Chapter VII

THE WAR AND WOMEN SUBSTITUTES; NEW LIGHT ON HOURS, LABOUR-SAVING,
FATIGUE, FOOD, AND EFFICIENCY

“Lo, strength is of the plain root virtues born:
Strength shall ye gain by service, prove in scorn,
Train by endurance, by devotion shape.
It is the offspring of the modest years.”

Those who have had patience to go with me so far, in gathering illustrations of the conditions under which women worked in factories down to the eve of the War, and who agree with my conclusions as to the spirit and character of the women themselves, will perhaps follow on with me in applying the words of George Meredith to their achievements in the years from 1914 to the close of 1918.

Unless one turns back to the very numerous documents, official and unofficial, relating to women’s industrial war work, it is not easy, at the close of the year 1921, to recall the full measure of pride expressed by the nation in what the women did for it in time of need. Almost immediately after the Armistice all the munition workers poured out of the factories and the substitute women followed gradually, as the demobilised men returned to their industrial occupations. A tide of industrial activity then rose and re-absorbed practically all available industrial women in their own normal trades. The tide turned suddenly in June, 1920, and increasing unemployment in 1921 has dimmed the memory of their achievements.

Many a non-official observer, unfamiliar with the great extent and variety of skilled manufacturing work, or with the heaviness and roughness of much of the less skilled work, done by women and girl industrial workers before the War, was astounded by the ability with which women turned to the new kinds of work. “Not only,” said one such observer, “has the War provided an incentive to women’s work on a scale never dreamt of in times of peace, it has caused women, more particularly those engaged in new occupations, to realise as they have never done before their own capacity.”[201] The old barriers against their employment on work suited to them and valuable to the community were, for the time, steadily and firmly removed one after another, and with surprising rapidity when guidance of State officials was applied to this removal. Women in the factory realised—some with astonishment—that they were entitled to high praise, and to hold a new confidence in themselves through the natural capacity and zeal shown by them; first, in intensified production in their own old industries[202] of unheard-of quantities of cloth, articles of equipment, rations, and so on, for the Army and Navy; secondly (and later), in speeding up the supply of munitions of war. The emphasis on their merits as industrial war-workers was greater than had ever been explicitly laid on their ordinary life- preserving activities as homemakers and mothers. Nevertheless a new impetus was given, through this enhanced valuation of women, to public health work for mothers and infants and care of the child—or maternity, infant and child welfare, as it became customary to call such work.

To return to women as “substitutes,” a new generation of adolescent girls had time to come into this form of industrial occupation for female workers—while the scope of “munitions of war” grew until they nearly engulfed ordinary peacetime kinds of production. These girls had never known anything but wartime manufacture. They also had what very few British girls before them had had under the factory system, opportunities for training by intensive instruction, and they laid hold of these opportunities with remarkable power.

A new version of an old couplet came into my mind on thinking over an incident in a remote rural district when, one evening in the fourth year of the War, a friend of mine spoke to a village girl on her way to a meeting at the lately founded Women’s Institute:

“‘Where are you going to, my pretty maid?’
‘To hear of substitute women,’ she said.”

The girl spoke as if it were a subject of lively interest to herself, and one that would of course interest any intelligent human being. “Women substitutes!” What could anyone have made of such a term before A.D. 1915? Of butter or leather “substitutes” we had heard, but not of women “substitutes.” And yet many books were written about them in the last three years of war. Books that will be studied by historians of the future seeking to explain the extraordinary growth during a critical stage of the War—when millions of men had been taken away from the possibility of production—in the supply of shells and guns to the waiting artillery batteries; in the inexhaustible production of aeroplanes; in the fitting and refitting of the Army with its boots, its razors, its surgical dressings, its millions of tins of preserved rations, its millions of smoke helmets; and in the gigantic supplies of the hundreds of other kinds of “munitions” all ceaselessly mounting in quantity.[203]

It is impracticable, and it is indeed unnecessary, to re-tell in detail here the story of the growth in production and in supplies, or to estimate exactly the share that women and girls took in making the expansion possible. Those who have not access to the literature can by a visit to the National War Museum put themselves in possession of the principal facts. Our concern is with the health conditions and the attendant circumstances of the women’s employment. It helps, however, to a true impression to sum up shortly the main stages of their entry into new forms of work.

