I have heard fear expressed, too, lest sex attraction be lost through work on army hats, the machinery being noisy and the operative, if she talk, running the danger of acquiring a sharp, high voice. One could but wonder if most American women work on army hats.
Among the women actually employed, I have found without exception a fine spirit of service. So many of them have a friend or brother "over there," that backing up the boys makes a strong personal appeal. But some of the women who have left factory life behind are adopting an attitude towards the present industrial situation as lacking in vision as in patriotism. Throughout a long discussion in which some of these women participated I was able to follow and get their point of view. To them a woman acting as a messenger, an elevator operator, or a trolley conductor, was anathema, and the tempting of women into these employments seemed but the latest vicious trick of the capitalist. The conductor in her becoming uniform was most reprehensible, and her evident satisfaction in her job suggested to her critics that she merely was trying to play a melodramatic part "as a war hero." In any case, the conductor's occupation was one no woman should be in, "crowded and pushed about as she is." It was puzzling to know why it was regarded as right for a woman to pay five cents and be pushed, and unbecoming for another woman to be paid eighteen dollars and ninety cents a week and run the risk of a jolt when stepping outside her barrier.
But the ideals of yesterday fail to make their appeal. It is not the psychological moment to urge, on the ground of comfort, the woman's right to protection. The contrast between the trenches and the street car or factory is too striking. But it is, however, the exact moment to plead for better care of workers, both women and men, because their health and skill are as necessary in attaining the national aim as the soldiers' prowess and well-being. It is the time to advocate the protection of the worker from long hours, because the experience of Europe has proved that a greater and better output is achieved when a short day is strictly adhered to, when the weekly half-holiday is enjoyed, and Sunday rest respected. The United States is behind other great industrial countries in legal protection for the workers. War requirements may force us to see in the health of the worker the greatest of national assets. Meantime, whether approved or not, the American woman is going over the top. Four hundred and more are busy on aeroplanes at the Curtiss works. The manager of a munition shop where to-day but fifty women are employed, is putting up a dormitory to accommodate five hundred. An index of expectation! Five thousand are employed by the Remington Arms Company at Bridgeport. At the International Arms and Fuse Company at Bloomfield, New Jersey, two thousand, eight hundred are employed. The day I visited the place, in one of the largest shops women had only just been put on the work, but it was expected that in less than a month they would be found handling all of the twelve hundred machines under that one roof alone.
The skill of the women staggers one. After a week or two they master the operations on the "turret," gauging and routing machines. The best worker on the "facing" machine is a woman. She is a piece worker, as many of the women are, and is paid at the same rate as men. This woman earned, the day I saw her, five dollars and forty cents. She tossed about the fuse parts, and played with that machine, as I would with a baby. Perhaps it was in somewhat the same spirit--she seemed to love her toy.
Most of the testers and inspectors are women. They measure the parts step by step, and weigh the completed fuse, carrying off the palm for reliability. The manager put it, "for inspection the women are more conscientious than men. They don't measure or weigh just one piece, shoving along a half-dozen untouched and let it go at that. They test each." That did not surprise me, but I was not prepared to hear that the women do not have so many accidents as men, or break the machines so often. In explanation, the manager threw over an imaginary lever with vigor sufficient to shake the factory, "Men put their whole strength on, women are more gentle and patient."
Nor are the railways neglecting to fill up gaps in their working force with women. The Pennsylvania road, it is said, has recruited some seven hundred of them. In the Erie Railroad women are not only engaged as "work classifiers" in the locomotive clerical department, but hardy Polish women are employed in the car repair shops. They move great wheels as if possessed of the strength of Hercules. And in the locomotive shops I found women working on drill-press machines with ease and skill. Just as I came up to one operator, she lifted an engine truck-box to the table and started drilling out the studs. She had been at the work only a month, and explained her skill by the information that she was Swedish, and had always worked with her husband in their auto-repair shop. All the other drill-press hands and the "shapers," too, were Americans whose husbands, old employees, were now "over there." Not one seemed to have any sense of the unusual; even the little blond check-clerk seated in her booth at the gates of the works with her brass discs about her had in a few months' time changed a revolution into an established custom. She and the discs seemed old friends. Women are adaptable.
Copyright by Underwood and Underwood
The daily round in the Erie Railroad workshops.
But everywhere I gathered the impression that the men are a bit uneasy. A foreman in one factory pointed out a man who "would not have voted for suffrage" had he guessed that women were "to rush in and gobble everything up." I tried to make him see that it wasn't the vote that gave the voracious appetite, but necessity or desire to serve. And in any case, women do not push men out, they push them up. In not a single instance did I hear of a man being turned off to make a place for a woman. He had left his job to go into the army, or was advanced to heavier or more skilled work.
As to how many women have supplanted men, or poured into the new war industries, no figures are available. One guess has put it at a million. But that is merely a guess. I have seen them by the tens, the hundreds, the thousands. The number is large and rapidly increasing. We may know that something important is happening when even the government takes note. The United States Labor Department has recognized the new-comers by establishing a Division of Women's Work with branches in every State. It looks as if these bureaus of employment would not be idle, with a showing of one thousand, five hundred applicants the first week the New York office was opened. It is to be hoped that this government effort will save the round pegs from getting into the square holes.