So far, however, I have described the expansion or adaptation of firms
already existing. But the country is now being covered with another and
new type of workshop--the National Shell factories--which are founded,
financed, and run by the Ministry of Munitions. The English Government is
now by far the greatest engineering employer in the world.

Let me take an illustration from a Yorkshire town--a town where this
Government engineering is rapidly absorbing everything but the textile
factories. A young and most competent Engineer officer is the Government
head of the factory. The work was begun last July, by the help of borrowed
lathes, in a building which had been used for painting railway-carriages;
its first shell was completed last August. The staff last June was 1. It
is now about 200, and the employees nearly 2,500.

A month after the first factory was opened, the Government asked for
another--for larger shell. It was begun in August, and was in work in a
few weeks. In September a still larger factory--for still larger
shells--(how these demands illustrate the course of the war!--how they are
themselves illustrated by the history of Verdun!) was seen to be
necessary. It was begun in September, and is now running. Almost all the
machines used in the factory have been made in the town itself, and about
100 small firms, making shell parts--fuses primers, gaines, etc.--have
been grouped round the main firm, and are every day sending in their work
to the factory to be tested, put together, and delivered.

No factory made a better impression upon me than this one. The large, airy
building with its cheerful lighting; the girls in their dark-blue caps and
overalls, their long and comely lines reminding one of some processional
effect in a Florentine picture; the high proportion of good looks, even of