When men first trooped in their hundreds of thousands, voluntarily, to the colours in 1914, industrial women found their outlet for the same impulse to serve the nation in intensified and extended work at their own more or less customary callings. They found it at the sewing machine, knitting machine, weaving loom, boot-upper stitching machine, tin-cutting power press, soldering bench, at tinning of meat, fruit and vegetable preserves for rations, and so on. Even with this added intensity of their work and the lengthened hours of employment factory women could do “a bit of knitting for the soldiers and sailors”—so that some of them could say, “We never seems to get any rest, but if we did not do it, no one else could.”[204] They had to play an indispensable, and, in some cases, a predominant part in supplying the Services with textile materials, clothing, blankets, mattress covers, with various kinds of bodily equipment, such as haversacks, bandoliers, light leather, and miscellaneous small metal articles, and with tents, and all kinds of general equipment, some time before their share in the production of “munitions of war” in the form of ordnance, ammunition, aircraft, chemicals, etc., was even thought of. And claims for women’s aid in the general service of the home community, in transport, distribution, clerical and commercial work, were strongly pressed before the great part they were to play (chiefly by aid of dilution of labour) in engineering and the larger metal trades came in sight.

A second phase in the industrial wartime employment of women came with the first thoughts of the “substitution” of women to release men for military service in the less essential manufacturing industries, next in industries essential for national needs, and in those where important export trade could (it was then believed) be developed or maintained.

At the request of the Army Council, the Home Office and Board of Trade began a series of conferences with associations of employers and workers to consider what reorganisation of work might be necessary to free as many men as possible. This work, requiring some diplomacy, was largely under the guidance of Factory Inspectors, men and women, and it was necessary to negotiate temporary suspensions of recognised trade union rules, at the same time providing safe and suitable conditions for the women employed in processes that were new to them, and heretofore arranged to suit men’s different ways of working. Agreements were secured in a number of trades, including hosiery and other textiles, boot and shoe manufacture, leather tanning, woodworking, baking, earthenware and china manufacture, printing, and glove making.[205] These agreements aimed both at preventing misunderstandings and dislocations at a critical time, and at getting security for future maintenance of the established standard of the life of industrial workers.

Orders, known as “Emergency Orders,”[206] were made by the Home Office, allowing relaxations of the law relating to hours and times of work of women and young persons, both in munitions and non-munitions industries, to meet the exceptional circumstances of the time. Certain fresh safeguards for health or safety were embodied in these Orders, of which foremost was an obligation laid on the employer to provide means for preparing and taking meals at the works, and next supervision by competent women to maintain good conditions.

There were certain large and heavy trades where no agreements between employers and workers could be arranged owing to lack of organisation on one side or the other, either of employers or of workers, and here the Inspectors closely guided the course of replacement of men and substitution of women—_e.g._, in flour milling, rubber manufacture, oil and seed crushing, soap making, sugar refining, paper making, cement making, and in gasworks. In all these “non-munition” industries—which tended more and more to provide material of war, and thus to become technically “munitions” as the War progressed—they advised employers on the necessary modification and reorganisation of processes, as well as on good conditions for production. In the factories, where women had not before been employed in process work, a noticeable solicitude was frequently shown by the employers and managers for protection of the health and safety of the women, and all paid tribute to their adaptability and natural quickness, as well as to their fine spirit.

