Berkshire and The War: the "Reading Standard" pictorial record. Volume 4. p 949

Messrs. Huntley & Palmers, Ltd. - continued.
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... planes with bombs. In this connection it is interesting to note that these men showed great courage and ran great risks when in enemy hands. They extracted the detonators from a large number of the bombs, and buried them in the earth.

Biscuits for the Army.

While the soldiers were fighting in many theatres of war and the sailors were engaged at the Battles of Jutland and the Falkland Islands, pursuing U-boats, and landing men at Gallipoli and so forth, War Service of extreme importance was proceeding at the Reading Biscuit Factory. Before the war Huntley and Palmers were not manufacturers of Army biscuits, but only of the fancy kinds which are familiar to people all over the world. But when the War Office, in great need of supplies, appealed to them for Army ration biscuits, they set to work to meet the urgent and vast demand.

During the war they made many thousands of tons of Army ration biscuits.

Fancy Biscuits for the Canteens and Hospitals.

In addition they were called upon to supply: The Expeditionary Force Canteens, the Military Hospitals, The Y.M.C., and Kindred Societies. For these they made all kinds of fancy biscuits for our Armies in every theatre of war. The biscuits were sent out in tins and tin-lined cases. Further, they despatched immense quantities of biscuits wrapped for preservation of their freshness and quality, in grease-proof paper. The number of this kind of packet rose to more than 250 millions, which absorbed nearly 1,200 tons of wrapping paper. Nor was this all. All the biscuits sent from England by the Central Prisoners of War Committee were manufactured by Huntley and Palmers. Four-fifths of the total output of the factory, in fact, was for troops in the field.

Now this necessitated the relegation of the civilian trade to a secondary place. The consequence inevitably was that constant complaints were made by buyers, who found themselves unable to obtain more than a fifth of their normal quantities. But traders and consumers alike came to recognise that Huntley and Palmers were only performing a duty to the country - carrying out a patriotic and large task - and although their own businesses were suffering, nevertheless the vast majority of grocers accepted the shortage philosophically.

[photo, interior, industrial] SHELL MAKING.

Difficulties Overcome.

Often during the war the difficulties of manufacture, packing and delivery seemed insurmountable. Everyone knows what restrictions there were on the import and use of the food stuffs. The large stocks of timber for case-making stocked by the Company were laid under embargo by the Timber Controller.

And although new supplies of timber had to be brought across the seas, though they were sometimes torpedoed, never once did the War Office and the other buyers of biscuits for the troops have to complain of failure by Huntley and Palmers to meet requirements. Indeed, special machinery was laid down for converting home-grown timber with the bark on, and it had to be passed through all the processes till it became packing-cases.

£41,000 for the Y.M.C.A. Fund.

Two other enterprises stand to the credit of the Reading Biscuit Factory. "H. and P." were asked by the Y.M.C.A. what they could do to raise funds, and in December, 1917, launched an appeal in their own name to the grocery and confectionery and allied trades. They collected £41,000 for the Y.M.C.A. by this appeal, to which their colleagues in the biscuit manufacturing industry responded on a scale of great munificence, contributing £13,000.

60,090 Shells.

Then as to shells, etc. They have no pretensions to be engineers, though they have repair shops to cope with the daily machinery needs of the factory. When the call for shells came in 1915, they turned lathe after lathe to work. They began with the small output of 50 shells a week. Ultimately they reached 900 a week. Their total number of shell-cases for the war was 60.000, which took more than 800 tons of bar-steel to produce. The percentage of defectives was abnormally low. Out of the 60,000 delivered only 98 were condemned!

"Every Huntley and Palmers shell is like a piece of jewellery,"€ said one of the experts. This was an excellent tribute, seeing that the operatives were mostly "H. and P."€ girls taken from packing biscuits and trained by the factory's chief engineer.

Miscellaneous Machine Work.

"H. and P." also undertook the machining of parts for aeroplane engines, gun rifling, and gun winding apparatus, the making of dies for smoke bombs, and other war engineering tasks. Thus, while the men of military standard were fighting, the factory people were doing their "b it" at home.