b-contracting
has undoubtedly been a failure. Sub-contracting has produced something
like 10,000 shells a month. We have only been at it a few days, and we
have already placed with responsible firms orders for 150,000 shells a
month. In a very short time I am confident it will be a quarter of a
million or 300,000. (Cheers.) It is a process of inviting business men
to organize themselves and to assist us to develop the resources of
their district.

We have secured a very large number of business men; many business men
are engaged in organizing and directing their own business, business
which is just as essential to the State in a period of war as even the
organization of this office; but still there are the services of many
able business men which are available, and we propose to utilize them
to the full, first, in the Central Office to organize it; secondly, in
the localities to organize the resources there; and, thirdly, we
propose to have a great Central Advisory Committee of business men to
aid us to come to the right conclusions in dealing with the business
community.

I should like just to point out two or three of the difficulties, in
order to show the steps which are taken to overcome them. The first
difficulty, of course, is that of materials. There is, as I pointed
out, material of which you have abundance in this country, but there
are others which you have got to husband very carefully, and there is
other material on which you have got to spend a considerable sum of
money in order to be able to develop it at a later stage. With regard
to this question, I think that it might be necessary ultimately for us
to take complete control of the Metal Market, so that available
material should not be wasted on non-essential work. (Hear, hear.) To
a certain extent we have done that.

I should like to say a word with regard to raw material for
explosives. We are building new factories so that the expansion of
explosives shall keep pace with that of shells, and in this respect,
again, I should like to dwell upon the importance of keeping up our
coal supplies in this country. It is the basis of all our
high-explosives, and if there were a shortage for any reason the
consequences would be very calamitous.

Sometimes we do not get the best in these yards through the slackness
of a minority and sometimes through regulations, useful, perhaps
essential, in times of peace for the protection of men against undue
pressure and