"PRODUCTION FOR PLENTY"HARROGATE CONFERENCE, 1953

SECOND PLENARY SESSION

Friday, 26th June, 1953

SPEAKER :

SIR HUBERT HOULDSWORTH, Q.C., D.Sc,

Chairman of the National Coal Board.

I SHOULD like to thank the President for thevery kindly welcome which he has given me and,

if I may venture to be so presumptuous, to congratu-late him on his tact in merely saying that I wasfrequently in the news, without making any detailedreference to what the news had to say!

I thought that this afternoon I might venture to talkto you about some of our problems, but in particularabout one which is closely allied to your own studiesand your own profession, a subject which in itsbroadest sense is by no means new to the coal in-dustry. It is, however, a narrower aspect of it aboutwhich I should like to speak, namely the moderntechniques of method and work study which havebeen developed in this and other countries since theearly part of the century, and which have provedin other industries so valuable in raising productivity.I think that I may follow the illustrious example ofyour President in still using the word " productivity ".as he did this morning.

Establishing New TechniquesI propose to tell you what we in the coal industry

are doing to establish and develop these techniquesto help us in our all-important and extremely difficulttask of raising our productivity. But perhaps I shouldpreface this by indicating some at least of the broaderdifferences between coalmining and most other in-dustries, and the special difficulties which face us.

Coalmining—like all mining—is an extractive in-dustry. Unlike manufacturing industries it does notpurchase raw materials or manufactured things andrefashion or assemble them. Its main task is win-ning coal from underground and carrying it to thesurface. In this country, if not everywhere, theconditions under which the coal is mined varyenormously, not only in different places or in differentseams, but from day to day, from hour to houralmost, in any particular part of the same mine.Some of our coals are very difficult to get; problemsof roof control, disturbed strata, changes in seams andmany other factors contribute to the problems of themining engineer. Moreover, by the very nature of

the job, and its inherent dangers, a rigid code ofpractice has to be imposed which places safety in aposition to which all production problems must takesecond place.

In coalmining we meet immediately all thecomplications which are involved in the constantchanging of underground conditions. Of course, inno industry are work standards absolute : they mustalways change with changing methods of manufac-ture, and finality is rarely reached in productionmethods. But in mining geological changes are rapidand unpredictable, and though the problem ofmoving conditions is not new, it is at its most acutein mining and far beyond anything common innormal industrial processes. You will appreciateeasily enough what this means in relation to fixingwork standards; and yet, as I shall have to show, weneed the analytical approach and all that " workstudy" comprehends perhaps more than any otherindustry.

We have also the problem of the wide dispersalof underground activities, which limits supervision toa degree which makes it far less than the supervisionwhich is possible in most industries. And do notforget that coalmining is in the dark !

These are some of the inherent problems in thenature of our business of coalmining. But there aremany other factors to beconsidered, some of whichhave an important bearingon the subject which I amdiscussing. Between the Warscoalmining went throughthe fire. It suffered in themost devastating way fromthe ravages of depression,of contraction of output andof employment, and of finan-cial difficulties. It sufferedmost greatly on the humanside, since coalmining is Photo: L. E. Broomelocated according to the Sir Hubert Houldsworth

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occurrence of coal and thus often creates an inflexi-bility in employment. In 1913 the country produced287,000,000 tons with 1,107,000 men. In 1920, stillbooming after the War, output was 230,000,000 tonsand manpower 1,227,000; but by 1933 output hadfallen to 207,000,000 tons and the labour force tono more than 772,000. Some places suffered moregreatly than others. For instance, the steam andbituminous coal regions of South Wales—leaving outthe anthracites of West Wales—produced 52,000,000tons in 1913, when 32,000,000 tons were exported.In 1936 exports of those coals were only 13,000,000tons and total production 28,000,000 tons, whilstthe men employed in the industry in this part de-clined from 218,000 in 1922 to 100,000 in 1936.

These things do not happen without leaving theirmark. The iron entered into the soul of the indus-try. I need not remind you of the havoc made tohuman beings, to whole communities; but I thinkit is important to emphasise the effect of this savagerestriction of demand on the management of theindustry.

The Years of DepressionEvery improvement in efficiency in the lean years

meant throwing a man on the streets. Wages werelow, so labour was rated low. There was little capitaldevelopment—how could this be expected if every-where there was over-capacity? Men could be re-cruited from the pit yard from day to day if neededand no one could look confidently to a future con-tinued demand for which a carefully balanced agepattern would be necessary. Many colliery under-takings were living from hand to mouth. Most pitsworked short time.

