TOMMY'S CLOTHES IN PARIS

Evening Post, Volume XCIII, Issue 48, 24 February 1917, Page 9

TOMMY'S CLOTHES IN PARIS

SAVING A MILLION POUNDS

A YEAR

(By W.L. M'Alpin in the Daily Mail.)

The French have always held, the opinion that the English are an essentially practical people. i o

Considering what champion muddlers we are, I have sometimes wondered where we got our' reputation Not long ago I overheard a highly placed British officer denouncing our "d waste and inefficiency."* ■

But if in some War Office departments we formerly wasted the public money in - a shameful manner, it is comforting to-know that in others we now effect remarkable economy. I have been privileged by General Headquarters to visit two important Army Ordnance. depots in Paris Organised saving is the Alpha and Omega of their entire system—a system which never existed. in any previous -war. The chief Ordnance officer, who courteously explained the working of the.system and took me through the establish.ment at Pantin, told.me that in March, 1915, when he first itackled the big problem of handling the British Army's cast-off uniforms, he. and sixteen men stood on the Quai de Javal in a vast roofless building, which was about to be pulled .down,, and wondered where they should begin. , The Army had already started dumping down the flotsam and jeteam from the front, and the necessity of hustling was evident. ■'. Tn this dilemma an ex-Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal volunteered *. and joined the colonel a few days later, and they set to work. A few'weeks afterwards an ex-High Commissioner of Scinde insisted on giving a hand. He was. he said, a much younger man than the Governor of Bengal 1 and should certainly he employed. He also joined the staff. ..-•■ ■ ' ■'.■■■■

All 'three put their shoulders to the wheel, and began the -task of sorting out Tommy's old clothes. How well they have done their job is apparent f roan these figures : . . .

Between Ist April, 1915, and 15th January, 1916, the saving effected by the Ordnance Depot, Paris, amounted to the handsome sum of £423,889—5 ay, £45,000 a month—after paying all expenses A subsequent balance-sheet shows that 16th January of this year.(l9l6)tofcheend of May the A.O.D. (Army: Ordnance' Department) made a further, profit of, £222,542. During the first fourteen months of .its existence the Ordnance Clothing Salvage Depot in Paris saved the British ratepayer ! nearly £650,000,, or^ over £46,000 a month. The saving for 1916 will not be less than one million sterling. STRICTLY BUSINESS METHODS. How has it..been done? By intelligence and energy and the application of strictly business principles. Whenlthe wagon-loads of soiled, bloodstained, and tattered uniforms roll into the railway siding in the yard at Javel they are .immediately discharged into the Ordnance warehouse, sorted out, cleaned, disinfected, renovated, and repaired by about 140 n.c.o.'s and men of the A.O.D. and 500 women.. All blood-stained garments and those too soiled or worn to be serviceable are scrapped and packed off to Dewsbury, where as, rags they sometimes fetch as much as £85 a ton. The other things are sent out to cleaning contractors, and ' when they come back .the women take; them in hand and deal with them so effectively that they are reissued to the men in the field almost as good as new. ■■„- Fur undercoats are subjected to much the same cleaning process" as ordinary furs,.but very large revolving drums are used. There was no establishment in Paris large enough to do the work, so the A.O.D! decided to do it itself. The fur-cleaning installation at Javel is said to-be the biggest in the world. -

Last summer the staff cleaned and repaired hundreds of thousands of fur undercoats, leather jerkins, and sheepskinlined coats for motor-car drivers. Blankets washed and mended- ran into millions. ■ ; ;

The nature of the economies realised is evident from .' the fact that . ridingbreeches cost 24s 6d a pair. They can, however, be washed and repaired for Is Id a pair A very considerable saving is effected in fiir-lined coats also. Nine cleansing drums, with a triple staff, each working eight hours at a stretch, clean and disinfect 9000 jerkins or 7000 fur coats in 24 hours.

The A.O.D. has been very fortunate in the female labour required to do its work The women are paid 2s 9d and those at the sewing machines make 3s 3d a day. I heard . nothing but. good of these ouvrieres. They are hard-working, conscientious, self-respecting, and cheerful.' As one officer said: "They do not smoke, they do not drink, and they like their work." They are always neat and clean. Tha young girls, being Frenchwomen, are inclined to be coquettish, and as I passed through the workshops I noticed that most of them wore pink, blue, and green mantillas on their heads, made out of first-field dressings of sterilised gauze found in Tommy's pockets. These keep the dust out of their hair, and they are certainly becoming.

Some of them had donned Service jacliets with little Union Jacks sewn on them by :: the. previous, owners. . One daring young woman had attained the grade of sergeant. The stripes were there to prove it. Her neighbour had a British soldier's cap set jauntily on her head. ' On a piece of waste ground'adjoining the warehouse demontable extension sheds (that can be taken to pieces)! have, just been erected Light, comfortable, and cheerful, . they accommodate about 450 sewing-women. The sheds cost.about £4000 to/put np, but the. savings of six months' work, will more, than cover this amount, and when their usefulness is at an end the sheds can bb sold, taken down, and erected elsewhere. RUBBER BOOT REP AIRS. .; : At Pantin, what was formerly a bleak, deserted tramway depot is now a cheery hive of industry devoted to the repair of Army gumboots, those handy india-rubber seven-leagued boots which make it possible for our soldiers to spend hours in the trenches with water up to their knees without losing their habitual good spirits'. AVhen the gum-boots, filthy and wet and covered with mud,,began to arrive in May last the question, was how to wash, and especially dry, 2000 boots a day. The best any Paris laundry could do was to dry a boot in four hours. That would not do. The A.O.D.- has so successfully grappled with this', problem that it dries a boot in ten minutes. This triumph, beyond the capacity of any firm inParis, was achieved by »• temporary lieutenant of the department, who invented an apparatus by which, after the boots are washed, they are stuck on the end of nn upright pipe, through which hot air from a radiator is forced into them, absorbing the moisture and drying them at the rate of half-a-dozen boots an hour If the boots are "unssrviceable," the rubber is separated from the leather and nsed to patch other boots, and the straps arid buckles conic in handy for refitting those missing elsewhere— the really unserviceable Voota are sold as old rubber and fetch a good price. In this depot there are about twenty men of the A.0.D., who do the soling and heeling, and 170 women, who do the patching, jvhea sized, aad paired tb,e

gum-boots are packed and despatched «S required to the base. From the time'H is washed until it is ready to go' out the actual cost of labour on a boot is threepence That does not include the price of material. By. the introduction of piecework the output was increased about SO per cent. Over 2000 boots are repaired daily. At its period! of greatest activity the Pantin depot was faced with the task of dealing with many thousands' of pairs of gumboots

So satisfactory are the results obtained by -the Pantin staff on rubber work that they are' laying down a special washing and drying plant to deal with rubber 'graund> sheets arid waterproof capes; duririg'next summer by the million. ;.":•"."