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SHELLMAKING AS SEEN BY NOTED : BRITISH AUTHOR Arnold Bennett Describes Visit to One of Many Projectile Fac tories in Britain. WOMEN WORKING WITH MEN •Ix-lnch and Nine-Inch Death Dealera Are the Product—Present Output la Monument to Brains and Energy of Country. London.—Here is an article written by Arnold Bennett, with the approval «C the ministry of munitions, with the object of Inspiring the British public (to still greater exertions in the manu (facture of munitions of war. The ar ticle, entitled, "N. P. F.: A Working Hxample of the New Phenomena," fol lows : By ARNOLD BENNETT. You see these letters on the doormat of the office. They stand for National Projectile Factory. I know not how many N. P. F.'s there are in Britain. Perhaps Mr. Montagu, the minister of munitions, knows. This particular factory is a very large one. It has over 11 acres beneath a single roof. A farmer can visualize a ten-acre field, but to the man in the industrial street an acre is a mere term. Imagine an area of one mile long by a hundred feet broad. That is roughly the area •f the factory, though naturally its chape is much nearer a square. Over *000 "hands" (the more spiritual Rus •luns would say "souls") are employed 'there, and of these very considerably •over half are women, of whom a large Part are young or youngish and attractive, gnd possess husbands in the army. Now, you can observe a N. P. F. in ■various aspects. There is the human aspect of its picturesque adjuncts. For Instance, the canteen (under its own •eparfkte roof, with a prodigious weranda for the al fresco), surpassing town halls in size and supplying all the diverse cooking and eating accom modations which young women who know on which side their bread ought to be buttered require. There are the women's dressing rooms and lavatories. —I never saw before and do not hope to see again so many white faience basins with hot and cold water, rows end rows and roWs, and scores in a sow. There is the ambulance station Ln with every device, and a nurse always (waiting in the secret expectation of j* "major" case and rarely getting any thing bettèr than a scratch or a cut / There are the women in the roof con trolling the overhead traveling elec tric cranes that command «very foot «f the floor space. Each has a rope to slide down by in an emergency, and for practice sake she is obliged to slide down that rope at least once a week. There are the other women who drive ' the electric carriages on the floor it #elf—-miles of line—sitting in a sort of easy chair and tickling levers. (Six Inch and nine-inch shells are not to be lightly thrown about The latter weigh more than a man, and it takes wither electricity or two men to shift them to and fro; electricity does 90 per cent of the shifting). There are still other women in peg 4op trousers. These last piquant crea tures start with two minute points «ear the ground and very often finish «ear, the top with an elaborate white, lacy corsage or a flowing, glowing •carf. The phenomenon looks queer In a factory. It ought not to look queer, it ought to be far more preva lent I liked to see a girl checker deli cately rolling a nine-inch shell over with her fashionable glace-kid boot that peeped out beneath the yellow overall. These things, happily, wlfr peep out So will the vase of flowers and the strange personal belongings in the wire cage cupboard of which each machinist has one near her machine. There are the long queues of women flu variegated street attire at the pay desks. ("Pay from 6501-7020" is one «f the signs.) There are the war sav ings desks—astutely placed next to the pay desks. "War Savings Certificates. They are 'subscribed today in THE section. Are YOU subscribing T". Well, SH a rule, she was. The Manufacturing Aspect So I ndght continue with the human picturesque aspect but I must turn to the manufacturing aspect; for, after all, this fast rumbling maze of wheels and women and men exists for shells. And, like the men, all these women, however nice and happy, are conscious ly engaged la the preparation of the means of destruction and slaughter. Steam Is at the bottom of this affair —a row of boilers and furnaces. Step flnslde the power house and, behold, the «team has been translated into elec tricity—three units of 750 kilowatt* «ach and three more of 480 kilowatts «ach. A little further, and much of the power 1ms become hydraulic. You «an see the huge hydraulic accumula tors rising and falling according as the creation of power here overtakes or |a overtaken by the dissipation of power in the factory. Having grasped this, you zaay enter (he factory. You there discover an or dinary railway wagon behind a row «d forges. The wagon is full of steel which have made a long jour #te f. They are craned out--they weigh three and one-half hundred weight apiece—and put into the forges, and when they are white hot they are dropped into a hydraulic machine which both pierces and shapes them and from which they emerge, after a pressure of 750 tons, In the shape of nine-inch shells. That is the first operation out of more than a score of quite separate operations. Then the rough carcass is "centered," its nose is bored, its cav ity is bored, and the screw-thread is milled In the cavity, the beautiful "slnk-and-wave" channels are cut in to go, the base plug is fitted (and no mortal power could unscrew that base plug once it is screwed in), the inside is polished and varnished and the var nish dried, the base is "faced." Then comes the copper-bnnd busi ness, which resembles in Its finish the Jeweler's craft. The copper band is jammed on by Incredible main force, but after It is on it is treated with the most astounding finesse, and the shell leaves that series of operations gleam ing with its cut and carved bangle. You see it next in the painting room, where everything and everybody is of a yellowish-brown color and where there Is not such a thing as a brush ex cept the floor sweeper. The paint is sprayed on to the shells as they hang In rows and thus the painting is ac complished with an evenness, a pre cision, and a celerity which would fa tally shock house-painters. A few yards further, and the shells are dried In gas-heated cupboards and out of these cupboards they are wafted into an ordinary railway wagon and they disappear from the factory forever. They are not yet truly shells. They are only shell-cases. They travel every where to be filled. Therefore yon do not witness either the beginning of the work (the steelmaking) or the end of It. The metal, as far as you are con cerned, springs from one mystery and vanishes away into another. its in in a lately Infernal complexity; the mere vanishes away into another. Men Able to Endure More. I have catalogued by no means all the operations, and I have given no hint of the Important differences in the two nevertheless similar processes for nine-inch shells and for six-inch shells. I have offered only a general indication, and space will not permit more. It should be added that some of the operations are done exclusively by men (such as forging) and some exclusively by women (such as paint ing) and some equally by men and women. For example, there are four "bays" of nose and body-boring ma chines, two bays for each sex. I was told that In the briefer operations de manding close concentration the wom en rivaled and perhaps excelled the men, whereas in the long, tedious op erations (not demanding physical strength) the men easily beat the wom en, whose attitude was apt to be : "Oh, bother! I've had enough of this ex asperating dullness!" Another aspect of the colossal or ganism is the checking and testing aspect. If yon examine this long enough you will become obsessed by It, so that you will arrive at the stage of thinking that the manufacture of shells consists chiefly in checking and testing. Every shell, as soon as it has cooled from the redhot condition, is provided with Its biography, which it bears on a card in its cavity. Every where on the walls are tabular state ments which are continually being add ed to. At every corner stand girls and men writing down figures in note books. Every shell is gauged for all its dl menslons. It is also weighed, for a shell may be right in dimensions and yet wrong In weight, in which case it won't do. Every gauge is periodi cally tested by experts in the gauge testing room. And a certain percent age of shells, when they are almost finished, are deliberately sawed to pieces again, and samples of their steel turned into bars of a given diameter, and these bars are fractured—or rath er pulled in two—by machines of a given power, and the quality of the steel thus laid bare for inspection. In the fracturing room on shelves are thousands of fractured bars vftth their jagged ends exposed, and in them you can see how steel differs. Under the terrific Influences of the pulling ma chines the finest steel behaves rather like stale bread. . - ' Finally, lq -addition to the factory tests am) the government tests within the factory, there is the government outside test, for which some shells go into, the sacred bondroom, where no unhallowed person may enter and whence the chosen shells are removed for realistic trials In distant spots. When that is over all has been done that can be done to furnish the ar tilleryman with an . utterly reliable shell-case. Product of Creative Brains. And lastly there is the esoteric as pect and unless you have eyes to see this aspect you will never get the National Projectile Factory in a true perspective. I mean the aspect of the creative brains, invisible and yet omnipresent In the organism. These men and women are wonderful and praiseworthy and very clever. The machinery which they manipulate is marvelous. But every machine has been slowly evolved and perfected by some brain or brains. Not one proc ess ont of hundreds of processes bat has sprang from a creative brain. Everything has had to be devised. The electric torch by which women peer into the cavity of the shells is beautifully thought out. So is the overhead trolley railway, hand worked. on which the shells pass dangling through the painting room to the railway wagon. The exquisite de tails can be counted in thousands. Then consider the architectural plan ning of the factory, a matter of abso a pladng of the machinery, the inter working of the cranes. A hiatus or an overlapping of one foot over all the expanse of these 11 acres would put a young woman out of her stride and bring wasteful friction and perhaps «T'stoppage into the organism. And consider also the affair of linking up the