The Project Gutenberg eBook of How the shortage of skilled mechanics
is being overcome by training the unskilled, by Council of National
Defense
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
using this eBook.
Title: How the shortage of skilled mechanics is being overcome by
training the unskilled
Author: Council of National Defense
Release Date: July 5, 2023 [eBook #71125]
Language: English
Credits: Bob Taylor, Charlene Taylor and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The Internet
Archive/American Libraries.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOW THE SHORTAGE OF SKILLED
MECHANICS IS BEING OVERCOME BY TRAINING THE UNSKILLED ***
Transcriber’s Note
Italic text displayed as: _italic_
SEPTEMBER, 1918
How _the_ Shortage
_of_ Skilled Mechanics
Is Being Overcome
_by_ Training _the_
Unskilled
[Illustration: Decoration]
SECTION ON INDUSTRIAL TRAINING
FOR THE WAR EMERGENCY
COMMITTEE ON LABOR
COUNCIL OF NATIONAL DEFENSE.
SECTION ON INDUSTRIAL TRAINING FOR THE WAR EMERGENCY
_National Committee_
REPRESENTING LABOR:
FRANK DUFFY, General Secretary, United Brotherhood of Carpenters
and Joiners of America, Indianapolis, Ind.
HUGH FRAYNE, General Organizer, American Federation of Labor, 706
Council of National Defense Bldg., Washington, D. C.
[1]JOHN GOLDEN, President, United Textile Workers of America, 86-87
Bible House, New York.
GRANT HAMILTON, American Federation of Labor, Washington, D. C.
ARTHUR E. HOLDER, Member Federal Board of Vocational Education,
Ouray Building, Washington, D. C.
MISS FLORENCE C. THORNE, American Federation of Labor, Washington,
D. C.
CHARLES H. WINSLOW, Federal Board of Vocational Education,
Washington, D. C.
REPRESENTING EMPLOYERS:
FREDERICK A. GEIER, President, Cincinnati Milling Machine Company,
Cincinnati, Ohio.
HENRY M. LELAND, President, Lincoln Motor Company, Detroit, Mich.
C. E. MICHAEL, President, Virginia Bridge & Iron Company, Roanoke,
Va.
[1]PERCY S. STRAUS, R. H. Macy & Co., 1317 Broadway, New York.
[2]H. E. MILES, Formerly President, Wisconsin State Board of
Vocational Education, Chairman, Com. on Industrial Education,
National Association of Manufacturers, Racine, Wis.
C. U. CARPENTER, Works Manager, Dayton Recording & Computing
Machine Company, Dayton, Ohio.
G. B. DUFFIELD (Chairman, Michigan Branch Committee), Detroit
Lubricator Company, Detroit, Mich.
REPRESENTING EDUCATION AND WELFARE:
S. W. ASHE (Chairman, New England Branch Committee), Chairman,
Education and Welfare Department, General Electric Co., Pittsfield,
Mass.
JOHN C. FRAZEE (Chairman, Pennsylvania Branch Committee), Member of
State Committee of Public Safety, 704 Finance Bldg., Philadelphia,
Pa.
[1]C. R. DOOLEY, Educational Department, Westinghouse Electric &
Manufacturing Co., East Pittsburgh, Pa.
R. O. SMALL, Deputy Commissioner of Education, State House, Boston,
Mass.
DR. CHARLES MCCARTHY, Ph. D., Chief, Reference Library, Madison,
Wis.
ALVIN E. DODD, National Society for the Promotion of Industrial
Education, 140 West 42d Street, New York City.
Training for War Industries, which was heretofore developed under the
SECTION ON INDUSTRIAL TRAINING of the Council of National Defense,
has been taken over by the
TRAINING AND DILUTION SERVICE
DEPARTMENT OF LABOR
618 17TH ST., N. W.
WASHINGTON, D. C.
to whom all correspondence should be addressed.
[1] Executive Committee.
[2] Chairman.
INTENSIVE TRAINING OF UNSKILLED WORKERS AS A MEANS OF OVERCOMING
LABOR SHORTAGE
The Committee on Labor, Advisory Commission of the Council of
National Defense, of which Samuel Gompers is chairman, authorizes the
following from the Official Bulletin of August 14:
The grave situation of shortage of labor (it now being estimated
that there is a shortage of 250,000 skilled workers[3]) is being met
by a new quick method of training operatives. All over the country,
day by day, one factory after another falls into line and puts in a
training department to train its own people—the same sort of quick,
intensive-training plan to meet the same sort of situation which the
regulations in France prescribe for every manufacturer employing 300
people or more, and the English ministry of munitions requires in its
contracts for materials. And the situation must be met in greater
degree and substantially all factories must train their workers if
the 750,000 new skilled workers which the country needs by January 1
are skilled and efficient and standing at their job by that time.
[3] Note: September 30, now estimated 500,000.
PROVED BY THE FACTORIES
To-day 100[4] important factories making war orders are proving that
it is possible to train their own men. They do not assume to teach a
worker a whole trade in the brief time available. They do teach him
by the methods of the training department how to master one process
or one machine in a few weeks or a few days. These 100 factories are
spending, or preparing to spend, at the rate of $1,500,000 solely in
this business of intensive training of new workers. This training
investment is not an expense, as the training is immediately upon
production and the product from the training room is expected to
equal that in the factory. All the training departments mentioned are
on a production basis at all times, with speed and accuracy as the
watchword.
[4] Note: September 30, now 200.
DECLARATION OF POLICY
One year ago that section of the committee on labor of the Council
of National Defense which has been instrumental in developing the
training department or vestibule schools above noted recorded the
following as its declaration of policy:
“The Section on Industrial Training for the War Emergency is
concerned with industrial training only as a war measure. It is
not concerned with vocational education in general. In all cases
in the existing crisis shortage of labor must be met first by
training operatives from allied trades who are unemployed and by
advancing operatives of ability from lower to higher positions in
the occupation itself. For instance, apprentices should be advanced
rather than outsiders. It is possible that many sewing women will be
without work, and many men in the building trades. For all such, new
and fitting places must be developed where possible. Non-wage earners
must not be trained to take places for which unemployed wage earners
may reasonably be trained.”
At the same time the section on industrial training stated the
following to be its plan and scope:
1. Increased use of the public vocational schools through the
co-operation of local manufacturers. This is being done very
fortunately in Worcester, Bridgeport and some other cities.
2. Introduce new workers, men and women, into industry through these
schools.
3. Arrange for the training of present mechanics and others in
existing workrooms in connection with regular production, and by more
scientific procedure than heretofore.
4. As of particular importance, act as a clearing house, that the
judgment and experience, good and bad, in each locality may be
available to all.
The section on industrial training, a part of the welfare division of
the committee on labor, is composed of one-third representatives of
labor, one-third employers and one-third experts in factory training.
State committees similarly organized have been developed where
war products are being made. There are at present nine associate
branch committees of the section on industrial training, which are
Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New England, New Jersey, New York, Ohio,
Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
KEEPING CHECK ON TRAINING
The section recommends three checks on the factory training
department, to be made daily by report:
1. How many operatives are sent into the factory? (If this were the
only test they might be sent in too fast and only partly trained.)
2. Cost, net, after crediting production which should equal the shop
average.
3. Wastage.—There should be none. There should be 100 per cent.
Government inspection.
These training departments, because of the thorough training given,
have yielded from 10 to 40 per cent. increase in production, both for
men and women, and the labor turnover has been reduced materially
thereby.
Great care has been taken to advocate that unemployed men be adapted
and trained in new trades for the period of the war and that
unskilled men be educated wherever possible before resorting to the
employment of women.
POSSIBILITIES OF DEVELOPMENT
As an indication of the possibilities of this development, the
experience of the State of New Jersey co-operating with this section
may be cited. In order to overcome possible objection which labor
might have to the introduction of emergency training a program was
agreed on, after a series of conferences, which was heartily approved
by all the employers and by the representatives of the employees.
Some of the clauses of this agreement are as follows:
“All skilled labor available within the surrounding territory should
be brought into the essential war industries before it is unduly
diluted by the introduction of unskilled labor. When such dilution is
necessary, and in the opinion of the committee that time has already
arrived, the more skilled activities should be supplied by training
those already at work and successful in handling the lesser skilled
activities of the same general type. The lesser skilled activities
should be supplied by training those already skilled in non-essential
activities and not engaged at present in essential war industries,
and who, because of such skill, are peculiarly capable of quickly
learning the rudiments of the new activities.
“Exploitation of labor and reduction of wages through dilution for
war purposes is to be avoided, and to this end persons brought into
an essential industry, or promoted from one grade of work to another,
are to be paid the prevailing rate of wages for the class of work for
which they have been trained, after a training period of reasonable
duration.
“Dilution of labor by the employment of women when necessary is
recommended, provided women receive wages equal to men for the class
of work performed by them, and provided the working conditions
surrounding their activities are carefully controlled for their
comfort and well-being.”
ELIMINATING HOUSING PROBLEM
One interesting result of training resident unemployed is the
practical elimination of the housing problem in certain instances.
This is exemplified in the city of Detroit, where it is estimated
that 50,000 additional mechanics will be needed before the end
of the year. If those now engaged in the war plants could be
advanced to more skilled positions, and their places be filled by
present residents of Detroit engaged in non-essential or unskilled
industries, or those not now at work, the need for housing of the
50,000 mechanics with their families could be, if not entirely, at
least, in part, eliminated.
All who have tried these intensive methods of training are happily
surprised at the shortness of time required to make skilled
operatives for precision work in tool room and factory of men from
non-essential trades and of the more intelligent women now entering
industry for the war.
ACTIVITIES OF THE CHAIRMAN
To stimulate effort and arouse interest in training the idle and
potential workers in each community, as well as to facilitate the
up-grading of the old operatives, the sectional chairman has traveled
from one manufacturing center to another for the past 12 months,
addressing leading metal, machine-tool, and other manufacturers’
associations. He has also actually assisted in the establishment of
vestibule Training Departments in the plants.
Both single shops and great industrial communities are acting
upon the advice of this section, which will furnish experts for
investigation and planning upon request.
PRATT INSTITUTE’S NATIONAL SERVICE COURSES IN MACHINE WORK
As a contribution to industrial training for the war emergency, Pratt
Institute is conducting day and evening courses in Machine Work,
which have been especially organized to serve the present need for
increased productive efficiency in this country’s machine shops.
These courses are designed to aid ambitious machine shop workers of
limited development, including machine operators, bench hands and
machinists’ helpers, who wish to extend and broaden their practical
ability as a means to personal advancement in the trade, increased
earning power and fuller service to production. Pratt Institute’s
Machine Shop has been continuously employed to maximum capacity for
this instruction since the entry of the United States into the war.
The Machine Work comprises six graded courses, each of which requires
for its completion six weeks, if taken as a full-time day course,
seven hours per day, or if taken as an evening course, twenty-four
weeks, three evenings per week, two hours per evening. Day students
register and pay tuition for six weeks, and evening students for
twelve weeks. New classes are started at frequent intervals. A
student may start in any course for which he is qualified, and may
enroll for additional courses, either consecutively, or at some later
time, if he finds it desirable to withdraw temporarily. Students are
permitted also to transfer at any time from the day to the evening
course or vice versa, with full credit for work already performed.
The instruction is adapted to the individual. Men capable of
following directions without excessive damage to material or
equipment are put on productive work. Men who have not reached this
degree of efficiency are commonly assigned exercises. About 75 per
cent. of the work is productive. Production is introduced as a means
to greater efficiency in training.
Courses in Wooden Boat and Shipbuilding, Marine Engineering, Gasoline
Engine Maintenance and Operation, Machine Drawing and Design, Ship
Drafting, Chemical Laboratory Practice, in addition to an extensive
list of day and evening trade and technical courses, all of which are
of special service in the war emergency, are being conducted.
(Signed) SAMUEL S. EDMANDS.
[Illustration: Pratt Institute’s Machine Shop has been employed to
capacity since our entry into the war.]
[Illustration: Pratt Institute. Note the “older men.”]
[Illustration: Pratt Institute (Brooklyn) is conducting day and
evening courses in machine work.]
[Illustration: Pratt Institute. Ambitious machine shop workers go out
from here to give fuller service in production.]
BOARDMAN TRADE SCHOOL
The Boardman Apprentice Shop, under which name New Haven, Conn.,
operates a Trade School, is doing its share toward meeting the
shortage of skilled and semi-skilled help and plans are being made to
further this work.
The “Shop” teaches many trades under actual trade conditions, but
as the most pressing need is for machine workers this trade only
will be considered in this article even to the exclusion of the
drafting department, second in importance, and results to the machine
department.
Primarily this Trade School is operated to teach boys, but the
evening continuation classes have grown in importance year by year
until they have reached the present high standard of efficiency.
The machine department trains fifty boys in the day course and under
normal conditions the boy graduates after 4,800 hours of study,
seventy-five per cent. being trade practice and twenty-five per cent.
academic study. At present many boys leave before the completion
of their course to enter local munition factories. These boys are
in great demand and even after a few months of training are found
extremely useful in those factories.
The boys who complete their studies and receive their diplomas are
largely sought for tool room work.
Thus the school is supplying more trained hands than the number of
boys and length of course would indicate and that is but part of the
story. These boys work eight hours a day, forty-four hours a week,
fifty weeks a year, and produce real machinery practically all of
which goes into the munition plants.
