On This Day, 25 March 1918

Birmingham Daily Gazette

Monday 25 March 1918

BIRMINGHAM’S WAR WORK.

Colonial & U.S. Pressmen Impressed.

THE WOMEN’S PART.

It grips, and grips again. Its immensity is beyond all calculation. You work here—work night and day without talk, with sleeves rolled up, and your shoulder to the task.—A New York Journalist

No turn of the kaleidoscope ever presented a more startling change than the total conversion which has been accomplished in Birmingham. Jewellers abandoned their craftsmanship and the fashioning of gold and silver ornaments for the production anti-gas apparatus and other war material; old-established firms, noted for their art productions which have found a permanent home in most of the museums of the world, turned to the manufacture or an intricate type of hand-grenade; cycle makers devoted their activities to fuses and shells; world famous pan makers adapted their machines to the manufacture of cartridge clips, the railway carriage companies launched out in artillery wagons, limbers, tanks and aeroplanes; and the chemical works devoted their energies to the production of the deadly T.N.T. All the people in the city became by the new national effort, to quote the words of the Lord Mayor of Birmingham.

Visit of Journalists.

Just the man in the firing line can only assimilate the events on the particular stretch of ground within their vision, having no opportunity of realising the perspective of the whole front, so the people of Birmingham have no idea of the tremendous character of their effort, while those outside the borders of the city cannot appreciate the extent of the work. In order, therefore, to focus attention on the extraordinarily large and varied output, the Ministry of Munitions arranged for a representative party of American, Colonial, and English journalists to inspect the leading works.

Given a powerful fleet of motor-cars and the necessary time there is no doubt that the full extent of Birmingham’s efforts would be appreciated, but though a week was devoted to the tour it was impossible to include even all the large munition factories and of the 400 supplying firms under the direction of the local Munitions Committee only those that could be numbered on the fingers of one’s hands were seen.

…in this remarkable work the women are playing the leading role. The change in the character of factory life is as complete as the change in the class of work. The day has long since gone when the munition girl, in her serviceable brown jacket and trousers and mob cap, aroused curiosity upon taking her place at the lathe, made vacant by the calling to the colours of the man. It is now unusual to see a man at a lathe. In the forged wheelwrights’ shop sturdy women are to be found: in the shell factories the work is performed by the women; in the fuse shops and in aeroplane works their quick and nimble fingers speed up the production; while even amid the fumes of the chemical factories whey have taken over the work of the men, and have made good.

Their trim and neat figures thronged in orderly array one of the fuse shops of a Vickers factory. The shop, a top-lighted, well-constructed, airy building, covered 14 acres of what was in March 1915 green fields…