Women and War Work

by Helen Miller Moyes

We know, too, that the great woman's movement of our country, which has worked to this end for fifty years and numbered our greatest women among its adherents, has had much to do with the ability of our women to take the great part they have in this crisis. If women had not toiled and opened education and opportunities to women, and preached the necessity of full service, we could not have done it.

One great thing the war has done for our women is to draw us all closely together—in common sorrows, hopes and fears, we find how much we are one and in so much of our work women of every rank of life are together. We had that union before in many ways, but never so completely as now. Punch has a delightful picture that summed up how we are mixed in soldier's canteens, and huts and buffets, and Hospitals, which show a little Londoner saying to a meek member of the aristocracy "washing up," "Nar, then, Lady Halexandra, 'urry up with them plaites," and we have an amusing little play of the same kind. The society girl who washes down the Hospital steps, and washes up for hours, and carries meals up and down stairs in her work, week after week, and month after month, and year after year, in our Hospitals, knows what work is now, and the soldier who is served, and the soldier's sister and wife, learns something, too, about her that is worth learning.

We have also learned a great deal in our welfare work, and the welfare supervisors and the workers both have benefited, and the heads of the innumerable hostels, which we have built everywhere for our girls—dozens in our new Government-built munition cities, have been of very real help and service to the girls. A tactful, sensible, educated woman has a great deal to give that helps the younger girl, and can look after and advise her as to health, work, leisure and amusements in a way that leaves real lasting benefit.

In the munition works, well educated women, women with plenty of money, women who never worked before, work year after year beside the working girl. Just at first some of the working girls were not quite sure of her, but it is all right long, long ago, and they mutually admire each other. The well-off woman works her hours and takes her pay, and takes it very proudly. I have been told many times by these women who, for the first time know the joy of earning money, "I never felt so proud in my life as when I got my first week's money." And the men in the factories learn a lot, too. "Women have been too much kept back," was the comment of a foreman in a shell factory to the Chief Woman Factory Inspector on a visit she was paying to it. The skilled men, teaching the women, have learned a great deal about them, too, and have helped the women in so many ways. Men have been amazed at the ability and power and capacity for work of the women and are, on the whole, very willing to say so and express their admiration.

One munition girl writes: "The timekeeper, quite a gorgeous gentleman in uniform, gave us quite a welcome.... The charge-hand of the Welder's shop helped us to start, and stayed with us most of Friday. He was most kind, and showed us the best way to tackle each job, did one for us, and then watched us doing it."

Another says, "Our foreman is a dear old man, so kind and full of fun. The men welders are awfully good to us."

In considering the practical facts of new opportunities for women, one thing is clear. Masses of our women took their new work as "temporary war workers," but as the war has gone on, it has become clearer and clearer that, in many cases, these tasks are going to be permanently open to women. One reason is that many of the men will never return to take up their work again—another, that many of them will never return to what they did before.

They have been living in the open-air, doing such different things, such big vistas have opened out that they will never be content to go back to some of their tasks. There is the other fact that we, like every other country, will need to repair and renovate so much, will need to create new and more industries, will need to add to our productiveness to pay off our burdens of debt, and to carry out our schemes of reconstruction, so women will still be needed. Our women, in still greater numbers, will not be able to marry, and the best thing for any nation and any set of women is to do work, and there will be plenty of room for all the work our women can do. Many will go back to home work, of course; there are large numbers who are working in our country, only while their husbands are away, and when they return will find their work in their homes again.

We are offering special training opportunities to the young widow of the soldier or officer.

In special branches of work our opportunities are very much greater and better. Medicine is one of the professions in which women have very specially made good. Better training opportunities have opened, more funds have been raised to enable women of small means to get medical education, and the Queen herself gave a portion of a gift of money she received, for this purpose. Most medical appointments are open to them now and they have been urged by the great medical bodies to enter for training in still greater numbers in the different Universities, and have done so.