If the employer has done well for the country, so, on the other hand, no finer example of patriotism has been shown by any class than by the artisan as a whole. On an appeal being made to the Trades Unions soon after the outbreak of the war these Unions without a single exception agreed to do what the national interests required. A network of Trades Union rules and regulations, usages and customs, the result of many years of activity by organized labor, were freely set aside to allow for the introduction of women in nearly every class of work, subject to reasonable conditions.

Whatever some employers may think this was a gigantic sacrifice to make. It involved wages, hours, overtime, night work, Sunday work, meal times, holidays, shop regulations and demarcation arrangements, restriction of output, preparations of apprentices and classes of employees to be engaged, etc., etc. This structure of Trade Unionism the workingman agreed should be swept away to allow of the production of the maximum amount of munitions by the readiest methods and by any character of labor that was available—male or female—on the condition that the structure should be replaced at the close of the war.

This is splendid patriotism and when you add to the sacrifice of Trades Union Rules the burden, such as has fallen principally on the Trades Union men, of training the hundreds of thousands of women to do their work, this must increase our debt of appreciation and gratitude. It is only by the loyal co-operation of employer and employed that we are in the satisfactory position as regards munitions that we are to-day.

By the process of dilution we have been able to place in munition works about 950,000 women to do work from the heaviest laboring unskilled operation to the highest grade of toolroom non-repetition work. I do not hesitate to say that women have entirely destroyed our pre-war ideas as to what constitutes “skilled” work. When in the early days of the war women were trained to turn out 18 pdr. H. E. shell and equal the production of male labor many thought that such work, amounting as it does to little more than manipulative dexterity, was about the limit of the capacity of women who had not received a regular course of Engineering training. After a few months’ workshop experience, however, women are to-day building the greater part of one of the best High-Speed Engines in the country, each woman setting her own tools and work, and able to machine any piece of work that the tool she is on will take. Women are building guns, including the fine fitting work on the breech mechanism, and the cutting of large screw threads up to a shoulder. They are doing most of the work in some shops on three and one-half ton Army Lorries and will do practically the whole of it if the war lasts much longer, including chassis erection and testing. They are doing important work in marine engine building, turning connecting rods, propeller shaft liners and doing practically all in some cases of the marked-off drilling. The Aero Engine, as you well know, is a very fine piece of mechanism and at the outset was considered a tool room job throughout. In some shops women are to-day doing the greater part of the work turning on Centre Lathes to half a thousandth, milling webs of Clerget Cylinders on a booker Miller without stops and setting up their own jobs and working again to half a thousandth limit, boring cylinders on a No. 9 Herbert and similar work on a Gishlet, setting up their own jobs, turning and finishing test pieces in various metals to a 5,000th; making tools and gauges of all kinds to fine limits; all varieties of bench fitting to drawings and marking-off work of every description. Locomotive work, steel constructional work, boilers, bending, drilling and riveting. Women are doing magnificent work both in regard to accuracy and output.

On shells of all nature women should, of course, be principally employed. Contracts for shell will only be renewed and continued after March 31st next (1917) with those firms who employ 80 per cent. of female labor on shell of sizes from 2.75” to 4.5” inclusive. On larger sizes of shell, contracts will only be renewed if the Ministry of Munitions’ instructions in regard to dilution have been carried out, not only in regard to the proportion of women to be employed in each factory but the proportions of semi-skilled men.

“The employer and employee have a mutual—not identical—interest in procuring the largest possible production from a given amount of labor.”—Hon. Wm. B. Wilson, Secretary of Labor. (Address before Chamber of Commerce of U. S. A., September 20, 1917.)

“The factory, like the trench, is a post of combat. The duty is not to abandon it before the enemy. My compliments to your Union for having understood it so well.”—Marshal Foch. (Cablegram August 12th to the International Typographical Union, in convention at Scranton, Pa.)

Transcriber’s Notes