ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACY
By AMABEL WILLIAMS-ELLIS
THE fighting men of all arms who have been victorious in Africa have, so war correspondents seem to agree, had "plenty of everything." They describe towering walls built of double layers of full ammunition-boxes, vast camouflaged dumps of spares and stores of all kinds. The big dumps give the troops a comfortable feeling. Who made all these things? An army much bigger than the men of all arms who are going to use them ; an army of men and women who range from boys and girls straight from school to grandfathers and grandmothers ; for it takes at least ten workers to keep one fighting man in the field. These men and women, boys and girls, are feeling very much pleased with themselves, and are proud of the African successes and of the help they have given on the victorious Russian front.
Our industrial effort here is enormous, and no population has ever before been mobilised as ours has been. We had 27,000 war factories in July, and the number increases as still more industries are concentrated, still more floor-space taken over for production. With a population of working age (that is between 14 and 65) of 331 millions, we have managed to mobilise for whole-time work and in the Forces no fewer than 231 millions. " Work " here has been strictly defined as work for pay. It does not, for instance, include such jobs as taking in and feeding two or three transferred workers or looking after evacuated children. There are over 9,000,000 children in the arsenal to be looked after, and a proportion of old people and invalids, while the nationally essential business of bearing and rearing is not counted, nor are the five or six million voluntary jobs, such as canteen work, holiday work on the land, War Savings collections, Home Guard and fire-watching, and many others which are somehow fitted in with the rest.
When I set out to try to find out about the industrial war-effort, I, like others, came upon an immediate difficulty. How are you to define war-work? Elias Heyford, the head smith, who forges steel for gun-barrels, Florrie Beston his hammer-driver, and Jim Watling his boy and one or two hundred thousand who work in Royal Ordnance Factories, are all people who are undoubtedly doing war-work, along with as many more again who roll steel sheets for Nissen huts, sew parachutes, assemble gun-turrets, tanks and lorries, make " components " (all-embracing word), dig and transport the hundreds of thousands of tons of coal which make the capstan lathe respond to the switch, who make, man and load and unload ships.
But these people could not go on turning out arms for very long if they were unshod and unfed. The girls and men in "bootand clothing factories who are making army boots, battle-dress and American uniforms know they are on war-work. But those who are weaving utility cloth or printing school text-books don't feel so sure. Yet Mrs. McPherson, a leading light of the joint Production Committee in her R.O.F., and one of the best among the 19,000 workers employed there, can't very well go 'about without clothes, nor can the teacher who has her Jeannie and Robbie to teach do very much if the blitzed school-books are not replaced.
If you are a transport-worker and you carry workers or goods to and from a war-factory, you know you are on war-work. But what about those who carry Mrs. Watkin home after her bit of shopping? Since the men started to build the aerodrome and she had two of them billeted on her, the shopping-basket is more than she could manage up the hill at her age, so if it weren't for the 'bus . .
Most of the jobs, like Mrs. Watkin's, which do not count in the 23 odd million regular paid jobs, are those done by women. At well as those suggested before, they do the whole-time domestic jobs which are not in the count, though these may be to look after a doctor who is worked off his head or do for a couple of industrial chemists or for a bunch of half a dozen land-girls. There are over 17,000,000 women of working-age in the country. In spite of the unlisted jobs that they do, and in spite of the work of bearing and
rearing the next generation, and not counting those in the Forcer or those doing part-time (four hours a day as a rule), there are seven million of them in full employment either in industry or transport Of these seven million, 21million are married.
Having recently been given facilities for seeing over 30 war factories (good and not so good, large and small) and nearly as many
other war "institutions," from hostels and canteens to Employment Exchanges and Training Centres, I should like to add that one might guess from sampling methods that of these 21 millions at least a million are heroines. Mrs. Apperly (two sons and a husband) gets "the worst of her housework" done before coming to the steel-mill to do a full man's work. Mrs. Dowlas has nine to do for
at home, and admits to finding the family wash rather difficult to
fit in. In another category comes Mrs. Marley. She gave her age as 39, and thus was allowed to learn to work the travelling crane.
She turned out to be a grandmother, and is indeed now suspected of being oll enough to come right outside any reasonable definition of "working age." But not all the efforts of the "Welfare Lady" can get her off her crane. She is a small, fragile old lady. As you read this she is probably moving onher huge machine, back and forth, from one end of the long shed to the other, far up in the twilight spaces of the roof, with half a ton of red-hot steel dangling on the chains.
Again, there are four housewives whom I met in an R.O.F. (incidentally this one is quite a tricky place to be in in a raid` One night, when these four were working on the day-shift, there was a raid in which all but nine houses in their whole town were damaged, in which the whole of their street and their own four
houses were reduced to rubble. They had been in the shelter, and seemed to think it the most natural thing in the world that neithei on that nor on any other, day did they miss a shift at the factors.. A boy I know who worked in another R.O.F. remarked to me: "Those women, the ones that are a bit older, do take the war seriously, don't they?" They are giving to sons and husbands that comfortable feeling of "meeting Jerry with a little to spare.' Dorothy Thompson and Mrs. Roosevelt are two observers who seem to have been struck by the spectacle of most complete all-coil effort that this country has ever made.
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