On this day in Yorkshire 1942

Yorkshire’s largest shell-filling factory, which has its own circular railway—a branch line of the L.N.E.R. within the grounds—so that workers can be taken to the very doors of the group factories the fields, needs thousands more women workers.

Here is the chance for which the women of many West Riding centres have been waiting. Here is a war factory in the country to which they can go without leaving home.

Special transport will bring them to and from the factory morning and night. Girls from the R.O.F. will be in Leeds to-day and for a fortnight demonstrating Lewis’s Store how they make bullets for fighter planes, and bigger, better bombs.

Because It is not possible for the public to visit shell-filling factories, the R.O.F. have brought a small part of a factory to the public.

They have brought girls who are ready and eager to answer questions. You may ask them about pay. protective clothing. complexions. food, transport arrangements, and the whole picture of working conditions and welfare.

The tiniest two workers in the factory are there, Irene Young and Emily Holliday. who both worked In a Leeds clothing factory, and now say they would “like to go on making munitions after the war . . . more money .. . much nicer than tailoring.”

Jenny Barrass. from Featherstone was in domestic service before the war. Now she wears the Aeronautical Inspection Department Badge on her arm and helps to pass and pack the finished shells.

Every new recruit goes through a school when she arrives at the factory.

One cannot experiment with explosives, so the girls first learn to handle such harmless materials as sago and rice, cement and flour.

Their progress in each process is carefully watched by experts, who grade them according to their findings.

In this way (I discovered during visit to the factory yesterday) nervous, over-confident, clumsy and otherwise unsuitable candidates are soon weeded out and directed to more domesticated jobs.

The factory has its own laundry and a network of canteens. Three large cooking centres supply food to satellite canteens so that the girls can feed in their groups, which obviates the need for changing.

“I get mutton chop, mash and cabbage for 9d.. sultana pudding for 2d and a cup of tea for a penny extra ‘ Mrs. Ruth Petit will tell you at the exhibition In Leeds, naming her favourite lunch.

Mrs. Petit was a farm worker for 22 years.

Other workers can tell you how they varnish the caps of small, solid cannon balls for fighter ‘planes, much as they would varnish finger nails.

The chief of the R.A.F. Inspection Department (each of the Services has Its own Inspectors) who used to be a fighter pilot until he was shot down, was full of praise for the girls, who never flag, for their splendid team work.

Much of- the machine work is simple and to avoid monotony the teams change places from time to time or move to other processes.

Soon the factory will be able to offer married quarters — two and three-bedroomed bungalows with electric lighting, electric kettle and copper coal range for cooking and a garden for vegetables.

Today is the start of eight weeks’ campaign, with exhibitions in different stores, and “ Waltzing Matilda.” an M.O.I, van, visiting different districts. This morning it will be In East Leeds.

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