelming torrents of artillery, rifle, and machine-gun fire, grenades and bombs. Be very sure that if and when we commence an offensive on those lines, the Germans are going to reply in like fashion, are going to go all out to beat down our heaviest fire with their still heavier one. The workers at home know the enormous amount of munitions preparing here, but the Front knows and feels the equally great effort of the German workshops. In old days we have known it too often by having to sit and suffer under it while our own reply was hopelessly inadequate; now our great hope is that at last we are going to be on something better than level terms. But to put us on such terms the war-workers have still to strain every nerve and muscle, put out every ounce they possibly can. The whole thing rests on them. They have been given the material, the shops, the machines; they have got the finest brains of the Empire guiding their efforts and ensuring that the greatest possible result is obtained from their work. So it is up to them, and to them only.

I don’t think there is the slightest fear that on the whole the war-workers are going to fail us, but it is impossible to avoid seeing that enormous damage and desperate delay may occur through the slacking or indifference or discontent of any one section of the workers. In this great business of munition-making it is inevitable that all the parts should dovetail, and that the output should advance in one long even wave. It is no use having a million shells if, because the fuse-makers have failed, there are not a million fuses to fit them; it is just as useless having a million shells and fuses if the million cartridge-cases are not ready, and a million charges of cordite made, and the guns to fire them completed, and the gun-carriages built, and the telescopic or prismatic sights made, and the gunners’ maps printed, and the boots and clothes and equipments provided for the gunners. And even if every last possible arm and ammunition and equipment is completed in the artillery, the battle-line must halt, or, still worse, must be beaten back and brutally punished, if there is a shortage of machine-guns or cartridges or bombs or grenades. In a great battle every branch of the Army must move and work together and keep the pace as one great and unbroken whole, and it is equally vital that the battle of the war-workers must run in exactly the same fashion. The men making one of many fuse-parts may lose us a battle if they hang up their work and prevent the fuses being finished and so leave the guns short of shells, the Front without artillery support. The whole business of munition-making must be hung up if the coal-miners, the transport workers, the engineers, the explosive makers, almost any one section of the war-workers, fail us. Such a complete hold-up may be unthinkable, but there is another danger which is more possible and almost equally lamentable. There are still some war-workers who appear to consider the War as merely grinding out a grist of profit and good wages to them; another lot who are still more concerned over their hours and pay and conditions of labour, over labour rules and laws, written and unwritten, over the profits the employers are making or supposed to be making, over their position and status when the war is finished, than ever they are over the winning of the war. I know one works where there are two departments engaged on making six-inch and eight-inch shells. In some way, which for the moment is of no matter, the six-inch workers are paid at a lower rate than the eight-inch workers. The wages of the six-inch workers cannot be raised because that would raise the cost of the shells above the contract price; the wages of the eight-inch workers may not be lowered to level them with the six-inchers. The result is that the higher-paid men deliberately restrict their output, make fewer shells per week than they could do, so that they will only draw a weekly sum about equal to the less well-paid workers. And they do this out of a so-called sense of fairness, a supposed “loyalty to their mates.” That is the sort of pettiness or indifference that staggers anyone who has been in the carnage and destruction and misery of the Front, who has endured the punishment resulting from a shell shortage. “Sense of fairness” – “loyalty to their mates”! What about fairness to the Front, loyalty to their mates and sons and brothers in the trenches? How I wish I could make these men understand what it means to see a line of infantry hung up by barbed wire, hacking desperately at it, running up and down its face in frantic groups searching for a gap and a clear path for their bayonets, to see these stout hearts falling in hundreds under a hail of lead, the blast of machine-gun and rifle fire and bursting bombs, to watch the line dwindle and wither and melt away to heaps and clumps of dead lying still in the mud or squirming in the clutch of the wire entanglements, to scattered figures crawling and rolling and dragging their broken limbs and shattered bodies back across the shell- and bullet-swept ground in a last struggle to reach shelter. If only the most discontented workers could see such a sight, would realise that it was due to nothing but the wire entanglements not being completely swept away because sufficient shells could not be spared to make a clean job of it, I wonder if they would ever again talk of “loyalty to their mates,” would ever again waste a day off or an hour off, would ever again be satisfied to do anything less than their highest, biggest, and best possible output of work. There was talk the other day of the engineers wanting an all-round 15 per cent. rise in wages. No doubt they think themselves fairly entitled to this because the cost of living has risen. But that sort of thinking simply paralyses again the men at the Front. Suppose cost of living has risen, suppose it has risen 50 instead of 15 per cent. Does that mean that the engineers are going hungry or thirsty, doing without a bed to rest on or a roof to keep them dry? Their mates at the Front often do all this, and surely the war-workers might carry some slight share of the hardships without grumbling, and not, because butter is too dear and they must eat margarine, want an immediate rise to allow them to eat butter again.