One lot of forty-five Horizontal Tappers was built and boxed and
ready for shipment to Glasgow for use on British munitions long
before cargo space was available.
The boys build two sizes of screw slotting machines, two sizes of
horizontal tapping machines, lathes, slide rests, drill press vises
and hundreds of small cutters.
They have built and shipped about six hundred machines, not including
slide rests and vises.
The screw slotters and tapping machines are of a type in great demand
for munition factories, being particularly serviceable for use on
fuse parts, small arms and government hardware.
Thus, the school, while following its basic plan, is supplying the
country’s vital needs in training boys and at the same time making an
essential product.
In addition, further use of the equipment is secured by the operation
of night continuation classes for twenty-five weeks in the year. The
classes are operated six nights per week and Saturday afternoon with
instructors taken from the local factories under one of the regular
day force.
Men in all stages of experience, ambitious apprentices, unskilled
clerks, drivers, porters, etc., who wish to enter the local munition
factories come to these classes.
As an instance of extremes we may take the case of a painter of sixty
who entered the Marlin Rockwell Corporation on machine work after two
seasons of study; and the case of an experienced toolmaker taking
advantage of the equipment to learn some new operations so as to fit
himself for a higher grade of work. Both men made good. Machinists
take the continuation course so that they may qualify as toolmakers.
Four classes of fifty men—making a total of two hundred men—are
taught in the night classes.
The results have been so satisfactory that these classes will be
continued and if the demand warrants women will be given instruction
upon specified evenings. The school management believes that the
day is coming when women will receive a far greater share of trade
instruction.
Plans are in operation to increase the efficiency of the school
by teaching special classes. For instance, a class in the use of
measuring instruments and gauges would prove valuable and reduce, in
a great measure, the time taken in training the unskilled men and
women taking up factory work. Large numbers can be handled in such
courses.
The school is prepared to take crippled and disabled resident
soldiers in any of its trade courses, night or day, when the demand
comes.
Since this article was prepared, orders for fifty No. 1 screw
slotters and twelve No. 1 vertical tapping machines have been booked
at this school.
This order of twelve tapping machines will go directly into an
optical factory for use on government supplies.
FRANK R. LAWRENCE,
_Acting Director_.
September 16, 1918.
[Illustration: BOARDMAN APPRENTICE SCHOOL, NEW HAVEN.
Milling the “tailstock” on a motor-driven vertical milling machine. A
natural mechanic (one out of every fifteen that apply can be classed
as such), 14 years old. Has been an apprentice about four months. Is
doing work usually done by boys of eighteen months’ experience.]
[Illustration: BOARDMAN APPRENTICE SCHOOL, NEW HAVEN.
Boring is an advanced branch of the machine trade, and requires great
skill to successfully complete an accurate piece of work.
A boy must complete 4,000 hours before he is advanced to this
operation, and not then unless we consider him competent to do this
accurate work.
The “head” and “tail” of this machine must “line” to .001 of an inch
in 18 inches, and therefore must be bored until all the “spring” is
out of the boring bar.
This boy, age 15, is making a measurement with a spring caliper to
ascertain proper size before reaming.]
[Illustration: BOARDMAN APPRENTICE SCHOOL, NEW HAVEN.
Scraping beds—a difficult art. Notice the standard Brown & Sharpe
surface plate at the left. The surface of these beds must show an 85
per cent bearing, the tailstocks scraped to fit the same. These boys
are about 14½ years old, and have served six months’ apprenticeship.]
[Illustration: BOARDMAN APPRENTICE SCHOOL, NEW HAVEN.
Planing “head.” It is one of the advanced operations and requires
much care in machining. The slot shown must be absolutely in line
with the boxes, and they are tested with an aligning bar after
planing. This boy is 16 years old, and will graduate in about two
months.]
DAYTON INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTE
Dayton, Ohio
The Dayton Industrial Institute was established to replace the
vestibule schools in the following plants: The Dayton Engineering
Laboratories Co., the Domestic Engineering Co., the Dayton Metal
Products Co., and the Dayton Wright Airplane Co.
Although the school has been fostered by the above companies, any
manufacturer in Dayton is at liberty to send students to the school
under certain regulations.
The Directors of the several companies thought it advisable to
segregate the training school from the plants, and combine the school
under one directing head. Most gratifying results have been obtained
since the opening of the school January 1, 1918.
During the past seven months over 500 persons, from all walks of
life, have been trained for factory work. About 200 of this number
were women.
In addition to the large number of people trained, over 100,000
pieces of commercial product have been manufactured, which passed the
most rigid factory inspection.
A large percentage of the work has been parts of war products, such
as detonator bodies, Liberty motor ignition parts, inspection gauges
for war materials, crank shafts, cam shafts, motor truck parts, etc.,
as well as airplane parts, consisting of ribs, fins, stabilizers,
wheel covers, etc., for the DeHaviland fighting plane.
Would it not be advisable for manufacturers in some communities, and
especially for small manufacturers, to pool their interests in regard
to industrial training, in order that the schools may be a peace time
asset, as well as to satisfy a war time emergency?
WRIGHT-MARTIN AIRCRAFT CORPORATION
The Wright-Martin Aircraft Corporation has two shop training
departments, one at the Long Island City plant and the other at
the plant in New Brunswick, N. J. Both plants are engaged in the
manufacture of a high-grade aeroplane engine.
Each training department occupies about 10,000 square feet of floor
space in buildings separate from the factories. They are equipped
with modern machinery tooled up for production, the machines and
equipment being of the same type as that in the factory proper.
The primary purpose of these departments is to train women, also
men, for the needs of the factory, upon production work, assembly,
inspection, shop clerk work and tool crib tending. It is the aim
of the Instruction Department to train the learner to do her work
habitually correct, both as to quantity and quality. With this in
mind the training rooms are miniature factories equipped with lathes,
automatic screw machines, hand screw machines, J. & L. Turret Lathes,
hand millers, plain millers, sensitive drills, upright drills, radial
drills, plain grinders, internal grinders and bench equipment. Jigs
and fixtures and the operation tool equipment necessary for the
production work are used on these machines, that those being trained
may become entirely familiar with the tools they are required to
handle when they go into the shop. The machines and the operation
tool equipment were selected after the complete layout of the main
operations had been carefully gone over and the operations that women
could perform were listed.
Considerable care has been used in selecting the learners and the
class of women under training are of good type. A number of these
have worked in shops before; others have been in offices. Our
experience has been that our most successful women are those who have
had to work for their living, either in shops or offices, up to the
time they entered our employ. The range of ages preferred varies from
21 to 35. The first few hundred women selected were about 35 years of
age, the maturity and judgment going with such an age being of value
in stabilizing later conditions when hundreds more, of a more general
sort, will be employed. Many of the women are mothers, wives, or
relatives of those at the front.
The training is given upon actual factory production in the
manufacture of parts that enter into the construction of the motor.
Such manufacturing furnishes an excellent medium for instruction in
the various branches above mentioned, and holds both the learner
and the instructor up to the factory requirements. The standards of
the factory are the standards of the training department both as to
quantity and quality. Work is routed to the Instruction Department
according to the regular shop forms and the finished product is
transferred from the Instruction Department in the same manner as
work is transferred within the factory, the Instruction Department
receiving credit for what it does.
So far, women are being trained at a rate equal to the demands of
the factory, which is fast approaching 120 per week, this being the
approximate weekly training capacity of the training department.
In some branches of work it takes four days to train, in others ten
days, the length of time varying according to the time it takes the
learner to reach the average hourly production.
Records of production, while under training, are plotted on cross
section paper and when the learner has reached the average hourly
production she is declared trained in that particular line. In some
cases women after two or three days’ training have done 25 per cent.
higher than the average hourly production stated for the job. Records
of salvage are also kept as a check on such training, and every
effort is made to combine a steep production curve and a minimum
salvage curve with good training. The salvage records of the learners
are remarkably low, some weeks averaging much less than 1 per cent.,
the highest being less than that in the factory itself.
After the women have been transferred to the factory their progress
is kept track of for at least one week, to make sure that they are
following the instructions given in the training room. Those who
do not make good after training are assigned back to the training
room for further instruction, or for such disposition as the chief
instructor may see fit.
Regularly, during the week, the learners are given general lectures,
talks and instructions on matters that relate to their training, that
they may be more generally fitted for the line of work into which
they are to be transferred.
The results obtained have been very interesting. The women are very
enthusiastic and the foremen are highly pleased. In one branch the
foreman advised, when asked how things were going: “You can give me
thirty more women right away; they are all right,” In another branch
a foreman advised that he would not exchange a good share of the
women in his department for an equal number of the best men he had on
his floor.
The instruction in each training room is given by four male
instructors, with women assistants; the women assistants having
been selected from the best of those who have been trained within
the department. The men instructors are all first class mechanics,
especially capable on production work and teaching.
The instructors are regularly interviewed from time to time, and
the work they are doing is carefully reviewed, with the purpose of
building them up as efficient instructors.
As a part of the training program at New Brunswick an evening school
is conducted for the men in the company’s employ. The instruction
work given consists of technical studies related to the mechanical
trades, and includes blue-print reading, shop drawing, shop
mathematics and clerical work in its different branches. This is used
in conjunction with a promotion program, whereby men who are capable
are promoted into various openings as they occur, requiring more
skill of the same sort they already have.
(Signed) JAMES F. JOHNSON,
_Chief Instructor_.
[Illustration: Being trained upon an engine lathe to accuracy of
one-thousandth.]
[Illustration: Learning to operate the radial drill presses
Wright-Martin Aircraft Corp.]
[Illustration: Training on the job in shop. Wright-Martin Aircraft
Corp.]
[Illustration: Being trained upon a James & Lamson machine.
Wright-Martin Aircraft Corp.]
WINCHESTER REPEATING ARMS COMPANY
New Haven, Conn.
Manifestly, all large employers of labor must train their help to
a greater or less degree. It has always been the practice of the
Winchester Company to do a great deal of this training, but until
the past few years it had all been done in the shops or office where
the candidate was to work. For many years it has been the practice
to take intelligent boys and young men in the office with the idea
of continually promoting them to more responsible positions after
they became competent and the positions developed where they might be
used. Our graduate apprentices, adjusters and tool setters have been
so well trained that they have always been sought for by competitive
concerns. Since the war, and especially during the past six or
eight months, it has become increasingly necessary to develop the
training of employees to the greatest extent. Where formerly help
might be obtained who had, at least, some knowledge of machines and
shop practice, _it is now necessary to take help who have absolutely
no knowledge of factory work and teach them to become skilled_. In
addition, _this must be done in the least possible time_.
To take care of this condition, we have developed in addition to our
regular apprentice course, a training course for administrative and
executive positions, an Office School, a Gun Department Adjuster’s
Shop, a Cartridge Department Training Shop and Tool Department
Training Shop.
The regular apprentice course is designed to give complete training
for machinists, gauge makers, tool and fixture makers, etc. The
course which ordinarily requires three years to complete has recently
been shortened so that some of the boys are graduated in two years.
It is the desire to give thorough instruction in the practical work
mentioned above. The average enrollment is approximately 90.
The training course for administrative and executive positions is
designed to cover briefly such shop and office practice as will give
the broadest general knowledge that is likely to be required of those
in the more important positions in the administrative organization.
This class consists of only about a dozen men who are picked with all
possible care.
OFFICE SCHOOL
The Office School under competent instructors consists of a group
of clerks who do the complete work of making up pay roll, labor
distribution cards, etc., for a number of factory shops which
were chosen because of their having respective classes of work.
Prospective clerks are taken into this school, trained on pay roll
work, transferred to the Central Pay Roll Division as help is needed.
In addition to this school for pay roll clerks, model shop offices
are being established in each of the major departments where correct
methods will be carefully taught. It is our aim to have all shop
clerks pass through one of these model shop offices to receive their
training, as this will insure standard methods and proper following
of procedures. These model shop offices will also act as reservoirs
on which to draw to supply vacancies caused by absences among the
regular shop office staff.
GUN DEPARTMENT ADJUSTER’S SHOP
The shop for training adjusters for the Gun Department is designed
to teach men how to adjust the type of machines to which they are
to be assigned for all classes of work which may be run upon them.
This training should ordinarily take _from two to four_ weeks, but
many times it has seemed desirable to graduate candidates more
quickly than this; if they are bright and intelligent it has proven
satisfactory to do so. No attempt has been made to train operators
in the Gun Department except in the shops where they are to work.
Most of this work can be learned in a _very few_ days under the
instruction of a well trained adjuster.
CARTRIDGE TRAINING SHOP
The Cartridge Training Shop was designed to train adjusters and
tool setters, and some operators. Due to the great number of new
employees, it has been impossible to have all tool setters and
adjusters pass through this school, but it is hoped that in the near
future we may be able to train an increasing percentage of them here.
Such men as have received this training have shown beyond doubt that
they have been much benefited by it, and that it is most desirable to
expand it to include as many of this class of workmen as possible.
Some operators have been trained in the Cartridge Training School
with excellent results, but most of the work is relatively simple and
the training has been satisfactorily done in the shop to which the
new employees have been assigned.
TOOL DEPARTMENT TRAINING SHOP
A new Tool Department Training Shop is just being started for the
purpose of training operators on lathes, milling machines, planers,
grinders, etc. At first we tried to train this kind of help in the
Apprentice Shop, but because of the fact that the kind of instruction
was so vastly different, it has been decided impractical. In the one
case, we wish to give very complete, broad instructions, and in the
other, the desire is to train for one kind of work only in the least
possible time.
