Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

DIVISION OF ECONOMICS AND HISTORY
JOHN BATES CLARK, DIRECTOR

PRELIMINARY ECONOMIC STUDIES OF THE WAR

EDITED BY
DAVID KINLEY

President of the University of Illinois
Member of Committee of Research of the Endowment

No. 4

ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF THE WORLD WAR
UPON WOMEN AND CHILDREN
IN GREAT BRITAIN

BY
IRENE OSGOOD ANDREWS

Assistant Secretary of the American Association
for Labor Legislation

AND
MARGARETT A. HOBBS

SECOND (REVISED) EDITION

NEW YORK
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
AMERICAN BRANCH: 35 WEST 32ⁿᵈ STREET
London, Toronto, Melbourne and Bombay

1921

FIRST EDITION
FEBRUARY, 1918

SECOND (REVISED) EDITION
MAY, 1921

COPYRIGHT 1921
BY THE
CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE
2 Jackson Place
Washington, D. C.

Press of Byron S. Adams
Washington, D. C.

Preliminary Economic Studies of the War

EDITED BY DAVID KINLEY

President of the University of Illinois
Member of Committee of Research of the Endowment

1. Early Economic Effects of the War upon Canada.
By Adam Shortt, formerly Commissioner of the Canadian
Civil Service, now Chairman, Board of Historical
Publications, Canada.

2. Early Effects of the European War upon the Finance,
Commerce and Industry of Chile. By L. S. Rowe,
Professor of Political Science, University of
Pennsylvania.

3. War Administration of the Railways in the United
States and Great Britain. By Frank H. Dixon,
Professor of Economics, Dartmouth College, and Julius H.
Parmelee, Statistician, Bureau of Railway Economics.

4. Economic Effects of the World War upon Women and
Children in Great Britain. By Irene Osgood Andrews,
Assistant Secretary of the American Association for
Labor Legislation.

5. Direct Costs of the Present War. By Ernest L.
Bogart, Professor of Economics, University of Illinois.

6. Effects of the War upon Insurance with Special
Reference to the Substitution of Insurance for
Pensions. By William F. Gephart, Professor of
Economics, Washington University, St. Louis.

7. The Financial History of Great Britain, 1914-1918.
By Frank L. McVey, President,
University of Kentucky.

8. British War Administration. By John A. Fairlie,
Professor of Political Science, University of Illinois.

9. Influence of the Great War upon Shipping.
By J. Russell Smith, Professor of Industry,
University of Pennsylvania.

10. War Thrift.
By Thomas Nixon Carver, Professor of Political Economy,
Harvard University.

11. Effects of the Great War upon Agriculture in the
United States and Great Britain.
By Benjamin H. Hibbard, Professor of Agricultural Economics,
University of Wisconsin.

12. Disabled Soldiers and Sailors—Pensions and Training.
By Edward T. Devine, Professor of Social Economy,
Columbia University.

13. Government Control of the Liquor Business in Great Britain
and the United States.
By Thomas Nixon Carver, Professor of Political Economy,
Harvard University.

14. British Labor Conditions and Legislation during the War.
By Matthew B. Hammond, Professor of Economics,
Ohio State University.

15. Effects of the War upon Money, Credit and Banking
in France and the United States.
By B. M. Anderson, Jr., Ph.D.

16. Negro Migration during the War.
By Emmett J. Scott, Secretary-Treasurer,
Howard University, Washington, D. C.

17. Early Effects of the War upon the Finance,
Commerce and Industry of Peru.
By L. S. Rowe, Professor of Political Science,
University of Pennsylvania.

18. Government Control and Operation of Industry in Great
Britain and the United States during the World War.
By Charles Whiting Baker, C. E., Consulting Engineer.

19. Prices and Price Control in Great Britain and
the United States during the World War.
By Simon Litman, Professor of Economics,
University of Illinois.

[1] 20. Cooperative Movement in Russia.
By E. M. Kayden.

[2] 21. The Germans in South America: A Contribution to
the Economic History of the World War.
By C. H. Haring, Associate Professor of History,
Yale University.

[3] 22. Effects of the War on Pauperism, Crime
and Programs of Social Welfare.
By Edith Abbott, Lecturer in Sociology,
University of Chicago.

[4] 23. (Abandoned.)

24. Direct and Indirect Costs of the Great World War.
By Ernest L. Bogart, Professor of Economics,
University of Illinois.
(Revised edition of Study No. 5.)

25. Government War Contracts.
By John F. Crowell,

THE CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE
2 JACKSON PLACE, WASHINGTON, D. C.