Today, as you know, we are in an entirely differ-ent position. We have not, since the early part ofthe War, met the demand for coal in full. In the lastfew years we have been short of men; but recruit-ment has recently been good and we have at themoment plenty of men in many places, though weare still badly short in others. Wages of coal minershave risen—as I believe they should have done—from a very low position amongst industrial workersto the very top of the list.

These higher wages, and a shortage instead of anexcess of capacity, have accentuated our need forhigher productivity. Moreover, the demand for coalat any price (and thus any efficiency), which wascontinued after the War years into nationalisation,and which was necessary, brought with it attendantevils; since to concentrate solely on the volume ofproduction in itself breeds inefficiency. We have torecover the proper emphasis on costs as well as onoutput.

Meanwhile, colliery management has become animmensely more intricate business than it was in thepast. The engineering aspects of it are now highlycomplex; and the man-management side requiresthe utmost skill and devotion.

On top of all this we have an industry which wasstarved for many years of development, with adesperate need for reconstruction. By " reconstruc-

tion " in this context we mean changes on thesurface, in the shafts and winding equipment, andin the underground structure of the mines—theirlayout and transport systems. We have a greatprogramme in hand for this. It is essential andinescapable to provide capacity and to obtain im-provements in efficiency. The execution of thisprogramme has been, and still remains, a matter foranxiety for a variety of reasons; but we can andmust catch up.

But apart from the shafts and structures of thecollieries we have another basic component of ourjob—the actual winning of coal at the coal face.This involves not merely getting coal, but loading it,carrying it to the roadways, forming those roadwaysas the face advances, supporting and controlling theroof.

The getting of coal has been helped increasinglyby mechanical cutting and blasting. The proportionof cutting rose from 31 per cent, in 1930 to 58 percent, in 1938, and today is 83 per cent. The processof carrying the coal (by belt or other type of con-veyor) to the roads and to convenient points forloading into cars or tubs has also been mechanisedincreasingly; the proportion of output mechanicallyconveyed has increased from 53 per cent, in 1938 to89 per cent. But in the intermediate process ofloading we have as yet made limited progress, andalthough many new types of machine and systems ofwork are under trial—and many of them arepromising—only 5 per cent, of our coal today ispower-loaded.

Similarly, though drilling is now virtually all doneby electric or compressed air equipment, the processof stowing away stone from the formation of roads,or for the control of the strata, is still largely un-mechanised. So we have still technical engineeringproblems to overcome, problems which are for themining engineer as such rather than the ProductionEngineer.

Scope for Improved EfficiencyIn our immediate operation of the mines, however,

there is an immense field for improved efficiency. Agreat deal can be done, and done quickly, under theexisting conditions of the pit, and more as a resultof minor changes at quite small expenditure. Theseimprovements can be done in advance of, or in con-junction with, major reconstruction. Often they areworth while even if the life of the working is veryshort. This is the first place where method and workstudy come in. They have also an important partto play in the planning for the long term.

The application of the principles of work study isnot altogether new in coalmining. There have beenand are today many evidences of this in simple and,to some extent, in more highly-developed forms. Insome cases colliery companies in the past employedmodern methods, but this was on a limited scale.There is nothing fundamentally new in these tech-niques, as you know; but they provide effectivemeans for applying common sense, for analysingthings properly, and seeing what the busy manage-

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ment official cannot, or does not, see. This is moretrue in collieries than anywhere else, because collierymanagement is perhaps the most exacting manage-ment task in all industry. I know of no body ofprofessional men who are more hard-working, moredevoted to their job, more anxious to make improve-ments, than the very harassed colliery managers to-day. The colliery manager, of course, is in a keyposition, because it is at the pits that the coal isproduced.

Application of Work Study TechniquesThe Board, having studied the subject, and with

the help of big undertakings such as I.G.I, andUnilever, decided that they must ascertain how workstudy techniques—with all the experience gainedover the years in other industries—could best bedeveloped in mining. They realised that the appli-cation of work study raised more difficult andcomplex problems in mining operations than inrepetitive work in a factory. As I have said, miningis inherently far less susceptible to any form ofstandardisation and offers much less uniformity thanmost manufacturing processes. Moreover, it has tobe admitted that technical efficiency in mining is solargely dependent upon good planning that workstudy may simply reveal defects in planning whichmay prove difficult to correct. But, despite all theseobstacles and difficulties, if we are to improve pro-ductivity and then production we are convinced thatwe must take up the challenge presented to us by thesuccess of these methods in other fields.