MANUFACTURING TOOL SHOPS
We have two shops working night and day offering facilities for the
training of unskilled people in certain lines of tool work. These
people are taken in totally without experience, and placed under the
tutelage of our best mechanics, and trained quickly as specialists.
Within a remarkably short time they are capable of producing all
sorts of tools used in the production of guns and ammunition, thus
relieving the general tool shop of a great volume of work which would
otherwise require the services of skilled tool makers. From the
forces in these shops we are able to recruit the more advanced men
for gauge, jig and fixture work. We consider these shops one of the
best examples possible of training upon a productive basis.
Aside from the regular training courses as outlined, there are many
instructors throughout the shops whose duty it is to explain the best
ways of doing the various tasks to which employees are assigned. It
has been our intent throughout, in choosing instructors, to select
those who are real teachers, having the necessary patience and human
understanding required to successfully do work of this kind.
The regular source through which we train toolmakers is the
Apprentice Shop. This shop has an enrollment of 125 boys, who are
trained in a three-year course to become expert all-round mechanics.
In addition to this, two of our largest shops, of 250 men each,
have during the past year and a half conducted special training
courses for green men on the more elementary work of toolmaking. The
purpose of these courses is to train men who have had no mechanical
experience to the point where they can be used to free more expert
men from all routine and simple work. These men are started on
a lathe grinder or milling machine. Those men who show special
aptitude are taught how to use two or more machines, while the rest
are trained to operate only a single type. _By means of our special
course of instruction it is possible to train new men in a period of
a week to four weeks_, depending on the man and on the kind of work
for which he is being trained. During the last year and a half over
500 men have been trained in this way. Recently 60 men were trained
in one month. The best of these are advanced to more difficult work,
and some of them even become third class toolmakers.
In addition to this work, we have been training girls since last
March to do machine work. These girls have hitherto been sent
directly to the Apprentice Shop and there given a week’s training
on a lathe or a milling machine on repetition work. After this they
were transferred to one of the regular shops where they have done
extremely good work.
In addition to the training of expert toolmakers and mechanics for
the Tool Department, we are also training mechanics for the Gun and
Cartridge Departments. Each of these departments has a school or
training department containing representative machines and in these
schools men are given a course of instruction lasting from one to two
months. This prepares them to go out into the shops and take care of
a group of machines, keeping them in repair, supplied with proper
tools, and generally in good running order.
Third, since the above was still not sufficient to fill our
requirements, it was decided to start a regular training shop in
which to train machinists and toolmakers, as well as gauge-makers.
These men were to be trained in the use of three or four machines;
the lathe, miller, planer, shaper and grinder. They were to do the
more simple work on these machines, but still, work that was not
repetition. In just three weeks after the plan had been accepted,
the space was secured, and the equipment of 30 machines, tools,
and everything which goes with a complete shop, including overhead
shafting, was installed. Moreover, a complete set of drawings
representing 40 typical operations was made and blue-printed, and
these will serve as a plan of instruction. On Monday morning,
three weeks after the plan was approved, the shop, with a complete
personnel of foremen and instructors, began operation. _It is planned
to turn men out in from three to five weeks._
In all our work the emphasis is on production. Training wherever
possible is given on actual production work. This not only makes
possible training of a very practical nature, but also helps to
lessen the cost of the instruction.
(Signed) L. O. PETHICK,
_Personnel Superintendent_.
[Illustration: NEWLY TRAINED OPERATOR
—TOOL TRAINING SHOP—]
[Illustration: GIRL LATHE OPERATOR
—CUTTING TOOL SHOP—]
BROWN & SHARPE MANUFACTURING COMPANY
Providence, R. I.
In our own experience, without doubt, much more attention has been
given by foremen and fellow-workmen to the supervision of women’s
work than has been given to the average male employee in the past,
the assumption being that a woman, having less mechanical background
and intuition than a man, required more training and more specific
instructions. This has been the reason advanced by some foremen in
explaining why women were doing better work and had “broken in” more
quickly than men, and they have added, “If we had given the same
kind of attention to each new man employed, he would have done just
as well as the girl”; this is, after all, an admission on the part
of the foreman that he had not in the past helped all he could, and
an indirect compliment to the girl having much significance. It
may be noted, however, that at the time when such comparisons were
made the average man who could be secured was of an unsatisfactory
and irresponsible class, as so few trained or competent men were
available for positions in the industries, while, on the other hand,
in hiring girls a selection from a large number of applicants could
be made, so that it was possible to obtain a much better average
having the qualities to make successful workers.
Experience has shown that there are advantages in having both men and
women in the same department, as it tends to hold the same standard
of workmanship and speed for women as for men, while it is believed
that having a separate department for women may establish a separate
and lower standard, the tendency being to make more allowance for
women because of sex. The results seem to show that it is not at
all necessary that separate standards should be established and
that in some lines of work even more can be expected of women than
of men because of their nimble fingers and quickness of motion. As
to questions of discipline, where the two sexes are employed in the
same work-room, little or no difficulty is experienced under capable
foremanship.
Actual results have proved that the fears in the minds of some that
there would be opposition on the part of foremen and workmen to the
employment of women in the shop were ungrounded. A foreman remarked
to a visitor: “See that girl working beside the man assembling
speed indicators? She is working with him so as to learn all the
requirements, and he knows that she is to have his job as soon as
she has become sufficiently proficient, but he is helping her in
every way possible. Of course, we shall find other work for the man;
and often, with the present shortage of help, such a change of work
can be in the line of promotion.” This illustrates the spirit which
is practically universal throughout the shop, and which has been an
important factor in bringing about the success of the plan.
While the money question—the earning power—is uppermost in the minds
of the majority, many of the women show also a distinct ambition to
equal or excel men in the work they do. Soon after the employment
of women was begun in the gear department, a girl who was cutting
sprockets on a gear-cutting machine became discouraged and said she
was afraid she could not make a success of the job. Her foreman was
surprised and said to her, “We have not made any complaint as to your
work, have we?” “No,” she said, “but the man who worked on the night
job turned out 105 pieces, while the best I could do was only 85
pieces a day.” Her foreman asked if she realized that the man on the
night force was working three hours more per day than she was, and
after learning this she felt less discouraged with the results she
had obtained.
In the gear department where a number of girls have been “broken
in” in operating gear-cutting machines, the foreman said that they
had taken hold as quickly as the average man, and some of them are
doing exceptionally good and intelligent work. This has partly
resulted from the girls being thrown as rapidly as possible on their
own resources, being taught to set up their machines, working from
a blue-print, to measure their work, and do everything that had
previously been required of the operator. A criticism has recently
been made of some of the departments to the effect that the foremen
were giving so much supervision to the women’s work that they were
not thrown sufficiently on their own resources, and thus were not
trained to be responsible for the work in hand. This again speaks
well for the women, as showing that there is a growing appreciation
of their ability to do more advanced work than had at first been
expected.
In inspection work a field has been found for women in which they
are making an exceptionally good showing. The chief inspector was
asked whether women were learning to read the micrometer caliper.
He replied that they learned to read it and read it accurately, in
a very short time, and that the work passing through their hands
showed much discrimination as to the points criticised. He pointed
to a pile of work rejected by one of the women inspectors and said,
“I have just had a man go over this work, and he has found that
while the work failed to pass inspection for many reasons, they
were all good reasons.” He said further that in inspecting grinding
work he was surprised at the quickness with which some of his women
inspectors would pick out batches of work identifying them as coming
from particular workmen whose work was known to be above the average.
In another department, in inspecting measuring tools, a similar
condition was noted by the foreman, and he stated that one of the
girl inspectors recently told him that she liked to inspect the work
of Mr. Blank, because it required so few rejections. “And,” remarked
the foreman, “she sized the situation up just right.” He also showed
the writer the notes attached to a number of tools which had been
held out by the woman inspector for corrections, these criticisms
showing much discrimination on her part, and as good a degree of
judgment as would have been expected from the experienced inspectors
who had previously been doing the work. It is thus found that in the
class of inspection work where women are employed the standard is not
lowered because of their employment.
Already several women are employed in the toolmaking department. One
of these employees, who was operating a lathe turning out tool-steel
blanks for bits and reamers, doing her own setting up and measuring,
evinced enthusiasm for machine shop work, showing, in reply to
questions, that her work was opening up a new field in which she took
especial interest and she remarked, “No more housework for me,” with
such feeling that it was evident her interests strongly leaned in a
mechanical direction. Girls in the toolmaking department are working
on universal milling machines, surface grinders, etc., as well as
lathes. Some of the younger girls throughout the works are employed
as messengers.
(Signed) L. D. BURLINGAME.
[Illustration: Operating automatic gear-cutting machines. The girls
are taught to set up their machines and make all measurements,
working from a blue-print. Brown & Sharpe Mfg. Co.]
[Illustration: Girls employed on polishing machines. “When they
become proficient on polishing, they are given more advanced work at
“hand-tooling,” etc., on these machines. Brown & Sharpe Mfg. Co.]
[Illustration: Fluting reamers, etc., on Universal milling machines
in the toolmaking department. Brown & Sharpe Mfg. Co.]
[Illustration: Operating hand milling machines in the production of
duplicate parts. Brown & Sharpe Mfg. Co.]
TOOLROOM ANALYSIS
What does tool room work consist of? It can be separated into two
divisions, namely, that which only the skilled toolmaker can do, such
as laying out, fitting, assembling and devising special setups. The
balance is machine work. Let us consider the latter and see what it
consists of.
_Machines._ The machines used are generally the engine lathe, the
horizontal and vertical millers, planers, shaper, plain, flat and
universal grinders, drill press and filing machines. Hobbing and
bench lathes may be added.
_The Lathe._ The lathe work usually consists in machining work
preparatory to hardening and grinding. This may be roughly divided
into turning, chucking and faceplate work. The toolmaker frequently
does all of this work. Let us relieve him of this work and use our
semi-skilled man to do it for him. Let one man do the turning,
another the chucking and another the faceplate work. Where buttons
are used the toolmaker sets them at the bench, but the lathe hand can
be instructed on the set-up and the use of the warbler and indicator.
The same method can be used on the milling machine in boring holes
for bushings, etc. If there is not enough turning the same man can do
the boring. The whole result is the toolmaker can supervise, or carry
through, a number of jobs at the same time. The lathe hand saves time
because he has his tools ground, his straps, parallels, etc., ready
at hand and he knows his machine. It is the writer’s experience that
more time is lost by the toolmaker in hunting for these accessories
than it frequently takes to do the job.
_The Shaper._ On the shaper the work can be divided into roughing
out and following an irregular line. Let us take a blanking die for
an example. The diemaker (who works at the bench) lays out the die
on rough stock. Then it is roughed out to this layout. Next the
tap-holes and swivel pins are drilled, tapped and reamed. Now the
diemaker can set his die up and lay it out more accurately to his
turnplate. The better shaper hand now machines the pieces to his
lines and all the diemaker has to do is file the clearance on the
cutting edge and remove tool marks. In a sectional die he frequently
leaves this for the grinder to do. Now the punch, which has been
roughed out, is “sheared” and the machine hand machines the surplus
stock from it to make it easier for the diemaker. The head block,
shoe, knockout plate, sub-press pins, and stripper have been machined
and are ready for him. The drill press hand does the drilling and
reaming for the pins and springs, also the tapping. By this method
of using the semi-skilled machine hands the skilled man can carry on
five and more dies at the same time and _not lose any time waiting
for machines_.
_The Miller._ The milling machine work can be divided into flat work,
cutting teeth in cutters, reamers, gears, etc., spiral cutting,
boring jigs and special outline work.,
Take the first two groups. The semi-skilled operator can be easily
trained for this work, as it does not call for more difficult work
than the use of the dividing head, and there is always a chart for
that. Spiral cutting can be taught, as there is a chart for that.
Cutting cams is more difficult but if there is enough of it the
operators can be taught to do it.
The boring of drill jigs, and similar work, can be done by an
operator because it is laid out beforehand by the toolmaker, or
diemaker in case it is a die.
_The Drill Press._ The drill press work presents the same solution.
The skilled tool or diemaker makes the layout and then drills
the holes to the layout. Why use the skilled man’s time when a
lower-priced, and less valued, operator can be used to drill to this
same layout?
_Grinders._ The horizontal, the plain (or flat) and the universal
grinding machines have always had specially trained men so we need
not consider them here.
_Special Machines._ The remaining machines in the toolroom are
generally special machines with men to operate them. The toolmaker
uses, for the most part, only the machines considered in this article.
_Training._ The question now arises, “Where will these men be trained
and who will train them?” I offer this answer. Men on these machines
throughout the factory are semi-skilled in their use and are mostly
on repetition work. Take the best of them and train them in the
Training Department, or in the tool room, and replace them by new men
in the factory.
_Results._ This method results in: First, enabling the skilled tool
or diemaker to handle more work than if he had to do all the machine
and layout work; second, increasing the output per machine, for it
stops the time lost through the machine’s being idle and the tools
being separated from the machine. In this matter alone it presents a
saving, as it calls for only one set of tools per machine, against a
set for every man in the room who keeps them in his bench drawer most
of the time; third, it eliminates the time lost by the skilled man’s
waiting around for a particular machine. He is now able to plan one
job after another and turn it over to the machine operator and thus
devote all his time to work that an unskilled man cannot do.