EDITOR’S PREFACE

The following work on the “Economic Effects of the War upon Women and Children in Great Britain,” by Mrs. Irene Osgood Andrews, Assistant Secretary of the American Association for Labor Legislation, is the fourth in the series of preliminary war studies undertaken by the Endowment. Mrs. Andrews’ monograph is a sympathetic study of the situation by one who has long been familiar with working conditions of women and children in this country and abroad and the methods undertaken for their improvement. The author points out the difficulties and evil results of the hasty influx of women and children into industrial fields vacated by men who had gone into the army, but reaches the conclusion that on the whole the permanent effects are likely to be good. Such a conclusion by an author whose sympathies with laboring women and children are deep and whose outlook is broad is hopeful and cheering.

In the opinion of the editor, Mrs. Andrews has done her country a service in preparing this monograph, for her recital of the difficulties and evils of the British readjustment will enable our people to meet the same crisis when it comes upon us, as it surely will if the war continues, in the light of the experience of our Allies. If we go about the matter intelligently in the light of this study, we should be able to avoid some of the difficulties and evils of British experiences in this matter and open the way for a larger industrial life to women, while maintaining and indeed even improving, as we should, the conditions under which they are called upon to work and live.

David Kinley,
Editor.

AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO
REVISED EDITION

Following the publication of the first edition, opportunity came in 1919 to visit again both England and France and to secure first hand information concerning the effects of the war upon the economic position of women. As a member of the commission sent by the Young Women’s Christian Association to study the industrial outlook for women and children, there was occasion to interview many representative people in this field and to collect a large amount of recently published material bearing upon the subject.

The world conflict brought to women, in those countries where the industrial system was kept intact, an extraordinary invitation to active employment outside the home and in new occupations. In England and France millions of women were dislodged from their accustomed tasks and thrown into novel positions in industry, in trade and commerce and even in the professions. Many thousands have remained in the new occupations, and the vast majority will never be content to go back to their former places on the old terms.

The remarkable physical endurance of the women doing war work has been very generally recognized. This endurance has been attributed partly to the zeal of the women, but more particularly to higher wages, which enabled them to secure better food, clothing and lodging. Comfort from increased income was supplemented by canteens, welfare work and greater consideration in general for the health of wage earners.

Will woman’s improved income level be permanent? Careful analysis shows that during the war, despite government pledges, women did not receive equal treatment with men in respect to wages. Moreover, while money wages in many cases were greatly increased, seldom did they keep pace with the advancing cost of living. Furthermore, it became doubtful whether women were to be allowed to retain the more attractive positions if these were desired by men.

No one, since the war experience, doubts the skill and adaptability of women in performing a great number of tasks formerly considered “men’s work.” With the extensive standardization which British industry has adopted many more places can be successfully filled by women. Equal opportunity to secure positions, as well as equality of payment, appeals therefore to many thousands of women as merely a matter of justice. But such a new status for women, it is recognized, calls for more scientific methods in fixing wages. The old basis of sex, family obligation, tradition as to “men’s work” and “women’s work,” must be abandoned. Instead, some definite rate for a specified occupation, and where possible specified qualifications as to ability for such work, must be adopted. Moreover, it is increasingly recognized that the national welfare demands that money wages must be at least equal to the cost of living.

Such a program would place men and women more nearly on a strictly competitive basis, with the awards given to the most efficient. It would practically eliminate the constant “undercutting” now taking place and would introduce a more scientific element into the present chaotic wage market.

The insistent need for a thoroughgoing revision as to methods of determining wage rates is recognized by Mrs. Sidney Webb in her minority statement in the Report of the War Cabinet Committee on Women in Industry, 1919. Mrs. Webb recommends for immediate adoption four main principles. (1) The establishment of a national minimum rate of wage; (2) the determination of a standard or occupational rate above the national minimum; (3) the adjustment of money wages to the cost of living; and (4) wherever possible the requirement of efficiency qualifications. As to children and “young persons” in Great Britain the Fisher Education Act already has indicated a greater emphasis on training and there is hope that their employment will eventually become either subordinate to or, better still, a part of education.

The scarcity of labor now presents an appalling problem in several countries and one of the outstanding effects of the loss of human life in all war stricken nations is renewed interest in the protection of motherhood. In these countries measures are being adopted to conserve the lives of mothers and babies. Better medical and nursing care are recognized as essential, cash maternity benefits are increasing, maternity centers are being greatly extended and in England the endowment of motherhood is proposed.

This revised monograph, while attempting to present a fairly complete history of the industrial experience of women and children during and immediately following the war, is still necessarily tentative. Some years must elapse before it will be possible to measure the full effects of the world war upon the economic condition of women and children. This revision is brought out, however, at this time to supply a demand which quickly exhausted the first edition, and in the hope that it will be of service to those interested in the progress of women industrial workers.

Irene Osgood Andrews.

New York City,
April, 1920.

