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.”