WAR FACTORIES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 88, 15 April 1941, Page 6

WAR FACTORIES.

POWER PROBLEMS.

NEED FOR WORKERS.

BRITAIN FACES UP TO IT.

(Special.)

LOXDOX, March 26,

Differ though it may from 1914-18 in tactics and strategy, the present struggle sets us one problem which is the same now a» then. How are wc

to secure a maximum war output? Xow, as then, we face an enemy who had organised directly for this purpose long before the fight began. An enemy, moreover, with a centuries-old habit, even in peace-time, of shaping economic development with an eye to the contingency of war.

Germany's munition-making record in 1014-18 was really astonishing. She started with two assets—'the largest steel industry in Europe, and the largest chemical industry; and for IS or 19 months —from about the beginning of 1913—she had directly organised for an intended trial of strength. But her population and peace resources were decidedly less than the British and French. Do«u to the end of 1917 she had to provide guus and shells, as well as soldiers, for an eastern as well as a western front.

This time the problem of equipment is more complex. Aircraft and tanko in masses have becomc prime factors in addition to guns and shells. Mechanised transport is 011 a totally new scale. Yet again Germany takes u lot of beating on the sido of war output. What must we do to match and exceed it

New Demands. We have now a smaller demand than before for personnel in the Army. But everywhere else the demands see.m greater. How are wc to meet all these, demands and at the same time have more pairs of hands available to work machines in the factories'! Partly, of course, by reducing our provision oT peace-time goods and services—fewer trains, fewer new clothes, fewer luxuries and junketings. This was done, though inadequately, in the last war. But the biggest means of expansion at that date, probably, were the women. Not only were the women's auxiliaries to Army, Navy and Air Force started for the first time; not only did women for the tirst time become familiar in such roles as bus conductors and railway porters, chaulleurs and farm labourers, civil servants anil bank clerks, but in very large numbers indeed they staffed the war factories, minding iathes, tilling shell.-, and performing countless other industrial operations which before had been exclusively men's work.

Cannot all this be done again? In some, measure it. is being. Women are at work in all the vocations named

above. Sonic concern*, and notably the three Fighting Forces, started recruiting them from the beginning. Others only appealed later. But a common feature in nearly all case.? —oven the very populai A.T.S. is that the appeals have been only partially successful. Thev would like to recruit far 11101 c women than they have.

Women in Factories. For the factories in particular the restricted flow of woman-power threatens a serious problem. Important factories and machines, ordered in the early davs of the war, are now just opened or opening. Women have boon pre supposed as their workers. What will happen if thev do itot come forward in sufficient numbers? This doubt seems to be what ha* specially inspired Mr. Bevin at the. Ministry of Labour in bis proposals for the registration and ultimately the conscription of women.

The presumption of any such policv must lie that manv women arc deliberately holding back. Nobody would think of compulsion otherwise. But i«= the presumption correct ? The numerous women M.P.'s, of all parties, who spoke in the debate on the subject last week almost all strenuously denied it. And their view cannot merely bo ignored.

The fact is that analogies from the last war are here only partially valid. Before 1914 women had a vcrv* limited place in industry. In the working class most women ceased work on marriage; in the middle and upper classes large numbers never sought employment. They formed a vast reservoir, which the war tapped. But in doing so it revolutionised women's habit*. There was no such great unemployed reservoir in 1939.

Diversion From Luxuries. Swondly. there is the too often forgotten factor of evacuation. In the bi" towns it is viewed solely from the stand" point of those evacuated. Little thought is given to the hosts, or to the labour and the "tie" entaibd on hundreds of thousands of women among them. But very largo numbers, who would have worked in the last war. cannot in this because of their evacuees.

What, then, can be done? The first thing is to divert people from luxury trades to necessary ones. Secondly, to concentrate the work in the semi-neces->ary trades, so that the reduced amount of it that is still allowed mav occupy as few workers and as little "plant a's possible, instead of being spaced thinly over a large number. The second is the Government's "concentration of industry" scheme. It may help us much, provided that the difficulties of its adoption are not permitted to delay its working. These policies will liberate for war work more women than men. For. as women nowadays are the principal consumers of luxuries, so women are also by far the most numerous employees in the luxury trades. The persistence of some luxuries at present miglit surprise a visitor from Mars. Lipstick, for instance, is probably in wider and greater use than ever before. Tt is a mere fashion, copied from the film stars, who had to use it for technical purposes. Is there any reason why its production and sale—and that of most of the cosmetics that go with it—should not in war-time be confined to export? Men have likewise their luxuries, which employ men. The costliest is racing. Even if the experience of the last war furnishes arguments against stopping it entirely, it seems difficult to justify its continuance on the present scale.

A Question of Survival

But when all is said, it is useless to turn people out of these non-essential occupations unless thev are promptly brought into the essential ones. ,\j| sorts of obstacles, local or professional, may impede the change. To beiin with, training is needed, and hitherto training allowances have been on a disieouragingly lower level than wages. Happily, Mr. Bcvin was able to announce last- week that that mistake would be rectified.

Then there are difficulties of domicile. People would often sooner draw the dole in their own town than do national work in another. Some proportion of those might be suitable subjects for compulsion. Then again there are employers who dislike heing troubled with training in their works. To them, too, compulsion may need to be applied. But behind personal factors one must allow for a real incompatibility between training and output. When, as after Dunkirk, there is a <*risis demanding instant maximum output, skilled men must produce, not train. At other times a balance has to be struck between output to supply the needs of the present and training to meet those of the future. It is not always easy to strike it.

Hard as many of these problems arc, we must solve them. For Germany solves them. True, her dictatorship does so, as her despotic monarchy did in 1914-18, by riding roughshod over liberties of every kind. Our task is not to copy her methods, to prove that a free people can get same results by different ways. Odious as modern war is, it is struggle where, in a considerable degree, survival goes to those fittest to survive. It is our responsibility to show tin possesses that survival v a lij If wc fail to do it «ill die out i> the wurld.