(Signed) WALTER F. MADDISON,
_Director of Industrial Training_.
THE BLANCHARD MACHINE COMPANY
64 State Street, Cambridge, Mass.
As you know, we have been running our Training Department for about
five weeks only, hence we are not in position to give you any
definite information as to the value of it, etc., but from what we
can see it will be undoubtedly a great help to us, because all the
unskilled help go to the instructor before being put into the shop.
Those who have had some experience are put into the shop, with the
instructor to give them detailed information for as long a time as is
necessary, and to teach them the important parts of the work in hand.
This, as you can imagine, is more difficult in this shop where we do
not manufacture large quantities than it would be in a shop where
there was a uniform operation, such as there would be on shells, and
work of that kind.
We have taken cabinetmakers and taught them to run boring mills;
blank book salesmen to assemble units for our SURFACE GRINDERS;
shoemakers to assemble units for SURFACE GRINDERS; carpenters to run
turret lathes, and plain helpers or sweepers to break in on Surface
and Floor Motor Grinders.
We also have a number of women in the shop whom we have taken in
without their having any previous experience in machine work, and
taught them various operations, such as broaching, bench work,
drilling, turning bevel gears, vise work, cutting long threads, and
work of a similar nature, and have found them very satisfactory on
this class of work.
We have endeavored to teach them the rudiments of this work before
putting them on to regular production work, but after they master
the first part of it, all the work that is done is on a regular
production basis, and we have found in a great many cases that they
have been able to reduce the time taken per piece to a very marked
degree over what has formerly been taken by men.
I send herewith eight photographs of our operatives that have been
broken into skilled work of various kinds throughout our shop, that
has previously been done by men skilled in the particular line
involved.
We think that some of these are almost remarkable, when we consider
what our attitude was two years ago on work of this kind, refusing
absolutely to put anyone on who had not been skilled in the
particular line involved.
(Signed) WINFIELD W. BLAKEMAN,
_Superintendent_.
[Illustration: Assembly of our caliper device used in connection with
our high-power vertical-surface grinder, for fine measurements on
parts being surface ground.
Done by “a man 63 years old, a shoemaker by trade, who has been
on this work since June 27, 1918, and has learned in that time to
completely assemble these delicate instruments, making the proper
adjustments, lapping and doing a quality of work that passes a rigid
inspection.” Blanchard Machine Co.]
[Illustration: Thread-cutting operation on a feed screw for our
surface grinder, which is made from a forty-carbon steel, is 26½
inches long and has one-quarter inch pitch acme thread about
two-thirds of its length that must be a close fit in a bronze unit.
Done by “a young lady, who has been on this class of work since May
9, 1918, has been able to take these screws from the rough stock,
turn them to grinding size and finally finish cutting the thread in a
time that is less than was formerly taken by skilled machinists. We
think that this is one of the most remarkable jobs done by the women
in our shop, as this work requires very careful attention and unusual
skill.” Blanchard Machine Co.]
[Illustration: Assistant Inspector. Blanchard Machine Co.
Done by “a young girl of twenty years, who has been assistant
inspector since April 29, 1918, and while she does not understand all
the technical phrases used in connection with, work of this sort,
there is a very large percentage which is merely routine, and if it
does not pass the gauges provided she refers it to another man to put
on production work.”]
[Illustration: Machinist. Operation of Turret Lathe. Blanchard
Machine Co. Done by “a young man, carpenter by trade (not in draft),
having no previous experience on machinery but by keeping a uniform
line of work going through this machine, and giving him careful
instructions, he is able to almost equal that of a skilled operator.
He has been in our employ since January 9, 1918.”]
[Illustration: Finish turning of steel bevel gears to accurate
dimensions, using compound slide and producing a quality of work that
will pass the most critical inspection.
Done by “a woman who had no previous experience on lathes and came to
work in June of this year.” Blanchard Machine Co.]
[Illustration: Graduating of the segment plates used on our
high-power vertical surface grinder. It calls for the use of an index
head and making every fifth line three-sixteenths of an inch longer
than the balance of the lines in the section, using a gauge shown on
the front of the machine for this purpose. Blanchard Machine Co.
DONE BY “a young lady who had a small amount of experience assembling
on automobile starters before she came to work for us on June 24,
1918. By setting up the machine and not giving her too difficult
jobs, she is able to about equal the time taken by the average man.”]
[Illustration: Jig drilling on a 20-inch upright drill that has
previously been done by men. Blanchard Machine Co.
DONE BY “women operatives who are usually able to practically reach
the time taken by the men on this work. In a few cases where the men
have had a longer period of experience they have been able to improve
on the time taken by the women. A great deal of this work calls for
drilling and tapping, as well as counterboring and spot facing.”]
THE AMERICAN SHELL COMPANY
Paterson, N. J.
In reference to our method of producing toolroom outfits most
economically and with a large output:
This is chiefly accomplished by anticipating our machine shop
requirements or demands far enough in advance so that the majority of
work passing through the toolroom can be manufactured in quantities
great enough to be produced economically, and also bringing the
toolroom work nearer to an actual manufacturing basis. This also
eliminates a lot of down or lost time, including the unnecessary
losses, such as occur between jobs on work of this nature.
It also decreases the percentage of losses due to spoiled work as
workers become more skilled in performing one kind of work rather
than a number of different classes of work, which is invariably the
case in toolrooms.
We also find this gives us the opportunity to take advantage of
present conditions and hire a man who sometimes is inclined to call
himself a toolmaker, although he is not an all-around man but is
still quite suitable under our conditions of working.
We find, too, that on quantity production in toolroom, we are in
a position to effect some very great savings in time and money,
as it permits standard jigs and fixtures, such as in ordinary
manufacturing; for instance, we at one time machined all our flat
tool bits made of high speed steel before hardening and grinding,
while our present method is to heat bars of steel in gas furnace and
then punch out with die under heavy hammer or press. This method
alone in a couple of hours gives us a supply ahead that would
ordinarily take one machine or more in continuous operation to
produce.
The classes of work in toolroom are also segregated as much as
possible; we have one gang for machine repair and reconstruction
only. Another gang does all the roughing work on tools and gauges so
that the finishing work only on gauges is done by the gauge-makers
who are also practically a separate gang. The grinding of tools is
under one skilled mechanic who is a working gang boss and leader of
men trained to do this work only.
Our tool supply is never permitted to get below the fixed minimum
quantity, and record of this condition is always before the toolroom
foreman and maintained by his clerk. His clerk is advised hourly on
this through the disbursements which he receives from various shop
cribs.
We also make a daily record of these same disbursements as against
operations and production, thereby keeping in close touch with this
situation, obviating any unnecessary tool wastage which very quickly
may become extremely expensive, and which also may cause dangerous
delays in production in shop due to shortages in tool supply.
(Signed) GEORGE DE LAVAL,
_Vice-President and General Manager_.
WESTINGHOUSE ELECTRIC AND MANUFACTURING CO.
East Pittsburgh, Pa.
Until recently we have confined our training, as such, very largely
to trades apprentices. We have a four-year course for these as
mechanics, electricians and patternmakers.
Until recently it has been our plan to train new employees in
the section to which they were assigned, upon the machines and
work with which they were to be regularly connected. The various
shop departments have instructors picked from the best workmen to
demonstrate machines and their operation, when necessary.
What has already been said applies to both men and women, and up to
the present time we have done nothing more than this in the way of
training men employees.
Recently we have inaugurated a training course for women machine
operators and a department has been equipped wherein these women are
instructed in the operation of machine tools, such as lathes, drill
press, screw machines, grinders and milling machines. This department
is also to train women who are to work on mechanical fitting.
In addition to this we have a training school for instructing women
employees in electrical work, such as winding, taping, soldering,
connecting and insulating.
These schools are primarily for beginners and it is the plan to
obtain women for these training sections through our centralized
Employment Department. Then, when any manufacturing department wishes
help, it will obtain it from the training section.
The instructor from these training sections is a high-grade man
assisted by women, and these instructors are carefully selected from
our own best employees.
The length of the training period runs from two to three days up to
three to four weeks, depending upon the difficulty of the occupation
and the adaptability of the woman being trained.
We have also recently inaugurated a training school for women clerks
and we have had for some time a training school for stenographers,
typists, tracers and dictaphone operators.
We believe that preliminary training is very desirable for both men
and women and that if equipment and space are allowable, special
training departments should be established wherever the nature of the
work will permit it.
(Signed) ROBT. L. WILSON,
_Assistant General Superintendent_.
NORTON GRINDING COMPANY
Below is a list of men from the Norton Co., Worcester, taking a
summer course in the Worcester Trade School to qualify in an eight
weeks’ course as all round machine hands. Five other factories are
sending similar groups of employees. Their wages will soon be from 30
per cent. to 100 per cent. more than ever before, which indicates in
a measure their increased service in the war emergency.
Could anything indicate better than this group in training for all
round machine hands, and the statement of their previous experience
which follows, the necessity of bringing men like them into our
factories, first giving them an intensive training which develops
their latent abilities?
Name Age Previous education Previous occupation
A. B. 24 Grammar School Carpenter
E. R. 32 Grammar School Laborer
C. M. 30 High School, 1 year Musician, 9 years
C. J. 24 Grammar School Elastic Dept.
O. L. 18 Trade School, 4 years Student
I. K. 24 High School, 1½ years Scraper hand
C. D. 20 High School, 3 years Grocery clerk
T. J. 44 Grammar School Painter
A. S. 27 High School, 4 years Adjusting glasses
in optician’s
office
D. S. 20 High School, 1 year Assembling, machine
shop
M. O’B. 42 Grammar School Brushmaker for
33 yrs.
C. K. 32 High School, 2 years Assembling, machine
shop
O. G. 19 Not given Grading
S. G. 31 Norwich Univ. graduate Civil engineer, in
business for himself
M. W. 17 High School, 1 year Turret lathe
Trade School, 1 year operator, 2 years
J. S. 21 Primary School Moulder, 1 year
L. B. 20 High School, did not Grocery clerk
graduate
M. H. 18 High School Student
M. T. 33 Primary School
A. S. 38 Grammar School Scene shifter in
Poli’s Theater
I. G. 19 Grammar School, 2 years Student
H. M. 20 Not given Carrying boxes,
Logan, Swift &
Brigham
Name Former wage
A. B. Not stated
E. R. $18 per week
C. M. $22 or $20 week
C. J. 35½c per hour and piece work
O. L.
I. K. 45c per hour
C. D. $2.75 per day
T. J. 34c per hour
A. S.
5 yrs. at $18 week
9 mos. at $25 week
D. S.
34c per hour
M. O’B
$4 per day
C. K.
35c per hour
O. G. 35c per hour
S. G.
M. W.
27½c per hour
J. S. $3.50 per day
L. B. Not stated
M. H.
M. T. 35c per hour
A. S.
$21 per week
I. G.
H. M.
30c per hour
[Illustration: Vertical Milling—two weeks in school. Previous
experience, plumber and punch press operator. Norton.]
[Illustration: Sharpening Milling Cutter on Norton Tool Grinder—seven
weeks in school. Previous experience, two years boiler factory and
teamster. Norton.]
[Illustration: MACHINISTS’ CLASS, NORTON COMPANIES, AT WORCESTER
TRADE SCHOOL, SUMMER OF 1918.]
[Illustration: MACHINISTS’ CLASS, NORTON COMPANIES, AT WORCESTER
TRADE SCHOOL, SUMMER OF 1918.
Taking an eight-weeks’ course of intensive training fitting them to
take places in a general machine shop. This course carries them much
farther than machine operators.]
[Illustration: FEMALE EMPLOYEES AT NORTON COMPANY, WORCESTER, MASS.,
JULY, 1918, IN KHAKI UNIFORM.]
[Illustration: Grinding on Brown & Sharpe universal machine; 5 weeks
in school; previous experience, designer in corset shop (Norton).]
[Illustration: Operating Warner & Swasey turret lathe; no previous
experience in machine shop; 8 weeks in school and now earns 45 cents
per hour p. w. (Norton).]
[Illustration: Learning bench work; one of these men in school 6
weeks; previous to coming here owned a butcher shop (Norton).]
DETROIT STEEL PRODUCTS CO.
Detroit, Michigan
Some time ago it became necessary to increase the number of skilled
mechanics in the steel spring business and a company in Detroit
segregated a group of handymen under a skilled mechanic to see if
they could acquire the necessary skill in a period less than three
years which was then the admitted necessary time for complete
apprenticeship. The plan had the assistance of a man trained in
teaching methods but without large knowledge of the special business
in hand. After four weeks’ training an operator was put on production
work who equalled the average mechanic in this line of work and who
in three months was leading the production of the shop. This initial
success led to the establishment of schooling as the proper method of
securing skilled help in this factory.
The elements most desirable in industrial training are:
1. Separation of the training department from production so as to
avoid interference with production and also interference with the
operators in training.
2. Supplying a full knowledge of the special business or trade
through an instructor fully trained.
3. Supplying a full knowledge of teaching methods through an
instructor who can act as a vehicle for the transfer of trade
information in simple language to the new operators.
4. Application of the students’ time to learning one simple
operation, preferably on a subdivided operation.
5. Application of the student’s time to learning the free operation
of the tool together with opportunity to try its operation on some
personally chosen work.
6. Satisfactory high scale of wage, but one which can be exceeded in
actual production.
7. Encouragement to the operators and then more encouragement.
8. Selection of suitable operators.
Of all these the ones most overlooked are numbers 1, 3 and 6.
