England's effort : $b Letters to an American friendWard, Humphry, Mrs.
History
England's effort : $b Letters to an American friend
Ward, Humphry, Mrs.
Great Britain. Army -- Ordnance facilities; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, British; World War, 1914-1918 -- Women
No!--under this fast-spreading industry, with its suggestion of good
management and high wages, there is the beat of no ordinary impulse. Some
feel it much more than others; but, says the clever and kindly
Superintendent I have already quoted: "The majority are very decidedly
working from the point of view of doing something for their country.... A
great many of the fuse women are earning for the first time.... The more I
see of them all, the better I like them." And then follow some interesting
comments on the relation of the more educated and refined women among them
to the skilled mechanics--two national types that have perhaps never met
in such close working contact before. One's thoughts begin to follow out
some of the possible social results of this national movement.
[Illustration: A Forest of Shells in a Corner of One of England's Great
Shell Filling Factories.]
[Illustration: A Light Railway Bringing Up Ammunition.]
II
But now the Midlands and the Yorkshire towns are behind me. The train
hurries on through a sunny afternoon, and I look through some notes sent
me by an expert in the great campaign. Some of them represent its humours.
Here is a perfectly true story, which shows an Englishman with "a move
on," not unworthy of your side of the water.
A father and son, both men of tremendous energy, were the chiefs of a very
large factory, which had been already extensively added to. The father
lived in a house alongside the works. One day business took him into the
neighbouring county, whilst the son came up to London on munition work. On
the father's return he was astonished to see a furniture van removing the
contents of his house. The son emerged. He had already signed a contract
for a new factory on the site of his father's house; the materials of the
house were sold and the furniture half gone. After a first start, the
father took it in true Yorkshire fashion--wasting no words, and
apparently proud of his son!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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