Out and Home.—By " The Extractor."
Page 15
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The strike mania seems to have affected everyone, At the office we had feverish telephone inquiries as to where motorvans and lorries could be hired, and we helped as far as we could. In the midst of it all, we had our own troubles, because large quantities of paper for our various journals had to be got up from the country by road somehow. A Milnes-Daimler van was pressed into service, but even then petrol had to be procured. An urgent demand to Shell and Pratt's proved quite abortive. At the firstnamed concern they were completely paralysed. Even if we sent van down, they did not think it would be safe to hand over the spirit. We eventually had to fall back on a suburban dealer who regularly supplies motor spirit for the private car of a member of Temple Press staff. Later in last week, cars had to be chartered for conveying our sister papers to the Provinces, because, no matter how the railways' organization may fail, Temple Press publications will somehow be. found to reach the chief centres for distribution.
As it is holiday time, and many of the staff are away, it fell to my individual lot to be packed off late last week to Harrogate, in connection with some important motorcycle trials. As it fell out, I could have reached Paris in less time. Once in the Yorkshire spa, 1 was marooned until Monday. Leeds was a storm centre, the station being barricaded and the military element much in evidence. It was very odd in Leeds station to notice rows of railway carriages displaying red flags and occupied as sleeping apartment and salles-h-manger by the indispensable Tommy Atkins. Signal boxes had pickets hovering about outside and soldiery within and around—some peeling potatoes, others tending stew pans at camp fires smouldering near the foot of the signal-box stairs. At various points along the line could be seen military camps. Outside Chesterfield station was quite an imposing encampment. The train in front of mine, from Harrogate to Leeds, was piloted by an emergency driver, an immaculately-dressed young apprentice from the engineering shops who attracted much attention. He went off bravely, but, when we reached Arthington, we learned that he had stuck in the tunnel, and that our driver had had to leave us and bring him backwards into the daylight. Subsequently they took away our engine and attached it to the other train. It went off, followed by our doleful gaze, to assist them up the long rise into Horsforth. Our apprentice friend had lost his " compression," some motoring wag said. Anyway he lost us over an hour !
One of our staff is responsible for the statement to me that, amidst the numerous strikes throughout the country, the oddest perhaps was that of the Nottingham worm gatherers. I hasten to add that this will have no effect on the output of Messrs. Dennis Bros., Ltd., because these Nottingham worms are used solely by the great angling community in a huge district of which Nottingham forms the centre. I feel, however, that our man was libelling an honourable, if lowly, body of workers, and that it was only his playful humour when he told me that something almost as grotesque, and which I i am assured with much solemnity s " gospel," was that our own compositors practically "laid down their tools" last week in connection with my own particular "copy." They can. struggle along, I understand, with the ordinary stuff, because they can guess some of the words from the context, but, when it came to including a list of picturesque Lancashire villages [In the Extractor's own longhand—En.] then the strike mania seized them. I can see what it will come to, I shall have to include a typewriter in my travelling outfit, not if it please you of the human variety, but the mechanism with the keyboard manipulating the caps, the lower case, the dots and the dashes and all the other odds and ends.