Indeed, although it may be more difficult tointroduce these techniques in coalmining than else-where, coalmining needs them perhaps more thanany other industry. We need them not only fordirect purposes of analysis and to seek to improveefficiency, but also for the inter-related purpose ofcomparing the results of our different productionunits. Just because physical conditions in miningvary so greatly, and straight comparison of costs, andproductivity in terms of output per man-shift isthus invalidated, management needs common andbasic standards, a common scale and common term-inology, in order to assess the quality and standardof control at the collieries.

The Two Lines of ApproachHaving discussed the matter with our National

Consultative Council, on which all grades in theindustry are represented, it was therefore decidedto approach the question from two angles. First, amining engineer occupying a responsible managementpost in one of the Divisions was attached to head-quarters and was given as thorough a training ascould be provided over a period of about a yearwith outside industries. This training was under-taken by an established firm of consultants who werespecialists in this field. In addition, arrangementswere made for the mining engineer to take courseswith Imperial Chemical Industries and with Uni-lever, and also to attend a short course run by theT.U.C. which is used for training members of itsconstituent bodies in this subject.

The second line of approach was to use the con-sultants who were specialists in work study but whowere without previous knowledge of coalmining, tocarry out a specimen investigation at a typicalcolliery. It was emphasised that this specimen workwould relate only to the possibilities of achievingeconomy and increased efficiency by short-termimprovements in methods, equipment, labour deploy-ment and the organisation of work flow.

So we had on the one hand a man with a closeknowledge of coalmining considering work study,and on the other hand engineers experienced inwork study methods coming fresh to the miningindustry. The colliery selected for the experimentwas a guinea-pig—the aim being to discover thebest means of developing work study generally.

After consultation with all the trade union officialsconcerned, who were particularly helpful and gavetheir full co-operation (without which, of course, theexperiment would have been impossible), a pit wasselected and investigations were concentrated mainlyon underground haulage, shaft winding and thesurface operations generally. In addition, some sur-veys were made of the coalface and other collierieswere visited in order to obtain a wider backgroundof coalmining. In the space of a year, and withoutany special knowledge of the mining industry, theconsultants were able to indicate ways wherebysubstantial improvements could be made in theefficiency of the operations they had studied by rela-tively small changes of equipment, spreading of thework load more equally and by some redeploymentof haulage workers.

Surveying the FieldThe main purpose of the work done at this colliery

was to discover and demonstrate the scope for thelatest methods of work study in mining and the bestway of applying them. The consultants formed theopinion, and successfully showed, that there was avery large field for this work in the industry. Ourmining engineer who had been trained during theperiod of the experiment reached similar conclu-sions, although he had approached the matter froman entirely different background.

In the light of these special enquiries, the Boardwere strengthened in their conviction that themining industry could ill afford to ignore the fullydeveloped work study techniques and that it was amatter of urgency to adopt these methods, althoughthey realised that the build-up of the work studyinstallations would have to be to some extent experi-mental, and in any case would need to be carriedout in stages.

It was apparent that the success of this develop-ment would depend primarily upon (i) obtaining thesupport of the unions, and (ii) convincing manage-ment. We are dealing here with an industry wherethe personnel is a little conservative-minded on someoccasions. With these basic considerations in mind,it was necessary to find the right location for workstudy sections and how best to employ them.

The Board's organisation consists of a headquarters,

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eight major and one minor Divisions, about 50 Areas,and over 850 collieries. The Areas ore the effectiveoperational units—as it were the " companies "—andthey are the places where specialist services shouldmainly be located, except in so far as individualcollieries need such service, or where a central serviceis desirable. For a large colliery a permanent Pro-duction Engineer concentrating on work study maywell be necessary, but by and large it seems clear thatwork study units should be set up at Area level, fromwhich they will operate at the collieries under thedirection of the Area General Manager, who is incharge of and responsible for the work of his Area.He, of course, has a Production Manager, who willobviously need to take an interest in this work, be-cause it affects the operation of the pits.

We shall normally have work study under the wingof or very closely associated with our Area PlanningDepartments, since the link between planning andwork study is particularly strong in coalmining; butwe are laying down no precise pattern, as we shouldlike to see a natural development of the organisa-tional side rather than dogmatise at the start.