CONTENTS

ECONOMIC EFFECTS
OF
THE WORLD WAR
ON
WOMEN AND CHILDREN
IN GREAT BRITAIN

CHAPTER I
Introductory Summary

Under the conditions of modern warfare the industrial army in factory, field and mine is as essential to national success as the soldiers in the trenches. It is estimated that from three to five workers are necessary to keep a single soldier at the front completely equipped. Accordingly, it is not surprising that Great Britain during four years of warfare saw what was little short of an industrial revolution in order to keep up the supply of labor, to heighten the workers’ efficiency, and to secure their cooperation. No changes were more interesting and important than those which concerned working women and children.

Increase in Numbers

Upon women and children fell much of the great burden of keeping trade and industry active and of supplying war demands when several millions of men were taken away for military service. “Without the work of the women the war could not have gone on,” said representatives of the British Ministry of Munitions while in New York in November, 1917. Before the increased demand was felt, however, the dislocation of industry during the first few months of war brought far more suffering to women workers than to men. In September, 1914, over 40 per cent of the women were out of work or on short time. The “luxury” trades, which employed a large proportion of women, were most severely affected, and the women could not relieve the situation by enlisting as the men did. The prewar level of employment was not reached until April, 1915. Between that date and July, 1918, the number of females gainfully occupied increased by 1,659,000 over the number at work in July, 1914.

It is more difficult to ascertain the exact increase in the number of working children and young persons under eighteen, but apparently more children left school for work directly at the end of the compulsory education period and more were illegally employed. Official reports show an increase from 1,936,000 in July, 1914, to 2,278,000 in January, 1918, or 17.6 per cent, in the number of boys and girls under eighteen who were gainfully employed. In addition, in August, 1917, Mr. Herbert Fisher, president of the Board of Education, admitted in the House of Commons that in the past three years some 600,000 children under fourteen had been “put prematurely to work” through the relaxation of child labor and compulsory school laws. But in October of the same year the Board of Trade stated that 90,000 boys had left school for work during the war. The earlier exemptions, statistics of which have been published, were almost entirely for agriculture, but judging from Mr. Fisher’s statement a considerable number of exemptions were made for mining and munitions work during the third year of the war.

One of the most notable effects of the war was the number of occupations which women entered for the first time, until, in the winter of 1916-17, it could be said that “there are practically no trades in which some process of substitution [of women for men] has not taken place.” According to official figures, 1,816,000 females were taking men’s places in April, 1918.

During the first year of the war, however, women took men’s places for the most part in transportation, in retail trade and in clerical work rather than in manufacturing. In factory work, while some women were found to be undertaking processes slightly above their former level of skill in establishments where they had long been employed, the most general change was a transfer from slack industries to fill the expanding demands of firms making war equipment. There women were employed in the same kinds of work they had carried on before the war. The rush into the munitions industry, where women engaged in both “men’s” and “women’s” work, was one of the most important features of the second year of war. While a few additional women had begun to be taken on very early in the war, the increases were not large until the autumn of 1915 and early winter of 1916. During 1915-1916 also a decline was first noticed in the number of women in domestic service, in the printing trades, and in such typical “women’s trades” as confectionery and laundry work.

In the third year of the war the substitution of women for men on a large scale was extended from munitions to numerous staple industries having a less direct connection with the war. In many cases, of course, the women did not do precisely the same work as their masculine predecessors. Especially in the engineering trades almost an industrial revolution occurred between 1914 and 1917. Skilled processes were subdivided, and automatic machinery was introduced, all the changes tending toward greater specialization and the elimination of the need of all round craft skill. Early in the war it was generally considered that women were not as efficient as men except on routine and repetition work. But as the women gained experience it was observed that more and more of them were undertaking the whole of a skilled man’s job, and the testimony as to relative efficiency, on work within a woman’s strength, became far more favorable. During the last year of the struggle, while a few new fields were invaded, the process of substitution had progressed nearly as far as possible, and the year witnessed mainly a settling down into the new lines of work previously entered.

Though the increase in women workers in agriculture was less marked than in industry, beginning with the summer of 1916, the numbers rose, being 113,000 in 1918, in contrast to 80,000 in 1914. The widening of professional opportunities and the opening of some executive positions in industry and commerce were other important features of the changes in women’s work.

Women even engaged in work ordinarily a part of soldiers’ duties. Besides thousands of military nurses, a special corps of women under semi-military discipline was recruited for work as clerks, cooks, cleaners, chauffeurs and mechanics behind the lines in France. These “Waacs,” as they were popularly called, numbered over 50,000 by the end of the war. The “Wrens” did similar shore duty for the Navy, and the “Wrafs,” woodcutting for the Board of Trade. The women were able to take up their new lines of work with surprisingly little formal training, the chief exceptions being short practical courses for farm workers and semi-skilled munition makers.

