You see now, there is practically no reason left why a woman shouldn’t work outside her home if she wants to. Such a nice place has been made for her in industry, and she’s getting along so well. Let’s take the British Government’s word for it. The Adjutant General to the Forces in the report on “Women’s War Work in Maintaining the Industries and Export Trade of the United Kingdom” announces, “Women have shown themselves capable of successfully replacing the stronger sex in practically every calling.”
It was before the war that the great feminist, Olive Shreiner, wrote her book which has been called the Bible of the woman movement. In it occurs a memorable statement: “We claim all labour for our field.” Now it is our field. Women to-day are working as longshoremen, as navvies barrowing coke, as railway porters and conductors and ticket takers, as postal employés and elevator operators, as brick-settlers’ labourers, attenders in roller mills, workers in 78 processes of boot and shoe-making, in breweries filling beer casks and digging and spreading barley, in 19 processes in grain milling, in 53 processes in paper making, in 24 processes in furniture making, in boiler making, laboratory work, optical work, aeroplane building, in dyeing, bleaching and printing cotton, in woollen and velvet goods, in making brick, glazed and unglazed wear, stoneware, tiles, glass, leather goods and linoleum. In France a year before the war, it happened in the baking trade that a committee appointed to take under advisement the question of admitting women reported adversely that the trade was not “adapted” to women. To-day there are 2000 women bakers in France. In all countries the largest number of women are employed in two occupations, in agriculture and in munitions. England had last spring 150,000 women at work in the fields and was in process of enrolling 100,000 more. In munitions the last returns show England with 400,000, Germany with 500,000 and France with 400,000 women.
In this the engineering trade, women have mastered already 500 processes, three-fourths of which had never known the touch of a woman’s hand before the war. “I consider myself a first class workman at my trade. It took me seven years to learn it,” said a foreman to me through the crashing noise of the machines among which we stood, “but,” and he waved his hand over his domain in which 1700 women were at work, “these women, at occupations requiring speed and dexterity, already excel me.”
He led me to the side of a girl who was drilling holes in brass. “See,” he said, “she does 1000 holes at 50 centimes an hour. No man we were ever able to employ, ever did more than 500 holes an hour, and we had to pay him 75 centimes.”’
We came to the gauging department: “Here,” he said, “women are more expert than men. See how well adapted to the task are their slender, supple fingers? And they work for 50 centimes an hour, where we should have to pay men 80.”
Like this the evidence of woman’s efficiency at the work they are doing, is everywhere in Europe. It has now been written into the records that cannot be gainsaid. That famous publication, Women’s War Work, in announcing the 1701 jobs at which a woman can be employed, asserts under the authority of the British War Office that at all of these jobs a woman is “just as good as a man, and for some of them she is better.” Then they sent a special commission over to see what women were accomplishing in French factories. After a conference with M. Albert Thomas, the French Minister of Munitions, and a wide tour of inspection, the special commission returned to England with this report: “The opinion in the French factories is that the output of females on small work equals and in some cases excels that of men. And in the case of heavier work, women are of practically the same value as men, within certain limits (when machinery is introduced to supplement their muscular limitations).” Italy also presents its evidence. The Bolettino dell’ officio del Lavoro, Journal of the Italian Labour Department, under date of October 16, 1916, had this to say: “It is necessary to remove the obstacles to the larger employment of women. As soon as manufacturers show plenty of initiative and adaptiveness for this new class of labour, and cease to cherish preconceived opinions as to the inferiority of woman’s work and as to the low wages it merits, the labour of women will respond splendidly to the utmost variety of demands.”
Apparently one controversy is now at rest: Woman knows enough for all of these things that she has been permitted to do. Thus far, it is true, it is the unskilled and the semi-skilled processes at which she is employed in the largest numbers. It was, one might say, the basement of industry to which she was first admitted. In every land that skilled workman summoned to receive the government order, “You must let the women in,” about to take his departure, turned at the door with cap in hand to make a stipulation. It was the last clause of the ancient “gentleman’s agreement.”
“All right,” the Government replied, “not any farther up than we have to.”
ON THE WAY TO THE TOP
To-day at every convention or little district meeting of any skilled trade, there is one question for heated discussion, “How far are the women going?” The only answer is the woman movement that keeps on steadily moving. And it’s moving up. With every year of the war there are more and more vacant places. More and more of these are places high up and higher up. And the women who are called, are coming! There is Henrietta Boardman.