Training FacilitiesThe main burden of work study is thus in our

Areas. But there are certain functions which weneed to perform at first at headquarters to securethe developments which we desire. The initiative inthe steps I have described had, in fact, been taken byour Production Department, and to make generalprogress it was clear that they would need to providethe stimuli, and to furnish facilities for training ofArea work study engineers.

We want there to be a natural growth, and nothingwill succeed better than a positive demonstration ofsuccess. To make a start, therefore, the Divisionswere asked to select a few established miningengineers for training under arrangements which wehad made. After training, those men were to returnto their own Areas, where they would instal workstudy in its fullest sense.

Now let me break off to explain why, at this stage,we proposed to use mining engineers for this purpose.I do not suggest that in the long run there isnecessarily any reason to train a mining man in workstudy rather than a work study man in mining;indeed, there are some advantages in the latter; butto begin with we felt that the gospel would bepreached better by an experienced mining official,respected on his own ground, who had been trainedin work study, rather than by an outsider who might,in what I have already referred to as our somewhatconservative industry, find it difficult to convincemanagement.

Our headquarters training and " commando"section is working at present with the consultants,since we believe at this stage at least that we musthave outside assistance. As I have said, the first jobis to provide training. The men drawn from theAreas are undergoing a course of some months' dura-tion in which they receive theoretical and practicaltraining, the latter in works outside mining by

arrangement with our consultants. For the timebeing we prefer to go outside, but shortly we shallbe able to provide this practical training at collierieswhere work study in its fullest sense is well established.

We are also providing a short appreciation coursefor management officials, since I need not remind youthat their education on how to use the results of workstudy is no less necessary than the training ofspecialists in the work itself.

As each Area man completes his training he willset up in his Area a work study unit. Advice will beavailable, when required by the Area, from head-quarters, but this will, we hope, gradually becomeunnecessary.

A Central Research SectionThe headquarters section have a further function

to perform, though it will take time to tackle this,since the process of installing and helping the Areawork study sections come first. We shall need to havea central research section, analysing and comparingdifferent methods of work and machines. The head-quarters section will not, unless specially requestedby an Area, undertake a local investigation at aparticular colliery, but they will make comparativeanalyses and appreciations of the efficiency of differ-ent ways of doing things, or of different machines.With the insular traditions of individual coalfields, webelieve that there is much to be gained by dissemin-ating the best practices from one to another; butwe must be assured that they are the best, and asaccurate measurement as possible, taking into accountall the variable factors of mining, is an absolutenecessity if we are to be sure what is best.

If in our interest in method and work study I havegiven the impression that we are racing ahead with awide-scale introduction of these techniques, I mustcorrect a misunderstanding. We are, in fact, pro-ceeding slowly; we are proceeding slowly because thetraining must be thorough and because we want tostimulate our Areas and Divisions to want work studyrather than to impose it, and slowly, above all, be-cause we must have the absolute confidence of thetrade unions and the men in what we are doing.Nevertheless, whilst I hesitate to prophesy, I believethat in time we shall, with the helpful co-operation ofthe unions, build up as sound an organisation of workstudy and production engineering as will be foundin this difficult industry anywhere in the world, andthat we shall reap the benefit of it in improving ourefficiency, and thus the economy of the whole nation.

Need for A New OutlookBut, of course, no one new method or new

approach is going to solve the difficulties of this in-dustry; it can only be a hand-maiden in such solution.Your President, in the course of his address thismorning, referred to research work and to a new out-look. We want a new outlook in this industry. Wewant an ever-increasing capacity on the part of thosewho are engaged in administration, in technical workand in the manual processes necessarily associatedwith the industry.

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Good personnel, properly used at proper points,are far more important than the form of an organisa-tion. The success of any organisation will dependultimately on the capacity, the devotion, the vision,the initiative and the drive of individuals, andparticularly of individuals in key positions. Theymust, of course, be assisted by the best form oforganisation which we can devise to help them intheir task, but the primary problem is to get theproper men in the proper places.

As the Reid Report showed, there was beforenationalisation a dearth of technical men withadequate experience in the large-scale planning whichis necessary in an industry of the size and complexityof the coalmining industry and which, as the ReidReport suggested, had a task no less than that ofrebuilding the industry. It was necessary, therefore,to attempt to correct this shortage of technical men.In what I said when I was discussing our experimentsin work study methods, I paid a very high tributeto the management that we have in this industry; butwe want, with the increased specialisation which isso necessary, and with the vast reconstruction workwhich we have to-day, more and more technical men.and more and more of those with the broader outlookwhich is necessary for this large-scale planning.

