Posters and small bills with both an artistic and literary "punch" are being prepared and sent out for distribution. Newspapers with special working class clientèle are making direct appeals to their readers.
TEN THOUSAND MEN A DAY
Mr. H.E. Morgan, of the War Munitions Ministry, said in an interview printed by The London Daily Chronicle on July 1:
The War Munition Volunteers have amply justified their formation. During the last two days the enrolments throughout the country have averaged ten thousand skilled and fully qualified mechanics, who are exactly the type of worker we want. So far as the men are concerned, the voluntary principle in industrial labor has triumphed.
We have already transferred a large number of skilled mechanics from non-war work to munition making, and daily the number grows. London compares excellently with other places as regards the number of volunteers, but naturally most of the men are coming from the great engineering centres in the North and Midlands.
A REGISTER OF 90,000
In a London dispatch of the Associated Press, dated July 16, this report appeared:
After upward of a fortnight's work in the six hundred bureaus which were opened when the Minister of Munitions, David Lloyd George, gave labor the opportunity voluntarily to enroll as munitions operatives, closed today with a total registration of ninety thousand men. Registration hereafter will be carried out through the labor exchanges.
More men are needed, but the chief difficulty now is to place them on war work with a minimum of red tape. H.G. Morgan, assistant director of the Munitions Department, said today that this problem was causing some unrest among the workers, but that the transfers would take time, for the Government was anxious not to disturb industry more than necessary.
"The problem almost amounts to a rearrangement of the whole skilled labor of the country," said Mr. Morgan. "This, of course, will take considerable time."