Changes in the work done by children were considerably different for girls and for boys. For girls the choice of occupations widened much as for adult women. But for boys, though a few received earlier promotion to skilled men’s work than would ordinarily have been the case, on the whole training for skilled trades declined. With the men drawn into the war and with the increasing cost of living, it was natural that an increase should take place in the number of child street traders, and in the number of children working outside school hours.

Wages

Under war conditions the wages of both women and children were raised, probably the largest gains being made by boy and girl munition makers. The smallest rise seems to have occurred in the unregulated, so-called “women’s trades,” like laundry work. The trade boards made a number of increases in the industries within their jurisdiction, but the changes were seldom proportionate to the increase in the cost of living. Instead, what it was believed the industry would be able to support after the war was usually the determining factor. The economic position of the women who took men’s places was undoubtedly improved, though, even taking into account differences in experience and efficiency and the numerous changes in industrial method, the plane of economic equality between the two sexes was rarely attained. The government had the power to fix women’s wages on munitions work and in so doing it seemed at first to go on record in favor of the equal pay principle. But, in practice, the principle was not applied to unskilled and semi-skilled time work and the women failed to receive the same cost of living bonuses as the men, though unquestionably the wages of women substitutes in munitions work was much higher than the prewar level of women’s wages. Where other industries were covered by trade union agreements, women in most instances received “equal pay,” but in the remaining cases of substitution, for instance in agriculture, though considerable increases were gained, the men’s rates were by no means reached.

Recruiting New Workers

It is of interest to learn how England secured women workers to meet the demands of war. For the most part they came from three different groups. First, workers changed from the low paid “women’s trades” and various slack lines of work to munitions and different kinds of “men’s work.” Second, the additional women workers were mainly the wives and other members of working men’s families, most of the married women having worked before marriage. Soldiers’ wives often found their separation allowances insufficient. In general both patriotic motives and the rising cost of living undoubtedly played a part in sending these women and many young boys and girls into industry. Finally, a comparatively small number of women of a higher social class entered clerical work, agriculture and the munitions factories, in many instances in response to patriotic appeals.

Many of the women and children were recruited through the activities of local representative “Women’s War Employment Committees” and “County Agricultural Committees,” formed by the government, and working in close cooperation with the national employment exchanges. A large number of women, about 5,000 a month in the winter of 1917, and even a good many young boys and girls were sent through the exchanges from their homes to work at a distance. According to representatives of the Ministry of Munitions, the securing of their well being outside the factory under such circumstances was the most serious problem connected with their increased employment. Efforts to provide housing, recreation and improved transit facilities were at first in the hands of the voluntary committees, but later it proved necessary for the Ministry to appoint “outside welfare officers” to supplement and coordinate this work. The “hostels” with their large dormitories and common sitting rooms which were frequently open in munition centers for the women proved unsatisfactory because of the rules required and the difficulties of maintaining necessary discipline. In many cases, also, they were unpopular with the women themselves. In an attempt to solve the housing problem, the government, in the summer of 1917, was forced to enact a measure making compulsory the “billeting” of munition makers with families living in the district, but this does not seem to have been put into actual practice.

Removal of Trade Union Restrictions

Trade union restrictions on the kinds of work women were allowed to perform were set aside for the war period and “dilution” was made widely possible by the munitions acts, in the case of munitions of war, and by agreements between employers and employes in many staple industries. In all cases the agreements included clauses intended to safeguard the standard wage rate and to restore the men’s places and the trade union rules after the war. Even where the munitions acts gave the government power to force “dilution” it proceeded mainly through conferences and agreements.

Officials of the Ministry of Munitions claimed to believe that the substitution of women or any other important change intended to increase production could only proceed peacefully if labor’s consent and cooperation were secured. They believed also that provisions to safeguard labor standards are essential to gain such cooperation, and that anything in the nature of coercion or a “labor dictatorship” would necessarily fail to reach the desired aim of enlarged output.

Control of Labor by the Munitions Acts

Considerable irritation was aroused among the munition makers, both men and women, by the control exercised over them through certain features of the munitions acts. Strikes were forbidden and provision for compulsory arbitration was made. Special munitions tribunals were set up which might impose fines for breaches of workshop discipline. In order to stop the needless shifting from job to job which was hampering production, a system of “leaving certificates” was established. Workers who left their previous positions without such cards, which could be secured from employers or from the tribunals only under specified conditions, might not be employed elsewhere for six weeks. The clearance certificate system was obviously open to abuses, especially during the first few months of its operation, before a number of safeguards were introduced by the first munitions amendment act, in January, 1916. It created so much unrest among the workers, that it was abolished in October, 1917. The British Government’s experience with these features of the munitions acts which approach nearest to the conscription of labor illustrates the difficulties attendant upon such devices for obtaining maximum output without interruption.

