A commission which included in its membership a trade unionist, sent by the British government in the darkest days to find why it was that France could produce so much more ammunition than England, found these tiny workshops, with their primitive equipment, performing miracles. The output was huge and of the best. The woman, when at the head, seemed to turn out more than the man, she worked with such undying energy. The commission said it was the "spirit of France" that drove the workers forward and renewed the flagging energies. But even the trade unionist referred to the absence of all opposition to women on the part of organizations of men. Perhaps the spirit of France is undying because in it is a spirit of unity and harmony.
It seemed to me there was one very practical explanation of the unmistakable energy of the French worker, both man and woman. The whole nation has the wise custom of taking meal time with due seriousness. The break at noon in the great manufactories, as well as in the family workshop, is long, averaging one hour and a half, and reaching often to two hours. The French never gobble. Because food is necessary to animal life, they do not on that account take a puritanical view of it. They dare enjoy it, in spite of its physiological bearing. They sit down to it, dwell upon it, get its flavor, and after the meal they sit still and as a nation permit themselves unabashed to enjoy the sensation of hunger appeased. That's the common sense spirit of France.
Of course the worker is renewed, hurls herself on the work again with ardor, and losing no time through fatigue, throws off an enormous output.
Wages perform their material share in spurring the worker. Louis Barthou says that the woman's average is eight francs a day. Long ago--it seems long ago--she could earn at best five francs in the Paris district. She works on piece work now, getting the same rate as men. And think of it!--this must indeed be because of the spirit of France--this woman does better than men on the light munition work, and equals, yes, equals her menfolk on the heavy shells. I do not say this, a commission of men says it, a commission with a trade union member to boot. The coming of the woman-worker with the spirit of win-the-war in her heart is the same in France as elsewhere, only here her coming is more gracious. Twelve hundred easily take up work on the Paris subway. They are the wives of mobilized employees. The offices of the Post, the Telegraph and Telephone bristle with women, of course, for eleven thousand have taken the places of men. Some seven thousand fill up the empty positions on the railways, serving even as conductors on through trains. Their number has swollen to a half million in munitions, and to over half that number in powder mills and marine workshops; in civil establishments over three hundred thousand render service; and even the conservative banking world welcomes the help of some three thousand women.
Has there ever been anything impossible to French women since the time of Jeanne d'Arc? The fields must be harrowed--they have no horses.
Out on the land the tally is greatest of all. Every woman from the village bends over the bosom of France, urging fertility. The government called them in the first hours of the conflict. Viviani spoke the word:--
"The departure for the army of all those who can carry arms, leaves the work in the fields undone; the harvest is not yet gathered in; the vintage season is near. In the name of the entire nation united behind it, I make an appeal to your courage, and to that of your children, whose age alone and not their valour, keeps them from the war.
"I ask you to keep on the work in the fields, to finish gathering in the year's harvest, to prepare that of the coming year. You cannot render your country a greater service.
"It is not for you, but for her, that I appeal to your hearts.