Such a judgment is not surprising when the nature of the work frequently done by women munition makers is considered. To be sure, such work as filling shells with explosive mixtures was easy and semi-automatic; but other tasks, for example, examining and gauging, although light, took much attention and exactness; and some work, such as turning shells, was comparatively heavy. In lifting shells in and out of the lathe women were obliged to stretch over the machine, which involved a considerable strain on the arms with the heavier shells. For shells over 40-50 pounds, special lifting apparatus was generally provided, or a male laborer used to lift the shell, but women, in their haste to proceed, sometimes failed to wait for help. A number of compensation cases have arisen in which women were seriously injured by heavy lifting. Yet a woman physician who had medical supervision of several thousand workers from April, 1916, to November, 1918, decided that if women were chosen with care they could perform without risk operations formerly thought beyond their powers. The employes in question were expected to lift shells up to sixty pounds without special appliances, but women with pelvic or abdominal defects were not allowed to enter this work.[256] Ten and a half hours, however, of the heavier work might prove to be a serious strain.
Moreover, long train journeys were frequently necessary, adding two or three hours to the time spent away from home. Out of seventy-five women whose working hours began at 6 a.m. and ended at 8 p.m., none had time for more than about seven and a half hours’ sleep, and many of them less than seven hours. Only nineteen of these women were over twenty years of age.
The premium bonus systems of payment, which became more and more common, provided increased rates for increased output. In some cases such systems were said to have proved “a strong temptation to injurious overexertion.” One example was that of a woman who had “won a ‘shift’ bonus by turning out 132 shells (nose-profiling) in one shift where the normal output was 100 shells, and had as a result, to remain in bed on the following day. When it was pointed out to her later that she had acted foolishly, her reply was that she knew but she ‘wasn’t going to be beat.’”[257]
As counteracting influences to these strains, several factors were brought forward. Improved pay, and the more nourishing food, better clothing and living conditions which women workers were often enabled to secure were mentioned by a number of authorities, including the Health of Munition Workers Committee, the factory inspectors, the Association for the Advancement of Science, and the War Cabinet Committee on women in industry. “The dietary was in most cases more ample and suitable than the workers had been used to previously,” said the investigators for the Health of Munition Workers Committee. It has been observed that many well paid women gave up the supposedly feminine habit of living on bread and tea for substantial meals of meat and vegetables. The British Association for the Advancement of Science noted a higher “physical and mental tone” due to the better standards permitted by higher wages. The health of low paid workers frequently improved after entering munitions work.[258] The improvements in factory sanitation encouraged by the Ministry of Munitions were likewise helpful in decreasing the risks to health, and the patriotic spirit of the women also received mention as a partial preventive of fatigue. “The excitement of doing ‘war work’ and making munitions added a zest and interest to the work which tended to lessen the fatigue experienced,” said the physicians who investigated the health of women munition workers for the Health of Munition Workers Committee.
Effects of Night Work
It is generally believed that the wisdom of forbidding night work by women has been clearly demonstrated by experience during the war. Women, especially married women, did not stand night work as well as men. The British Association for the Advancement of Science said, in April, 1916:
It would be well if the experience of those industries in which night work has become a temporary necessity could be made widely known. The adverse effects on output, not to mention the lowering of the health of the workers, should be a sufficient safeguard against any attempt permanently to remove the factory act restriction.[259]
The earlier investigations of the Health of Munition Workers Committee also confirmed the dangers of night work for women. In one factory visited at night fatigue was found to prevent many of the women from getting a meal at the rest period. In another “several women were lying, during the meal hour, beside their piles of heaped-up work, while others, later, were asleep beside their machines.”[260]
The night work in munition factories had once more emphasized, said the committee, the “half forgotten facts” about its injurious effects on women. “In a working class home the difficulty in obtaining rest by day is great; quiet can not be easily secured; and the mother of a family can not sleep while the claims of children and home are pressing upon her; the younger unmarried women are tempted to take the daylight hours for amusement or shopping; moreover, sleep is often interrupted in order that the midday meal may be shared.”[261]
It must be acknowledged, however, that in its later interim report the committee was somewhat less unfavorable to night work by women. While it was found that continuous night work reduced output, a group of women on alternate weeks of day and night work lost less time than when on continuous day work. The committee did not, to be sure, consider night work desirable, but inevitable during the war emergency as long as production must be increased to its highest point. Because they were especially likely to do housework during the day and to get very little sleep, the physicians who examined women munition workers believed night work to be “too heavy a burden for the average married women.”