Scholarship SchemesIt is a slow job to make good a deficiency of that

nature. We started some years ago a scholarshipscheme by which we offer 50 scholarships for trainingin mining departments at the universities to thosewho are in the industry, and 50 to those who arestill at school, making 100 scholarships offeredannually which are divided in that way. In addition,we offer some for ordinary engineering subjects,because we want to build up a stronger engineeringdepartment, mechanical and electrical, as well ashaving more mining engineers.

The quality of those selected has been good, onthe whole. When I tell you that 82 have completedtheir basic courses at the universities, and that 42of those have completed them with first or secondclass honours in mining, you will see that we havemanaged to select some raw material worthy oftraining; but, of course, they are only at the be-ginning of their training after graduation, and there-fore we have established a practical training schemefor those who have completed their university courses,whereby they are virtually treated under the oldapprenticeship scheme by which students werearticled in the past to mining engineers. They areput under the general supervision of our Area GeneralManager himself, or the Area Production Manager,and given three months in this operation, six monthsin that, and so on, for a period of three years. Then,when that three years is over, which means that fromthe time of their selection some six or seven yearshave gone by, they must go through the various ranksof the junior officials — deputies, overmen, under-managers and so on — to get a full practicalexperience of the industry. It will be seen, therefore,that there must be a minimum of ten to twelve yearsbefore the raw material which has been selected has

obtained the training and the experience necessaryto help us effectively in the improvement intechniques, in planning and so on.

One of the unfortunate features of this scheme isthat, despite the fact that the financial payment to theselected scholars at the university is in line with thatof the State scholarships, we are not getting, of thestandard we require, anything near the full 100 thatwe are prepared to take each year. We have nowto embark, therefore, on a missionary crusade in thepublic schools, the grammar schools and so on inorder to try to attract those who have received a goodfundamental training in the sciences, and who havethe proper temperament to look towards this greatbasic industry for their career. It is an industrywhich can give, compared with other engineeringoutlets, a reasonable remuneration. It is certainly an.industry which can provide for a man who is anxiousto serve his fellows an opportunity of fulfilling thatambition.

Importance of University TrainingYou heard Professor Matthew speak in the very

short discussion this morning. It is interesting tonote that some twenty-five or so years ago there was.at the University of which he is now a distinguishedprofessor, what might be called a vintage period inthe mining department. There was a professor there,Professor Moss, who conceived the idea of persuadingcolliery owners to give financial assistance to thosewho were prepared to go to the universities to readmining. With those promises, he went himself as amissionary to the schools and he persuaded manyyoung men of the proper type, who had no familyconnection with coalmining at all, to go to theUniversity of Birmingham and read mining. Theyhave a triennial reunion of their students, and theywere kind enough some months ago to invite me toone of those gatherings. Looking round, I was amazedat the number of those, now occupying with distinc-tion and success high places in the coalmining in-dustry, who had been trained at the University ofBirmingham in that particular period, many of whomto my personal knowledge had not in their familyhistory, so far as they knew, any former connectionwith this industry.

We have to do that. The lesson is clear. Untilwe have succeeded as he succeeded we shall not bedoing fully our job, even with these schemes, ofattracting to our ranks many of those who can renderus very good service.

Making the Right ImpressionAfter all, it may be that outside the mining areas

there is a wrong impression of what work in a collieryis like. Some months ago, for example, I had amedical man spending the week-end with me, and onthe Sunday afternoon I said to him; " I am goingdown a pit in the morning; would you like to comewith me ? " The reply which I got, quite quickly,was: " If you will come and have a cup of tea with mein the typhoid ward this afternoon, I will go downthe pit with you in the morning." There is a good

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deal of misconception about coalmining by thosewho are not used to it, and that is one of the diffi-culties which we shall have to overcome.

Again following your President this morning, Iwould suggest that the efficiency of an industry isnot going to depend only on those who occupy keypositions and who possess the necessary energy andvision, but in the end it will depend also on havinga happy team at work, a team that know that fairdealing will be given and a team, too, of the highestaverage ability and training. We are not neglectingthat side of the matter. We have trained a largenumber of people at special courses to go out andhold similar courses in the coalfields for thedeputies and foremen who are our non-commissioned officers, those who are in touch withthe men, those who really create the impression ofhow the National Coal Board does its job and howit regards its manpower. Every deputy in everyDivision is going through a course of a week's dura-tion where these problems of man-management andapproach are thoroughly discussed, together with acertain number of technical matters.

