SWEEPING CHANGE

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 136, 10 June 1940, Page 8

SWEEPING CHANGE

FACTORIES OF FRANCE

EVERYTHING TO WAR EFFORT

INDUSTRIAL TOUR

(By Air Mall, from "The Post's" London Representative.) LONDON, May 18. After touring the French munition centres, a member of the staff of the "Daily Telegraph" writes that the face of Paris has fewer marks of war than London. Smartly-dressed crowds, perhaps not so gay as of yore, still throng the Champs Elysees. The cafe tables are, often filled at the aperitif hour. Josephine Baker and Maurice Chevalier nightly attract cosmopolitan houses to the Casino de Paris. The night is not as black as in London. But all these things are just a veneer. Behind the facade lies an incredible story of industrial organisation "for victory." The mobilisation of 6,000,000 fighting men last September was an extraordinary feat of efficient organisation; the transformation and extension of industry is equally remarkable. Factories, great and small, engaged in peaceful pursuits were commandeered at a moment's notice and turned into units for the manufacture of munitions of war. New giant workshops appear almost magically in unexpected places. Disused skeletons of buildings are equipped; labour is conjured, apparently, from nowhere; almost overnight another tributary to the ever-growing, insatiable stream of arms, has been started. OUTPUT GREATLY INCREASED. He went to an electric steel furnace hidden in an Alpine gorge, producing ■ high-grade metals for aircraft, guns, tanks, and tools. ; Before the war' the output was 30 tons a day; now it is 45 tons; next month it will be 160 tons. Yet the number of workers has been increased by a mere handful. Of the 3600 employees 800 are either Poles or Italians, who. on the outbreak 'of war, were told they could .demonstrate their good will towards France by joining the army. Into the Maginot Line they went, but they are now back again at the furnace, acknowledged as good French citizens but subject to military control. On the outskirts of one of the most picturesque towns in Europe and the centre of an important wine-growing district he found a vast aluminium rolling shop. In times of peace it produced sheets, strips, and discs of pure aluminium for the luxury and fancy articles for which France is famous, Today it is manufacturing duralumin for national defence purposes, and although 45 per cent, of its former skilled workers are at the front and the personnel has been increased only from 440 to 540, the tonnage of' production has leapt fivefold. VALUE OF HYDRAULICS. The management has planned on a war basis for years ahead. It has established a school for the perfection of engineers, foremen, and other workers, and a research department. Pupils are initiated into foundry work, forging, brazing, soldering, rolling, deoxidisation, and polishing. In the shade of a snow-covered mountain on the south-east, frontier there is a factory, known throughout the world, whose activities before the wa» were directed entirely to the construction of hydraulic turbines and equipment for dams and sluices. It is still carrying on this work, because hydraulics have increased in importance, for military reasons, since the start of the war. At the moment the firm is equipping vital energy-producing falls, the location of which must remain secret, with turbines ranging from 28,000. to 90,000 horse-power. ? The study of the problems of water and its vagaries continues in the,worldfamous laboratory attached to the workshop. Yet the management has contrived to engage in the production of large-calibre shells at the rate of 10,000 a month, gun* turrets and tanks, with an increase of 400 on the peacetime staff of 800. Women are taking the places of men in the drawing offices. AN ORDNANCE FACTORY. Ah ordnance factory, standing on a bank of the -Rhone, was a fascinating study. Nine months ago the building was a disused artificial silk and wool factory which had been derelict for years. It was filled with old machinery which had no relation to the production of arms. Within a few hours of commandeering vast structural alterations had been started, the old machinery had been scrapped; machine tools installed, key workers recruited, unskilled labour provided by military companies comparable to Britain s Pioneer Battalions", and production of shells and fuses for heavy machineguns begun. , Machine tools from Switzerland and the United States of America are still pouring in; a school has been opened for instructing workers in the management of automatic lathes; output is increasing every day; soon there will be 5000 workers at the machines and arms will be produced by mass methods. „ „ A cable firm "in the Rhone, wellknown to Britain, has completely abandoned its export trade for national defence purposes. Today the factory, which covers 60 acres and employs 3500 workers, as compared with 1000 last September, has increased its prewar output by IPOO per cent. Its speciality is armoured cables for power supply in the war zones, MAKING OF GAS MASKS. Perhaps the most amazing sight of all was 4500 women working under one roof on the production of gas masks at. the rate of 150,000 a month. Not many months ago the site was an old quarry. Just before the war 200 persons were at work. But within two months a new factory had grown and an organiser had recruited 4500 women. The same organising genius has now conceived the idea of transferring the factory underground and work on a colossal piece of excavation has started. The production oi 150,000 gas masks in a month by 4500 workers may not appear a high rate of output, but infinite pains are taken to make the masks 100 per cent, gasproof; exactness is the test rather than speed. A new departure is the manufacture of "gas mask" fittings for underground shelters and dug-outs in the front line on the same principle as the individual respirator. They are known as "collective "protection filters" and are a tribute to French inventiveness and logic. LORRIES, CARS, AND TANKS. Yet another example of France's industrial momentum was an immense motor-lorry factory which before the war employed 6000 workers, now employs 9000, and has increased its output of lorries, all destined for the army, three-fold. This one factory contains all that is necessary for the making of an automobile—foundry and iron, stamping, machining, asr sembliiig, and testing shops. With