Safety, Health and Comfort

The effect of the war on the working hours of English women and children centers in the changes made in the restrictive legislation in force at the outbreak of the war. This legislation forbade night and Sunday work, and hours in excess of ten and a half daily and sixty weekly in nontextile factories; and ten daily and fifty-five weekly in textile factories. But from the beginning of the war up to the latter part of 1915 hours were lengthened and night and Sunday work became frequent, both by means of special orders from the factory inspection department and also in defiance of the law. Two special governmental committees were finally created to deal with the unsatisfactory situation. The studies by one of them, the Health of Munition Workers Committee, on the unfavorable effects of long hours on output, were a determining factor in securing a virtual return to prewar standards of daily hours, and provided scientific arguments to strengthen the active postwar movement for a general eight hour day.

The introduction of women into factories and offices for the first time often led to the making of special provisions for their safety, health and comfort. In the interests of output, the Ministry of Munitions fostered such developments in the establishments under his control, encouraged the engagement of “welfare supervisors” for women, girls and boys and gave special attention to the well being of munition makers outside the factory. The Ministry allowed owners of controlled establishments to deduct the cost of special welfare provisions for women, such as wash rooms and rest rooms, from what would otherwise be taken by the excess profit tax. It provided housing accommodations on a large scale—for 60,000 workers, it is said, between July, 1915, and July, 1916, and subsidized similar projects by cities and private organizations. That the war brought increased recognition of the importance of measures for safety, health and comfort was evident from the passage of a law in August, 1916, empowering the Home Office as a permanent policy, to make special regulations for additional “welfare” provisions in factories.

Effects of War Work

It was hardly possible to judge the full effects of war work on women and children by the summer of 1919. Among women, while individual cases of overfatigue undoubtedly existed, signs of injury to health were not generally apparent. The effects when the excitement of war work is over and the strain relaxed were still to be reckoned with, however. Higher pay, which meant warmer clothing, sometimes better housing and especially better food, was believed to be an important factor in counteracting injury to health. It doubtless accounted for the improvement in health which was not infrequently noted in women entering munitions work from low paid trades and which is a sadly significant commentary on their former living conditions. Among boy munition makers the evidences of overwork and a decline in health were much more striking.

Particularly in the crowded munition centers, home life suffered on account of the war. Overcrowding, long hours spent in the factory and in traveling back and forth, an increase in the work of mothers with young families, the absence of husbands and fathers on military service, and the more frequent departure from home of young boys and girls for work at a distance, all contributed to the undermining of the home.

Yet even the additional responsibility placed on many women by the absence of their men folk seems to have been one of the stimulating influences which are said in three years of war to have “transformed” the personality of the average factory woman. As a class, they have grown more confident, more independent, more interested in impersonal issues. The more varied and responsible positions opened to women, the public’s appreciation of their services, their many contacts with the government on account of war legislation also helped to bring about the change, which promises to be one of the most significant of the war.

Among the younger workers, on the contrary, it was feared the relaxation of discipline, unusual wages, long hours of work, the frequent closing of schools and boys’ clubs and the general excitement of war time were producing a deterioration in character. “Had we set out with the deliberate intention of manufacturing juvenile delinquents, could we have done so in any more certain way?” said Mr. Cecil Leeson, secretary of the Howard Association of London. A marked increase in juvenile delinquency was noted, particularly among boys of eleven to thirteen, the ages for which school attendance laws have been relaxed and premature employment allowed.

Peace and Reconstruction

With the coming of peace and the extensive readjustments in industry which necessarily followed, new problems confronted the woman worker. Chief among these were the danger of unemployment during the transition period, the question of what should be done with the “dilutees,” who had taken up work formerly reserved for skilled men, frequently under pledges that they should be displaced at the end of the war, and the burning issue of “equal pay for equal work” as between men and women. In Great Britain a remarkable amount of attention had been paid, while the war was still in progress, to preparation for the adjustment to peace as well as to the improvement of evils disclosed by war experience. In addition to much unofficial discussion and organization an official Ministry of Reconstruction had been formed, having numerous subcommittees. But the end of the war came sooner than had been expected when the government’s plans were still incomplete, so that the English had, after all, to trust largely to hastily improvised schemes or to chance to carry them through the transition.

As had been anticipated, for a time a large number of women were unemployed, the reported total rising as high as 494,000 in the first week of March, 1919, but gradually falling from that point to 29,000 in November. In place of the comprehensive program outlined by one of the committees of the Ministry of Reconstruction, the government’s main reliance in dealing with unemployment was a system of doles or “donations.” An unemployed woman worker might draw 25s. ($6.00)[5] weekly for thirteen weeks and then 15s. ($3.60) weekly for a like period. Many complaints were made about the administration of the donations, particularly in the case of women workers. On one hand it was alleged that the women were refusing to accept positions offered and “taking a vacation at the taxpayers’ expense.” On the other hand protests were made that unemployed women were forced by the denial of donations to take places at sweated wages, especially in laundry work and domestic service. The plan of unemployment donations, originally established for six months, was renewed for an additional six months in May, 1919, and finally ended for civilians in November.