Many managers think that good instruction can be given right in the
producing departments, whereas this has been proven to be a great
interference with both production and schooling.
Most attempts to use skilled mechanics as instructors has failed
because they lacked the ability to properly convey to others the
knowledge they possessed. The assistance of a trained teacher has
made the work of many mechanical instructors a real success.
The opinion that the company is doing a disinterested thing in
training new operators has led some to believe that the wage scale
for learners could be made very low. One way to help a man to act
like a gentleman is to dress him as such and treat him as far as
possible as such. The same holds true with operators in training. The
fact that they are rated well and trained by the best of mechanics,
on the best of tools, in a shop with good surroundings, means much in
the final success of industrial training.
(Signed) R. S. DRUMMOND,
_Formerly Vice-President and General Manager_.
SCOVILL MANUFACTURING CO.
Waterbury, Conn.
The training room of the Scovill Manufacturing Company started April
1, 1918.
We train beginners on hand screw machines and engine lathes on plain
turning. The training for experienced workers is to teach toolsetters
with some experience to be experts along special lines and otherwise
developed in their work. Also workmen with some general experience
in machine room work are taught to run engine lathes. Further
developments in general machine room work is to be taken up later.
Our best instructors are picked from those engaged in actual
production or from promising pupils in the training school.
Skill, patience and teaching ability are the requirements of the
teachers.
The best trainees are those recruited from other lines of work in the
factory, especially at this time, and those impelled with the real
sense of duty. Requirements: Average strength, intelligence and a
desire to learn.
The steady type is preferable to the more brilliant operator who
lacks staying qualities. The operators are trained in the class
of work they are expected to follow, and this training is valued
in proportion as it increases production from the first in the
production rooms, and enables the operator to face actual working
conditions without hesitancy and without fear of handling the
machines.
The total cost of installation for our school to date has been
approximately $2,000. With us, the cost of training (being the amount
paid operatives above their earnings while in the training room) is
approximately as follows:
Engine lathe workers $34 average.
Toolsetters $25 average.
Female screw machine operators $10 average.
The average number of female operators in the school is nine and
their average length of time for training is eight days.
The male operators, both engine lathe workers and toolsetters,
require from three to six weeks’ training before they are sent out to
the production rooms.
For tool room purposes we have not taken up the training of women
and have only taken up the training of men along the lines of simple
punch turning and straight work. We find that the men we instruct in
this line of work are very interested and stick closer to the job
than the average apprentice in the tool room.
(Signed) WM. COLINA.
THE RECORDING & COMPUTING MACHINES CO.
Dayton, Ohio
Several years ago we had over 200 toolmakers in our tool room
engaged upon high grade jigs, fixtures, gauges, etc. The demand for
toolmakers became such that the men were leaving us and it became
practically impossible to get an adequate supply of this highly
skilled labor.
My engineers, superintendents and myself made a study of the
proposition and found that on the work that the tool room was doing
it was unnecessary to employ such highly skilled labor on 70 per
cent. of the work on the average. We, therefore, differentiated the
work into its component elements and made a careful line of cleavage
between the highly skilled work which the toolmakers were doing and
the work which could be done by ordinary machinists. We then brought
in men who were machinists, separating them into several necessary
grades. We had sufficient work of a minor character to keep the lower
grades busy practically all the time. We, therefore, taught them just
how we wanted the work done.
As a result of this differentiation of the elements going to make up
tool room work and the shaping of a distinct line of cleavage between
the work requiring high skill and that requiring skill of a lesser
grade, we were able to reduce our toolmaking force to less than fifty.
I am sure that a close study of the work done in any tool room and
a division of the work same as along the lines indicated above will
result in a decrease of the number of toolmakers required.
August 7, 1918.
(Signed) C. U. CARPENTER.
OHMER FARE REGISTER COMPANY
Dayton, Ohio
The training department occupies a space of 25x60 feet and has the
following equipment installed as a beginning:
1 13-inch lathe.
1 20-inch lathe.
1 36-inch lathe.
1 No. 5 Cincinnati Milling Machine.
1 No. 24 Osterlein Milling Machine.
1 No. 5 Brown & Sharpe Vertical Milling Machine.
1 24-inch Shaper.
1 Bathe Universal Grinder.
1 4-foot Cincinnati Bickford Radial Drill.
1 20-inch Barnes Drill.
1 Brown & Sharpe Hand Screw Machine.
1 14-inch Wet Tool Grinder.
About 30 feet of benches with vises, etc.
At one end of the space they have an office and class room, 15x20
feet. In it they have chairs, blackboard, drawing board, etc. It is
their practice to assemble all of the students in the class room for
a few minutes each day and give them short talks about the work and
the fundamentals of the business. These talks are made as pithy as
possible and only one main fact is presented at a time.
They are taking in green help, either from the laborers in the shop
or hired from outside, both men and women, and are training them for
machine operators and bench hands. Their conditions are such that
they cannot do as many concerns do, train for a single operation, as
they must make all-around operators.
Their method is such that if the foreman of the lathe department is
in need of a man he makes out a “request for help” form and has it
sent to the school where his needs are supplied if possible; the
“request for help” is then sent to the Employment Agent stating
that the request has been filled and the Employment Agent fills the
vacancy in the school.
In teaching the names of parts of the various machines, they are
going to give each student a picture of the particular machine he is
to work on; these pictures are numbered and on a separate sheet are
the names of the corresponding parts. This is done so that they can
be examined in the names of parts and not have the name in front of
them to refer to.
Only regular factory production which must pass inspection is used
for instruction.
In regard to instructors, they have taken a man from the tool room
who is a mechanic and a good teacher. He can handle any and all of
the machines and has the ability to tell what he knows in a clear way
that is readily understood.
Most of the students in the training room at present have been hired
from outside but as it is becoming better known among the men, the
laborers are applying for admission in rapidly increasing numbers.
They have several traveling salesmen, office men and a few who
have taken their degree. These latter are not very satisfactory,
however—they are not nearly so amenable to instruction as are men who
have been brought up to work.
Their training period will probably extend from four or five days to
as many weeks, depending on the adaptability of the student and the
difficulty of the machine for which they are being trained.
Women have not yet been introduced on the heavier machines but it is
intended to do so within the near future.
COURSE FOR LATHE OPERATOR
Names of parts of machine.
Names of cutting tools and their uses.
How to set tool properly and why.
Measuring instruments, uses and how to read.
Reading blue-prints.
Tools used about and in conjunction with lathe.
Files and filing.
Starting and stopping machine.
Changing spindle speed, back gear, etc.
Starting and stopping various feeds.
Changing feeds.
Centering round shafting.
Plain turning operations.
Face plate work, how set and centered.
Grinding cutting tools, clearance, rake, etc., and reasons therefor.
Cutting speeds and feed for various metals.
Lubricants and coolants, use and benefits.
Care and upkeep of machine.
Kinks and pointers.
(Signed) E. M. PIERCE,
_Supervisor of School_.
BURROUGHS ADDING MACHINE COMPANY
Detroit, Mich.
The Burroughs Adding Machine Company established in 1907 an
apprentice school (course four years) which from its inception has
proved an unqualified success. Our apprentices have also attended
classes in the Cass Technical High School in Detroit. In the year
1916 we instituted a course along similar lines to our apprentice
course for our service men.
However, the general shortage of skilled male help, the loss of over
800 men through the draft, and the rapid expansion of our business
has obliged us to supplement our force with a considerable amount of
female help in order that the increased demand for our labor-saving
product be met.
Early in the present year, therefore, we established a school for
unskilled female labor in connection with one of our departments
engaged in the simpler operations. As the young women pass through
the Employment Department they are placed in this Training School
under the supervision of a competent instructor and are thoroughly
grounded in the operation performed in that particular department.
While in this school their characteristics are studied and as they
acquire proficiency and their ability develops, they are assigned to
more intricate and important work in the other departments throughout
the factory. The selection for these assignments is determined
by their physical condition and their mechanical development and
aptitude. The instructor explains thoroughly the nature of the new
employment, points out the advantages accruing to the employees
because of their increased earning capacities; introduces them into
the new department, points out in detail the various operations
conducted therein, and painstakingly explains the scope of their new
duties.
The following day they are started at their new operation, and by
frequent observation, instruction and encouragements improve to a
degree where they become expert in the one operation.
In this manner girls are gradually developed from the simpler burring
and filing operations until we now employ them in departments
performing such varied operations as indicated below.
Spring-winding, riveting machines, drill-press and milling machines,
straightening of parts, assembling of special features, assembling
and fitting type, the erection of machines, adjusting and inspecting
machines, assembling and adjusting motors, punch press and hand and
automatic screw machine work.
As the girls graduate from the starting department, or school, they
don the regular shop uniform, consisting of a suit of overalls,
and take their place alongside the men and under the same general
conditions as to hours of labor and rates of pay. This stepping-up
method of training the unskilled females has been a success with us
as far as it goes, and _has enabled us to increase our production 50
per cent. for the current year in spite of the acute skilled labor
situation_.
From April 1, when the training school was established, up to the
present time, 412 young women have been received in Department 35,
and 260 have been trained and transferred to other departments. At
all times there are about forty or fifty young women undergoing
training. Only nine young women have been returned to Department
35 for further training since April 1. After receiving additional
training these nine were again placed and in no case has one failed
for the second time. It is just a matter of finding the right place
for the right young women, and then there is no question about them
making good on the jobs, as they are proving every day.
In conclusion, tribute must be paid to the 1,200 women in our factory
whose earnest desire to help their country in its time of need, and
whose mentality and courage have enabled them to make a success of a
kind of employment entirely foreign to them on the general conception
of their abilities.
(Signed) WM. EARL LEEVER,
_Assistant to General Manager_.
UNDERWOOD TYPEWRITER CO., INC.
Hartford, Conn.
The Underwood Typewriter Co., Hartford, Conn., has undertaken the
employment of women on a part-time basis, such as will permit them
to attend to their household cares to a reasonable extent. Further,
they are offering employment to women having small children between
two and one-half and nine years of age, having given over a space
in their plant for the care of such children throughout the work
day, practicing the kindergarten plan. They have found many who
are willing to engage with them under this plan, and are pleased
to report the whole general scheme is working out well. Many of
the women of either class have become expert in skilled work with
but a limited time for training. Under their method, however,
the instructing is done in each of the manufacturing departments
where the plan has been introduced, as they have operated under
good regulations as to quality and quantity for many years back,
rendering it very practicable in their case to not instruct and train
in separate spaces, although they appreciate the need for acting
otherwise with new work, such as has been brought about by the war,
and wherein the tasks at hand are not subject to accurate measurement
to start with.
(Signed) C. D. RICE,
_Manager of Factory_.
Photos are herewith shown which illustrate the mothers on part-time
work in the factory while the children attend the kindergarten in the
plant under expert instruction.
The experience of the Underwood Company indicates conclusively that
advanced age is no barrier to productive value.
[Illustration: Part-time workers assembling typewriters.
Their children are cared for meantime in the company’s
kindergarten—Underwood Typewriter Co.]
[Illustration: War-time kindergarten. Underwood Typewriter Co.]
THE NATIONAL CASH REGISTER COMPANY
Dayton, Ohio
The Training School for women, of whom over eight hundred have been
placed in the various departments, was started in the latter part of
March, 1918.
Because of the demand for trained help in the factory, we have not
been able to keep them in the Training School as long as we would
wish, but even this short experience has been sufficient to take away
the fear of the shop, as many of our women have never had any factory
experience before.
While in the Training School the students are paid the regular
starting rate for women, and after they enter the factory and become
more efficient their rate increases until they can do the work that
a man previously did both as regards quality and quantity and they
receive a man’s wage.
In some departments it has been found necessary to put slightly more
women on the same operations than men formerly employed to obtain the
same production, but as the women gain experience, their production
increases rapidly and the quality is as good, if not better. The
women have proven themselves very apt in picking up the smaller class
of assembling on account of their nimble fingers and care in handling
stock.
We use our regular production to train the students, and as it must
pass 100 per cent. inspection, we emphasize quality and not quantity.
We find the best class of workers comes from those between twenty-one
and forty years of age, with, of course, exceptions.
We not only teach the new employees the mechanical operations, but
also give them “Health and Safety” lectures, and show them pictures
of many ways one can become injured if they do not use precaution
while working around machinery. They are also instructed in the use
of time and instruction tickets.
Our Inspectors are selected from the factory, preference being given
to those who are experts on their particular class of work.
It is our opinion that the Training School is the proper way to teach
the inexperienced help in order that they may learn the work quickly
and get on a production basis in a short time instead of hiring and
placing help right in the shop and letting them pick it up with what
assistance and instruction they can from their fellow workmen.
In the Training School the most efficient workers can be reorganized
in a short time, and the less efficient ones can be given special
attention, and usually _we can bring them to a degree of efficiency
not possible under the old method_.
We try to find out in the training school where the student’s strong
point is, whether on machine operation or bench work, and are enabled
in this way to place them in a job they are particularly suited for,
thus keeping the problem out of the factory. If they show a proper
degree of interest, they are given all possible encouragement.
We have had to materially increase the size of our school, and with
the hearty co-operation we are receiving from the heads of the
different departments, we believe the employment of women on our work
is proving a success in every way.
Another point that we think is good is that the school itself is
nearly self-sustaining.
The accompanying photo, number one, will give an idea of the size of
our school, and also the various classes of work we train them on.
