GUNS AND SHELLS

Evening Post, Volume XCI, Issue 2, 4 January 1916, Page 8

GUNS AND SHELLS

FORGING BRUTE FORCE

"DILUTION OF LABOUR."

THE ORGANISATION OF VICTORY.

Of such size and weight are the British arsenals that one falters in the .task of giving an impression (writes the Leeds correspondent of a Sydney paper). How can it be understood that all the Midlands have become an arsenal, that all Yorkshire is pouring its masculine and feminine strength into the making of guns and gun-fodder? How can an adequate picture be given of the Empire second-line' army —the army that works in the workshops—devoting the whole strength of a great industrial nation to the apparently unlimited production of steel and powder and shot ? Real masculinity is the impression given in the foundries. The women may work cheerily and well at the lathes, and introduce an element of romance into the shell factories by glancing now and then at the flags, when tired. But here in the foundries is mascubnity wrestling with' massive forces of nature, and subduing them. One is reminded again that war is man's work, and. that brute force wins. Here the great guns are forged, the great shells are made for them, and strength in a thousand different ways is produced from furnaces and forges and massive machines. It is the adaptation of science and the old strength of mother earth—the iron from her bosom 'and the coal and chemicalsrto the needs of a struggle which in the end will go to those who are brutally strongest. You can walk ten miles along a roadway in the Don Valley, at Sheffield,, and pass nothing but ironworks, organised now for brutal needs of war. You can enter one, of these establishments, as we did, and walk four miles and a-half ,in . direct progress through its branches and workshops. And even then .you are only beginning to appreciate the gigantic and massive strength the Midlands are,putting into this war. You are only beginning to understand what strength, is compressed into a guri, what power is contained in a shell, what masculinity in warfare really means. Coal and iron have made the might of a' man's- arm into something that removes mountains. A CONVERTED FACTORY. With our guides from the Ministry of Munitions and the Home Office, and in ea-ch case with the directors of the great establishments, we have walked to-day for 10 miles through sweating, straining collections of workmen in ironworks. We began with a typical "converted" factory —a great British railway company's locomotive workshops, which are now devoted to gun-carriages and .shells. You would know the place at once if I mentioned it, but further than saying it is | in the Midlands, the censor will not let me go. Ido not- know how many large and small commercial factories have been converted to war purposes. The number is certainly many hundred. Gramophone factories are making shell fuses, printing press manufacturers are making shell lathes and drills, manufacturers of gas burners are making shell primers, and fuses, too. Motor-car makers are devoted to aeroplanes, makers of simple engines are turning out complete setr of big shell-making machinery. One peaceful engineer in Leeds has agreed to produce tbe huge presses and 5 lathes, required for an output of 600 15in shells a week. You get the impression that England has already made, enough guns "and shells to kill every man on earth. And then you find that if an ironworks is not busy upon the production of still more shells, it is making machinery, which.will produce them, and that not only are hew works being ■ everywhere built for this new machinery, but that new workshops are being made for the making of still more shell-making machinery, it would be delightfully confounding if it were not so serious. The sum of our munitions production has become the sum of Great Britain's industrial strength. The output of guns and shells and cartridges is already stupendous. WOMEN AND BOYS WORKING , And the effort is not only to get more munition plant .at work, it is also to get an even greater production from available labour.' "By every means possible we dilute the labour," said the manager of the great locomotive works, surveying a mass of elaborate' and strong mechanism known as a 6in howitzer carriage, standing where a new locomotive might have stood. "The unions and ourselves want all our strength organised So we have a constant spreading of skilled labour and the dilution of the whole by women and by boys—by whatever pair of hands Aye can find. We want to look back on this war and say, 'We used our strength.' " Every railway workshops in the country has become a munition factory. It is not that money is to be made, for profits are limited and prices are fixed. It is merely patriotism, coupled with a dour determination, very general here in.the Midlands, to rescue Belgium from an oppressor's , clutches. Railway engineers have no interest in gun carriages. But they are producing perfect articles, steel and copper throughout, with elaborate roller bearings, that they had never touched before, and a greater nicety of work on angle axles than was required even for leviathan locomotives. These men are notoriously fond of their designing rooms. But they have turned out of them gladly, working now where the office boy worked or in the halls, while their old offices are devoted- to fuse-making plants. They are working twelve hours a day- for seven days a week. They may look wan and tired, or at least fagged. But what matters life till Germany is beaten. One can die then -with gladness for tbe privilege of having lived till then. So say masters and men and women in the Midlands. _ I ' They told us to-day of a hardhit Midland battalion. Of one hundred women who arrived at the workshops on the morning after the casualty lists were published, twelve had lost husband or brother or sweetheart-xand wives and sisters and sweethearts here, it may be said, wear miniatures of their menfolk as their single pieces of jewellery. The manager suggested that the twelve should take the day away from the monotonous shell-making. But they settled at their machines. Not a moment's respite, said they, until our shells have won the war. It was at an establishment at Sheffield, where 11,000 tough and enduring men are employed, beating and bending steel and copper into shells, that we first met' the real masculinity of the Midland workshops. Here, under ono control, are 125 acres of furnaces, foundries, and lathes. The River Don is being turned in its course, because it cuts off the factory from land where still further extensions must be made. Railways run throughout the works, and chimney stacks rise high above them It is the joke of the managing director of this huge company that when he returns to the works these days after a fortnight in London he finds a new workshop has arisen. One vast workshop for high explosive shells was commenced on 15th December and operating on 3rd May, Another machine shop, for forging, machining, and completi ing larger ehellsj was begun in Novem-