Three distinct points of view were evident in regard to the closely allied problems of dilution and “equal pay for equal work.” Not a few persons held that women would and should return to their prewar occupations, in which they seldom did the same work as men. A large body of moderate opinion held that an entire return to prewar conditions was impossible. Women should be retained in all “suitable” employments, with due protection through labor laws and minimum wage fixing. Where men and women were employed in the same occupation, the equal pay standard should prevail. The more radical view was that all occupations should be open to both sexes at the same wage standard. As a corollary to this policy there was proposed the endowment of motherhood.

Even by the end of 1919 it was hardly possible to state definitely what the after war occupations and wages of the woman worker would be. But it appeared probable that she would continue in some, if not all, of her new occupations, and that her improved wage standards would be protected. After war industrial conditions in themselves naturally stimulated some return to prewar employment by reviving the luxury trades and curtailing munitions work. In certain cases, as in the woolen trade, agreements between employers and employes shut out the women. But in other important cases, as in engineering, it is probable that a compromise will be reached, permitting women to stay in at least the semi-skilled lines of work. Considerable protection has been given war time wage rates. The Minimum Wage (Trade Boards) Act has been widely extended. By two separate enactments, war time wage rates were continued until September 30, 1920, unless other agreements were reached or official awards put in force. Government proposals for eight hour day and minimum wage legislation for both sexes and for an extension of maternity care reflect the position of the feminist advocates of occupational equality between the sexes.

Undoubtedly the war, while it had a most unfortunate effect on many boy and girl workers, at the same time roused the nation to a far greater appreciation of their value as future citizens. There was general agreement on their needs during the reconstruction period. Action must be taken to modify the effects of any postwar unemployment, while as a permanent policy more attention must be paid to their welfare during the first years of working life. Unemployment donations, the payment of which was contingent on attendance at training centers, if available, was the method adopted to meet the unemployment crisis. The Fisher Education Act represents the government’s effort permanently to improve the condition of young workers. This law requires school attendance of every child under fourteen. Gainful employment outside school hours is absolutely forbidden, except a very limited amount by children between twelve and fourteen. Working boys and girls are required to go to continuation school eight hours a week until eighteen years of age when the law goes into full effect, and the time of attendance must be taken out of working hours. It is unfortunate that the children who in some ways most need the help of the act, namely those who went to work during the war, are expressly exempted from its provision. Nevertheless, by the enactment of this law, the final effect of the war on English child labor standards will apparently be to lift them to a higher plane than ever before.

Final judgment can hardly yet be passed on the effects of the war on the woman worker. Some far reaching changes are, however, already evident. While the disadvantages of war work, its long hours, overstrain and disruption of home life, seem likely to pass as conditions return to normal, the gains in the way of better working conditions, higher wages and a wider range of opportunities, seem more likely to be permanent. Many professional doors have for the first time been opened to her. Most important of all is the fact that because of her awakened spirit and broader and more confident outlook on life, the woman worker is able consciously to hold to the improved position to which the fortunes of war have brought her.

CHAPTER II
Work of Women and Children
before the World War

To understand the effect of the World War on the work of women and children, it is necessary to have as a background a picture of their place in industry before the war. As in other modern industrial countries, the employment of women and of girls and boys in their teens had long been an important factor in the work life of the English people. At the time of the latest census of the United Kingdom in 1911, nearly 6,000,000 “females ten years of age and over,” or almost a third of the total number of females of that age, were returned as “gainfully occupied.”[6]

About 2,000,000 of the total number were engaged in some form of “domestic” pursuits; 53,000 worked for the central government, or local authorities; 415,000, the majority of whom were teachers or nurses, had some professional occupation. Food, drink and tobacco, and the provision of lodgings accounted for 546,000, and there were 120,000 female agricultural workers. The great bulk of the remainder, some 2,275,000, were found in the manufacturing industries. Here again the principal lines of work were the metal trades, with 93,000 females; paper and printing, with 148,000; textiles, with 938,000; and dress, with 898,000. Almost all of the six million were working for hire; only 80,000 were “working employers,” and 313,000 were “at work for their own account.”