It was in a large shell factory, early in 1915, before the immense development of the Ministry of Munitions, that a foreman said to me as we stood watching the then novel and arresting sight of numerous women and girls intent upon their work at lathes, “There is more in this than people think; women have been too much kept back.” Several Inspectors said that the cotton workers, set free by unemployment in their own great trade, particularly enjoyed their new work in shell making, and found it less heavy, and conditions better, than in the textile factories. Munition factories in Birmingham profited early in 1915 by a temporary depression in the Staffordshire Potteries, receiving contingents of intelligent women from gilding and painting shops—high- grade labour—for the new work. In Lancashire one heard of young women proud to have learnt how to grind tools and set machines. In wire- drawing and engineering trades an Inspector said it was remarkable, considering the half-heartedness of the initial experiment of employing women, how general was the satisfaction over its success. It was an everyday occurrence to be told frankly by foremen that “the women are doing very well indeed, much better than I ever thought they could.”

Then came the third and, technically, the greatest experiment in women’s employment during the War, under the organisation of the Ministry of Munitions—their concentration on engineering and munitions supplies with much dilution and with highly specialised training in processes. It was this stage that led not only to the immense additional power in repetitive production, but also to the discovery in engineering, by enthusiastic “dilution” officers, of certain processes requiring manual dexterity and delicacy of touch, in which women could do better than men, and some even which women alone could do.[207] This phase can only be fairly studied in published documents, catalogues, and illustrations issued by the Ministry of Munitions, and at the National War Museum. It was under the Ministry of Munitions that the first systematic attempt was made to superimpose personal conditions of welfare—an essential for good output—on the general hygiene of environment in the factory already required by the Factory Act. And one of the earliest steps taken by Mr. Seebohm Rowntree, the Director of Welfare, appointed in the close of 1915 for “controlled” munition factories, was to obtain through me from my staff of Women Inspectors a detailed survey of conditions actually obtaining in each large “controlled” and national factory, with our recommendations on the arrangements desirable for the welfare of the women and girls.[208] This work was carried out in 1916 and 1917, and it is touched on in my next and last chapter.

The fourth and final new experience for industrial women, during the War, came with the urgent need in 1917 and 1918 of trying to substitute them for men, not only in process work that was likely to be suitable for them, but also in many processes and manual work heavier than had yet been attempted—for example, in the forging of bullet-proof plates, in driving overhead cranes, in certain heavy foundry processes, in a few operations in shipbuilding yards, in retort-house work, in internal scaling of boilers, in ferro-concrete pile making, and in new varieties of heavy labouring work. None of these (surviving the experimental stages),[209] except possibly scaling of boilers, appear to be heavier or more laborious, however, than work done long years before by women in tinplate works, in fireproof brick works, in timber yards, or galvanising works; and certainly none surpassed in dirt or disagreeableness the old work of women in such processes as gut scraping, rag sorting, or “breeze sifting.”

It was chiefly in these last two years of the War that development of women’s employment took place in chemical works, heavy metal works, and in gasworks. Some really interesting developments took place. In forge work—for example, in one factory making heavy tank parts—the whole of the process work was done by women, numbering 300; men, numbering six, being employed solely in keeping machines in running order. “The women work the furnaces, moulding presses, and do the grinding, besides trolleying, stacking, loading on to wagons, and women ‘chemists’ also take the temperatures.”[210] Here close investigation (made by one of the “first-aid” Inspectors) showed that there were no signs of serious injury amongst the women. The same conclusion was reached by her as regards women drivers of large overhead cranes—a dangerous occupation, however, in which some women met with fatal accidents. A cement works in Scotland was run almost entirely by women’s labour, and their employment in this heavy work had been made successful by the aid of mechanical appliances, the only men being rotary kiln men—doing very heavy and hot work, needing considerable training—besides foremen and engineers. At a large steel works in Yorkshire, where the managers were of opinion in 1916 that women would be useless to them, there were, in 1917, 300 employed to their satisfaction in yard work, painting, labelling, and crane driving. “Loading and unloading of ore is heavy, and can only be done by the women without injury if they take the work slowly and quietly.”[211] Inspectors found that some women, either from the natural but dangerous desire to show their strength or to get through their work quickly, lifted weights far too heavy for them. A foreman, however, in charge of construction work at a blast furnace who had trained women under him, “spoke exceedingly highly of them, and said he would be willing to undertake any ferro-concrete work with women only.” They had made over 1,000 piles 31 feet in length; they were bending and preparing all the steelwork used in the construction of the wharf, bridges, etc.; they worked the stone-crushing machines and concrete mixer, stacked the piles when made, and discharged stone, iron, etc., from railway trucks. Managers of gasworks expressed surprise at the good class of women found willing to undertake this hot, heavy, and rather dirty work. In the severe winter of 1916–17, when women were first being tried in heavy processes in gasworks, a manager, praising their grit and pluck, said, “If they stick this, they will stick anything.”

