Twelve miles from London, on what were once the marshy wastes of Essex, is a factory which has set almost the entire world talking.
Over 12,000 British workmen stream in and out in three shifts to man its thousands of machines, which include some of the most up-to-date and amazing in the world.
The result of their labours is a Ceaseless procession of Ford motorcars, which at any hour of any day may be seen speeding away from the factory gates to every corner of Great Britain, or being loaded on to great vessels which will carry them to practically every country in the world.
At Dagenham today over 600 acres, once largely waste land, form the estate, and, by one of the largest piling feats ever undertaken, nearly 100 acres have been converted into a perfect factory site—level and firm as rock.
Out of the flat Essex landscape giant buildings began, to appear Southern England saw, for the first time, the vast bulk of a blast furnace looming up against the sky. British steglyards set to work at high pressure, and in the space of months 13,500 tons of British constructional steelwork had been erected, one building alone covering 28 acres under one roof—a mere foretaste, however, of what was to come, for even, that vast building has. since been extended by several acres.
At the same time other British contractors were building a huge power house and a great block of Coke ovens; others were constructing miles of roadway and railway track; and still others were producing thousands of high-speed machines and other equipment to be installed in the factory shops.
Jutting into the Thames, another British firm built the largest and best-equipped jetty on Thameside—1,800 feet long, and able to accommodate 12,000-ton ocean-going vessels—in readiness for the export trade that was to come.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.