Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Seaforth News, 1942-09-03, Page 6PAGE SIX Manpower Boss THE $F4AFORTH NEW$ THilRSDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1942 ad. For three Months he worked ayand night, exploring every pose, By K. R. Wilson, ill Maclean's ible method to boost production At Magazine, ane point he stayed in the building Canada's Manpower boss is Elliott from. Thursday until the following M. T Ittle. For five months ho has Monday While some Critical teats been planning, organizing. He calls were being made. it "laying down a blueprint." ThatLater, as Melanie was boarding a boat for Newfoundland, he got a w means gating ready for 'tough dayswine ahead, for the rationing of labor and from plant boss Little; "Your mill a lot of "musts" which neither . he bit 033 tons today." nor his fellow Canadians are going McInnis died atter a lengthy nese in 1941, He had already turned to like, Elliott Little has been in tough direction of the property over to his spots before, In fact, he has been associate. When the Government pulling himself "out of the rough" asked Little in February, 1941, to since 1914 when he got a job as the head up its Wartime Bureau of first office boy In the newly formed Technical Personnel he was then Abitibi Power and Paper Co. Ltd,, at general manager of Anglo -Canadian Iroquois Falls, Ont, He was born and Gaspesia Sulphite Co. and "presi- forty-two years ago in the Ontario dent as well of the latter corpora village of Beachbnrg. The first tion, schooling he picked up was in a The dollar -a -year job at Ottawa two -boy classroom near Haileybury was a unique opportunity for a man where his family had moved when who had spent most of his life in Elliott was three. land around a pulp mill. It was only a At ten he entered high school, but part-time job at first for he still had there were six mouths to feed in the to run his plant. But he gathered a Little family so he went along to competent, loyal group of engineers Iroquois Falls where his dad was and administrators to help compile a supplying lumber for construction of complete file of all engineers in Can - the new pulp mill. He worked for .a few months on mill construction, then got the office boy job with the assistant postmasterehip as a aide line. It netted him twenty dollars a month but by the time he had paid for board and room in the hotel there wasn't much left. In the eighteen years he stuck with Abitibi there was hardly a job in the company which didn't come his way, He was shipper, efficiency expert, assistant superintendent, plant electrical engineer, hydraulic engineer and finally assistant mill manager. He held cards in two unions —the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the Internat- ional Brotherhood of Pulp, Sulphite and Paper Mill Workers, It was shortly after he went to Iroquois Falls that he met a man who exerted a tremendous influence on his life. That man was R. A. "Bob" McInnis whom Elliott Little succeeded last year as general man- ager and director of the vast Rather - mere paper properties at Quebec City and Gaspesia. When Mr. McInnis became manager at Abitibi in 1916 he hired a noted American phrenolo- gist to "examine" his staff. The phrenologist examined the bumps of Little's head and told Mr. Mcinnis that this boy was worth watching; that it would be a good investment to give him a proper education. The war interfered with these plans. In 1916 Little .enlisted in the Sudbury and Sault Ste. Marie Regi- ment (tile 228 Battalion). As he was barely sixteen, his parents pulled him out, Back he went to Abitibi for two years until he could join the RAF. He was training at Camp Borden when peace came in 1918. After the war Mr. McInnis ap- proached Little and asked if he would like to go to university. He offered to pay his way. Little said yes, he would like to go but he wasn't going to let McInnis pay the bill. He started for the registrar's desk at Queen's University, Ifings- ton, but illness sent him back to Abitibi. Finally he swung into the last returned men's class at the Uni- versity of Toronto. He knew what it was to be hungry many a time before he landed his engineering degree in 1925. But the opportunity had chang- ed his whole outlook on life. The uni- versity found him a wife as well for in 1930 he married a Seaforth girl, Elizabeth Dorothy Wilson, whom he had met during college days. With parchment in pocket he re- turned to Iroquois Falls as plant elec- trical engineer. His responsibilities steadily broadened until 1932 'when the firm went into receivership. After eighteen years he found himself with three weeks in 'which to find a new job. It was the hardest blow of his life. By this time McInnis had taken charge of the Rothermere property at Quebec and he offered Little a job. Little moved his family down to the St. Lawrence. McInnis was a good friend but a hard taskmaster. Looking back, El- liott Little says: "He drove the tail off me." If there was a tough job to be done, McInnis would sting Little into superhuman effort by a goad or a taunt which invariably brought re- sults. This training accounts largely for the straight -from -the -shoulder atti- tude withal. Little takes when he has a tough job to do; for instance, his fighting speech last ate to the Can- adian Manufacturers' Association when he made a blunt, hard-hitting appeal for co-operation in respect of labor-management committees in war industry. 