In such places good protective clothing and specially adapted implements, such as light barrows and shovels, automatic weight-lifting appliances, and other labour and fatigue-saving plant and machinery, played an immensely important part in enabling the women to do the work. Inspectors unanimously held that at no time had legislative protection for women, and competent inspection, been more needed than in these final years of the War, when women were eagerly pressing into processes and heavy labour of a kind new to them. There was generally an ample supply of women available, and the only places where one heard of shortage were in some of their old factory occupations, where conditions often remained at a lower level than in the new occupations, and where wages did not rise until later to meet the increased cost of living.

In 1917 and 1918 also, some marked development of women’s employment took place in relatively light processes, both skilled and semi-skilled, in certain non-munition industries, which were perfectly suited to their physical ability, and for which some intensive training was open to them in technical colleges. The most interesting examples, I think, were scientific instrument making, in which industry, by March, 1918, substitution of women had become general in some processes and frequent in others; and in leather-case making and fancy leather work. Especially in the former of these industries new openings appeared for women as works’ chemists or in laboratory research at the factory, as well as in the manufacture of glass prisms, lenses, thermometers, and many metal processes. As regards the future, the Home Office Memorandum on Substitution of Women declared in 1919 that there were “good prospects for women in this industry.”[212] Early in 1920, however, “the steady withdrawal of women from employment in men’s industries that began after the Armistice was almost completed.” And I was obliged to conclude at the end of the year that there was “as yet no fulfilment of the expectations that after the War a body of industries and operations offering a hopeful field of fresh employment would be open to women where their War experience could be turned to account. On the contrary, an automatically operating force has closed all these expected new avenues.”[213]

As the number of Men Inspectors decreased during the early part of the War, through claims of military duty and other national service where their technical knowledge and experience was invaluable, the number of Women Inspectors gradually increased, but only to a total of thirty. Much of the almost incredible amount of work they managed to get through was done by conference with, and information and advice to, other bodies of workers—the Women Welfare Officers and Dilution Officers of the Ministry of Munitions, the Superintendents of Women’s Labour in munition works, and the Local Advisory Committees (under the Ministry of Labour), concerned with the welfare outside the factories of the immense aggregations of workers who were drawn away from their homes into great centres for production of munitions of war. Some of them served also on various Central Committees, of which the two foremost were the Health of Munition Workers Committee and the Women’s Employment Committee under the Ministry of Reconstruction. When the Ministry of National Service was set up, the main lines of the great task of fitting substitute women into men’s industrial work were already planned, and much of the substitution was already carried into effect under the guidance of the whole Factory Inspectorate in co-operation with the Employment Department, Ministry of Labour; and when several of the Men Inspectors were “seconded” to the Ministry of National Service the work continued by co-operation between the Departments.