her, and operating in February. These shops have made a large proportion of tbe Navy's shells for many years, and are still principally engaged in supplying those new, huge, armour-piercing projectiles—some may be even bigger than tho public tin nils—wliich Jellicoe 'is using in practice, and storing in reserve for the German fleet. But so little had the War Office prepared for such a war as this that it did not know till November last that the establishment made high explosive shells, and' would hot have found out then had the managers not offered to produce them Tjy the thousand. There is another tragedy about these works. Seven years ago the plant for making Army 18-pounder shells was I disbanded, because the War Office declared it would no longer be wanted. The value of that plant to-day could be measured only in thousands of lives and limbs. DEVELOPMENT SINCE WAR. When we began the war we had only one 9.2 inch howitzer It represented the sum total of our'heavy howitzer or siege brigade Now we cannot get enough of them, though workshops are being established to make nothing else, and oftlere for these monster field destroyers are plentifully, scattered .in America.. We were caught out in our first innings because we did not have foresight; and now we are going in to make a great score at our second try. Of course, such siege warfare on the scale in France and Flanders and Russia . could hardly have been foreseen, and I mention the story of our one gun merely to illustrate the immensity of our effort now. At these workshops on the outskirts of Sheffield we are establishing a national shell factory, which will be devoted to 9.2 inch shells alone, for which the Ministry is finding money and labour and engines, and for the management of which the directors of the company will get practically no pay These national factories are springing up here and. there throughout the Midlands, and the • highly-skilled voluntary work being put into them ie another proof of the Midlands' obdurate spirit. They have accepted facts—facts which make the making of guns and.shells a religion to industrial England. One walks through great ten-decker rows of 15-inch, 12-inch, 9.2-inch, and other shells in these hurriedly-erected but solid new buildings; one touches enough concentrated force to wreck a vast portion of civilisation; and the realisation comes that it all portends something very big towards winning the war. No worker can stop to think that his shells are going to bring disaster to thousands of homes. His job is to produce, them, and if he wishes to picture their effect he thinks of the Russian shortage at Bukovina six months ago, leading to the great retreat; and he pictures the Russians as, they were in the trenches before Warsaw and ' Vilna, when rifles were so few that two men stood behind one, waiting till he was put out of action, and their turns arrived to use his gun. THE EMPIRE'S ANSWER, Tons of metal and explosives waiting to be shot through the air in the shape of a single shell are impressive, but to watch the great na^al guns being made is to get a new idea of force. Greater weapons even than those carried into Australian waters on the Australia are being made at Sheffield. Guns 60ft in length, made of belt upon belt of solidly compressed steel and 120 miles of steel windings, are not the largest. To say that 9000 men are employed in this single arsenal-is to'give no idea of its size, for in foundries men are not so plentiful as in factories, and steel ham-, mere and furnaces and forges occupy the space. Here at the melting furnaces rivers of molten steel, so white with heat that one can lock upon them only through blue spectacles, ruD with glorious cascades of sparks into capacious ladles. Cranes travelling along ceilings and walls, and stretching into all corners of buildings covering acres, pick up tons of metal with the cleverness of giant heat-proof hands. The process of compression and hardening goes on from steam hammer to hammer and from forge to forge. Whole lengths of guns are dipped into oil baths ; cellars are built 70ft into the ground for the longitudinal placing of gun belt into gun belt, and tube into tube, so that the scores of parts may be compactly assembled. Holes are drilled in this most solid of fine steel, and the hard inner tube is grooved with exact precision. There are in these works 12 miles of private railway, on which 20 locomotives are always steaming. The hammers are never silent, and the furnaces never empty, for work goes on in ceaseless shifts. The workshops produce armour plate and shells, but the day and night refrain of this mammoth foundry is guns—guns —guns. The chant is the Empire's answer to her enemies, and if the enemy could hear it as it resounds through Sheffield and the Midlands he would assuredly know that against this welter of brute force .there can be no avail.