While in England and Wales in the thirty years from 1881 to 1911 a special study of the census figures showed that the proportion of occupied women to 1,000 unoccupied women rose from 659 to 674, over a fifty year period the relative number of working women in the whole female population seemed to have fallen slightly.[7] Marked declines in the proportion of females in “domestic” occupations and in the dress and textile trades were not entirely balanced by smaller increases in the proportions in professional and clerical work, nontextile factories, paper and printing and food and lodging. The proportion of girls between ten and fifteen at work had also fallen. The author of the above studies believes that the relative decrease was to be found among the industrial classes and that it was due to the commencement of work at a higher age and to a somewhat lessened employment of married women. Recent increases in the proportion of gainfully occupied females carried out this theory, since they were found largely in the age group between sixteen and twenty-five. Over half of the girls of these ages were at work in 1911, and 70 per cent of those from fifteen to twenty, which has been called “the most occupied age.” The proportion of these young workers to older women rose considerably in the decade from 1901 to 1911, though during the same period the number of married women and widows at work increased from 917,000 to 1,091,202. For thirty years the proportion of men to women workers had remained practically stationary, being 2.3 males to one female in 1881, and 2.4 males to one female in 1911.[8]

Especially in industrial occupations women had been largely confined to the least skilled and lowest paid lines of work. To a deplorable extent they had been the “industrial drudges of the community.” It is, for instance, officially estimated that out of the 100,000 “home workers,” whose work has become almost synonymous with “sweating,” three quarters were women. An estimate by the English economist, Sidney Webb, of the wages of adult women “manual workers” in 1912[9] placed their average full time weekly earnings at 11s. 7d. ($2.78). Making allowance for an annual loss of five weeks a year from sickness, unemployment and short time—a conservative estimate—average weekly earnings throughout the year would be about 10s. 10½d. ($2.61). Only 17 per cent of the women regularly employed were believed to receive more than 15s. ($3.60) weekly, and those averaged only 17s. ($4.08) for a full time week. The average full time wages of adult male manual workers were estimated by the same authority at 25s. 9d. ($6.18) a week.

Legislative Protection for Women

Since the forties, however, much special legislative protection had been extended to women workers mainly through the factory acts. There were numerous regulations to protect their health and safety. They might not be employed in cleaning moving machinery, nor in underground mines, nor in brass casting nor in certain processes exposed to lead dust. In other lines where women were in danger of contracting lead poisoning, they were allowed to work only if found in good condition through monthly medical examination. In some unhealthy trades separate rooms for meals were required and in some dangerous ones women were obliged to cover their hair. Separate sanitary accommodations were compulsory in all factories and workshops. A provision which had proved of less value than anticipated because of the difficulties of enforcement, forbade a factory employer knowingly to give work to a woman within four weeks after the birth of her child. Wherever women were employed as “shop assistants” one seat was to be provided for every three assistants.

For factories and workshops an elaborate code limiting working hours had long been in existence. No work on Sunday or at night was allowed, and only a half day on Saturday. The maximum weekly hours permitted were fifty-five in textile factories and sixty in “nontextile factories and workshops.” Daily hours were ten in the former, and in the latter ten and a half, with, in certain cases, a limited amount of overtime. The time to be allowed for meals was also strictly regulated.

The latest phase of regulation of working conditions, the fixing of minimum wages, was begun in 1909 by the Trade Boards Act. Minimum wage rates might be fixed for trades in which wages were “exceptionally low” by boards made up of employers, employes and the general public. Though the wage fixing covered both men and women, the large proportion of women employed in the trades first regulated made the law of special importance in a consideration of women’s work. The trades covered up to the outbreak of the war included certain branches of tailoring, shirt making, some forms of chain making, paper box, sugar confectionery and food preserving, and certain processes in lace finishing. The minimum rates fixed for experienced adult women in these trades varied from about 2½d. (5 cents) to 3½d. (7 cents) an hour amounting on an average to approximately 14s. a week ($3.36) for full time work. The awards appear to have been effective in raising the wages of a considerable number of low paid women.

Child Labor

In matters of industrial employment the English recognized not only “children” under fourteen, whose employment was in great part prohibited, but also a special class of “young persons,” whose employment was subject to special regulation. Boys and girls under eighteen whom the law allowed to work were in the latter group. The 1911 census returned 98,202 boys and 49,866 girls, or a total number of 148,068 children between ten and fourteen years as “gainfully employed” in Great Britain. Mr. Frederic Keeling, an authority on English child labor conditions, believed, however, that this number was an underestimate because it failed to include many children employed outside of school hours. In 1912 he set the number of working children under fourteen in the United Kingdom at 577,000, of whom 304,000 were employed outside of school hours, and the rest under special clauses of the factory and education acts.[10]

The great majority of the boys and girls in Great Britain went to work before they were eighteen years old. There were 1,246,069 male “young persons” and 902,483 female “young persons” gainfully employed in Great Britain in 1911.[11] In England and Wales in that same year 309,000 boys and 241,000 girls of seventeen were at work, and only 20,600 boys and 87,400 girls of that age were “unoccupied.”