Much had to be done in bringing factories, and whole industries, up to the same standard in making the necessary substitution. In some factories the advance was more rapid than in others—far more reliance being shown in putting women into positions of real responsibility. For example, in only one malting house was it found that a forewoman was in complete charge of the women’s work, with technical responsibility for regulating the temperature of the kiln and judging the right time for “turning” the floors. And in an exceptional fruit-preserving factory output was doubled and engineers’ repairs reduced by half for the season, when a forewoman was put in complete control, a control which included not only the jam-making department, but also the maintenance in good working order of machinery, boiler, and engine.[214]

Inspectors sometimes expressed disappointment at the limited confidence shown by employers in substituting women in the higher posts of industry, but enough was done to “suggest a fair promise of future development of women’s natural aptitude for organising.” The difficulty lay even more in that direction than in process work, through lack of sufficient opportunity for women to obtain broad and sound technical training in the short time available. In large munition works, however, in two ways useful examples were given of technical control by women; women “charge-hands,” having gone through intensive training in processes, controlled the operations of small groups of workers, sometimes men and boys as well as women and girls; and in the work of Women Welfare Superintendents there was a tendency to develop their responsibility in the direction of carrying out some of the functions of a manager.[215]

Although a large number of women came for the first time, from domestic work and from home life, into industry during the years of strongest demand for substitutes and munition workers,[216] a considerable proportion of the increase in these two classes came from the return to the factories of former industrial workers, and by their transfer from the less essential trades. The highest proportion of those entering from domestic work or home life was usually found in factories situated in localities where other industries were not present. For example, in two chemical works in the country it was found that half the women came from home life, one-quarter from domestic service, and the remainder from other factories. In a Manchester flour mill one-third came from home life, a few from domestic service, and many from miscellaneous factories.

It was in such places as these, where the substitute women were unfamiliar with factory life and with the safeguards provided by Factory Acts and Orders, that protection by a trained Inspectorate was found to be most needed. Two points of considerable interest came out in the complaints from women themselves. In the years 1914–15, when long and exceptional hours (whether entirely illegal or else sanctioned by Emergency Orders) were at their highest point, the women worked willingly; and they complained only rarely and in extreme cases. On the whole, there was a great proportionate rise, on the other hand, in the complaints relating to matters of sanitation and safety, 63·1 per cent. of the whole in 1917, as compared with 47·3 per cent. in 1913.

The working of excessive and irregular hours, a natural outcome of the confused haste for enormous production at the beginning of the War, seemed to bring new light to many employers on the uselessness of long hours and long, unbroken spells for continued large output, however great the generally prevalent willingness of the workers to help to their utmost. Already before the War, as we have seen in Chapter II., it was a commonplace in Inspectors’ reports that the strain of the legal twelve-hours’ day of absence from home[217] was too great, having regard to the home duties of most women, who had frequently also a long distance to travel to and from work. In the first year of the War the Inspectors showed that the main resistance to excessive overtime came more from the employers’ side (in spite of exceptions among them) than from the workers. In a Crown factory the experience was “that any lengthening of the day, beyond 6 p.m. and a total of eight and a half hours’ work daily, exhausts the workers, and is of no advantage in increasing output.... A well-known wholesale clothier employing a thousand women on Government contracts gave it as his well-considered opinion that the full period allowed under the Factory Act ... is sufficient, and any work beyond this is useless: it exhausts the workers and does not pay.... The manager of a powder-bag factory ... found, after some weeks’ experience, that the pieceworkers were making less during overtime than during the normal period of employment.... A cardboard box manufacturer told me he had put his workers on shorter hours only to find that their output and earnings were equal to those on the full factory day.”[218] The interesting and very valuable researches made by scientific investigators for the Health of Munition Workers Committee and for the Home Office regarding fatigue, did but amplify and give scientific confirmation to the commonsense reasonings and conclusions of many manufacturers about hours of work. Nevertheless, at the beginning of the wartime pressure, it was clear that some deviation from the fixed Factory Act limits was necessary to counterbalance delays in getting out contracts, dislocations in movement of supplies of materials, and other interferences with a continuous run of work in making up articles. The Emergency Orders granted to numerous individual firms at the beginning were unquestionably necessary. Later, as experience grew, it was possible to standardise these for whole industries and groups of industries, greatly to reduce night work and overtime, nearly to abolish Sunday work, and ultimately to prohibit the night work for young girls under sixteen and for boys under fourteen years, that had been temporarily permitted at the outset of the national emergency. The new evidence gathered by scientific investigators gave increased strength to older humanitarian arguments, as well as fresh point to the conclusions of certain practical managers that excessive hours without regular intervals defeat their purpose of speeding up production. The experiments that were made, under Home Office orders in various shift systems,[219] showed how increased output might, in times of pressure, be obtained from limited plant and machines without exceeding the working powers of the delicate “human machine.” The finding of the Health of Munition Workers Committee in 1915, that the strain of long hours had not, so far, “caused any serious breakdown among workers, though many statements indicative of fatigue had been received,” was confirmed by reports of Factory Inspectors coming from all parts of the country. No marked increase in sickness rates could be found, yet among foremen and managers, who were less able than workers to take time off, and among individual older men and women, there were cases where health certainly suffered from the strain. After the War was over an experienced Welfare Superintendent told me of great lassitude amongst girls under her care, and she said that it had been necessary to send a high proportion of them to holiday homes before they quite recovered their natural elasticity and capacity for a full ordinary day’s work.

