Letter to Arthur Steainstreet from Steel, Peech & Tozer
Title
Letter to Arthur Steainstreet from Steel, Peech & Tozer
Description
The letter discusses the future, once the war is over and sends him Christmas greetings.
Creator
Date
1944-11-22
Temporal Coverage
Language
Format
Two typewritten sheets
Publisher
Rights
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
Identifier
EWrightAESteainstreetA441122-0001, EWrightAESteainstreetA441122-0002
Transcription
[logo]
STEEL, PEECH & TOZER
BRANCH OF THE UNITED STEEL COMPANIES LIMITED
WORKS:
THE ICKLES,
SHEFFIELD, 1.
22nd November 1944
Dear Mr. Steainstreet,
It was a great pleasure to all of us here to learn from so many to whom I wrote a letter about Christmas time a year ago that they enjoyed hearing from the company.
It has been a year of wonderful triumph for the forces of the Allied Nations on land, at sea and in the air.
Many of you have become veterans in one campaign or another, and many who have trained for long months or even years have at last gone into action.
At home, our industrial workers have seen the result of our less dangerous but often monotonous toil in preparing the great variety of weapons and equipment you require, from rifle bullets and battle-dress to battle ships and prefabricated ports. Transport workers and our civil defence have put their shoulders to the wheel and we even allot some credit to government departments and their irksome control.
Like you, we are looking forward to the end of the fight and to your return to a less dangerous and less strenuous life. But whether the enemy has reached the last round as we all hope, or still has a lot of fight left in him, we are not letting up, we know him of old.
But we are trying to prepare for the going back – in your case the coming back – to peaceful times. We have talked a lot about better conditions, education, vocational
Contd . . .
[page break]
– 2 –
training, the human touch in industry, employment, social security and even of spiritual revival. But we have also done some thinking about these things; Parliament is engaged in making laws about them; Government departments with industry are making plans designed to avoid unemployment in the transition from production for war to production for peace, and the machinery for making such plans is much more suitable and more thoughtfully applied than it was after the last war.
You may ask “when we come back, shall we find that your talking, thinking and the rest of it will bear fruit?”. I think the answer is “The spirit is truly willing, the flesh will depend upon ourselves, if it is to keep up with the spirit, we shall all have to work hard, intelligently and unselfishly, and we can succeed and still have time for leisure or fun or whatever we choose to call relaxation.”
Our company itself has made some progress. Works are cleaner and tidier, there are more amenities, and schemes for education and vocational training are being introduced. We have devised a scheme to assist those returning to us from the forces.
When peace comes, we expect to carry out modernisation programmes in our works and mines and we shall continue in our endeavour to establish pleasant surrounding and close personal relationship.
We all join in sending you Christmas Greetings and we wish you the best of Good Luck.
Yours truly,
A E WRIGHT
DIRECTOR and GENERAL MANAGER
1454520
F/Sgt. A. Steainstreet,
No. 1 Sgt’s Mess, East Camp,
Cranwell,
LINCS.
STEEL, PEECH & TOZER
BRANCH OF THE UNITED STEEL COMPANIES LIMITED
WORKS:
THE ICKLES,
SHEFFIELD, 1.
22nd November 1944
Dear Mr. Steainstreet,
It was a great pleasure to all of us here to learn from so many to whom I wrote a letter about Christmas time a year ago that they enjoyed hearing from the company.
It has been a year of wonderful triumph for the forces of the Allied Nations on land, at sea and in the air.
Many of you have become veterans in one campaign or another, and many who have trained for long months or even years have at last gone into action.
At home, our industrial workers have seen the result of our less dangerous but often monotonous toil in preparing the great variety of weapons and equipment you require, from rifle bullets and battle-dress to battle ships and prefabricated ports. Transport workers and our civil defence have put their shoulders to the wheel and we even allot some credit to government departments and their irksome control.
Like you, we are looking forward to the end of the fight and to your return to a less dangerous and less strenuous life. But whether the enemy has reached the last round as we all hope, or still has a lot of fight left in him, we are not letting up, we know him of old.
But we are trying to prepare for the going back – in your case the coming back – to peaceful times. We have talked a lot about better conditions, education, vocational
Contd . . .
[page break]
– 2 –
training, the human touch in industry, employment, social security and even of spiritual revival. But we have also done some thinking about these things; Parliament is engaged in making laws about them; Government departments with industry are making plans designed to avoid unemployment in the transition from production for war to production for peace, and the machinery for making such plans is much more suitable and more thoughtfully applied than it was after the last war.
You may ask “when we come back, shall we find that your talking, thinking and the rest of it will bear fruit?”. I think the answer is “The spirit is truly willing, the flesh will depend upon ourselves, if it is to keep up with the spirit, we shall all have to work hard, intelligently and unselfishly, and we can succeed and still have time for leisure or fun or whatever we choose to call relaxation.”
Our company itself has made some progress. Works are cleaner and tidier, there are more amenities, and schemes for education and vocational training are being introduced. We have devised a scheme to assist those returning to us from the forces.
When peace comes, we expect to carry out modernisation programmes in our works and mines and we shall continue in our endeavour to establish pleasant surrounding and close personal relationship.
We all join in sending you Christmas Greetings and we wish you the best of Good Luck.
Yours truly,
A E WRIGHT
DIRECTOR and GENERAL MANAGER
1454520
F/Sgt. A. Steainstreet,
No. 1 Sgt’s Mess, East Camp,
Cranwell,
LINCS.
Collection
Citation
Steel, Peech & Tozer, “Letter to Arthur Steainstreet from Steel, Peech & Tozer,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed January 24, 2026, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/collections/document/43318.