members of our Council be immediately used toward restoring the building trade to its proper normal position.”
The following facts appear to have influenced this resolution. The Government order, as announced, for 800,000,000 bricks had been confined to certain large makers, while no effort had been made to set going the enormous number of small brickyards scattered over the country, who made quite half the bricks in past days, and who could reduce transport by supplying locally.
Nor had the stone quarries, which are largely used for houses in Scotland and some parts of England, been started going, nor yet the very necessary quarries of slate, and thus, while waiting for the peace to be discussed and signed, the output of the next season’s production was being seriously affected.
The fact is that in this, as in most other trades, production is not merely needed, but it is vitally necessary, yet no forward move can be really taken to re-establish the normal conditions while we are waiting for peace to be definitely arranged.
Mr. Frank Vanderlip’s telegram is quoted in recent London papers as coming from an American observer in Paris: “Production has ceased, and unless it is speedily resumed the imagination cannot visualize the ensuing chaos. . . . Unless immediate peace permits the resumption of production, Bolshevism may overspread Europe, causing the breakdown of the machinery of civilization. No international guarantees can sustain exchanges while printing presses continue making paper money. America cannot withdraw in the belief that this chaos is remote and does not involve her. She must think internationally.”
Government organization has, without doubt, during the war achieved magnificent results, more especially in connection with aircraft and munitions, and at a recent meeting of the R. I. B. A., Sir Frank Baines, to whose initiative at the Office of Works so much has been due, gave a very informing address, illustrated with lantern slides, oil the subject of “War Factories and Their Adaptation to Future Needs.”
“Mammoth factories,” said the lecturer in describing these conditions of improvised building for war, “had to arise apparently at a wave of a magician’s wand—sites had to l^e selected, buildings to be erected upon land presenting exceptional natural difficulties; the whole complicated, elaborate, highly technical problem of factory process and factory allocation, plant disposition and power distribution, railway siding, water supply, sewage disposal, electric lighting, heating, ven
tilation—all had to be grasped, studied and carried into execution at fever heat.
“It should be borne in mind,” he added, “that the work was generally of a highly confidential character, the processes involved frequently secret, experimental and excessively dangerous. The organization and responsibility normally delegated to the contractor had to be shouldered—labor had to be allocated, recruited, conciliated, fed, housed •—and withal the public purse had to be safeguarded.”
This interesting address, which was arranged by special request, to be continued at a subsequent meeting, gave the report of a most capable and highly qualified official on work whose merits we have just acknowledged.
On the other hand, there is another side, and a far less attractive one, to the picture; and this has only too fully brought to public notice of late in such revelations as the Slough Motor Depot and, even more, the National Shipyards at Chepstow.
“The whole record,” said the Times correspondent of this latter undertaking, “would read like a screaming farce if so much public money had not been thrown away. ... It was the constant change of plan and apparent absence of technical knowledge of shipbuilding, coupled with a decided refusal to learn, which led to so much loss of time and money.” In expert opinion, “had the Admiralty employed an architect in the usual way, he would simply have required two or three draftsmen, a good clerk of works, and a responsible contractor. The many highly paid officials, with all their big staffs and circuitous methods of doing business could have been swept away.” The whole method in which this work progressed backward was described at the time in a humorous poem, under the title of “The Boat Builders—a Tragedy in 18 Spasms.” The Navy, said the writer, had acquired the property of the Standard Shipbuilding Company, and had called in the Army to provide labor. Then was seen the result—
“The first hundred thousand laid down a drain, The second draft took it all up again ;
Then they held an inquiry, and tried to explain.” And thus in process of time the conclusion was reached, which as the Times suggests, might have been adopted as the motto at Chepstow :
“Nobody minded. . . The public paid.”
For it is the public which inevitably suffers and has to meet the bill; and the present state of things is one which, affecting every trade, hits most directly, as we have seen, the building trade and the architect.
