MACHINES THAT WIN VICTORY.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume II, Issue 586, 27 December 1915, Page 11

MACHINES THAT WIN VICTORY.

HOW FRENCH FACTORIES ARE

ORGANISED.

GRAVE AND DISCIPLINED

WORKERS

[By James Boon, in the "Manchester Guardian."]

"What labour troubles have you here?" I asked M. Albert de Dion the head of the big de Dion-Bouton Automobile Works and member of the Chamber of Deputies. He replied: "We have none. Many of our workmen have been at the front, and have been brought back to use their skill at our lathes. They know what war and discipline are. They would not be able to look their comrades in the face if they did not do their best. They know that the front is also in the factory, and they work with their might. The women in our works —many of them are wives or daughters of men in the trenches; some, alas! are soldiers' that they are saving French soldiers' lives. Everyone is working, without second thought, for France."

I asked &bout discipline in the works. The question had not arisen in recent times-r-not since, the sol-dier-workmen had come back and told : their fellow-workmen what munitions meant. M. Thomas, the French Minister of Munitions, a Socialist,, had done much, and had the confidence of employers and men. To-day I have been-permitted to see the munition work in two great automobile factories which have been reorganised to put every ounce of French available human power and machinery into the scale for victory. The —— works now employ many thousand persons, and the De Dion-Bouton Works have several : thousands. In both cases the whole machinery works about 21 hours out of the 24 for seven days in the week. The workers are in two, shifts, one working from seven in the morning till seven at night, with an hour and two quarters of an hour off, and the other shift hours through the night.

The Soul of the Machine.

I dp not know the percentage of illness under tljjs arduous life, but one could ;nfatj fail to be struck by the vital and "energetic look of the workers, although a number of the women showed signs of strain. The ; conditions in these factories are very good—high; well-ventilated buildings, remarkable cleanness, and every labour-saving device in the way of travelling gantries, motor traction everywhere, and service lifts. All the "mobilised" workmen brought back from the Army receive payment on. the usual scale as before the war, just like the older men who were not mobilised. The women's pay runs from five francs a day upward. There is no Government scheme for limitation of profit, but the Munitions Department have power to compel w r ages to be paid on a certain scale. There were no canteens in these works, but I noticed the foundrymen refreshing themselves with beer, and nearly everyone smoked. I saw the night workers flooding in, each carrying his or her basket for supper and breakfast. There was little chattering or badinage. Their seriousnes would have vastly impressed those Englishmen who still think of the French as a "volatile and light" nation. Their minds to the business in hand. Paris had been saved a year ago, but the Germans were still squatting horribly on their land, and Frenchmen were dying every day to drive them out. Very quickly and gravely the men and women were working side by side at the lathes and on the benches, with only one thought. One woman at a lathe—-deep-bosomed, with a small, classic head, broad brows, and a dusky cloud of hair, terribly absorbed -in her work as she bent over the cutj ting twisted point with the brown lubricant flowing over it, and the shell taking shape—was like a wonderful statue. She gave one a vision of France appearing as the soul of the machine of victory.

Making the "75" Shell.

The works have been greatly enlarged since the war began, and all their capacity was put at the service of the State. The old machines were adapted and new machines acquired. It was curious to see, among the French and American machines, German lathes which were finishing shell cases to be delivered among the makers of the lathes. In the De Dion works we saw the magneto machines which the French had been forced to make themselves in place of the "magneto bochc," which, incredibly enough, was the name of the German contrivance everywhere in use for automobiles before the war.

All the processes of the French 75mm. shells can be studied here—the long steel ingot, the cutting of it into lengths, the rough cuttingout of the interior (in the old way by machine tool cutting and in the new way by punching under terrific pressure), and all the finishing processes to the fitting of the cap and the careful testing through which

each case has to go. Women in hundreds were punching out the shrapnel bullets, pouring the metal into a long narrow mould, which in a minute was opened like scissors, and the bullets in long strips, held together by a flat thin residue of lead, were struck off. The bullets then went through another process to cut away scraps of it; then each was carefully examined to see if it were round and smooth; and then they were packed into the case. Clever hands that had made bonnets and frocks packed them in—"pour les Bodies."

Motor Devices.

The works w r ere standardised for one shell—the but the factory showed how the famous gun is used, mounted in an automobile with limbers that could be let down to take the recoil and serve the wheels, and for anti-air-craft work on special frames. A large section of shops was given over to aviation work, and we saw the great 12-cylinder machine for aeroplanes, which develops enormous horse-power. These engines allow the aeroplanes to carry a weight of bombs that was formerly undreamt of, and explain much of the success of the recent air raids over the German poison factories and railway stations. Some of the newer devices cannot be mentioned, but the heavy motor waggon With its four wheels, all worked by independent action, which has permitted operations on most difficult broken ground, is a military •success that is no longer a secret. Each factory has its own nucleus and organisation, which even the stranger cannot after a little fail to perceive. The De Dion works strike one as typical of the learned, scientific side of France. M. de Dion is one of the few members of the old French aristocracy who have shown talents and will for the modern business of his nation. It is 20 years since the De Dion motor car made its appearance, and the experimental side of the business has been steadily pursued, and learned professors hav6 figured iii its laboratories. Among the many interesting things here that I saw was their famous searchlight, which' has a diameter of about three feet and of enormous candle-power. It is; mounted on a motor car, and by an ingenious arrangement its height can be altered so that it may be 10ft above the car or on the. car level, and in this way the difficulties to the enemy of exactly locating it are greatly increased. Another device was a trench motor, worked by acetylene gas, for launching air-tor-pedoes of 321b. But the impression of the day that remained clearest was of the workers labouring with set faces, men and women, in these vast thickets of steel machines and leather bands darting perpendicularly oyer their heads whirring in the broken light; and from the whole close throng of men, women, and machinery, all moving and flickering, yet all rooted like a forest in wind, there came a resonant chorus of terrific purpose and power.