shifts, where the women work In three shifts, but the men in two It might well have taken 20 years to perfect the N. P. F. How long did it take? The proposal for the factory was made on July 8, 1915, and sanctioned on August 17. The land on which the factory now stands was then chiefly a dumping ground. Part of it being subject to inundations, part of the con struction had to be founded on piles. The ironwork was started on Septem ber 25. By March 26, 1916, the power was installed, and much of the ma chinery had been manufactured in Brit ain. In the first week of June 127 shells were made. Within a year of the sanctioning of the proposal 48.549 shells had been delivered. The output Is now over 10,000 a week, and they are big shelis. How was it done? It was done in principle by putting a big armament firm In charge, but this firm supplied only two men direct, though it gave foremen a fortnight's course of train lng in its own shops. The manager was brought from India. There was no difficulty about female labor, but the skilled male labor had to be In vented, created, conjured up out of nothing, for when this N. P. F. was first thought of the country was sup posed to have been swept clear of the commodity, and it practically was. TO TEACH WOMEN TO SHOOT ' I ! Miss June Houghton, a champion fe male shot, has been engaged to teach New York society women how to handle a rifle and how to shoot. This is part of the general wave of pre paredness that is sweeping over the country. Included in Miss Houghton's list of pupils are several members of the ex clusive Colony club. clusive Colony club. REDS FLOCK TO BE MARRIED Chippewafc in Large Numbers Obeying Justice's Order That They Must Be Legally Married. Deer River, Minn.—This village was visited by a large delegation of young Chippewa Indians of both sexes from the Bowstring country, who came here to be married by Justice Ed Cahill. The Justice a week ago declared he would give them a week in which to get married, subsequent to many ar rests made by the sheriff of Itasca county on-*complaint of the Indian agent at Bena that young Indian couples are living together without be ing legally married. It is not the intention of the depart ment, it is said, to interfere with the marital rights of the older natives, who married years ago under tribal laws, but It is the younger members, and in most cases the well-educated ones, some of whom have college educatibns, the department officers are watching. INDIANS BUILD A MODERN CITY Los Angeles, CaL—Pala, the first modern Indian city in the United States, is celebrating the completion of a metropolitan sewage system. Pala has been built on the Indian reservation near Oceanside, and all the city officials, from mayor down, are Indians. The houses are all piped with water and an irriga tion system has been installed for ranchers in the vicinity. Of the 250 residents only three are white men. Cow on Long Journoy. Portland, Me.—C. C. Rounds of West Baldwin, Me., has an adventurous cow. Having bought the animal he put her out to pasture. She left her new feed ing ground, wandered through the woods to the Saco river, swam across the swift current and continued on her course rejoicing. The owner finally found her at South Hiram. I an the put up to it the of in In of FARM LOAN ACT. VI. Its Social and Economic Effect (By Frank R. Wilson, federal loan bu reau, Washington, D. C.) The main points of the federal farm loan act have been set forth in the preceding installments. The reader will readily see that this act is a new thing In this country, and is liable to lave an important effect on our social and financial life. Let us briefly suggest some of its possible effects: The rapidly increasing cost of living has of late given American thinkers a great deal of uneasiness. The fact is everywhere recognized that our city population has been Increasing more rapidly than the rural population. Ev ery day there are some more mouths to feed, but there is only a slowly In creased acreage upon which this food is produced. Two Important facts are therefore patent: First, more farms must be established to provide homes for more producers, and, second, the land under cultivation must be farmed more carefully and with more and better equipment to meet the growing demand for food. The farm loan act will have a strong influence toward a realization of both of these ideals. Will Reduce Tenantry. Farm tenantry is a curse whose worst effects are lowered fertility and inefficient farm methods. The tenant is not a normal farmer. The transient nature of his living makes maximutn production impossible. He is often not a meat producer, because b« is not on one farm long enough to build up a herd of live stock. He is a grain farmer, and a grain farmer is a sapper of fertility. He is engaged In the past time of hauling the fertility of his land lord's soil to market. With approxi mately one-half of the farm lands of the country in the hands of tenants, America Is cashing in her land fertil ity at an amazing rate. The farm loan act has for one of its important purposes the placing of land into the hands of owners who will farm It with the inspiration that comes from ownership. The owner of land treats it so as to conserve its fer tility. He^is a permanent fixture in the neighborhood. He markets his crop