We are holding, and have been holding for sometime, full-time courses for a fortnight or so for differ-ent grades of our more senior officials, because, afterall, the difference between the problems of a. smallunit and those of a large unit is rather more thana question of degree. There are other inevitabledifferences. Indeed, I should think that every largeorganisation has, in greater or less measure, the sametype of problems to deal with as those which areexercising our minds to-day. We must do all thatwe can to increase the training and broaden theoutlook of all who are employed in the industry.

Attracting Juveniles to the IndustryWe have our training scheme for the juveniles

who enter the industry. Incidentally, whatever ourshortcomings may be in this or that direction, wehave achieved one victory. It is not many yearsago that the parents in the mining villages wereusing all their influence to prevent boys going intothis industry, and this was cumulatively creatingdifficulties both in the numbers in the industry andin our age-group distribution. When I tell you,however, that in 1951 not the recruitment but thedifference between recruitment and wastage ofjuveniles was 11,000, and that went up in thesucceeding year, 1951-52, to over 15,000, and lastyear rose to over 20,000, I think you will agree thatat present we are succeeding in attractingjuveniles to this very vital industry. We donot gain productively from their services at themoment in proportion to their man-power, and weare often taken to task for it, but I think that thosewho are engaged in industry will see that therecannot be a direct proportionate relationship whenwe take in such a very large part of our new man-power as juveniles. We have to take, however, along-term view, and we are going to benefit from it inthe future.

Development of Research Work

Your President rightly referred to the importanceof research in an industry. Ours was an industrywhich until after the War, with the exception of oneor two big companies, had done little or nothingso far as research work was concerned. We have builtup one research organisation which, with itsscientists and technicians, numbers 350. We haverecently established a second one which is in processof being built up to the same size. When we havedone it all, and these two research organisations areat work for us, it will be costing us about fd. perton. I ask you, how much do the oil industry'spend on research work ? Yet here we are dealingwith an industry where research work had beenneglected. We are casting our bread on the waters,but I am quite sure that we shall have our reward inthe years to come.

We are encouraging fundamental research byfinancial assistance and by scholarships at ouruniversities, and I think that we are, as probablyProfessors of Mining will agree, giving new life to theteaching in the mining departments by the develop-ment of research work there, which has been con-ducted largely as a result of our assistance; becauseI believe that there can be no live teaching in anysubject unless it is taught in a department by thosewho are themselves engaged in research work.

I have referred to the conservative nature of thisindustry. Those who are trained in the miningdepartments which have this research outlook will notnormally be research workers but, having seen re-search work in progress, and having had thebroadening of vision which that opportunity will havegiven them, they will be likely to go into this industrywith a far more progressive mind than could beexpected from a person who had not had thatopportunity.

We have, as 1 have said, some first-rate managers.They have in many cases come up the hard way,with great credit to themselves, by evening study, orday study if they have been on night shift, on the topof rather laborious work. They are the salt of theearth. They have grown up with the men. Theyunderstand the human problems. There will alwaysbe room for that type of man, whatever the scholar-ship scheme is, and we are encouraging that type alsowith day release and so on. We want, however, toblend those who have the valuable knowledge ob-tained by hard experience, with the capacity for workdeveloped by conducting their studies in addition totheir work, with those who have the broaderoutlook about which I have been speaking.

If time had permitted I could have gone on todeal with many other developments, but I hope thatI have said enough to convince you that we aretrying to do that for which your President pleadedthis morning by bringing a new outlook into thisindustry. It will take time before the full results

(Concluded on page 399)

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The Conference Banquet, 25th June, 1953

Guests arriving for the Conierence Banquet are received by the President and the Chairman of Council, with Mrs. Burke.Left to right are (top): Lord and Lady S win ton, Sir Cecil Weir; Sir Hubert Houldsworth, Sir Cecil Weir, Mr. HaroldBurke; (centre) the Mayor and Mayoress of Harrogate, Councillor and Mrs. E. P. Oddy, Sir Cecil Weir; Mr. R. Kirchner,immediate Past President, London Section; Mr. Walter Puckey, Mr. Harold Burke; (bottom) Mr. and Mrs. E. PercyEdwards, Sir Cecil Weir, Mrs Harold Burke; Mr. and Mrs. G. R. Pryor, Sir Cecil Weir.