ENORMOUS DEMAND FOR EQUIPMENT.

Otago Witness, Issue 3196, 16 June 1915, Page 83

ENORMOUS DEMAND FOR EQUIPMENT.

HUGE DEALS WITH AMERICA. Though the manufacture of munitions has been increased six hundred times since August, this prodigious growth of output is still insufficient ‘or the requirements of the War Office and the Admiralty (says the London correspondent of the Sydney Sun). Great Britain has become at once the manufacturing arsenal and the clearinghouse for the Allies. Already £100,000,000 has been expended in the United States in the purchase of. guns and shells and rifles and ammunition, and large as these oiders have been they are as nothing compared to those which are at present current, because Great Britain, in conformity with the financial congress in Paris, is also purchasing for Russia and France. Last July there were thousands of idle hands in the State of Connecticut. To-day almost all the factories are working the full 24 hours and seven days a week. The State is enjoying a prosperity hitherto undreamt of. One firm alone is turning out 7,000,000 rounds of ammunition every week, and other centres in the United States which produce munitions of war are equally busy, wbi'e Canada is being saved from consequential depression by the immense orders that have been distributed amongst her factories. But though practically the whole of North America is feverishly working for the Allies, tbo demand for munitions exceeds the supply, and by hook or _ by crook the British contribution to the joint stock must bo augmented. It is not such an easy proposition as might appear at first sight. The rise _ in the cost of living has made the working classes discontented and restless. Th© raising of the new armies has withdrawn from the factories hundreds of thousands of the steadiest and best workers employed in

them. This has loosened tho hold of the Labour executive upon the men registered in their trade unions. The discipline which previously existed in the ranks has in too many cases been replaced by a reckless irresponsibility and a tendency to give car to the insinuations and mischievous promptings of feather-headed agitators seeking a little notoriety in the abnormal conditions that exist. The first-class men trusted their loaders, and were guided by their advice. What we may call the second-class men are not so sensitive to the control of their chosen officials, and, though their delegates may propose, it is very often tho least reliable section of the unions which disposes. The union officials have consequently to be very adroit and very persuasive to reconcile the recalcitrant won’t-workers to the exigencies of the War Office. They arc also handicapped by the license which too often develops from tho liberty which is enjoyed by the pieceworker. When this class of worker has earned what ho considers sufficient for his daily needs ho either downs tools or slacks off. Having got what he wants, he will not exert himself to produce any more. It is the pieceworkers who have been giving most trouble to the Labour leaders and the Government.