to get in touch with somebody. Business engagements, when 
      those concerned must travel, seldom work out as planned and when 
      they are kept at all, somebody usually arrives very late.
 
      
 
 
So far, there is nothing permanent about any of the tie-ups 
      in the transport and communication fields. A telephone, cable 
      severed today may be joined tomorrow. A fleet of busses destroyed 
      this week is replaced in some way or other one next. But if this 
      part of England continues to be bombed as it is certainly a question 
      whether repairmen will be able to keep apace with their work 
      and the fear is that replacements of destroyed or damaged equipment 
      will steadily become more difficult and may even develop into 
      a problem which can only be met by importation. Already electrical 
      equipment is hard to get hold of, owing to damage and dislocations 
      in the producing trades. It is understood that requests are simply 
      filled for reference in the comparatively distant future. It 
      is also understood that if buses continue to be destroyed at 
      the current rate, it will not be very long before it will become 
      impossible for municipalities satisfactorily to cope with the 
      problem of getting workpeople to end from even urban planets 
      engaged in tasks of the utmost national importance.
 
      The general public is inclined to make light of in-conveniences 
      which attend and persist for some days after heavy raids. The 
      hundreds of persons who daily stand for long periods at rural 
      and urban bus stops are, on the whole, good natured and patient. 
      But as admirable as in their disposition to accept their situation 
      with humor or resignation, their employers are becoming alarmed 
      at the reductive effect which successive but temporary transport 
      failures has on the productive capacity of the plants for whose 
      output they are responsible.
 
      
 
 
For some years before the outbreak of war, it was nip and 
      tuck between the supply of and the demand for transport and communications 
      facilities in the Birmingham area of England. No sooner was a 
      new road buil %t or a new cable laid than that cable became overtaxed 
      with traffic. The daily movement of some two millions of workpeople 
      in a relatively minute and densely populated area offered problems 
      the solution of which required the utmost ingenuity. The most 
      had to be made of each road, of each line, and roads and lines 
      came to constitute a veritable maze. Schedules for transport 
      services were kept almost to the second. Each traveler caught 
      something in the way of a vehicle at precise times each day and 
      only by the maintenance of the service at the perfection level 
      were they made to suffice.
 
      
 
 
Immediately the war, crafted, there was a vast movement into 
      the Birmingham area of workers seeking employment in its thousands 
      of separate plants which at once assured responsibilities in 
      connection with the production of goods