PREWAR OCCUPATIONS OF 444,137 FEMALES
INSURED AGAINST UNEMPLOYMENT
IN JANUARY, 1917[91]
| Prewar Occupation | Metal Trades (except Engineering) | Chemical Trades (incl. small arms) | Clothing | Other insured | All insured trades | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Per cent | No. | Per cent | No. | Per cent | No. | Per cent | No. | Per cent | |
| Same trade | 53,249 | 48.1 | 14,634 | 8.4 | 38,256 | 53.6 | 30,399 | 34.3 | 136,538 | 30.7 |
| Household duties and not | ||||||||||
| previously occupied | 18,927 | 17.1 | 52,401 | 30.2 | 9,334 | 13.1 | 17,843 | 20.2 | 98,511 | 22.2 |
| Textiles Trades | 3,408 | 3.1 | 6,226 | 3.6 | 1,000 | 1.4 | 4,374 | 4.9 | 15,008 | 3.4 |
| Clothing Trades | 4,635 | 4.2 | 17,941 | 10.3 | 8,430 | 11.8 | 8,787 | 9.9 | 39,793 | 9.0 |
| Other Indus. | 12,458 | 11.3 | 20,879 | 12.0 | 5,745 | 8.0 | 10,065 | 11.4 | 49,147 | 11.1 |
| Domestic Serv. | 12,502 | 11.3 | 44,438 | 25.6 | 4,970 | 7.0 | 12,062 | 13.7 | 73,992 | 16.6 |
| Other nonindustrial | ||||||||||
| occupation | 5,449 | 4.9 | 17,079 | 9.9 | 3,643 | 5.1 | 4,977 | 5.6 | 31,148 | 7.0 |
| Total insured | 110,628 | 100.0 | 173,604 | 100.0 | 71,378 | 100.0 | 88,527 | 100.0 | 444,137 | 100.0 |
Transfers between Districts
In connection for the most part with the expanding munitions industry there has developed a phenomenon rare on any large scale in the history of women in industry, namely, the transfer of women workers from their homes to other parts of the country. Especially in England such transfer was carried on during the war on a fairly large scale. The British Government has naturally not encouraged detailed statements of the building of new munition plants and the extension of old ones, but occasional glimpses reveal revolutionary changes. In a speech to the House of Commons in June, 1917, the British Minister of Munitions said:
But the demands of the artillery programme, as it was formulated in the latter half of 1915, were such that it was necessary to plan for the erection of large additional factories.... They were erected at such a pace that what were untouched green fields one year were the sites a year later of great establishments capable of dealing with the raw materials of minerals or cotton, and of working them into finished explosives in great quantities every week.
Moreover, firms in operation before the war frequently doubled and quadrupled their capacity. In Barrow, for instance, a somewhat isolated town in the northwest of England, the population grew from 75,000 in 1914 to 85,000 in 1916 on account of the enlargement of a munitions plant. To meet the needs of such centers it was necessary to secure workers from many other localities.
Effort was made to center any transfer of women workers in the employment exchanges. The Ministry of Munitions’ handbook of “Instructions to Controlled Establishments” recommended application to the employment exchanges for all female labor instead of engaging it “at the factory gate” in order that the supply might be organized to the best advantage and “any unnecessary disturbance” of the labor market avoided. But the recommendation was not universally adopted. An undated circular of the Ministry complained that in cases where the exchanges were not used, skilled women, such as power machine operators and stenographers, for whom there was an “unsatisfied demand” on government work, had been hired for unskilled munitions work where unskilled women were available. Women had been brought into towns where lodgings were almost impossible to obtain while suitable local women were unemployed. Such occurrences and the “stealing” of skilled men by one employer from another caused an order to be made under the Defence of the Realm Act on February 2, 1917, which forbade the owner of an arms, ammunition, explosives, engineering or shipbuilding establishment to procure workers from more than ten miles away except through an employment exchange.
The employment exchange figures of the number of women obtaining employment in other districts, which therefore probably cover an increasing proportion of the movement, are for 1914, 32,988, for 1915, 53,096, and for 1916, 160,003.[92] In March, 1917, the number of women workers being moved to a distance through the exchanges was between 4,000 and 5,000 a month. In February, 1917, 5,118 women from some 200 different exchange areas were brought into eight large munition centers alone. In this one month, 1,641 women were brought from sixty-three different districts to a single munitions factory in the south of Scotland, and to another in the West Midlands. 772 women “were imported from centers as far apart as Aberdeen and Penzance.” From Ireland, where the conscription acts were not in force, and where women did not replace men in industry to any large extent, many girls crossed over to work in British munition factories. Official judgment ascribed the increased mobility of women labor to the rise in wages and the appeal of patriotism, which together supplied an incentive previously lacking.
Besides the munition workers, the transfer is noted during 1914 of silk and cotton operatives to woolen mills and of tailoresses from the east coast to Leeds uniform factories, and in 1915 of fisherwomen and others from the east coast resorts to the Dundee jute mills to replace the married women who left to live on their separation allowances. Some women substitutes for men in clerical and commercial work and in the staple industries, and agricultural workers, especially for temporary work, were transferred in 1916 as well as the munitions workers.