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Show AMERICA IN ACTION r MODERN MOLLY PITCHERS WASHINGTON. It is a long shot from the molded bullet of the past to the high-powered artillery projectile pro-jectile of today. But as women poured the molten lead into crude molds to make those bullets, so women today work on the modern goliaths. More and more women are taking their places in wartime industries, working to put into the hands of TfltftJk - IhP'C men the weapons that will win M lictory. These modern processes are complex. Each worker does only a small part of one of them. She may never see the finished product. prod-uct. She cannot put it into the hands of the man who uses it. But her work is just as important, for without with-out it the product would not be finished. fin-ished. For example, a primer is a little brass cup that contains the pellet charge a small explosion wafer pressed to a foiling disk. It must be set under a tiny anvil through which the flame passes from the lighted pellet into the vent hole in the cartridge case to ignite the powder. pow-der. The foiling paper must be shellacked. It must be pressed over the primer. This is done by a machine, but the small anvils must be placed in the primer cups by hand. This is just one small process, proc-ess, seemingly simple, but on the dexterity of the worker depends the effectiveness of the missle. In many plants women are employed em-ployed as testers. They do such intricate in-tricate jobs as adjusting hairsprings hair-springs in strobo-globe machines and projecting fuse parts on comparators com-parators or shadowgraphs processes proc-esses which would have alarmed their grandmothers. Some women are given an entire year's training as time-fuse makers so they can be transferred from one operation to another; still others load primer heads and pack powder in bags. These are by no means all the things that women do today to supply sup-ply ammunition to the soldiers, but they indicate how the modern women wom-en emulate the Molly Pitcher of Revolutionary lame who rammed the powder down her husband's cannon can-non at the Battle of Monmouth. |