The next group of figures carries forward the story of the increase in women workers more than a year further, to July, 1917. This third year of war was a period of striking developments, both in growth in the number of women workers and in the extent to which they filled men’s jobs.
Best known of these changes to American readers is the constant expansion in the number of women munition makers. The number of government munition factories had risen from four at the beginning of the war to 103 in January, 1917, and the number of women employed in them and in docks and arsenals increased by 202,000, or 9,596 per cent, between July, 1914, and July, 1917. At Woolwich Arsenal there were 125 women in 1914 and 25,000 in 1917. The number of women in 3,900 of the 4,200 “controlled” establishments doing munitions work was reported to be 369,000 in February, 1917.[40] In July, 1917, the increase in the number of women in the trades which covered most of the munition work outside national factories, namely, metals, chemicals and woodwork, was 358,000, 52,000 and 26,000, respectively. In June, 1917, Dr. Christopher Addison, then Minister of Munitions, told the House of Commons that from 60 to 80 per cent of all the machine work on “shells, fuses and trench warfare supplies” was performed by women. One shrapnel bullet factory was said to be run entirely by women.
Part of the total gain of 518,000 in the number of women in industrial occupations under private ownership in July, 1917, was likewise found outside munitions work in a great variety of staple trades less directly connected with war orders, many of which were far removed from the scope of women’s work previous to the war. For instance, the number of women in grain milling rose from 2,000 to 6,000, in sugar refining from 1,000 to 2,000 and in brewing from 8,000 to 18,000 by July, 1916.[41] Women became bakers and butchers and even stokers.[42] The employment of women increased in the building trades, in surface work in mining, in quarrying, brick making and cement work, in furniture manufacture and in the making of glass, china and earthenware. Women were reported to be building good-sized electric motors, working in shipbuilding yards, testing dynamos, working electric overhead traveling cranes, gauging tools to a thousandth of an inch and less and performing the most highly skilled work on optical instruments.[43] The British mission from the Ministry of Munitions described a former kitchen maid who was running a 900-horsepower steam engine without assistance.
A committee of industrial women’s organizations stated, in the winter of 1916-17 that, except for underground mining, some processes in dock labor and steel smelting, and iron founding, “the introduction of women in varying numbers is practically universal.” And even in steel works women were sometimes employed in breaking limestone and loading bricks, though not on the actual smelting of the metal, while in iron foundries negotiations were going on to see where women could be used.
Meanwhile, the decrease in women workers in what, before the war, were distinctively “women’s trades,” became more marked. For instance, in April, 1917, the number of women was falling off in textiles and the food trades, though these were still above prewar levels, in dressmaking and domestic service, where the decline was put at 300,000, and in laundry work, for which exact figures were not obtainable.
The following table brings out the changes in the employment of women in several of the more important industrial occupations between July, 1914, and January and April, 1917:
INCREASE OR DECREASE IN THE NUMBER
OF WOMEN EMPLOYED SINCE JULY, 1914[44]
| January, 1917 | April, 1917 | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Metals | 267,000 | 308,000 | |
| Chemicals | 43,000 | 51,000 | |
| Textiles | 23,000 | 22,000 | |
| Clothing | -34,000 | -37,000 | |
| Foods | 26,000 | 18,000 | |
| Paper and Print | -6,000 | -7,000 | |
| Woods | 19,000 | 24,000 | |
| Total | 399,000 | 453,000 |
It had become so difficult for the London high class dressmaking and millinery shops to secure employes that in the fall of 1916 some of the employers met with representatives of the London County Council and the employment exchanges and planned considerable improvements in working conditions. The changes included a reduction of the seasonality of the trade and a shortening of the working hours. But in July, 1917, their supply of labor was still “insufficient.”[45]
In nonindustrial occupations also during the period from April, 1916, to July, 1917, there was a continued increase in the number of women employed and the kinds of work they were doing. Next to “government establishments” the largest percentage of increase (though the absolute numbers are comparatively small) were found in some of these groups. In “banking and finance” the gain over July, 1914, was 570 per cent, in “transport” 422 per cent and in civil service 150 per cent. The gain in numbers in the whole group, exclusive of agriculture, was 639,000, of which 324,000 were found in “commercial occupations.”[46]