MAKING OF MUNITIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVIII, Issue 21, 24 January 1917, Page 11

MAKING OF MUNITIONS.

WOMEN WORKERS. INDUSTRIALISM REFORMED. (From Our Special Correspondent. 1 LONDON", Nov. 17.

■£ wind swept fiat by the r"ca. A sottins surely for hoaltli giving, not for death dealing. Yet there, somewhere in Britain, I fouud in full poiiifi order a new munition factory, one holonging to the department initialled U.K., innocent letters that i-onrail explosive. Its latitude and longitude, its acreage . what matter? Suffice it to say it Is one of the. new four thousand odd tstablishtncjits now feeding our torees .on geaand l«nd with the wherewithal for dealing out death. Passins the scrutiny of armed sentries on guard we—l and my guide a Welfare Worker, who. as incidental to her duties, acts as chauffeur to the supervising staff—left tlu> car and tramped over°vhat had been not long before open jnoorland. We made for a block of lonf* huts grouped round a central one. In each long hut a series of processes is performed, and there emerges at the close tray loads of innocent-looking cream-coloured lanky sticks of macaroni. Ihe reality is far removed from that ptringlike, wheaten food. The creamcoloured sticks are cordite, dangerous to handle. The munition girls who handle it stand, through any carelessness, risk to theruselves, and their work entails risk to the users of the cordite it they deviate by n lair's breadth from tlicii instructions. Ether is largely concerned in this process of manufacture, and the central building of each block of huts j* devoted to recovery of the ether, which is thereby available for use over and over again. Xhis ingredient forms one. too. of the dangers to well-bemj: of the workers. A cordite girl does not »o into her job "for her health. -. The effects of the ether is at first sometimes rather overpowering. It causes headache and even great nausea. But the girls are stayers —most of them —and they become inured to the ether-impregnated atmosphere. ' In the housing scheme a plan has beon adopted that strikes a mean between the herding of barrack dwellings and the financially impossible model of extreme individualism. The dormitories have, some of them, cubicles partitioned off, others have a number of beck —never a large number in one room, some as few as two or three beds only— in one airy dormitory. Four dormitories etand as the four corners of a block in the midst of which arc the common room, dining room and kitchens to the four dormitories. The girls are free to roam the countryside as they choose . . . and do. Nor are they hedged about with rules as to their behaviour. There are thousands of workers of both sexes. They meet, they walk about the country lanes as from time immemorial lad and lass lave done, and, tell it not in Gath, go to "the pictures."' There are entertainments to which they flock, there are entertainments they get up themselves to add to the gaiety of their fellow workers. The welfare workers' methods as practised here are based on no system of treating the women workers as hybrid compound of charity school girls and imbeciles. They are women workers tit .to play their part in munitioning the nation at "a grave eriss, therefore lit to be allowed to lead their lives as -best they like in their fuEv earned'leisure hour's.

'. It was a far' cry from the corditemaking, countryside to another plate I visited within range of London's hummini hive of millions. In that distant factory I had seen the raw material of explosive action in the making, here in London I saw how the manufactured o.utjmt —of some part of it at least —was tried and tested to the nth degree lest the product should by a microscopic fraction differ from the just dimensions. Else" the death-dealing- its makers planned would fall not on the enemy, but oh our own men using it. Here there were thousands of workfers—men and women. But they were not housed within the factory. Welfare workers here gave their attention to the working of the canteen, to any girls who became knocked up during thoir shift, to informal co-operation with the medical- staff—in fact to all those tangible and intangible services to the human machine, which makes it work sweetly and efficiently.

; This factory, which on entrance impinged on the vision as one colossal ly vast organised agglomeration of cartridges, is devoted to testing. "The eartrhige testing is done in the first instance by a machine fhich ■automatically rejects the badly Jnade. One machine tests the weight, another the shape, another the length, and so on —eight different tests in all. The automatic machines, through which an unending stream of cartridges flows, 'seem almost uncanny. They spot andi ■throw aside defectives unhesitatingly. But automatic machines err on the safe side. Their "'rejects' are examined by girls, who test them again, and thus. ■many first rejects are saved. It is in this ■work that a girl's deftness of-- fingers counts towards a good wage, for payment Js made for piece-work.

It makes my head reel to think of the., infinite number of operations that piccede the final act of putting up the bandiliere of cartridges in hermetically Eealed boxes. Take the bandolier- themselves. One saw a number of sorts that to the casual eve looked.all alike. They were just .plain khaki bandoliers. But the War

Office formerly expending its jrreat braiu on buttons for uniforms has done other work of late, and the evolution of the lanJolier is its vindication. Does the great British public realise how much hangs on whether bandoliers are fastened with old-faehioned hooks and eyes or with snap fasteners? .That was only one of the bandolier «Kfueultics. There was the machine etitehing of the pockets. . . . That stitchnig of every one of the hundreds of thousauds of bandoliers has to be measured up with care. One might easily, too. imagine in haste that packing bandoliers into their oases was merely a matter of getting in as many as possible. There is more in it than that. The pa«kJig has to he done so that when the Boxes are torn open in the fighting line they yield up their contents eaeily and without strain on the bandoliers. These—merely jottings—of the myriad ■ysteries at which we wrre permitted to glance, convey but an- infinitesimal imof their vastness and complexity, -toeir -delicacy, and their dynamic energy.