“People are asking,” says the Daily Telegraph,
The following facts appear to have influenced this resolution. The Government order, as announced, for 800,000,000 bricks had been confined to certain large makers, while no effort had been made to set going the enormous number of small brickyards scattered over the country, who made quite half the bricks in past days, and who could reduce transport by supplying locally.
Nor had the stone quarries, which are largely used for houses in Scotland and some parts of England, been started going, nor yet the very necessary quarries of slate, and thus, while waiting for the peace to be discussed and signed, the output of the next season’s production was being seriously affected.
The fact is that in this, as in most other trades, production is not merely needed, but it is vitally necessary, yet no forward move can be really taken to re-establish the normal conditions while we are waiting for peace to be definitely arranged.
Mr. Frank Vanderlip’s telegram is quoted in recent London papers as coming from an American observer in Paris: “Production has ceased, and unless it is speedily resumed the imagination cannot visualize the ensuing chaos. . . . Unless immediate peace permits the resumption of production, Bolshevism may overspread Europe, causing the breakdown of the machinery of civilization. No international guarantees can sustain exchanges while printing presses continue making paper money. America cannot withdraw in the belief that this chaos is remote and does not involve her. She must think internationally.”
Government organization has, without doubt, during the war achieved magnificent results, more especially in connection with aircraft and munitions, and at a recent meeting of the R. I. B. A., Sir Frank Baines, to whose initiative at the Office of Works so much has been due, gave a very informing address, illustrated with lantern slides, oil the subject of “War Factories and Their Adaptation to Future Needs.”
“Mammoth factories,” said the lecturer in describing these conditions of improvised building for war, “had to arise apparently at a wave of a magician’s wand—sites had to l^e selected, buildings to be erected upon land presenting exceptional natural difficulties; the whole complicated, elaborate, highly technical problem of factory process and factory allocation, plant disposition and power distribution, railway siding, water supply, sewage disposal, electric lighting, heating, ven
tilation—all had to be grasped, studied and carried into execution at fever heat.
“It should be borne in mind,” he added, “that the work was generally of a highly confidential character, the processes involved frequently secret, experimental and excessively dangerous. The organization and responsibility normally delegated to the contractor had to be shouldered—labor had to be allocated, recruited, conciliated, fed, housed •—and withal the public purse had to be safeguarded.”
This interesting address, which was arranged by special request, to be continued at a subsequent meeting, gave the report of a most capable and highly qualified official on work whose merits we have just acknowledged.
On the other hand, there is another side, and a far less attractive one, to the picture; and this has only too fully brought to public notice of late in such revelations as the Slough Motor Depot and, even more, the National Shipyards at Chepstow.
“The whole record,” said the Times correspondent of this latter undertaking, “would read like a screaming farce if so much public money had not been thrown away. ... It was the constant change of plan and apparent absence of technical knowledge of shipbuilding, coupled with a decided refusal to learn, which led to so much loss of time and money.” In expert opinion, “had the Admiralty employed an architect in the usual way, he would simply have required two or three draftsmen, a good clerk of works, and a responsible contractor. The many highly paid officials, with all their big staffs and circuitous methods of doing business could have been swept away.” The whole method in which this work progressed backward was described at the time in a humorous poem, under the title of “The Boat Builders—a Tragedy in 18 Spasms.” The Navy, said the writer, had acquired the property of the Standard Shipbuilding Company, and had called in the Army to provide labor. Then was seen the result—
“The first hundred thousand laid down a drain, The second draft took it all up again ;
Then they held an inquiry, and tried to explain.” And thus in process of time the conclusion was reached, which as the Times suggests, might have been adopted as the motto at Chepstow :
“Nobody minded. . . The public paid.”
For it is the public which inevitably suffers and has to meet the bill; and the present state of things is one which, affecting every trade, hits most directly, as we have seen, the building trade and the architect.
“People are asking,” says the Daily Telegraph,