Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 168, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 August 1917 — GREAT ACTIVITY ON RIVER CLYDE [ARTICLE]

GREAT ACTIVITY ON RIVER CLYDE

Twenty-Two Miles of Factories Turn Out Hundreds of Standardized Ships. CHIEF FOE OF SUBMARINE Visit to the Great Plants Explains Lloyd-George’s Confidence That the German Sea Menace Will Be Beaten; Glasgow. —A day on the River Clyde helps explain Lloyd-George’s confidence that the submarine menace will be beaten. A snare-drum roar from thousands of steam riveters and a battlefield of drumfire of crashing hydraulic hammers ; unending miles of wooden and steel scaffoldings with workmen swarming over them like flies; towering cranes that look capable of lifting a county courtty>use and setting it (Lown in the next county; these are some of the reasons. Girls —thousands and thousands of trouseretted girls—furnish so many additional reasons. And then there are certain reasons visible to the eye concerning which secrecy is imposed. They constitute a method of direct warfare against submarines and are already proving their effectiveness, but more than that cannot be told. Twenty-Two Miles of Factories. The Clyde was the greatest shipbuilding center in the world before the war began. Now it dwarfs its own activities of three years ago. For 22 miles on one side of the river immense plants crowd against one another; the same is true for half the distance on the other side of the river. Soon it will be the whole distance on both sides.

The world’s biggest fighting craft went the ways here a few days ago, but work stopped many months ago on what was to be the world’s. biggest merchant ship. Instead, smaller ships and more of them are being built. Rows on rows of skeletons, some bare, some partly dressed in their armorplate, show how the new policy of building standardized ships Is being carried out. Builders report it means a 40 per cent gain iq speed of construction. “Unless the destructiveness of the German submarines is greatly increased, the extension of British shipping will practically take care of the situation by autumn,” said Fred Lobnitz, munitions director for Scotland. “This does not take Into account the huge preparations under way in America.” The fact that they are compelled to rely on women and girls for an Immense proportion of their labor has ceftsed to be considered a handicap, the shipbuilders say. Aside from such work as calls for sheer muscle, they declared, the women are completely qualified as proved by the fact that they are averaging a larger output per person than men in the same work averaged—before the war. The same Increase In output since the war began, of course, has been shown by the men. Do No Heavy Work. Women are used chiefly In work where automatic devices take the heavy lifting off their hands. Thus feminine hands are seen turning out 15-inch shells practically without masculine assistance; doing the bulk of the work on the famous British tanks, gun carriages and, naturally, on airplanes and airships. The excellence of their workmanship makes certain that the problem of adjusting labor conditions after the war will be a big one. “Just now they are giving thought to one thing only,” said Lobnitz, “and that Is .the winning of the war."