While some supervisors in the future—like some forewomen in the past—will do much to safeguard and improve our girls’ working lives, others will begin their career full of queer notions as to “discipline” and openwork stockings, and firmly persuaded, till experience teaches them better that “Trade Unionism is of the devil.”[208]

The Health of Munition Workers Committee admitted that “the confident support of the workers has yet to be obtained. Undoubtedly unwise appointments have been made; complaints have been considerable and often well founded, though their importance may have been over emphasized.” But “on the other hand some mistakes were inevitable in the initiation of what was largely a new enterprise in industrial organization. The conditions of employment of women have vastly improved. It has been and is likely to be of material advantage that there should exist a body of persons specially concerned to promote the health and well being of the worker.”[209]

More moderate critics, while seeing dangers in “welfare supervision” as a permanent policy, felt that it might be of value under the emergency conditions of the war.

The help in need of the welfare officer can not, perhaps, be too far extended ... in order to meet the predicament of scores of thousands of inexperienced women and young people drawn into mushroom munition factories from every kind of home and employment, working day and night (until the limit of human endurance perhaps), stranger to the town and countryside. To the efforts of the welfare officer the workers owe, indeed, not a little of the improved conditions and comfort enjoyed in many national and other model munition factories.[210]

As a substitute for the “welfare supervisor” the radicals brought forward plans for “workshop committees.” A “joint committee on industrial women’s organizations” conferring on the “reconstruction of factory life” in the spring of 1917, passed a resolution that “all the concerns of the worker” should be cared for in each shop by a trade union committee. Schemes of this sort were indeed occasionally in successful operation. The factory inspector’s report for 1916 described the “workers welfare committee” of one large factory, made up of thirteen persons, one representing the management, who were elected at a general meeting of the employes. The workers agreed to a deduction of a little more than 1 per cent of their wages, which gave the committee an income of over £50 (about $240) weekly. With this fund help was given local hospitals and convalescent homes which were used by the employes, war relief funds and cases of distress among the force. Daily newspapers were provided in the canteen and “concerts twice a week at dinner time. ‘Whatever we want we can have,’ said a member of the committee.” Such a compromise, it would seem, could preserve the benefits of “welfare supervision,” while satisfying the workers and giving them valuable experience in administrative work.

Improvements in Conditions
Outside the Factory

The activity of the Ministry of Munitions did not halt at the factory gates, but extended outside into matters of housing, transit, provision of recreation, and the care of sickness on the ground that the abnormal conditions of the new munition centers affected the efficiency of the workers. Mr. H. W. Garrod of the Ministry of Munitions believes that perhaps the most difficult problems it encountered in connection with women workers arose concerning the welfare of the women who were moved away from home to work at a distance at the rate of 5,000 a month or more.

Work of this nature for women away from home was at first in the hands of the “local advisory committees on women’s war employment.” The official conception of the duties of “welfare supervisors” also included attention to such items. In January, 1917, the Health of Munition Workers Committee brought out a memorandum on “Health and Welfare of Munition Workers outside the Factory.” In this it stated:

The necessity in the present emergency of transferring workers from their homes to distant places where their labor is required has created an unparalleled situation, and problems of the first importance to the nation are arising simultaneously in munition areas in various parts of the kingdom, especially as regards women and girls. The committee are of opinion that the situation calls for some more complete and systematic action than can be taken locally by isolated bodies of persons, however public spirited and sympathetic they may be.... It is, therefore, from no lack of appreciation of the work of these committees that the Health of Munition Workers Committee must express the opinion that the time has now come to supplement and reinforce them by a larger degree of State action than has hitherto been deemed necessary.

In accordance with their recommendation the welfare department of the Ministry of Munitions appointed a number of “outside welfare officers” who aided the committees and who were held responsible for the successful accomplishment of the work.