The question naturally arises, where did the increased number of women workers come from? Who were the thousands of munition workers, the girls undertaking men’s jobs, and all the army of a million and a third women who were at work in July, 1918, and not in July, 1914?
Transfers from Nonessential Industries
The increase during the first months of war in the industries equipping the troops was met for the most part by a transference of workers from slack to busy lines. “So great has been the passing from industry to industry,” said the factory inspectors,[84] “that at the beginning of the New Year it seemed almost as if women and girls had gone through a process of ‘General Post.’” For instance, makers of high class jewelry in Birmingham transferred to light metal work for the army. Silk and linen weavers went into woolen mills and dressmakers in the west Midlands were taken on in light leather work. In other cases slack industries took up government work. The activity of the Central Committee on Women’s Employment in securing contracts for uniforms for idle dressmaking establishments has already been mentioned. The Scottish fish workers were relieved by knitting orders. Certain carpet mills took up the weaving of army blankets, corset makers were set to making knapsacks, girl workers on fishing tackle were used in the manufacture of hosiery machine needles, previously imported from Germany, and an effort was made to provide the manufacture of tape and braid for uniforms for unemployed lace makers in the Midlands. Army shirts were made by many of the Irish collar factories. In retail trade also there was often a transfer from slack to busy shops, as from dressmaking and millinery to the grocery trade. Middle aged professional women whose ordinary occupations were unfavorably affected by the war frequently took the positions in banks, insurance offices and other business offices which had for the first time been opened to women. Yet in the two trades which suffered most severely from unemployment, namely, cotton textiles and dressmaking, there was a much “less general movement of the workers to find a livelihood in other directions.” This was considered due in the one case to “relatively high wages and specialized factory skill,” in the other to “deep-rooted social traditions and special craft skill.”
Very early in the war, also, married women who had worked before marriage returned to industry. A large proportion of the expanding needs of the woolen trades was filled in that way. In “drapery”—that is to say, “dry goods”—shops, and in cotton and shoe factories and potteries, many of these “dug-out” married women also appeared. Municipalities, when substituting women for men on tram cars and in other services, frequently gave preference to the wives of men who had enlisted. Many married women entered the food trades and they did not seem to object to dirty work in foundries and other places as did single women. In the professions, also, some women returned to teaching and clerical work. Soldiers’ wives likewise entered munitions work in large numbers. While the reason for their reentering work was probably largely economic—rising food prices and “separation allowances” insufficient to maintain a skilled worker’s standard of living, particularly if the family was large—yet their choice of occupations appears to have been at least partly dictated by patriotic motives.
As the war went on, the transfer of women from “normal” women’s occupations, such as domestic service, dressmaking, textiles, the clothing trades and laundry work to the more highly paid lines, especially munitions work, became more and more noticeable. The actual decline in numbers in these occupations has previously been described.[85] In addition to the decreases in these trades, a considerable change in personnel was observed, involving “the loss of skilled women and the consequent deterioration of the quality of labor.”[86] For example, skilled women left laundry work, and their places were filled by charwomen, or young girls fresh from school. Not infrequently the skilled women went to almost unskilled work, as from textiles to munitions.
On the other hand, war conditions occasionally kept women at home who were previously employed. In districts where large numbers of soldiers were billeted women were kept busy at home attending to their needs. Especially in colliery districts the rise in men’s wages caused married women who were thrown out of work at the beginning of the war to become indifferent to obtaining new positions. In some cases, notably in the Dundee jute mills, separation allowances placed the wives of casual workers who had enlisted in a state of comparative prosperity, and they ceased to go out to work. But on the whole the war doubtlessly increased the employment of married women.
In spite of impressions to the contrary, the proportion of previously unoccupied upper and middle class women entering “war work” was by no means large. Some young girls from school who would not normally have gone to work and some older women who had never worked before entered clerical employment, especially in government offices, and often obtained promotion to supervisory positions. A limited number of well-to-do women took up such temporary farm work as fruit picking from patriotic motives. Many of the women working behind the lines in France and as military nurses were from the “upper classes.” And an appreciable number of munition workers were drawn from the ranks of educated women. One such worker estimated that in the large establishment where she was employed, about nine out of 100 women belonged to that class.[87] Educated women were particularly likely to take up such skilled occupations as oxy-acetylene welding, tool-setting, and draughting, where their trained minds proved advantageous. Daughters of small tradesmen and farmers, who had not worked before except in their own homes, were likely to become forewomen and supervisors, positions for which their reliability and common sense well fitted them.[88] The “week end munition relief workers,” or “W. M. R. W.,” who worked Sundays in order to give the regular staff a rest day, were rumored to include among their members “dukes’ daughters and generals’ ladies, artists and authors, students and teachers, ministers’ and lawyers’ wives,”[89] but this class of workers was, after all, small and was not increasing.
Mainly, however, the new needs of industry have been filled by working women or the wives of working men. Former factory hands, charwomen and domestic servants are found on the heavier work, and shopgirls, dressmakers and milliners on the lighter lines.
A fairly large proportion of the increase may, moreover, be accounted for without the recruiting of new workers. Numbers of home workers, of half employed charwomen and of small shopkeepers and other employers have voluntarily become regular employes. During the war fewer women married and of those who did marry a large proportion seem to have remained in industry. A writer in The New Statesman noted of certain women munition workers that “a large majority of them—even girls who look scarcely more than sixteen—wear wedding rings.”[90]
A general idea of the sources from which the new workers came into industry may be obtained from an analysis made in January, 1917, of the prewar occupations of nearly half a million women and girls who were insured against unemployment, covering nearly all the munition trades. Seventy per cent of the 444,000 workers considered had changed their occupation during the war. Twenty-three per cent had changed from one kind of factory work to another, 22 per cent had not been employed except with housework in their own homes, 16 per cent had been in domestic service, and 7 per cent had been at work in other nonindustrial employments. Assuming that the same proportions held for the 778,000 additional women found in private factories and government establishments in July, 1918, 178,000 of them would have come from other kinds of factory work, 171,000 from the home, 125,000 from domestic service, and 54,000 from nonindustrial occupations.