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other class of the community, are prepared to adopt a roving life. There are certain occupations such as those of the navvy, and in less degree of the builder, in which regular movement is an essential incident. But generally, although the working classes probably tend to migrate more easily than other classes, they share the general preference for a fixed home and unchanging environment. But from the beginning of the war it was plain that mobility would have to be largely stimulated. It was, as Mr. Lloyd George said at Manchester in 1915, " an engineers' war," and it was plain that one or both of two courses must be adopted either men must be brought to the engineering centres or en- gineering must be spread over areas where it had not previously been carried out, or both expedients must be adopted. The approach to this problem indeed passed through at least three stages the first in which the man was brought to the work, the second where the work was brought to the man and the third a combination of the other two.

(i) Increase of Mobility. The first step of all was when, at the beginning of Aug. 1914 labour was supplied to Aldershot to get the Expeditionary Force off to France, and men were moved in large numbers from the northern shipbuilding yards to the naval dockyards. Valuable and indeed vital as this service was in itself, it did not really form part of the general plans for increasing mobility. Many, indeed a majority, of the men engaged on getting the Expeditionary Force off returned after a short period to their old work ; and this, though in much less degree, was also true of some of the men moved to the dockyards.

The origins of a more general effort were found in the King's Squad, organized in July 1915 by the Newcastle armaments committee, and the war squad organized by the Glasgow commit- tee. But it is necessary in the first place to give some explanation of the events that led up to the formation of these committees.

When about the beginning of 1915 public attention was riveted on the shell shortage, the general view held by the authorities was that the only way to increase production was to place further orders with the very limited number of mittees. Government establishments and private firms that had experience in the manufacture of munitions. All these establishments had declared emphatically that they could not possibly increase production unless (a) they could have a largely increased labour supply, and (b) trade union restrictions could be removed. The solution of the second demand was afforded by the Treasury agreement and the subsequent Munitions Acts. But the first demand in itself helped to create a position which con- verted the authorities to the belief that work must be spread to where the men were, rather than impose on the already breaking resources of the great armament firms a burden which was ex hypothesi beyond them.

As early as the end of 1914 the Board of Trade had challenged the policy of concentrating labour on the armament firms. They had suggested the possibility of group arrangements in districts with engineering experience where by a reasonable sub- division of work among the various firms the whole article re- quired by the War Office could be provided. The War Office, however, did not accept this view, and in accordance with their wishes the Board of Trade made an intensive effort to discover new sources of labour and to divert to the armament firms large bodies of workpeople from other engineering works. The first part of the campaign has been already mentioned. The result of the second part was, as the Board of Trade anticipated, a failure. Employers were not prepared to release their men, when most of them felt confident that if contracts could be placed with them they could carry out the work far more expeditiously than if the same contracts were undertaken with men new to them by the already overburdened armament firms. As a matter of fact, at the end of Jan. the total number released by employers on com- mercial work for armament firms had reached a total of 942. The value of this figure will be realized when it is remembered that at this period one armament firm alone (Messrs. Armstrong's) were asking for 4,150 men.

It was plain that matters could not be left at that point. The Board of Trade proposed a survey of the engineering trade in

order to discover what its capacity for armament production was. This plan was not adopted, but later a Home Office census of machinery following much the same lines was put in hand and produced excellent results. The Board of Trade were, however, authorized by the War Office to exhibit samples of shells, etc., at various engineering centres with a view to obtaining possible offers from local manufacturers.

In the meantime, following on a successful experiment on organizing a saddlery group in 1914 by the Board of Trade, the first cooperative group of manufacturers was formed in Jan. at Leicester. This group was formed under the auspices of the Board of Trade on Jan. 8, and the first order for 1,000 4-5 shells per week was placed with it by the War Office on March 30.

At this point the armament outputs committee of the War Office, under the chairmanship of Mr. G. M. Booth, and a little later the Treasury munitions committee, under the chairman- ship of Mr. Lloyd George, come upon the scene. Mr. Booth and his committee from the outset took the view that both of the contending policies must be worked side by side that is to say, that within the areas of the big armament firms men should be brought to the firms, while in other engineering areas the work should be brought to the men by distribution of contracts.

These principles were endorsed by the Treasury munitions committee, but they took the matter one step further by order- ing the construction of national factories, a proposal first put to them in a memorandum presented by Sir P. Girouard.

Thus by April and May 1915 the principles, though destined to every form of subsequent modification of detail, had been established which moulded the whole supply of labour for munitions throughout the war. In short the vital decision had been reached that the whole engineering tracts. capacity of the nation should be used. In the first place the great firms with years of experience should be strengthened to the greatest extent possible, but this strengthen- ing was not to be at the expense of encouraging the wide distri- bution of contracts to all firms or groups of firms capable of mu- nitions manufacture; and in the second place national factories were to be set up under direct State management to supplement production from the other two sources. These general decisions depended for their successful carrying out in practice upon the supply of labour required being forthcoming. While it had been decided that movement of labour should be limited by spread- ing contracts, it was still obvious that before the work and the workman could be successfully brought together there would have to be considerable adjustments. The Board of Trade had through their employment exchanges already stimulated move- ment to a great extent, but the time had now come for a further step forward. As part of Mr. Booth's scheme for concentrating labour in armament firms in districts where these firms existed, two committees were established in Newcastle and Glasgow, known respectively as the N.E. Coast and the West of Scotland Armaments Committees.

Of these two committees, that of the N.E. Coast was the earlier and perhaps the more successful. It addressed itself immediately to the question of tHe transfer of labour from com- mercial to munitions work. With this end in view it took two steps: the first, which followed the precedent adopted by the Board of Trade, was to appeal to employers to release men; the second, destined to form the germ of the war munitions volunteer scheme, was to appeal to workmen to enlist voluntarily for munitions work. The first, even with local influence, was a failure, producing a negligible number of men for transfer, but the second was a striking success. By the middle of May under the first head 290 men had been transferred, by the end of June under the second 1,080. At Glasgow a similar appeal for volun- teers produced 434 transfers. But not only did these committees by the method of direct appeal lay the foundations of the war munitions volunteer scheme, but they went further and settled two vital points as to the basis of their employment. These points arose on the question of who was to be responsible for travelling and subsistence allowances of men transferred. It was