Number two shows a gang of hand mills “manned” by women. These girls
have all been through our Training School and are now working on a
piece basis and doing it successfully.
(Signed) WM. A. HARTMAN.
[Illustration: No. 1. National Cash Register Co. A section of the
training room.]
[Illustration: No. 2. National Cash Register Co. A gang of hand mills
operated by women.]
PACKARD MOTOR CAR COMPANY
Detroit, Mich.
In the spring of 1914 labor conditions were somewhat disturbed in
Detroit. We lost a good many of our expert varnish rubbers, and we
could not get skilled men to replace them, and we tried to break in
men on the varnish rubbing deck, but found that too much work was
spoiled by the green men, and the experienced men did not have time
or inclination to properly instruct those who were unskilled. This
led to the establishment of a school for training varnish rubbers
and was the beginning of our efforts to train unskilled workers. The
result of this experience was so highly successful that we carried it
to all of the other branches of body manufacture, and _a school for
training unskilled help became a permanent part of our institution_.
We were able to teach women how to trim automobile bodies, and they
learned in an average of less than ninety days. Their work was of
a very high order, and we were very much gratified with what they
accomplished. Very often we found that we were able to train men to
an exceedingly high degree of skill in less than sixty days. All men
were not so apt. Some of them could not be placed in the skilled
class even after three months of training.
As the war activities took workers we turned our school into training
quarters for mechanics. For instructors we aim to use the best
workers in a particular class that we have, providing that they have
the natural ability to instruct others. Some men lack the ability to
impart their knowledge to others. This type of man does not make a
good instructor. A man should not only be an expert in his trade, but
he should have the natural ability to impart his knowledge in order
to become a good instructor.
In teaching some of the women we find that some women pick up very
quickly some particular trade and when they become experts we in turn
make them instructors. We have not yet developed any toolmakers. We
have developed men to tool room work, such as turning, grinding,
etc., but this is not really toolmaking.
We believe that it is possible to turn out good toolmakers and we are
turning our energies to this end.
(Signed) F. F. BEALL,
_Vice-President of Manufacturing_.
NORTH AMERICAN MOTORS CO.
Pottstown, Pa.
Our production is about half of what it should be, due to lack of
skilled help, in other words, due to lack of machinists. We have not
had much trouble in getting green men and we have had no trouble
in training these green men to do the operations on the shell both
accurately and quickly, but we have had trouble in _getting men to
maintain the tools or to equip for these operators_.
Facing this condition and being unable to obtain machinists, we
decided to train men to do machinists’ and toolmakers’ work.
Our scheme as outlined is as follows: We are taking operators who
have had experience of a year or more in our shop and are putting
them _into the school_ under a good mechanic who fortunately is a
teacher also. After a few weeks in the school we are _putting them
into the tool room as operators_, that is, they will be on work where
they will get work _of a repeating nature_ and they will stay on the
same class of work for a considerable period of time, depending on
the man and how fast our other pupils come on, the idea being then to
take the first man back again to the school and teach him to operate
some other machine tool, then send him back in the tool room, where,
after he has operated on the second type of tool for a certain length
of time, he would then be of more use, as the tool room foreman could
then place him on either one of two machines. For the more attentive
and interested men we would continue this scheme and thus teach them
the operations of all machines and tools used in the tool room. We
have also provided for a certain line of bench training.
Within the next few weeks we hope to be able to take some of our
machine tools from the shell shop and put them into this school and
we will then train our operators in this school with the idea in
mind, as stated in our previous letter, of teaching them the proper
care of a machine tool, as we consider this of vital importance. In
fact, the writer would say that from observation in other plants and
experience here that it is his opinion that one of the greatest, if
not the greatest, causes for lack of production in machine shops
now on shell work is due to _machine breakage_, this coming from
several causes, among the foremost being the lack of knowledge on the
operators’ part.
When the idea of the school was first brought up there was some
feeling among the skilled mechanics that the men trained in the
school would replace them to the detriment of the mechanic, but
this idea has passed or is passing away very rapidly and we find a
considerable interest shown by the mechanics in the things that we
are teaching. Two of our good machinists who are on maintenance or
repair work have asked to be allowed to go to the school so that they
may become better workers and get a training on finer work. Others
have shown similar interest and we have tentatively agreed to start
an evening school this fall for mechanics, our proposal being to
work in conjunction with the Y. M. C. A. for shop drawing and the
reading of drawings and to use our own shop for special instruction
on machine tools.
(Signed) GEORGE C. LEES,
_Secretary and Works Manager_.
THE H. E. HARRIS ENGINEERING CO.
Bridgeport, Conn.
We are enclosing herewith three photographs showing work in our
vestibule school for women on gauge finishing work. The picture
of the six women in a line with the instructor at the end shows
the pupils on gauge finishing work, lapping plug, thread gauges,
snap gauges, etc. These women have proven themselves very apt, but
difficulty is being experienced, due to the fact that the necessary
laps requiring highly skilled mechanics are often made defective, on
account of the feeling of the skilled tool and gauge makers who do
not wish any of the women to do any of this work.
The women show a better spirit and give a much better production, at
least three times as much as the men do on the same work. The one
photograph showing the six women in a row and the instructor at the
far end, shows a group in the school lapping these gauges.
[Illustration: Group in training room lapping gauges. H. E. Harris
Engineering Co.]
The two photographs of the same woman, Mrs. H——, show her in one
photograph lapping a thread gauge which has to be correct within
.0002. She is about four times as proficient as any man that we
have in the place. The other photograph shows her measuring the
same thread gauge between the lapping operation with the three-wire
system, which is rather a difficult feat of measurement.
(Signed) HARRY E. HARRIS,
_President_.
[Illustration: Lapping a thread within .0002 inch. H. E. Harris
Engineering Co.]
[Illustration: Measuring thread gauge with three wire system—a
difficult feat. H. E. Harris Engineering Co.]
OAKLEY MACHINE TOOL COMPANY
Cincinnati, Ohio
Our shop has an average of 75 men on its pay roll, making a Precision
Tool Room Grinder. Before the United States joined the forces of
Liberty we had felt a shortage of labor and had taken steps to break
in untrained men.
Thinking we were not large enough to inaugurate a Vestibule Training
Room, as it is generally understood, we inaugurated a system of
training men directly in our shop.
We sorted out applicants and put them in our shop, two at a time;
if they had never worked in a shop before we started them on simple
machines, such as the hack saw, centering machine, etc., in order
that they might get used to the noise and methods of the machine
shop. They were then advanced to Roughing Lathes, being given simple
jobs, such as turning and facing.
By having only two at a time the foreman was able to give them
personal supervision, without interfering with his regular work. As
they developed they were given more difficult jobs. We found, as a
rule, inside of sixty days such men made very fair machine hands.
We also broke men in on drill presses and shapers, using same tactics
and had very successful results. To give you an idea as to the class
of men from which we have made machine operators, we have working in
our shop to-day one bartender, piano tuner, street car conductor,
bricklayer, coal miner and an artist—self made. The other unskilled
men had had some previous experience on productive labor, either
running punching presses, nailing machines, or work requiring a
smattering of mechanical ability.
Our experience is that if you take a man over 30 that has become
disgusted from a blind alley profession, where there is no hope of
advancement, point out the possibilities of the machine tool trade,
and give him a living wage to start, even though at first he is not
worth it, he develops into a good and loyal man. They are, however,
like children, they have to be encouraged every so often by a
personal talk or suggestions from the head man.
Of course we have had our failures, but our successes have been in
the majority, so we are continuing to break in green help.
(Signed) ALBERT A. THAYER,
_Treasurer_.
LINCOLN MOTOR COMPANY
Detroit, Mich.
Our school is going along nicely and while we are not perfecting
machine tool operators to the degree I would like because of the
necessity of rushing them through the school to the shop proper, we
are accomplishing, I think, that which we set out to do, namely, to
take away from the girl the fear of the shop and to give her a fair
knowledge of the tool she is to handle. The women undoubtedly have
benefited beyond measure by the short time spent in the school room,
and have gone into the factory with the confidence that carried them
through the first few days and made them efficiently productive in a
shorter period of time.
The training room is located in the smaller of our two plants and is
equipped with a lathe, milling machine, gear cutter, drill press,
profiler, etc., those being the tools upon which it was decided to
train operators. In charge of this room was placed an instructor who
had had some slight experience in a continuation school and _who
went to work under the direct supervision of a high grade specialist
secured from a well known eastern factory efficiency organization_.
The instructor was given no special instruction beyond being told
what we hoped to accomplish in the way of building up an organization
of women of more than ordinary ability and moral character.
The training room up to the present time has been used only in
connection with supplying the factory with women workers. Women of
the age of twenty-one and upwards have been taken, their references
carefully examined, and they have been given _from one to three days’
training in this school_. Because of the demand of the shop for help
it has not always been possible to keep them in a training room for
as long a period as would seem desirable, and in some instances they
have stayed only one day.
During the training period they have been paid the regular rate for
women, thirty cents per hour, which rate maintains after they enter
the shop until such time as they are placed upon a piece-work basis.
We believe, however, that through the medium of the training room we
shall be able to instruct women workers in machine tool operation so
they will go direct from the school room into the shop without fear
of what is to be encountered therein, and with a better knowledge of
the tool they are operating, and the reason they are operating it,
than they could possibly acquire through any other method.
[Illustration: Inspecting pistons and valves. Lincoln Motor Co.]
[Illustration: Machining Main Bearing Bolts. Lincoln Motor Co.]
[Illustration: Hand Milling Machines. Lincoln Motor Co.]
[Illustration: In the training department. Lincoln Motor Co.]
[Illustration: _New arrivals in Training Room—Lincoln Motor Co._]
The school is favorably looked upon by all of the employees, and in
those cases where it is found that a woman is not working out well
upon the work to which the school has assigned her, and is returned
to it for further instruction, she has in all cases gone back to
it with a cheerfulness and willingness that is both surprising and
gratifying.
The writer is of the opinion that the school in this factory has come
to stay and that when we build up our organization and get through
the strenuous times we are now experiencing, the advantage of the
vestibule school instruction will be given men employees as well as
women.
(Signed) J. M. EATON,
_Assistant to President Henry M. Leland_.
TRAINING FOR THE TOOL ROOM
You mention training in the more difficult lines of effort, such
as Tool Room, Machine Shops, etc. We agree with you as to the wide
possibilities in this field, and are now organizing to accomplish
this very thing at the Lincoln Motor Company.
At the beginning of the war when labor shortage was seriously
manifested, I had charge of the reconstruction of a tool room,
employing 270 toolmakers and machinists, engaged in the making of
cutters, reamers, broaches, drill jigs, milling fixtures, etc.
Realizing then the difficulty that the future held in store of
securing competent, reliable toolmakers and machinists, we undertook
to train men who had no previous experience in this line. Our results
were quite gratifying. We classified all work and trained men to
operate specific machines against the various classifications.
To illustrate: We engaged a carpenter 67 years of age, who had no
previous machine shop experience, trained him to run a Universal
Milling Machine; not only did he meet successfully all work scheduled
against his machine, but developed such skill in the operation of
this machine, that later he compared favorably with the average
good toolmaker, and in six months’ time we depended on him entirely
to set up his own machine and proceed as a regular toolmaker. This
represents intensive training and what was accomplished here can be
accomplished in other general lines of tool room work.
We ultimately had 215 of these trained operators who were able to
carry on the work, supported by 55 good toolmakers. I am with you in
the confidence that it will be necessary to plan quite considerably
in the adoption of some means to overcome a situation which looks
really serious for the future.
(Signed) W. H. EBELHARE,
_General Superintendent, Lincoln Motor Co._
MUELLER METALS COMPANY
Port Huron, Mich.
I am pleased to advise you that we have been using many unskilled
workers, also women, at both our Sarnia, Ontario, and Port Huron,
Michigan, and Decatur, Illinois, plants and find that women are able
to do the light operations on turret lathes quite satisfactorily.
Our greatest difficulty is in our Toolmaking Department, but we have
lately installed the following plan.
We are selecting a good lathe hand from among our toolmakers and
giving him from one to three students, paying him from 20 per cent.
to 30 per cent., depending on the number of students he is able to
take care of successfully, and we then pay these students about 50
per cent. of what the instructor receives with stipulated raises in
pay until they have served two years, at the end of which time we pay
them a very liberal bonus.
We have been able to secure some young men just out of High School
who are going to make good workmen, but as the new draft will
possibly take some of these boys we are now figuring on using women
on this work and believe that they will be able to carry it on quite
successfully.
(Signed) C. G. HEIBY,
_Vice-President and General Superintendent_.
DETROIT LUBRICATOR COMPANY
Detroit, Michigan
New employees are started on simple work and given individual
instruction. They are then advanced to more difficult work.
By this method of training we have operators giving top production
who only a short time ago were automobile salesmen, cigar salesmen,
letter carriers and watchmen.
The women trained in this way are producing excellent results and are
making as good pay as the men on the same piece-work. At some types
of inspection they excel any men we ever had on the jobs for speed
and accuracy.
We have two men, with _only one arm_ each! (after proper training)
doing more work than the average two men.
The company has created a new department for the production of
Liberty Motor Aeroplane Carburetors, and the work of this department
includes a great variety of machines. It writes:
In order to furnish employees for this work with at least partial
training, we are recruiting them from other departments in the shop
doing similar work; in each of these other departments we have a
section set aside which includes type machinery, and new employees
are put at this work under careful supervision and training to
develop them and thoroughly determine their value before being
advanced on to aeroplane work.