through his live stock, returning the fertility to the soil. A nation of land owners means a nation with a con stantly increasing capacity to produce food for its people. But the farm loan act will do more for agriculture than merely supply ing cheap money. The act actually specifies how the money borrowed shall be spent. It says that unless used to pay debts, it shall be spent on things that will contribute to more production on the same acreage. So the farm loan act means a higher and better type of agriculture, t Will Stimulate Co-Operation. But some students of the act be lieve its greatest contribution will be the stimulation to the practice of co operation. Co-operation is its basic fact. Farmers are required to get to gether into groups to secure its bene fits. When they put their mortgages together for the sake of getting cheap er money, they will also form the habit of co-operating in other problems of common interest. Who knows but that these co-operative associations may be come the business and social units of farm society? The financial saving to the farmers of America would alone be enough to Justify this enactment On a vol ume of four billion dollars our farm ers are paying now nearly 9 per cent annually, all of which is a tax on all the peopft .because it limits consump tion by handicapping the producer. If this rate should be reduced by 4 per cent it would mean an actual annual saving of $160,000,000. But this esti mate of the money to be saved does not take into consideration the fact that tue normal volume of farm loan business will greatly increase with an advantageous interest rate. The success of the farm loan bank ing system is now up to the farmers themselves. They have been given the co-operative machinery to finance themselvs without profit to any indiv iduals. They have been given the ma chinery for governing their own finan cial institutions and maintaining con trol of them. So carefully is their ownership guarded, no matter who buys stack in the federal land banks, that eventually none but the farmers may have voting power. Yes, the federal farm loan act is somewhat revolutionary. It upsets all past practices in farm finance. It puts the interests of the majority above the Interest of the few. It gives the under dog a chance. It writes "Humanity First" across the ledger of modern business. Frankly Admitted. "Do you enjoy grand opera?" "I might," replied Mr. Cumrox, "if lu talking about it I weren't oblige« to use words that I can't pronounce and don't understand." Faint Heart. "She had a hard time finding a piece of mistletoe to hang in her parlor." "Gee ! She is too pretty and charm ing to need mistletoe!" Sure she is. It's the fellow who calls upon her that needs it." More Pleasure to Give. Baker—How did that box of cigars I gave you affect you? Eger ton—Made me générons. "How so?" "I gave all of them away bnt the firat one I smoked." $ cut by to BANDITS' TREASURE SOUGHT BY NEPHEW Relative of the Younger Brothers Seeking to Locate Hoard of $63,000. Tulsa, Okla.—Scout Younger of Tul sa, nephew of Cole and Bob Younger, early day bandits who were with Jesse and Frank James in some of their raids in this country forty years ago, is trying to locate a box said to con tain $63,000 in money and treasure, and to have been buried by the James band In the vicinity of Tulsa many years ago. Scout Younger, from the description furnished him by Cole Younger while on a visit to Tulsa shortly before his death, believes the treasure is buried In the Lost City Canyon, six miles northwest of Tulsa, on the bank of the \\ m Js. Is Trying to Locate a Box. Arkansas river. Cole Younger was un able to give exact location owing to the cutting of a new road In that di rection, which does not follow the cat tle trail of border days. One of the last statements of Cole Younger as he lay on his death bed some two years ago was an injunction to Scout Younger to continue search for this buried treasure until it was found. It is said that Frank James, who died a few years ago, was anxious in his declining days to search for the fortune which lay buried near Tulsa, but ill health forbade him undertak ing it. STOLEN KISS COSTS $100 Shopgirl's 8uit Upheld on Appeal in the County Court of New York. Rochester, N. Y.—It was a costly kiss that Alfred Pye of 359 Melville street forced from the unwilling lips of Marie Becker, a pretty little shop girl employed where he was foreman. She had him arrested for assault, third degree, Pye was convicted in police court and fined $50. He appealed to the county court from that decision anf County Judge J. B. M. Stephens has Just filed his decision. He upholds the decision of Police Justice Gillette. Counting the attorneys' fees, the cost of trial and other incidentals, Pye's stolen kiss will cost him more thaï $ 100 . BABY BURIED ALIVE TO GET A. FORTUNE Atlanta, Ga.—Little Tnxle Adair, the baby-girl of mystery who was found burled aline in a country graveyard near Adairs vllle, Ga., last spring, just in time to save her, will inherit a fortune. She has been adopted by a wealthy man and his wife, who recently paid a visit to the or phans' home in the suburbs of Atlanta and were charmed by her appearance. They have no children of their own, and as sured Superintendent Hawkins of the orphanage that the child would receive $50,000 when she becomes twenty-one years old, and as their adopted daughter, would be their sole heiress. NEGRO CAUGHT IN CHIMNEY "For Gawd's Sake, Mister," He En treats Grocery Proprietor, "Don't Start No Fire." Des Moines, la.