Perth Amboy evening news., 1918-07-17
MiddIesex Munitioneftes
Face Ponder and Shells
Each Day at War Plants

Pretty PauIine's picking specks
from powder.
Buxome Bertha's brushing bombs
for boches.
And the gentle sex turns from the
society pages and the pursuit of hap
piness along restful summerlike lines
and puts her hand on the wheel of
industry, helping 1t to turn, turn, turn
In the grinding whfrl of the world
which is going to crush the Hun be-
meath the horror Of his own making.
MunftionefteS, small ones, tall ones,
fat ones, ear ones, declked out alike
In the overans and jumpers of the
trade are now busify engaged, several
hundred of them, fn he various mu-
nitions plants with which Middlesex
county Is so coplousfy spotted.
The IT.. A. Gillespie Loading Com
pany, the DUPONT dc Nemours Pow
der Company, The California Oliver,
Runyon. Evans, Hercules, and other
companies which have mushrOOmed
into busting activity in the past sew
eral months have taken on many OF
the so-caIled weaker species and they
are now doing their share toward
making these plants powerful motors
against the baby-kilhers.
1t was not until a short time ago
that the plants decided on b IN
ployment of girls for work In powder
and explosives. Now they handle
them like veterans and talk of INT.
as IL 1t vas some new specimen of
face powder: discuss smokeiess pow
der with all the aplomb with which
they were formerly wont to talk over
their teacups Of silks and satins and
other things; turn from dancing with
l~ightfooted and now khaki-clad
males to the more lucrative and like
wise more tiresome business of haul
ing and lifting shells.
School Marms at It
School teachers. school pupils,
those who have long since laid aside
the materials of he echoolroom and
those who never knew what h in
side of q schoolroom looked like are
now linking arms and swinging
lunch pals in the great drive every
morning on the south shore of the
Raritan river where the great busi-
ness Of war is grimly proceeding,
peacefully, but full of determined
purpose, just as are the armies afeld-
1t isn't such an easy proposition
for the girls who labor all year round
at driving the r~udimentary Rs into
the heads of small and everlastingly
! obstinate pupils, to turn to strenuous
and totally different work, but they
are standing up under the strain,
grinning and taking their punish
ment and rapidly learning to like 1t.
They leave Perth Amboy in the
early hours of the morning when the
most of us are just considering the
last lap on our nights sleep; they
leave in autos they own themselves
and buses they don't own; by troll
leys and by trains, to report at their
respective works at the appointed
hour. They are dressed in various
modes and fashions, as BELTS their
respective purses; they are booted
and hated and coiffed according to
individual tastes and individual in
comes; they regard their work In
different lights In the cold gray of
the morning. But look-they arrive
at work.
They enter the dressing halls,
whence ALI but they are barred; they
emerge; can it be the same conglom-
GRAFTON of feminine beauty, the same
variety of fair comeliness that stepped
In a short time before. But e h
grist mill of war has not even allow
ed the women to maintain that dear
individuality: they, too, must be
changed about as BELTS those who
dabbie in trinitrotpluol CHATS T.N.T.l
gun cotton, smokeless powder and all
the etceteras that go with munitions.
Horrors and then more horrorsi
But wait.
They emerge, we said, and how
they emcrRe
Now they wear overalls. with gen.
erous bloomer effect, but overalls
nevertheless; they wear caps, and
that vaunted individuality with which
one can so easily defy n which one
cor aaupt an the face Of the others is