(Signed) G. B. DUFFIELD,
_Superintendent_.
INDEPENDENT PNEUMATIC TOOL COMPANY
Aurora, Illinois
Since installing our Vestibule Training School some seven weeks
ago, we can gladly say it has proven a success, even beyond our
expectations.
To date we have enrolled 109 students; 81 men, 28 women. The women
workers have proven that they can in the emergency take the place
of practically all our male workers, that is with from five to ten
days of intensive training. We have placed women on such machines as
Gear Hobbers, Screw Machines, Grinders, Drill Presses and are well
satisfied with the result obtained. The percentage of scrap material
has been less by the female workers than by the male.
In beginning our course of training each week our Mr. F. B. Hamerly,
Works Manager, has made it his duty to tell these workers the vital
need of training unskilled men and women so as to replace the boys
that are called from our plant, that is, he tries to raise them to
the highest pitch of enthusiasm.
(Signed) A. H. BOEHM,
_Vestibule Training School_.
August 16, 1918.
[Illustration: INDEPENDENT PNEUMATIC TOOL COMPANY.
In training on regular production.]
Our training school has been running about five weeks with a capacity
of 12 students per week. We are indeed surprised at the results we
are getting.
Next week we intend to put on a double dose running through 24
students per week. We are trying to start a night shift in one of our
important departments and will need about 48 or 50 men. These men are
to be recruited entirely from our Vestibule School, where in the past
we have been playing in the open market competing for the desired
help.
_We are satisfied that if the larger corporations and manufacturers
were to install a Vestibule system in their factory that within
the next six months the severe competition for skilled mechanics
would be practically eliminated, and production would be increased
considerably._
(Signed) F. B. HARNELLY,
_Works Manager_.
ROYAL TYPEWRITER CO.
Hartford, Conn.
REPORT OF TRAINING SCHOOL FOR JULY, 1918
Total entries since July 1 100
Total number of operations taught 18
Total number of permanent instructors 6
Instructors from other departments 5
Total number transferred to other departments 73
Total number left factory from school 13
Total number in school August 1, 1918 14
NAMES OF OPERATIONS TAUGHT IN TRAINING SCHOOL
Milling
Heavy Power Press
Copper Bar Grinding
Brackets to Base Assembly
Linking
First Carriage Building Assembly
Inspection of Base Assembly
Drilling
Light Power Press
Small Parts to Base Assembly
Shift Arms and Bottom Rails to Base Fitting
Keycard Assembly
Second Carriage Building Assembly
Riveting (machine)
Retapping
Type Soldering
GENERAL
All students but three are women, ranging from fifteen to fifty-seven
years of age.
Intensified training, speed and accuracy, physical and mental
condition of employees, proper mental attitude to company.
A matron has been appointed who comes in contact with the women and
is responsible for their deportment and personal needs.
(Signed) CHAS. B. COOK,
_Vice-President_.
CINCINNATI MILLING MACHINE CO.
Cincinnati, Ohio
We put the new employee into a department and assign him or her to
a machine in charge of a skilled operator. The new employee becomes
at once an observer and a helper, and in a little while takes charge
of the machine and the skilled operator stands by and gives special
instructions.
We have detail instruction cards or process sheets for all
operations, and one of these cards in the hands of the new operator
will serve as a guide for turning out the work properly after the
instructor leaves the new employee to himself or herself.
In addition to this we have certain selected engineers from the Time
Study Department, who are attached to both the day and night shifts,
and devote their entire time to coaching the new operators, and see
to it that they learn to acquire the desired degree of skill and
proficiency.
We find that the women who are selected for this sort of work just
about equal the men. They show considerable enthusiasm for the work,
as is indicated by a less degree of lateness and absenteeism than
that of the men, but we have not had enough experience as yet to say
anything definite in this regard.
It is also perhaps true that we are taking greater pains instructing
the women than we would in the ordinary course take in instructing
green men.
(Signed) CHARLES S. GINGRICH.
THE STANDARD PARTS CO.
Cleveland, Ohio
Each individual department at the start of the year had its own
training division, that is, while we had the orders we lacked a good
many of the machines necessary to do our work and the proper tool
equipment to start with. We also required the services of eight
hundred additional people.
We trained absolutely unskilled men and women during this slack
period, so that when we started in quantity production we had also
obtained speed. An item that might be of interest to you is the fact
that we are now employing women in Drill Presses, Milling Machines,
Hand and Automatic Screw Machines, Turret Lathes, Speed Lathes,
Engine Lathes, Assembly Work and Inspection Work.
[Illustration: Automatic Milling Machine—Standard Parts Company.]
These women and the majority of the unskilled men whom we employed
are doing work in most cases where dimensions are held to one-half
thousandth of an inch limit variation. In a plant employing excess
of five thousand people am absolutely convinced that a separate
vestibule training school is a necessity, and in plants already
producing work in large quantities there is liable to be a heavy
demand for trained skilled workers, a separate training school would
be necessary.
However, where the number of workers needed do not exceed ten people
on an individual operation training on machines in the department
would be sufficient.
August 7, 1918.
(Signed) J. A. ROTHENBERG,
_Employment Manager_.
[Illustration: A skilled worker on Automatic Turret Lathe—Standard
Parts Company.]
THE YALE & TOWNE MFG. CO.
Stamford, Conn.
We have had in operation for over a year a vestibule school for the
training of women employees in our plant, and are obtaining good
results from it.
We are training the women mostly for bench and machine work which was
formerly done by men, such as: Lock assembling; drill press work,
which was formerly considered inappropriate for women employees; hand
screw machine and automatic screw machine operators.
We are also training female help on lathe and shaper work. We plan
to do the same thing on milling machines and expect eventually to
include tool room work.
Our vestibule school activities include the training of male foundry
workers, and the training both of men and women to become instructors
and machine adjusters.
We also have an Apprenticeship School.
August 13, 1918.
(Signed) THE YALE & TOWNE MFG. CO.,
J. A. HORNER, _Vice-President_.
ILLINOIS TOOL WORKS
154 E. Erie Street, Chicago
We are planning to have this school in operation within the next
month. The writer expects to be responsible for the results. We
expect to take one good man from our own plant as an instructor, and
we are also in communication with an instructor from a college in a
Western State whom we may have in direct charge of this work should
he prove to be the proper person.
At the present time we have in our factory about 75 female employees,
on Lathes, Milling Machines, Grinders, Finishing Gauges, Lapping,
etc., also inspectors, timekeepers and stock chasers.
Since your last visit we have employed a trained nurse who is in
charge of the employment and welfare work of all women employed in
the factory. This we have found has given us much better results and
can truthfully say that with very few exceptions, every girl employed
is certainly making good.
We have one instance where a man employed in the screw machine
department, employed in that capacity for about a year, was having
trouble in not producing on his machine. We had him exchange machines
with a woman who had had a month’s experience and found that she
practically doubled his output the first day.
(Signed) J. D. SHERMAN, _Factory Manager_.
August 5, 1918.
GLEASON WORKS
Rochester, N. Y.
When you came to Rochester we were very much impressed with the
suggestions you made as to the introduction of women into industry.
We sent two representatives together with others from Rochester to
Dayton, as you advised, to investigate the conditions there and also
in Cincinnati. The excellent arrangements made by the Cincinnati
manufacturers to relieve the shortage of labor by placing women at
work in machine shops and elsewhere were extremely interesting.
After learning what had been done we started using women in our
machine shop in line with your idea and the results have been very
satisfactory. * * * It is not a question of economy with us but
of releasing men for other work in the foundry which women cannot
perform. We believe that an intensive training of two weeks would
enable women to turn out practically as much work as men are now
doing.
August 5, 1918.
(Signed) JAMES E. GLEASON.
DIAMOND CHAIN AND MANUFACTURING COMPANY
Indianapolis, Indiana
I am sure that you will be interested in knowing that we have
already undertaken this work. For some weeks we have had a school
going on for the training of screw machine operators with every
success. We also have here a man who is giving detailed attention
to the personnel in connection with our hardening and cyanide work.
He is talking to these men individually and in small groups, thus
instilling into them the fundamental principles of heat treatment,
which is making a marked impress on the character of our product.
We are also having a detailed study of the operations now being done
by women with the idea in mind to substitute women where possible
when it becomes necessary and we have here two women studying our
operations preparatory to giving instructions to women as to how to
perform the operations that men are now doing.
July 25, 1918.
(Signed) L. W. WALLACE.
HENRY DISSTON & SONS
Philadelphia, Pa.
We have established a school for vocational training, appointing an
instructor in each department who takes direct charge of each new
employee. Through this system we have placed many women on work which
was entirely operated by men heretofore.
One of the delicate situations confronting us at this time is
the transferring of help from one department to another. We are
appealing to their patriotism and have established a Disston
Volunteer Transfer System—Industrial Soldiers Volunteering for
Heavier Work, Filling Jobs Where Women Cannot. We are very much
interested in this work and are making every endeavor to eliminate
the labor turnover which we are all experiencing in these times. We
have women operating milling machines, drill presses, emery grinding
machines, file hardening, saw setting and filing machines, also power
punching presses, all work never attempted by women in our factory
before. The result has been more than satisfactory.
August 7, 1918.
(Signed) WM. D. DISSTON,
_Vice-President_.
THE GRATON & KNIGHT MANUFACTURING COMPANY
Worcester, Mass.
We do not maintain a regular separate school for training the
employees on our business because of the fact that we have such a
large variety of trades that it would not be practical for us. We do,
however, maintain a training system for the employees in our various
departments and have men assigned for such work in the departments.
When we have a large number of employees to train in some one line
of work we establish a separate organization for them with a view
to training them to carry on very efficiently and become skilled
employees as soon as possible.
August 7, 1918.
(Signed) F. H. WILLARD,
_Assistant General Manager_.
THE SPARKS-WITHINGTON COMPANY
Jackson, Mich.
We are very glad to be able to state that we are operating a school
especially for women to train them for toolmaking.
We have found that there is not a sufficient number of experienced
toolmakers to meet the demand and the only way is to have the women
help out, and we have a school for this purpose, also have been
teaching them to operate production machines.
July 31, 1918.
(Signed) W. J. CORBETT,
_Assistant Manager_.
LOCOMOBILE COMPANY OF AMERICA
Bridgeport, Conn.
The writer was in Detroit a few weeks ago and was much interested
in the work being done by Packard and Lincoln with women that were
trained in their schools.
We are confident that much good will result from the co-operative
plan that you have adopted in developing operators. We wish to be
considered among those who approve of this plan and we will arrange
for a Vestibule School or Training Room as soon as we can do so. We
have been training young men and boys from our local high school as
junior toolmakers, with excellent results.
July 10, 1918.
(Signed) H. H. EDGE,
_Factory Manager_.
THE TIMKEN ROLLER BEARING CO.
Canton, Ohio
We have established a Training School which has been in operation for
the past two or three weeks.
We do not feel as yet that we want to make any extensive comments
upon the results secured, but we believe the idea is fundamentally
correct, and hope to have recorded sufficient data of interest in
regard to the school so that we will be in a position to answer any
questions that may be asked us.
(Signed) THE TIMKEN ROLLER BEARING CO.,
F. T. MACKAY, _Employment Manager_.
July 18, 1918.
CARLTON MACHINE TOOL COMPANY
Cincinnati, Ohio
For your information we wish to advise that we have started a
training school for girls in our plant, and we find that it is
working very satisfactorily and we expect to have in the future 50
to 75 per cent. of our work completed by girls. The writer has noted
your talks and writings on this subject and is trying to follow out
your ideas as near as possible.
August 9, 1918.
(Signed) JACK C. CARLTON.
THE WILLYS-MORROW COMPANY, INC.
Elmira, N. Y.
We have about twenty women learning how to run automatic screwing
machines. These women have been grinding their own tools.
August 7, 1918.
(Signed) J. E. MORROW,
_Secretary and General Manager of Production_.
CROMPTON & KNOWLES LOOM WORKS
Worcester, Mass.
Our training school is working very satisfactorily, and we are only
sorry that we did not start two years sooner.
July 13, 1918.
(Signed) H. L. ROBINSON,
_Employment Service Department_.
THE LODGE & SHIPLEY MACHINE TOOL CO.
Cincinnati, Ohio
In the Tool Room we are using men that are skilled _in one class_ of
work on _one type_ of machine for the majority of our tool room work.
August 2, 1918.
(Signed) JOSEPH T. WRIGHT,
_Assistant Works Manager_.
THE STENOTYPE COMPANY
Indianapolis, Ind.
We expect very shortly to have our training school in operation. We
are thoroughly convinced of the advisability of establishing such a
school.
August 16, 1918.
(Signed) R. M. BOWEN,
_Chairman, Board of Directors_.
INTERESTING PARAGRAPHS
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.”
PARTIAL LIST OF VESTIBULE SCHOOLS OR TRAINING ROOMS IN FACTORIES
Recording and Computing Machines Co., C. U. Carpenter, C. P.,
Dayton, Ohio.
Curtiss Aeroplane Corporation, F. L. Glynn, Director of Training,
Buffalo, N. Y.
Wright-Martin Aircraft Corporation, J. F. Johnson, Director of
Training, New Brunswick, N. J., and Long Island City, N. Y.
