NEW ARMY HUTS LINO

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXVIII, Issue 13008, 8 April 1940, Page 2

NEW ARMY HUTS LINO

COULD LINK PARIS TO GIBRALTAR Enough linoleum to stretch from Paris to Gibraltar has been ordered from British manufacturers by the Ministry of Supply. The Ministry, now a gigantic trading concern with a yearly turnover in essential war materials at the rate of £ 150,000,000, gave the order for 2,000,000 yards of linoleum and set the public guessing as to how the floor covering came to classed as an “essential war material.” This has now been explained by the Parliamentary Secretary. “In the new huts built for the_ Army and the new ordnance factories there will be concrete floors instead of timber ones,” he said. “The linoleum will be used for covering them. We cannot expect troops to live on concrete floors, and in the factories particles of high explosives collectingin cracks of a concrete floor might well cause an explosion.” The use of linoleum will economise considerably in timber, and although the order for 2,000,000 yards is admitted by the linoleum trade to be “very large,” it is not so big that production for ordinary, commercial purposes will suffer. It has, of course, helped to create a boom in the industry, and one big Scottish manufacturing firm is now paying about £ 10,000 a week extra in wages, compared with a few months ago.