He took me through every stage of his process.In his office he showed me the general story.Here were photographs of certain vacant fields and old sheds--"this place"--he indicated the altered prospect from the window--"at the outbreak of the war."He showed me a plan of the first undertaking."Now we have rather over nine thousand workpeople."He showed me a little row of specimens."These we make for Italy.These go to Russia.These are the Rumanian pattern."Thence to the first stage, the chopping up of the iron bars, the furnace, the punching out of the first shape of the shell; all this is men's work.I had seen this sort of thing before in peace ironworks, but I saw it again with the same astonishment, the absolute precision of movement on the part of the half-naked sweating men, the calculated efficiency of each worker, the apparent heedlessness, the real certitude, with which the blazing hot cylinder is put here, dropped there, rolls to its next appointed spot, is chopped up and handed on, the swift passage to the cooling crude, pinkish-purple shell shape.Down a long line one sees in perspective a practical symmetry, of furnace and machine group and the shells marching on from this first series of phases to undergo the long succession of operations, machine after machine, across the great width of the shed in which eighty per cent of the workers are women.There is a thick dust of sounds in the air, a rumble of shafting, sudden thuddings, clankings, and M.Citroen has to raise his voice.He points out where he has made little changes in procedures, cut out some wasteful movement....He has an idea and makes a note in the ever-ready notebook.
There is a beauty about all these women, there is extraordinary grace in their finely adjusted movements.I have come from an after-lunch coffee upon the boulevards and from watching the ugly fashion of our time; it is a relief to be reminded that most women can after all be beautiful--if only they would not "dress."these women wear simple overalls and caps.In the cap is a rosette.Each shed has its own colour of rosette.
"There is much esprit de corps here," says M.Citroen.
"And also," he adds, showing obverse as well as reverse of the world's problem of employment and discipline, "we can see at once if a woman is not in her proper shed."Across the great sheds under the shafting--how fine it must look at night!--the shells march, are shaped, cut, fitted with copper bands, calibrated, polished, varnished....
Then we go on to another system of machines in which lead is reduced to plastic ribbons and cut into shrapnel bullets as the sweetstuff makers pull out and cut up sweetstuff.And thence into a warren of hot underground passages in which run the power cables.There is not a cable in the place that is not immediately accessible to the electricians.We visit the dynamos and a vast organisation of switchboards....
These things are more familiar to M.Citroen than they are to me.
He wants me to understand, but he does not realise that I would like a little leisure to wonder.What is interesting him just now, because it is the newest thing, is his method of paying his workers.He lifts a hand gravely: "I said, what we must do is abolish altogether the counting of change."At a certain hour, he explained, came pay-time.The people had done; it was to his interest and their that they should get out of the works as quickly as possible and rest and amuse themselves.He watched them standing in queues at the wickets while inside someone counted; so many francs, so many centimes.
It bored him to see this useless, tiresome waiting.It is abolished.Now at the end of each week the worker goes to a window under the initial of his name, and is handed a card on which these items have been entered:
Balance from last week.
So many hours at so much.
Premiums.
The total is so many francs, so many centimes.This is divided into the nearest round number, 100, 120, 80 francs as the case may be, and a balance of the odd francs and centimes.The latter is carried forward to the next week's account.At the bottom of the card is a tear-off coupon with a stamp, coloured to indicate the round sum, green, let us say, for 100, blue for 130 francs.
This is taken to a wicket marked 100 or 130 as the case may be, and there stands a cashier with his money in piles of 100 or 130francs counted ready to hand; he sweeps in the coupon, sweeps out the cash."/Next!/"I became interested in the worker's side of this organisation.Iinsist on seeing the entrances, the clothes-changing places, the lavatories, and so forth of the organisation.As we go about we pass a string of electric trolleys steered by important-looking girls, and loaded with shell, finished as far as these works are concerned and on their way to the railway siding.We visit the hospital, for these works demand a medical staff.It is not only that men and women faint or fall ill, but there are accidents, burns, crushings, and the like.The war casualties begin already here, and they fall chiefly among the women.I saw a wounded woman with a bandaged face sitting very quietly in the corner.
The women here face danger, perhaps not quite such obvious danger as the women who, at the next stage in the shell's career, make and pack the explosives in their silk casing, but quite considerable risk.And they work with a real enthusiasm.They know they are fighting the Bloches as well as any men.Certain of them wear Russian decorations.The women of this particular factory have been thanked by the Tsar, and a number of decorations were sent by him for distribution among them.
3
The shell factory and the explosives shed stand level with the drill yard as the real first stage in one of the two essential /punches/ in modern war.When one meets the shell again it is being unloaded from the railway truck into an ammunition dump.
And here the work of control is much more the work of a good traffic manager than of the old-fashioned soldier.