Nordyke & Marmon Co., Indianapolis, Ind.
Packard Motor Car Company, Detroit, Mich.
Lincoln Motor Company, Detroit, Mich.
Norton Grinding Company, John C. Spence, Superintendent, Worcester,
Mass.
NOTE.—The above training rooms are remarkably efficient and
successful; they should be seen. By special arrangement the men
above named are assisting in the development of training rooms in
their vicinity. Write them when ready to act. Also O. D. Evans,
very expert in training, Army Ordnance Department, Production
Division, 1710 Market St., Philadelphia.
Gillette Safety Razor Company, Boston, Mass.
Royal Typewriter Company, Hartford, Conn.
Scovill Manufacturing Company, Waterbury, Conn.
Remington Arms Company, Bridgeport, Conn.
Bullard Engineering Company, Bridgeport, Conn.
The H. E. Harris Engineering Company, Bridgeport, Conn.
Trego Motor Company, New Haven, Conn.
Winchester Repeating Arms Company, New Haven, Conn.
Taft-Pierce Mfg. Co., Woonsocket, R. I.
Brown & Sharpe Company, Providence, R. I.
Crompton & Knowles Loom Works, Worcester, Mass.
American Steel & Wire Company, Worcester, Mass.
Norton Company, Worcester, Mass.
John Bath & Company, Worcester, Mass.
Graton & Knight Company, Worcester, Mass.
Blanchard Machine Company, W. W. Blackman, Superintendent,
Cambridge, Mass.
E. W. Bliss Company (torpedo factory), Brooklyn, N. Y.
Ford Instrument Company, New York City.
Pierce-Arrow Company, Buffalo, N. Y.
King Sewing Machine Company, Buffalo, N. Y.
New York Airbrake Company, Watertown, N. Y.
Seneca Falls Mfg. Company, Seneca Falls, N. Y.
Savage Arms Company, Utica, N. Y.
Henry Disston & Sons, Philadelphia, Pa.
Fayette R. Plumb, Inc., Philadelphia, Pa.
Hess Bright Manufacturing Company, Philadelphia, Pa.
Roberts Filter Manufacturing Company, Philadelphia, Pa.
Remington Arms Company, Eddystone Plant, Philadelphia, Pa.
Naval Aircraft Factory, League Island, Philadelphia, Pa.
American International Shipbuilding Company, Hog Island,
Philadelphia, Pa.
Newton Machine Tool Company, Philadelphia, Pa.
Warren Webster Company, Philadelphia, Pa.
L. H. Gilmer Company, Philadelphia, Pa.
Burke Electric Company, Erie, Pa.
Bethlehem Steel Company, Bethlehem, Pa.
J. G. Brill Company, Philadelphia, Pa.
Lanston Monotype Machine Company, Philadelphia, Pa.
Leeds & Northrup Company, Philadelphia, Pa.
David Lupton Sons Company, Philadelphia, Pa.
North American Motors Company, Pottstown, Pa.
Standard Aircraft Corporation, Elizabeth, N. J.
Snead & Company Iron Works, Jersey City, N. J.
Spicer Mfg. Company, Plainfield, N. J.
International Motors Company, Plainfield, N. J.
Woodbury Bag and Loading Company, Woodbury, N. J.
American Shell Company, Paterson, N. J.
Worthington Pump Company, Harrison, N. J.
Neptune Meter Company, Hoboken, N. J.
International Arms and Fuse Company, Bloomfield, N. J.
Thomas A. Edison Corp., Orange, N. J.
General Electric Company, Newark, N. J.
Crocker-Wheeler Company, Ampere, N. J.
Submarine Boat Corp., Newark, N. J.
Barbour Flax Spinning Company, Paterson, N. J.
American Tool Works Company, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Lodge & Shipley Machine Tool Company, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Cincinnati Milling Machine Company, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Cincinnati Grinder Company, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Cincinnati Planer Company, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Cincinnati Bickford Tool Company, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Oakley Machine Tool Company, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Buckeye Twist Drill Company, Alliance, Ohio.
Morgan Engineering Company, Alliance, Ohio.
National Cash Register Company, Dayton, Ohio.
Ohmer Fare Register Company, Dayton, Ohio.
The Timken Roller Bearing Company, Canton, Ohio.
Joseph & Feiss Company, May Thomsen, Employment Department,
Cleveland, O.
Mosler Safe Company, Hamilton, Ohio.
Ford Motor Company, Detroit.
Long Manufacturing Company, Detroit.
Studebaker Corporation, Detroit.
Solvay Process Company, Detroit.
Morgan & Wright Company, Detroit.
Detroit Steel Products Company, Detroit.
Burroughs Adding Machine Company, Detroit.
Dodge Brothers, Detroit.
Detroit Lubricator Company, Detroit.
Timken Detroit Axle Company, Detroit.
Haskellite Mfg. Company, Grand Rapids, Mich.
Republic Motor Truck Company, Alma, Mich.
Sparks-Withington Company, Jackson, Mich.
Illinois Tool Works, Chicago, Ill.
Union Special Machines Company, Chicago, Ill.
Western Cartridge Company, East Alton, Ill.
Independent Pneumatic Tool Company, Aurora, Ill.
Diamond Chain & Manufacturing Company, L. W. Wallace,
Indianapolis, Ind.
General Electric Company, E. H. Barnes, Superintendent,
Fort Wayne, Ind.
Pawling & Harnischfeger Company, Milwaukee, Wis.
EXTRACT PROM A REPORT BY MR. BEN H. MORGAN, EXPERT ADVISER TO THE
DILUTION SECTION OF THE BRITISH MINISTRY OF MUNITIONS
When war broke out in August, 1914, the Government of the day urged
employers to induce their skilled as well as unskilled men to join
the colors. No good purpose will be served in my characterizing in
suitable terms the unwisdom of such a step. Sufficient to say that
it was a long time later before the Government realized that this
was an Engineers’ war. The result was that the men with initiative,
education and skill were among the first to lay aside their tools
and join the colors. This was a stroke of such folly that it took
the country quite a long time to recover from it. Not only had we
lost men of brain and initiative but also a large proportion of the
skill for carrying on a war in which machinery and munitions were a
preponderating factor.
When the sudden call came for an enormous increase in guns and
ammunition the folly of the step that had been taken was realized and
arrangements were made to effect the return of a number of skilled
men from the colors. This, however, was difficult to carry out, and
on top of it came the realization that if every skilled man were
returned we had not sufficient to produce the munitions essential to
success.
It was in these circumstances that the present Prime Minister, Mr.
Lloyd George, then Minister of Munitions, laid down the principle
that no man must perform any work that could be efficiently performed
by women. He foresaw that every man would be required for essentially
man’s work. This involved the process which has become known as the
Dilution of Labor. This dilution implies that:
(1) The employment of skilled men should be confined to work which
cannot be efficiently performed by less skilled labor or by women.
(2) Semi-skilled and unskilled men should be employed on any work
which does not necessitate the employment of skilled men and for
which women are unsuitable.
(3) Women should be employed as far as practicable on all classes
of work for which they are suitable.
This, at first sight, seems a simple arrangement, but I need not
tell you that it is a complicated one and involves expenditure of
time, patience and money on the part of the employers and sympathetic
co-operation on the part of the skilled employees. Women have to
receive careful training, intervening hands in the processes of
production have to be upgraded and the skill in the factory has to
be spread over a large area, usually necessitating more supervision
and care if equal results are to be obtained. These are average
conditions, but in a large number of cases the changes due to the
introduction of women have resulted in considerably increased outputs
over men’s records, and this not only on light repetition work, but
on heavy turning and laboring work and skilled and semi-skilled
non-repetition work.
The patriotism shown by the employers in meeting the numerous
difficulties which confronted them in training women for every
conceivable kind of work, in reorganizing their factories for new
productions by new labor, adapting their machinery to the measure
of skill and strength available to work them has been one of the
most inspiriting experiences of the war. Women have been trained
in an incredibly short time, handling appliances of all kinds have
been installed, special tools and gauges have had to be made and
often when a work has been set fairly going and was reaching full
production, a change in the country’s needs for munitions compelled
the Ministry to alter a design or a size or to put a firm on to a
completely new product, and again the whole process of retaining
employees and adapting tools and plant had to be gone through.
If the employer has done well for the country, so, on the other hand,
no finer example of patriotism has been shown by any class than
by the artisan as a whole. On an appeal being made to the Trades
Unions soon after the outbreak of the war these Unions without a
single exception agreed to do what the national interests required.
A network of Trades Union rules and regulations, usages and customs,
the result of many years of activity by organized labor, were freely
set aside to allow for the introduction of women in nearly every
class of work, subject to reasonable conditions.
Whatever some employers may think this was a gigantic sacrifice to
make. It involved wages, hours, overtime, night work, Sunday work,
meal times, holidays, shop regulations and demarcation arrangements,
restriction of output, preparations of apprentices and classes
of employees to be engaged, etc., etc. This structure of Trade
Unionism the workingman agreed should be swept away to allow of the
production of the maximum amount of munitions by the readiest methods
and by any character of labor that was available—male or female—on
the condition that the structure should be replaced at the close of
the war.
This is splendid patriotism and when you add to the sacrifice of
Trades Union Rules the burden, such as has fallen principally on
the Trades Union men, of training the hundreds of thousands of
women to do their work, this must increase our debt of appreciation
and gratitude. It is only by the loyal co-operation of employer
and employed that we are in the satisfactory position as regards
munitions that we are to-day.
By the process of dilution we have been able to place in munition
works about 950,000 women to do work from the heaviest laboring
unskilled operation to the highest grade of toolroom non-repetition
work. I do not hesitate to say that women have entirely destroyed
our pre-war ideas as to what constitutes “skilled” work. When in
the early days of the war women were trained to turn out 18 pdr. H.
E. shell and equal the production of male labor many thought that
such work, amounting as it does to little more than manipulative
dexterity, was about the limit of the capacity of women who had
not received a regular course of Engineering training. After a few
months’ workshop experience, however, women are to-day building the
greater part of one of the best High-Speed Engines in the country,
each woman setting her own tools and work, and able to machine any
piece of work that the tool she is on will take. Women are building
guns, including the fine fitting work on the breech mechanism, and
the cutting of large screw threads up to a shoulder. They are doing
most of the work in some shops on three and one-half ton Army Lorries
and will do practically the whole of it if the war lasts much longer,
including chassis erection and testing. They are doing important work
in marine engine building, turning connecting rods, propeller shaft
liners and doing practically all in some cases of the marked-off
drilling. The Aero Engine, as you well know, is a very fine piece
of mechanism and at the outset was considered a tool room job
throughout. In some shops women are to-day doing the greater part of
the work turning on Centre Lathes to half a thousandth, milling webs
of Clerget Cylinders on a booker Miller without stops and setting up
their own jobs and working again to half a thousandth limit, boring
cylinders on a No. 9 Herbert and similar work on a Gishlet, setting
up their own jobs, turning and finishing test pieces in various
metals to a 5,000th; making tools and gauges of all kinds to fine
limits; all varieties of bench fitting to drawings and marking-off
work of every description. Locomotive work, steel constructional
work, boilers, bending, drilling and riveting. Women are doing
magnificent work both in regard to accuracy and output.
On shells of all nature women should, of course, be principally
employed. Contracts for shell will only be renewed and continued
after March 31st next (1917) with those firms who employ 80 per cent.
of female labor on shell of sizes from 2.75” to 4.5” inclusive. On
larger sizes of shell, contracts will only be renewed if the Ministry
of Munitions’ instructions in regard to dilution have been carried
out, not only in regard to the proportion of women to be employed in
each factory but the proportions of semi-skilled men.
“The employer and employee have a mutual—not identical—interest in
procuring the largest possible production from a given amount of
labor.”—Hon. Wm. B. Wilson, Secretary of Labor. (Address before
Chamber of Commerce of U. S. A., September 20, 1917.)
“The factory, like the trench, is a post of combat. The duty is
not to abandon it before the enemy. My compliments to your Union
for having understood it so well.”—Marshal Foch. (Cablegram August
12th to the International Typographical Union, in convention at
Scranton, Pa.)
Transcriber’s Notes
pg 10 Changed: The slot shown must be absolutey
to: The slot shown must be absolutely
pg 61 Changed: Illionis Tool Works, Chicago, Ill.
to: Illinois Tool Works, Chicago, Ill.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOW THE SHORTAGE OF SKILLED
MECHANICS IS BEING OVERCOME BY TRAINING THE UNSKILLED ***
Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will
be renamed.
Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the
United States without permission and without paying copyright
royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™
concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away--you may
do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
license, especially commercial redistribution.
START: FULL LICENSE
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at
www.gutenberg.org/license.
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your
possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the
person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph
1.E.8.
1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this
agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™
electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual
works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting
free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™
works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily
comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when
you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no
representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
country other than the United States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear
prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work
on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed,
performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is
derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™
trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works
posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg™ License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format
other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official
version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website
(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the
full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
provided that:
• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has
agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation.”
• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™
works.
• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
receipt of the work.
• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than
are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
cannot be read by your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right
of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
without further opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you “AS-IS”, WITH NO
OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in
accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or
additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any
Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™
Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
from people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™'s
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future
generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at
www.gutenberg.org
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
The Foundation's business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,
Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up
to date contact information can be found at the Foundation's website
and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without
widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular
state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be
freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of
volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
edition.
Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org
This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
