THE CREUSOT GUN WORKS
RRIVING in Le Creusot we stopped at the Grand Hotel Moderne and had a most enjoyable Sunday evening. It was discovered that our French secretary, Emile Garden, had quite a tenor voice. He started in to sing the Marseilles Hymn, and it was not long until all the Commission joined, and then the hotel employes. Before we got through scores of people came in from the street to see what was going on. The incident was telegraphed by the newspaper correspondents to the Paris papers, and it aided in the work of the commissioners by showing their patriotism and sympathy for France.
We were told that there had been no strike at Le Creusot for twenty-five years. The employes wear a special sleeve decoration which indicates that they are in the same class as soldiers; that is to say, they are making cannon and munitions and working for France.
We were given a breakfast at the Schneider club house and then visited the plant. We were refused admission to the munitions plant. The works employ about twenty thousand men and two thousand women. The output of the plant is large projectiles, and for this reason the number of women employed is relatively small. A number of five hundred and twenty millimeter shells were shown to us; these shells are more than seven feet long and weigh a ton and a half. We were also shown the guns from which they are fired, but these were not quite completed. This plant contains four blast furnaces of very small capacity, making special grades of pig iron. The initial heat is not used, the steel being reheated and repoured. A good deal of Vanadium alloy is used, and this is made in America. At this plant we met Mr. Edmond Lemaitre, an engineer who had been in Youngstown employed as an inspector. All the employes, both men and women, wear wooden shoes. We noticed an absence of safety devices and safety notices. Armored cars were being manufactured for the government as well as armor plate, but this armor plate mill was away behind the mills in our own country.
We had luncheon at the club house, but no speeches were made. None of the proprietors or directors of the company was present. We then visited the company hospital, a part of which was occupied by electric devices for treating the wounded. Then we came to the home where the orphans of the employes are taken care of.
[Illustration: New 520-mm. Gun, Carrying Projectile Seven Feet in Length and Weighing 3,100 lbs., seen at Creusot Works.]
A great deal of attention is paid to the sanitary conditions and also to the uniforms of the men, and a great deal that is done for the workmen could be copied in our American plants. The history of these works, the greatest of their kind in France, is interesting. Their former ore supply, or at least a large part of it, was captured by the Germans near Verdun.
The name Creusot was first mentioned in an old charter in 1253. In the year 1502 coal was discovered there, and the year 1793 saw the opening of the Canal du Centre. During the French Revolution the plant was taken and exploited by the state and a little before the year 1800 was given back to its owners. During the Napoleonic wars much work was done here. In the year 1815, gun making was stopped and only coal mining was allowed.
The dynasty of the Schneiders continued for four generations; the last one, Charles Eugene Schneider, was born in 1868.