LEAVES FROM THE INSPECTOR'S NOTEBOOK.
Page 17
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The Comb and the Dilutee. Iron-shod Roads.
IWAS ONCE a member of a Trade Union, but that was so long ago that I have almost forgotten what it felt like. I have wondered what would have been my attitude, my own private attitude, in these days of intensive labour problems, with regard to the undoubted anomalies that exist in connection with the varied and unequal nature of services which men are being called upon to render to the State. The difficulties are now sufficiently onerous for the -authorities for it to be incumbent upon me and others to avoid writing anything which might in any way tend to aggravate the position. But with the comb now busy ' scratching down to the last hair " (as a civil servant of some promineride described the operation one day last week) there is one aspeet of the case for exemption which has, for some while past, struck mo very forcibly. I cannot-for 'the life of me understand why a man can claim, and claim successfully more often than not, that the accident of his being a craftsman of some particular class, but not; mark you, necessarily of any particular skill, should furnish him with an imaginable prescriptive right to avoid the necessity of his yielding military .service.
We can, all of us, of course; appreciate that where the country Wants really skilled men, men with special knowledge and special faculties, it is vital to the national interests for such men to be retained on work of urgent national importance. But surely the •qualifications for such retention should be nothing lees than -ascertained and certified skill or knqpIedge, as the case —may be. The niceties of arginAnt in the A.S.E. case are not for consideration here and now, but this I do submit, that because a man happens to be what is known. as a. dilutee, it should not necessarily, after several years of war conditions, . come about that he (be he ever so skilful) should automatically become a soldier before some man who happtns to have been a member of a trade union, just before lthe war, or even after it, no matter whether he be skilful in the-proper sense or not. • There is a good deal of uninformed twaddle talked about skilfulness of occupation, and, if anything has shown that to be the case, it is the fact that thei capacity to carry on in hundreds of wartime occupa-Mons has been thoroughly well acquired in many cases in the course of a few months' steady and intelligent application. A tale that is pertinent and which has much point in it is being told as follows : An eighteen year old lad, asked if he didn't think that he ought to fight "for his King and Country" replied, "No, I'm a member of the Boilermakers' Society."
personally, do not consider, for instance, that the mere tending of automatic machinery calls for a. much greater degree of skill than the driving of a horse in traffic. From my own point of view' the latter task is one fraught with far graver difficulties, but then, as I have written before, I am a fool where the mechanism of a horse is concerned. There are a number of trades such as smelting, optical instrument making, and so on, where skill can only be acquired by years of application, but there • are a number where this is not. so.
• Is it not at least likely that, at any rate here and there, a. cliIutee may well be more skilful than many a man who has been a year or two at a job; and who yet may be many years more without becoming of any increasing u.0.• in his particular trade-? The 'right to retention -should, in my opinion, rest, entirely on relative skilfulness and therefore ofutility to the
• nation.. There should be no prescriptive right to exemption from military service. A man s_hould either be too ill, too old or tic) clever in certain well defined directions before he is conceded the right. to allow other men to undergo the burden and hardship of military service on his behalf. There are, of course, graver eo lective issues than those suggested, and of these I am n well aware, but I cannot refrain from registering is protest againet those who consider that skill of the type required in the present emergency is the monopoly of those who have necessarily been, from pre-war itirnes, associated •with some industry 'which has ultimately proved to be of-wartime importarme. As well, almost, might we admit that such a great industry as that of aircraft production is not of national importance because it did not exist before the war. The test now, as ever, should be skill and knowledge. But that, unfortunately, strikes right at the root of the whole of the problem of collective bar gaining and collective representation of the age in which we live.
Iron-shod Roads.
Road repairs at the present time are (in all but
a few districts naturally) conspicuous their absence. Surfaces have been allowed to continue in service, which, in normal tirnes, would long ago have been renewed. Tim result in the case of wood pavement is remarkable and well worth a moment's study. It_ will be found that the average woodsurfaced roadway is now thickly studded with all kinds of .metal refuse, ranging from metal-studs from non-skid tyres to the three-quarter hexagon nut which I actually found embedded in a West-end roadway surface the other day. The variety of such additions to the wood blocks is most remarkable. The most extraordinary ease of which I have heard came to my, notice some years ago, and was discovered during the renewal of a certain stretch of wood in one of the West-end thoroughfares. A block had been split open, and embedded endwise from the top was found to be a lady's ordinary hairpin. How it had become possible for this wire implement to be driven downwards without bending through a solid wood block for a length of three or four inches is a" problem to which none of these who were present at the time was able to-suggest any adequate answer.
• I wonder if any attempt is made, when wood road surfaces arerepaired, 'to recover the veryconsiderable amount of metal which is embedded in the surface. It must amount to quite a great deal,. and is unusual testimony to the extent to whibh•inechanical vehicles now use the highway. It is but a few years ago when such additions to -the normal surface Omprised nothing more than an odd horseshoe. Nowadays, one may find small bolts, split and taper pins; rivets, wire, tyre studs, wood `screws, washers, and other miscellaneouS ironmongery. At one spot about a hundred yards from Piccadilly. I :could, a few days ago, have shown yen the •major part of an ordinary teaspoon. solidly inlaid in a, redwood block nearly in the middle of the highway.
Were it not a .fact that "-odd jobs " -are now -displaced by well-paid work elsewhere, one can almost imagine the erstwhile collectors of roadway dirt turning to the recovery of "old iron" from .the roadways as highly-remunerative employment, even if fraught with some little danger to life and limb