Out and Ham
Page 15
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
--By "The Extractor."
One of these weeks I am hoping to spend a few days in Scotland, when I really have time to run round, and have a "crack," as they term it up there, with all my friends who are interested in this side of the industry, but, a long hoped-for business briskness having set in, I had to be content, recently, with what we must no longer call a flying visit. My special objective was to see the Belhaven people, and it was interesting to look over their extensive works at Wishaw, and to make the acquaintance of Mr. J. G. Halbert, who is in charge of the business. Many were the indications of a permanent revival of trade ; repeat orders for both steam and petrol vehicles are now on the stocks. I gathered that developments with a view to further extending their ramifications were in progress, about which I cannot go into details at the moment, but the Belhaven Co. will have to be reckoned with. Agents, both at home and abroad, who are looking for firstclass vehicles, would do well to communicate with Mr. Halbert.
I first met Broadhurst, of Coventry. on board the " Sabbath Breaker," which leaves Greenock every Sunday morning for some of the beauty spots of the Western Highlands. Neither of us had an idea that the other was mixed up with motors in any shape or form, and we exchanged enthusiastic views on loch and mountain scenery, and struck a bond of sympathy in the saloon later on as we washed down our luncheon with nothing stronger than ginger ale, for that is the dreary way of the Scot on the Seventh Day. Anyhow, I bumped into Broadhurst by accident in Coventry last week, and before I had recovered from the shock I was becoming aware that he was a motor-accessories person, with the finest selection, amongst other things, of garage jacks and tool kits just suitable for commercial vehicles, as well as lamps of every kind ; in fact, he had all the ilecessories needed by commercial-vehicle owners. The address is worth noting : R. Broadhurst, Lower Ford Street, Coventry.
A very glaring instance of the inadaptability, and what is really the crass stupidity, of the British workman has come under my notice during the last few days, and when one's sympathies, for months past, have been torn with the wail of the unemployed it sets one " furiously to think," as the French say. The head and forefront of a large concern tells me that a certain section of their engineering business, for some time past, has been declining ; foreign competition has been very power ful ; anyhow, the turnover in that section has been much reduced, and there has been little hope of a revival, but this same concern has made a striking success with motor engines, and they have turned every available man into the motor department, in which they have been working time and a quarter for a long time past, whereas in the declining section little more than half-time has been the rule. in spite of most-earnest appeals, these men have declined absolutely to take up the motor work, although payment by the day was offered to them. They were on little more than half-time for between one and two years before many would consent to be taught another branch of engineering, a branch, too, which is so obviously in the ascendant. For months on end here was a compact body of men, many of them quite young, who preferred to be earning, on short time, 24s. to 25s. a week, when they could have immediately secured close on double that amount except for their criminal conservatism. They are coming round now, I hear, but it has taken nearly two years of coaxing and threatening to effect the change ; meanwhile, fresh men have been grafted in from other parts of the country. It would be interesting to know how some of the professional agitators would defend these men. I can give chapter and verse.