World War I
World War I 1914 - 1918 brought a huge upsurge in demand. The Mills increased staff numbers by around 3000 to a total of 6230. The 3000 additional workers were largely female, recruited from the surrounding area and this was a significant social phenomenon.
After WWI there was again a period of quiet before anxieties about the future again surfaced. It was decided that production at Waltham Abbey would be gradually transferred to the west of the country, safer from air attack from Europe. However in the meantime production continued and crucial development work was carried out on TNT production and on the new explosive RDX.
Read more about this topic: Waltham Abbey Royal Gunpowder Mills
Famous quotes containing the words war i, world and/or war:
“War is thus divine in itself, since it is a law of the world. War is divine through its consequences of a supernatural nature which are as much general as particular.... War is divine in the mysterious glory that surrounds it and in the no less inexplicable attraction that draws us to it.... War is divine by the manner in which it breaks out.”
—Joseph De Maistre (1753–1821)
“If all things were eternall,
And nothing their end bringing;
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—Unknown. If All the World Were Paper (l. 21–24)
“Germany has reduced savagery to a science, and this great war for the victorious peace of justice must go on until the German cancer is cut clean out of the world body.”
—Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919)