—"For Gawd's sake, mister, don't start no fire. Ah'm in dis hyar chimley and 171 smother to death." This frantic prayer In a sepulchral voice greeted a grocery proprietor when he started to mak,e a fire in his place of business the other morning. When the base of the chimney was cut away, William Gaines, a negro, was taken out, half-dead from fear and suf focation. He had been standing, jammed in, for several hours. Police be lieve he intended to enter the grocery by way of the Santa Claus route and miscalculated his size. FOR SICK CHILD «California Syrup of Figs" can't harm tender stomach, liver and bowels. Every mother realizes, after giving her children "California Sjrup of Figs" that this is their Ideal laxative, because they love Its pleasant taste and It thoroughly cleanses the tender little stomach, liver and bowels with out griping. , ,__ When cross, irritable, feverish, or breath is bad, stomach sour, look at the tongue, mother! If coated, give a teaspoonful of this harmless "fruit laxative," and in a few hours all the foul, constipated waste, sour bile and undigested food passes out of the bow els, and you have a well, playful child again. When its little system is full of cold, throat sore, has stomach-ache, diarrhoea, indigestion, colic remem ber, a good "inside cleaning" should always be the first treatment given. Millions of mothers keep "California Syrup of Figs" handy; they know a teaspoonful today saves a sick child tomorrow. Ask at the store for a 50 cent bottle of "California Syrup of Figs," which has directions for babies, children of all ages and grown-up* printed on the bottle. Adv. A Monument to Pioneer Cowboy. The memory of James (Kid) Wil loughby, pioneer Wyoming cowboy, who died in Los Angeles recently, will be perpetuated by the frontier days committee, which will erect a monu ment in Pioneer park to commemorate his early deeds. The memorial will be paid for by popular subscription. Already subscriptions are pouring la from pioneer plainsmen, former asso ciates of the noted cowboy.—Cheyenne State Leader. ANY CORN LIFTS OUT, DOESN'T HURT A BIT! No foolishness! Lift your corns and calluses off with fingers— it's like magic! Sore corns, hard corns, soft corns OB any kind of a corn, can harmlessly b« lifted right out with the fingers if you apply upon the corn a few drops of freezone, says a Cincinnati authority. For little cost one can get a small bottle of freezone at any drug store. Which will positively rid one's feet of •very corn or callus without pain. This simple drug dries the moment It is applied and does not even irri tate the surrounding skin while ap plying it or afterwards. This announcement will Interest many of our readers. If your druggist hasn't any freezone tell him to surely get a small bottle for you from hi* wholesale drug bouse.—adv. Airship Losses In Europe. An official recapitulation In Berlin of the statistics of airship losses dur ing the year 1916 indicates that the Germans lost 221 machines and their opponents sacrificed 784. The bulk of the losses on both sides was In the West, where the Germans lost 181 airships and the English und French 739, It Is declared. GREEN'S AUGUST FLOWER Few persons can be sick who use Green's August Flower. It has been used for all ailments that are caused by a disordered stomach and Inactive liver, snch as sick headache, constipa tion, sour stomach, nervous indiges tion, fermentation of food, palpitation of the heart from gases created in the stomach, pains in the stomach, and many other organic disturbances. August Flower is a gentle laxative, regulates digestion, both in the stom ach and intestines, cleans and sweet ens the stomach and whole alimentary; canal, and stimulates the liver to se crete the bile and Impurities from the blood. Try It. Two doses will relieve you. Used for fifty years In every town and hnmlet in the United Stated and in all civilized countries.—Adv. Postal Surplus In China. S The Chinese postal department shows a surplus of $500,000 gold for the year 1916. The postal adminis tration was first inaugurated in China in 1896, and operated at a loss until 1913, when the net surplus amounted to $125,000 gold. Since that time the Increase In surplus has grown each year. A NEGLECTED COLD la often followed by pneumonia. Be fore it Is too late take Laxative Quint dine Tablets. Gives prompt relief in cases of Coughs, Colds, La Grippe and Headache. Price 25c.—Adv. Tire of Steel Wire. Of German invention Is a bicycle tire made of steel wire that Is closely colled. The OoinlM That Dom Not Affect The Heed Became of lu tonic and laxative effect. Laxativ» Bromo Quinine can be taken by anyone wltboni rlrwintf in the head. Tham __ _ _ JMJ taauu uy auyuuo niwo«( Matin, nervomnemor^ln. Ip 1« only one "Bromo s»«-— dgntara is on eub box# mo. Pneumatic boxing gloves have been Invented by a Philadelphia sportlug man. Dr Peery'a "De** Shot" not only expel» Wonne or Tapeworm but cleans out th» mucus In which they breed and tones u* th* digestion. One dOM sufficient. Adv. A busy man talks but little A busy body never stops talking.