EXTRACT PROM A REPORT BY MR. BEN H. MORGAN, EXPERT ADVISER TO THE DILUTION SECTION OF THE BRITISH MINISTRY OF MUNITIONS

When war broke out in August, 1914, the Government of the day urged employers to induce their skilled as well as unskilled men to join the colors. No good purpose will be served in my characterizing in suitable terms the unwisdom of such a step. Sufficient to say that it was a long time later before the Government realized that this was an Engineers’ war. The result was that the men with initiative, education and skill were among the first to lay aside their tools and join the colors. This was a stroke of such folly that it took the country quite a long time to recover from it. Not only had we lost men of brain and initiative but also a large proportion of the skill for carrying on a war in which machinery and munitions were a preponderating factor.

When the sudden call came for an enormous increase in guns and ammunition the folly of the step that had been taken was realized and arrangements were made to effect the return of a number of skilled men from the colors. This, however, was difficult to carry out, and on top of it came the realization that if every skilled man were returned we had not sufficient to produce the munitions essential to success.

It was in these circumstances that the present Prime Minister, Mr. Lloyd George, then Minister of Munitions, laid down the principle that no man must perform any work that could be efficiently performed by women. He foresaw that every man would be required for essentially man’s work. This involved the process which has become known as the Dilution of Labor. This dilution implies that:

(1) The employment of skilled men should be confined to work which cannot be efficiently performed by less skilled labor or by women.

(2) Semi-skilled and unskilled men should be employed on any work which does not necessitate the employment of skilled men and for which women are unsuitable.

(3) Women should be employed as far as practicable on all classes of work for which they are suitable.

This, at first sight, seems a simple arrangement, but I need not tell you that it is a complicated one and involves expenditure of time, patience and money on the part of the employers and sympathetic co-operation on the part of the skilled employees. Women have to receive careful training, intervening hands in the processes of production have to be upgraded and the skill in the factory has to be spread over a large area, usually necessitating more supervision and care if equal results are to be obtained. These are average conditions, but in a large number of cases the changes due to the introduction of women have resulted in considerably increased outputs over men’s records, and this not only on light repetition work, but on heavy turning and laboring work and skilled and semi-skilled non-repetition work.

The patriotism shown by the employers in meeting the numerous difficulties which confronted them in training women for every conceivable kind of work, in reorganizing their factories for new productions by new labor, adapting their machinery to the measure of skill and strength available to work them has been one of the most inspiriting experiences of the war. Women have been trained in an incredibly short time, handling appliances of all kinds have been installed, special tools and gauges have had to be made and often when a work has been set fairly going and was reaching full production, a change in the country’s needs for munitions compelled the Ministry to alter a design or a size or to put a firm on to a completely new product, and again the whole process of retaining employees and adapting tools and plant had to be gone through.