PREPARING BANDAGES.
WOMAN’S ACTIVITY DURING THE WORLD WAR.
When in August, 1914, the most dreadful disaster that ever befell humanity burst upon the European nations, women at first stood paralyzed with fear and terror, foreseeing the tremendous burden and sacrifices they would have to bear. But after every hope for a peaceful solution had vanished and nothing remained but to face the inevitable, they rallied and prepared to weather the coming hurricane.
The manner in which they met it during the long and terrible years of 1914, 1915, 1916, 1917 and 1918 was perhaps the greatest revelation the world has ever experienced. Never before have members of the “weaker sex” braved such a catastrophe more heroically and made such supreme sacrifices. In fact, woman’s activity during the World War has been a grand manifestation, which stands out in glorious colors from a black background of man’s hatred, revengefulness, slander, calumniation, treason, avarice, atrocities, and murder.
When the vast armies were mobilized it became necessary to close the innumerable gaps caused by the sudden drafting and departure of so many million men. To refill the positions they had occupied, was the most urgent necessity, as otherwise the whole machinery of national life would become disorganized, and that at the most critical time.
At once immense numbers of women and girls responded to the call. They went into the tramway and railway service to act as ticket sellers and punchers, as conductors, brakemen and motormen. They replaced the letter carriers and chauffeurs; they climbed the lofty seats formerly occupied by cab-drivers and postilions. Mounting motor-cycles they delivered telegrams and performed other urgent errands. They formed street-cleaning and fire-brigades and took care of the sanitation and protection of the cities. In the offices and stores they assumed the duties of the bookkeeper and floor-walker; in the schools they substituted for male teachers who had followed the call of the war trumpet. They repaired telegraph-wires and installed telephones; they became blacksmiths and repaired the roofs of houses. They cleaned windows and chimneys, delivered newspapers and carried the coal from the wagon into the bins and bunkers. They acted as “ice-men” and collected the garbage and ashes. They tilled the fields and vegetable gardens, and brought in the crops and the harvests. They thrashed the wheat and served in the mills as well as in the bakeries. They furnished clothes, and made and mended shoes. They finished the public roads and other works that had been left uncompleted. They built houses and tore down others. In Berlin the excavation for a new underground railway, badly needed, was done by women, and half of the gangs that worked on the railroad tracks were made up of girls.
WOMEN FILLING SHELLS IN A BRITISH AMMUNITION FACTORY.
In England as well as in France and Germany thousands of women could be seen in the ship-yards working side by side with men on the scaffolds, at bolting and riveting, forging and casting, as if they had always done this work. In fact, women did everything that heretofore had been regarded as “man’s work.”
But they did much more. Hundreds of thousands of women entered the gun- and ammunition factories in order that the armies might not lack ample means for the defense of the country.