1'i On one occasion at Quebec, Mc- Innis chided Little for not being able to get more production out of the mill, The output then 'was about 480 tons a day. This made Little fighting ada, Compiled originally from 45,000 names, it gave for the first time an accurate picture of the location, skill and experience of Canada's technical personnel. It forms the basis of the present 'rationing" plan worked out originally by Little in September, 1941, and made effective by order in council last March. Es- sentially the job proved a "teat tube" opportunity to find out what was wanted in tackling the larger man- power problems on the nation-wide front. And during his twelve months as director of this bureau, Little found an opportunity to study the way in which Nazi Germany mobiliz- ed and controlled its labor force, He believes that to win the war we must not only know the enemy's methods but improve on them. This early ex- perience and study has been invalu- able to him in his present job. To aid him as manpower boss, Elliott Little has a husky physique. Not very tall, he has strong, sturdy shoulders, looks like a welterweight boxer. He is one of the best athletes produced in Northern •Ontario. For six years he was the star pitcher on the Iroquois Falls baseball team which finally found its way into pro- vincial championship company in a tilt with the Toronto Osiers for the Ontario title. He pitched seventeen strike -outs in that particular game. Spiking The Spooks In a darkened room, high up in New York City's Empire State Building, a group of men and wo- men were seated in a semi -circle facing a woman in a chair. They seemed to be intently listening for something other than the distant rumble of the traffic which rose faintly from the light -freckled face of the city's night life to the shad- owy room on the 82nd floor of the skyscraper. There was a slight noise, which. could have been the scraping of a chair -leg or a heel across the floor— or it could have been something else, the something every person in that group was waiting, hopefully or in- credulously, according to his atti- tude. For a second or so the quiet be- came even more intense while they all literally held their breaths for a possible repetition of the sound. But it didn't happen. "Did someone move his chair—or his heel—or was something dropp- ed?" asked a man's voice sharply from out of the darkness. "Yes," replied a woman some- what apologetically. "I thought so," pursued the man's voice, "That didn't sound to me like the rapping of a spirit," and he con- tinued, "Ladies and gentlemen, we have now sat here an hour and a quarter, waiting for the medium to produce raps which she claimed would be audible, and which would indicate the presence of spirits and her ability to contact them. Has any- one heard the slightest sound that might be interpreted as rapping? If not,. I think we may as well call this seance off." And thus (lid another of the hun- dreds of Dunninger's psychical in- vestigations end. Incognito, he had visited the med- ium's own parlor, attended a seance —and distinctly heard raps. But Dunninger had heard so-called spirit rappings before. Accordingly he chal- lenged the medium to produce the "evidence" elsewhere. She countered by agreeing, providing Dunninger would obtain a room for the test, as high up as possible in a New York skyscraper, This, she said, would place her nearer heaven and enhance the possibilities of hearing the spir- its knock. The Empire State Building was the best Dunninger could do but it hadn't been a question of being close enough to. heaven. What the medium had not been aware of was that the floor"s of the skyscraper are of rein- (forced concrete—not the old -fashion- ed wooden floors of the medium's seance parlor. A wooden floor con- stitutes an infinitelybetter sounding board than does cement, for that an- cient, but still useful art of toe - cracking, Joseph Dunninger, a native New Yorker, now in his forties—early set a course that was destined to lead him across the thresholds of many a medium's parlor, At the ten- der age of eight he had mastered the magician's technique sufficiently to produce his own slight -of -hand per- formances. He billed himself on crudely lettered programs as Master Dunninger, The Child Wizard. In his early teens his prestigiatory powers were so highly developed as to se- cure him a 65 -week engagement at the Eden Musee, As Dunninger progressed through vaudeville and lecture circuits, which took him all over this continent and many foreign lands, his insatiable desire to find the answer to the un- explainable, led him into other and larger fields. He began delving into the so-called miracles of the occult as a close associate of the late Harry Houdini. This resulted in the expos- ure of men and women who were preying upon the public. He has long stood ready to $10,000 to any medium who produce any supernatural manifesta- tion which he cannot duplicate, or explain through natural or scientific means. Hundreds of mediums have applied, but in each and every in- stance Dunninger has more than duplicated their performance. Dunninger has exposed alleged ectoplasm as cheescloth, muslin, di - oxygen, frothy mixtures of perovide and toothpaste, or a concoction of glycerine, egg-white, and soap. Trumpet calls have been shown up as being prosaically handled by the medium's hands in the dark, or by mechanical contrivances. He has caused tables and chairs to pirouette and to apparently lift themselves off the floor—and then he has dis- played one of his several means of accomplishing these "phenomena." With a nob -too -heavy chair, for ex- ample, a few rehearsals, and ` the poor visibility provided by lighting vagaries, almost anyone can slip the edge of the sole of his shoes under one chair-leg—steady the back of the chair with the palms of, the . hands and, by exerting an upward pressure. cause the chair to rise. Sometimes, a tiny strip of thin steel, fastened to the toe of the shoe -sole, slips more easily under the chair-leg—and no- body's going to see that tiny acces- sory in the semi -darkness. Weird, luminous faces and figures have appeared in the darkness of a seance room. These too, Dunning- er has duplicated. Then, with