"The women who have tried both. These four, for instance."
"Well, another thing," he said, "a woman can't be looking after her children when she's working in a factory."
"That's true. But she can't be looking after them, either, when she's washing, or cooking, or doing things like that. They lie and cry—or crawl around and fall downstairs—or sit on the doorstep—or play in the street.
"Now, here, during the war," she continued, "we had a day nursery. You never saw such happy children in your life. Why, almost the only time they cried was when they had to go home at night!" Mary's eyes brightened at the memory of it. "Didn't your son's wife have a baby in the nursery, Mr. Edsol?"
"Two," he solemnly nodded.
"For another thing," said the chairman, "a woman is naturally weaker than a man. You couldn't imagine a woman standing up under overtime, for instance."
"Oh, you shouldn't say that," said Mary earnestly, "because everybody knows that in the human family, woman is the only one who has always worked overtime."
Here the third member of the committee muttered a gruff aside. "No use talking to a woman," said he.
"You be quiet, I'm doing this," said the chairman. "Another thing that everybody knows," he continued to Mary, "a woman hasn't the natural knack for mechanics that a man has."
"During the war," Mary told him, "she mastered nearly two thousand different kinds of skilled work—work involving the utmost precision. And the women who did this weren't specially selected, either. They came from every walk of life—domestic servants, cooks, laundresses, girls who had never left home before, wives of small business men, daughters of dock labourers, titled ladies—all kinds, all conditions."