Women’s weekly and daily totals in the stress of the earlier years of War, long and fatiguing as they were, rarely rose (apart from special aberrations which successful prosecutions did much to check) to the extremes too commonly reached by men munition workers. Forewomen and women superintendents were more often employed in the later than the earlier years, and thus were spared some of the excessive overstrain that at first fell on foremen and managers. In factories where the long double twelve-hour shift system with alternate weeks of night and day work for each shift obtained, evidence of absenteeism and poor timekeeping made it highly probable that accumulating fatigue and overstrain had been partly averted by the natural tendency of the workers to take an occasional day or halfday off. It was truly fortunate, however, for the ultimate health of the people that as strictness of discipline, in controlled factories, in enforcing regular attendance of the worker under penalty grew, some reasonable standardisation of shift systems and considerable development of canteens and other welfare arrangements had been secured.

By the end of 1917 it was evident that for whatever reason, probably through better wages, providing much better food than formerly, and through increased personal care of the workers in the factories, sickness among the women was not increasing, but rather diminishing.[220] The evidence given before the Health of Munition Workers Committee was that sickness benefit was lessening, and I learned by special enquiry that an almoner’s records in a large general hospital in a great munition area showed that as few as thirty women and girl munition workers had attended as out-patients in six months.

Even though much detail as regards the best daily and weekly period and spells of hours remains to be worked out by practical experimentation for different types of factory work with differing kinds and degrees of effort and strain involved, the large-scale demonstrations regarding conditions and output in wartime have both added to our knowledge and also popularly spread that knowledge. It may be doubted whether the full potential strength of the social motive in industry—the sentiment of national service—has been at all fairly grasped in its bearing on true success in industrial production. Yet the leaven is there, its workings can be seen, and it is the one unalloyed gain that came from the stupendous and terrible effort of production for “munitions of war.” The new lights that this effort brought on the dependence of good output and efficiency on right adjustment of hours, labour-saving appliances, fatigue prevention, food, have but a limited value for the commonwealth if the aims of industry continue to be “merely material production of wealth and things unrelated to spiritual values” or social ends.[221] Women’s extended entry into industry from 1915 to 1918 did indeed bring social considerations into the conditions of work, and some of these things remain. Yet they can hardly last if they do not lead to “the ordering, the comforting, and the beautiful adornment of the State” in its organised industrial capacity.

