INTERESTING PARAGRAPHS
Says Mr. E. G. Allen, the able Director of the Cass Technical Trade School, Detroit: “We have taken high grade machinists in Detroit who have been in the shops for a couple of years and were familiar with the use of drawings, decimal equivalents, etc., and made tool room machine operators doing work of considerable variety, each on a single type machine, almost immediately. In three or four months, by continuing to watch and instruct such a man, he has been able to run almost any machine and do on it almost any work laid out by the toolmaker.”
This war is going to last years. Even three or four months, which seems a long time, will pass like a day. Are some of us not almost grossly careless in not getting at this immediately? Mr. J. J. Pierson, Dilution Officer of the British Ministry of Munitions in the London District, says: “You can make a toolroom operator of a woman in three weeks. If you can’t do it in three weeks, you can’t do it at all. You have simply gotten the wrong woman. Pick out a long fingered, sensitive, intelligent woman from the shop force who has been carefully trained and is especially satisfactory and exact in her production and upgrade her in this way.”
“This office has made an exhaustive study of the vestibule training methods and results of the Section on Industrial Training, of the Council of National Defense, and believes that this general immediate adoption is absolutely essential to meet the increased war program and cannot be too quickly or extensively adopted and should have the immediate and fullest support of all who are charged with production matters. The shortage of skilled labor to-day is alone two hundred and fifty thousand and we are advised will be one million by January 1. This office is putting it into force and effect just as promptly and as actively as we know how.”
August 8, 1918.
(Signed) John C. Jones,
Chief of Ordnance, Philadelphia District, Philadelphia, Pa.
“I am confident that any community by establishing a proper school connected with the industries may become a great factor in the progress of the community’s industries.
“We find your bulletins very useful. You are sending out a world of information which education ought to receive. This war ought to show us the way in our schools and give us a chance to connect up the educational wagon with life.”
August 10, 1918.
(Signed) Augustus O. Thomas,
State Superintendent of Schools, Augusta, Maine.
“We are making plans to introduce training schools into all Ordnance Manufacturers’ plants in this district. We will endeavor to make sure that representatives of all the Ordnance plants in this neighborhood hear you and work out from the enthusiasm which no doubt your exposition will create.”
Aug. 10, 1918.
(Signed) B. A. Franklin, Major, Ord. R. C.
Bridgeport District, Bridgeport, Conn.
The following firms in Worcester, Mass., are using the vestibule principle in special efforts at training unskilled men in their shops: The Heald Machine Company, Bradley Car Works, Reed Prentice Company, Sleeper & Hartley, Inc., Rice, Barton & Fales.
In a large factory making power machines the men from one department threatened to strike because “the women were being paid higher wages than the men.” Investigation disclosed that all were working at the same piece rates but the women were producing more.
A member of a British Commission which visited the United States last winter said:
“England delayed the winning of the war two years by delaying the introduction of women one year.”