the lights turned on, the ,startled sitters discover that the medium, played by a lady assistant, has merely elevated pay can the hem of her jet-black dress to dis- close that the frightening apparition was Caused by the use of luminous paint applied to the under side of the dress and to the petticoat. In the ease of a man this hoax has been perpetrated by painting something resembling a face on the rear of his vest. In . the darkness he merely re- moves his coat and turns his back to the guests. In either event, the effect on seance sitters is mystification. Now Critical Period in Life of Pullets The late summer and early fall months are critical periods in the development of pullets, say officials of the Poultry Services, Dominion Department of Agriellture. On the management of the pullets at this time depends to a large ,extent their ability as egg producers for the re- mainder of the laying season. Neglect of any impartant detail in their care may well be the cause of loss of a month or more of vital production. Careful, efficient management during late summer and early fall will .de- velop the pullets into strong, vigor- ous, healthy hens capable of sustain- ed production. One point to fe guarded against is' overcrowding in range shelters or colony houses. A whole season's work may be lost as a result of a few nights overcrowding, Don't have, more than 60 birds in a 6 -ft. by 8 -ft. range shelter or more than 100 in an 8 -ft. by 12 -ft. colony house. It's good business to have a few open nests near the range shelters or in the colony houses before the pullets start to lay. The nests should be at least 14 inches from the ground and, if outside, should have a weather-proof covering to keep them dry and clean. The pullets should have plenty of fresh, clean drinking' water all the time and no lack of green feed.. There's going to be an assured market for all the eggs that can be produced — both Canada and Britain want million of eggs. The pullets of to -day should be the good laying hens later on—and they will be if given good management now. GLASS PINCH-HITS FOR STEEL There's a hint of prophesy in the way workers in glass call their mat- erial "metal" as it flows from melt- ing furnaces to machines that mold and blow and spread and spin it into thousands of intricate forms. As one of the few plentiful materials, glass is destined to replace unpredictable tonnages of hard -to -get metals like aluminum, brass, bronze, steel and cast-iron. In addition, as such unre- lated non-metallic substances as cork, synthetic plastics, asbestos, silk and rayon and rubber become in- creasingly scarce, glass can be count- ed on to fill i1. The raw materials for glass are sand, soda ash, lime, most of the metallic oxides and sulphides that give it color and other physical, char - "Reads up," says the RCAF instructor. There's something symbolic about that last look at the sky just as he slips into his seat in the Harvard plane and rolls down the runwaytowardatake--off. It says, "Here we come...Look putt" acteristics. Fortunately these are plentiful, as is also the fuel for fus- ing the mixture. Sources and manufacturing facil- ities for glass are strategically and economically excellent. Great beds of white silica are found in Indiana, Missouri, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Roughly speaking, there are only four branches of glass manufacture. They comprise flat glass and build- ing glass; bottles and containers; pressed and blown glassware, and fibrous glass. Glass can be as delicate and fra- gile as a soap bubble, or tough enough to stop machine gun bullets at point blank range. It can be light- er than aluminum or heavy as cast iron. It can be transparent, translu- cent or opaque; resistant or non- resistant to the passage of heat -rays, ultra -violet or X-rays, incredibly re- sistant to thermal shock, as it 18 plunged from the,iflame of a Bunsen burner into a pail of ice water, and back again. Some of the replacements of me- tals and non-metals worked out by the flat -glass technicians are: ,(1) Doors, exteriors and interiors of dis- play cabinets for ice cream, where glass replaces hard rubber, stainless steel and aluminum. ,(2) Cores for studio recording platters, replacing aluminum; (3) Interiors in domestic stoves and refrigerators, formerly made of porcelain -enamelled steel; (4) Shelving in tsore displays, kit- chen cabinets, medicine chests, also stoves and refrigerators, replacing steel and wood. I(5) Tops for food counters, tables and kitchen sinks, replacing stainless steel, etc. As glass is blown and processed today there seem to be no structural materials safe from its competition. The Corning Glass Company has actually produced coiled glass spring duplicating' the physical properties of metal springs. There are said to be electric laundry irons and toasters, all glass except the heating elements and electrical connections, made pos- sible by a comparatively new methAft - od of sealing glass directly to metal lir to form a strong and durable joint. Sentry—"Halt! Who goes there?" Voice in the dark—"Cook, with doughnuts for breakfast." Sentry—"Pass, Cook. Halt, dough- nuts." AUCTIONEER F. W. AHRENS, Licensed Auction- eer for Perth and Huron Counties. Sales Solicited. Terms on Application; Farm Stock, chattels and real estate property. R. R. No. 4, Mitchell, Phone 634 r 6. Apply at this office HAROLD JACKSON Licensed in Huron and Perth coun- ties. Prices reasonable; satisfaction guaranteed. For information, write or. phone Harold Jackson, phone 14 on 661; RR. 4, Seaforth. Counter Check Books • We Are Stelling Quality Books Books are- Well Made, Carbon is Clean and Copies Readily. All styles, Carbon Leaf and Black Back. Prices as Low as You Can Get Anywhere. Get our Quotation on Your Next Order. The Seaforth News SRAFORTH, ONTARIO, r,,