During the time of the greatest zeal for introduction of women as “substitutes” into men’s industries, and well on into 1919, it seemed almost at times to be forgotten how essentially noneconomic and temporary both basis and framework of the introduction were. Except as regards some extensions within women’s own traditional industries, women were in reality in these new places simply as “substitutes,” and, in nearly all, under a solemn covenant that it was solely for the duration of the War. An entirely new peacetime departure is needed for application of women’s freshly proven powers to new industrial developments. In the future women will surely attain their better industrial status not as “substitutes,” not as secondary men, but in their own fields (with aid of better training), and also in other carefully chosen fields, as joint labourers with men. The War emphasised a very true and natural interchangeability of men and women for many emergencies. The new “Science of Labour” has perhaps come at the very time of most need, with insistence on the essential complementariness of the industrial aptitudes of men and women.[222] There at least—in industrial labour—their complete fusion would mean an economic and social loss.

While the hopeful expansion in industry following very soon after the War lasted, there was a remarkable, though temporary, re-absorption of women into their own former occupations. They took with them certain great gains from their recent experiences. They brought into their old industrial environment new ideas of fellowship as well as knowledge of fresh processes and of better rates of pay; they brought strengthened capacity for trade union organisation as well as new ideas of the value of intensive training. Not least, they brought a new demand for better means at the works of preparing and taking sufficient food, which is the material foundation of all efficient labour.

We may here sum up the possible permanent gains to industry as well as to women themselves, brought from their wartime experiences in factories, ready for the time when expansion of trade again begins.

It has been seen that in many ways women have far greater powers of endurance, activity, and enterprise—quite apart from new forms of skill— than was formerly admitted or expected of them. We know that they gain in health by fresh kinds of outdoor and labouring work not previously customary for them. We have seen conclusive evidence of their capacity to quickly become proficient at engineering tasks—with the aid of semi- automatic machinery that is often intricate—and of their powers of sustained interest in such work under great pressure for output.

The enquiries and valuable memoranda of the Health of Munition Workers Committee[223] brought out, more completely than any previous official reports had done, the practical importance of selective care in setting women and young workers on to work, as well as the need for the improved personal conditions and skilled supervision by women, that are considered in the next chapter.

In addition to the gain of a higher standard in women’s own expectation as regards their conditions, there is a new atmosphere in the factories, traceable to the women’s increased self-reliance engendered by the appreciation that has been expressed for their work and capacity. No one can realise this more thoroughly than Women Factory Inspectors, meeting it as they do on the spot, and there comparing past and present. In a factory where formerly a woman worker would not have disclosed the fact that she belonged to a trade union, there is a woman shop steward ready to come forward and show the Inspector round, the manager expecting her to do so.[224]

There is a new outlook on the possibility of applying science as well as humanitarian motives to use and care of labour. To no workers is this more important than to women, with the dual claims on them of home cares and breadwinning. The studies of the Industrial Fatigue Research Board have a special significance in their application to women in industry.

Another gain from War experiences peculiarly affecting women—although it has also a much wider bearing—is the very considerable testing of the practical value of well-designed appliances, adapted machinery and lifting tackle, for saving human labour, quite apart from its power to lessen cost of production. The aim of lessening human toil for its own sake, not merely for commercial reasons, has a new interest.

Before the War there was for women and girls in industry, outside one or two ancient skilled occupations (such as weaving, high-class dressmaking), so little arrangement for training that it was negligible. During the War, by special organisation of training for women substitutes and dilutees in technical schools and colleges and in instructional factories, women’s technical and personal capacity was publicly measured. And for the first time national resources were applied, under the kind of direction that suited women, to adaptation of the means of technical training in process work to the results best obtainable from them. At last, there was a demonstration on a scale sufficiently large to make the truth incontrovertible, that women workers are not necessarily the less valuable for production to meet the nation’s daily need because their pace and natural ways of working differ from those suited to men.

And with all these new lights came also the political enfranchisement of women, which enables them to survey with new eyes the too passive and subordinate position that they have in the main hitherto held in industry. Though from time to time a set-back may occur, they are surely summoned to take their full share in the building up of a better industrial life for the people—as fellow-producers with men, but with their “other” point of view as guardians of the home.