These things are more familiar to M. Citroen than they are to me.  He wants me to understand, but he does not realise that I would like a little leisure to wonder.  What is interesting him just now, because it is the newest thing, is his method of paying his workers.  He lifts a hand gravely:  “I said, what we must do is abolish altogether the counting of change.”

At a certain hour, he explained, came pay-time.  The people had done; it was to his interest and their that they should get out of the works as quickly as possible and rest and amuse themselves.  He watched them standing in queues at the wickets while inside someone counted; so many francs, so many centimes.  It bored him to see this useless, tiresome waiting.  It is abolished.  Now at the end of each week the worker goes to a window under the initial of his name, and is handed a card on which these items have been entered: 

Balance from last week.  So many hours at so much.  Premiums.

The total is so many francs, so many centimes.  This is divided into the nearest round number, 100, 120, 80 francs as the case may be, and a balance of the odd francs and centimes.  The latter is carried forward to the next week’s account.  At the bottom of the card is a tear-off coupon with a stamp, coloured to indicate the round sum, green, let us say, for 100, blue for 130 francs.  This is taken to a wicket marked 100 or 130 as the case may be, and there stands a cashier with his money in piles of 100 or 130 francs counted ready to hand; he sweeps in the coupon, sweeps out the cash. “Next!”

I became interested in the worker’s side of this organisation.  I insist on seeing the entrances, the clothes-changing places, the lavatories, and so forth of the organisation.  As we go about we pass a string of electric trolleys steered by important-looking girls, and loaded with shell, finished as far as these works are concerned and on their way to the railway siding.  We visit the hospital, for these works demand a medical staff.  It is not only that men and women faint or fall ill, but there are accidents, burns, crushings, and the like.  The war casualties begin already here, and they fall chiefly among the women.  I saw a wounded woman with a bandaged face sitting very quietly in the corner.

The women here face danger, perhaps not quite such obvious danger as the women who, at the next stage in the shell’s career, make and pack the explosives in their silk casing, but quite considerable risk.  And they work with a real enthusiasm.  They know they are fighting the Bloches as well as any men.  Certain of them wear Russian decorations.  The women of this particular factory have been thanked by the Tsar, and a number of decorations were sent by him for distribution among them.

3

The shell factory and the explosives shed stand level with the drill yard as the real first stage in one of the two essential punches in modern war.  When one meets the shell again it is being unloaded from the railway truck into an ammunition dump.  And here the work of control is much more the work of a good traffic manager than of the old-fashioned soldier.