The 1911 census figures covering the principal lines of work in which girls and boys under eighteen are employed had, in November, 1917, been published only for England and Wales. For boys these occupations were the building trades, the metal trades, textiles, agriculture, mining, outdoor “domestic service,” messenger and porter work—which is in most cases a “blind alley” occupation—and commercial employment, whereas for girls they were textiles, clothing, domestic work and commercial employment. The girls, it may be noted, were found mainly in the same kinds of work as were adult women.

While, as has been previously mentioned, there was a relative increase in the number of young working girls between fifteen and twenty, the number of working children under fourteen was falling off. There were 97,141 boys and 49,276 girls under fourteen, a total of 146,417, employed in England and Wales in 1911. In 1901 working boys under fourteen numbered 138,000 and working girls 70,000, a total of 208,000. In Scotland there were but 1,600 young children of these ages at work in 1911, and 17,600 in 1901.

Most children and “young persons” were, of course, receiving very low wages. Sidney Webb estimated the average earnings of girl manual workers under eighteen to be 7s. 6d. weekly ($1.80) and those of boys to be 10s. ($2.40).

Laws Affecting Children’s Employment

The chief forces in bringing about this diminution of child labor were, naturally, the laws forbidding child labor and requiring compulsory schooling. Children were required to attend school until they were fourteen unless they were thirteen and could secure a certificate of “proficiency” or of regular attendance. They might not work in factories until they had completed their school attendance, except that “half timers,” girls and boys of twelve, might work not more than thirty-three hours a week and were compelled to go to school half the time. Most of the “half timers” were found in the Lancashire cotton mills.

Children under eleven might not sell articles on the street, boys under fourteen might not work in coal mines, and the local authorities might forbid all work by children under fourteen, though unfortunately the power had been but slightly exercised.

The health and safety regulations affecting “young persons” under eighteen were similar to those for women, but somewhat more stringent. The lead processes which were forbidden women were also forbidden girls and boys under eighteen, together with a few other very unhealthy trades. In others where women might be employed, boys and girls under sixteen were forbidden to work. Children under fourteen might not be employed “in a manner likely to be dangerous to their health or education.”

In factories and workshops the same regulation of daily and weekly hours, night and Sunday work, applied both to adult women and to “young persons.” In addition the hours of boys under sixteen employed in mines were limited, and a maximum of seventy-four hours a week was fixed for shop assistants under eighteen.

The minimum rates set by the trade boards for boys and girls under eighteen generally rose year by year according to age from about 4s. weekly at fourteen (96 cents) to 10s. ($2.40) or 12s. ($2.88) at seventeen. Girls with the necessary experience in the trade received the full minimum rate for women at eighteen years of age, but the boys, who sometimes began at a higher rate than the girls, did not reach the full men’s rate till they were twenty-one or more.

Almost all these working conditions—the principal kinds of work women and children were doing, the rate of increase in their numbers, their wages and the legal regulations protecting them—were changed during three years of the world war.

CHAPTER III
First Months of the World War—
Labor’s Attitude toward the War—
Unemployment among Women Workers

August 4, 1914, was a momentous day for the working women and children of England. On that date the nation entered the great conflict which was not only to throw their men folk into military service, but to affect their own lives directly. It was to alter their work and wages and to come near to overthrowing the protective standards built up by years of effort. What was the attitude of the women and of organized labor in general toward the war and the industrial revolution which it brought in its train?

Shortly after the opening of hostilities the majority of the workers swung into line behind the government in support of the war, despite the fact that the organized British labor movement had earlier subscribed to a resolution of the international socialist congress that labor’s duty after the outbreak of any war was “to intervene to bring it promptly to a close.”

Indignation at the invasion of Belgium was apparently one of the determining factors in the change of attitude. The Labour party did not oppose the government war measures. It joined in the parliamentary recruiting campaign, and in the “political truce,” by which it was agreed that any vacancies occurring in the House of Commons should be filled by the party previously in possession without a contest. On August 24, 1914, the joint board of three of the four important national labor bodies, namely the Trades Union Congress, the General Federation of Trade Unions and the Labour Party, declared an “industrial truce,” moving for the termination of all existing disputes, and for an effort to settle all questions arising during the war by peaceful methods, before resorting to strikes and lockouts. The principal women’s labor organizations fell in with what may be called the official labor attitude toward the war, and the Independent Labour party stood almost alone in continuing to advocate an early peace.

In July, 1914, just before the war, British business had been in a reasonably prosperous condition. There was somewhat of a decline from the boom of 1913, and a considerable depression in the cotton industry, but on the whole the state of trade was good.

The first effect on industry of the outbreak of war in August was an abrupt and considerable curtailment of production. Orders both in home and foreign trade were withheld or canceled, large numbers of factories went on short time, and in a number of cases employes were provisionally given notice of discharge.[12]

The Unemployment Crisis

That the crisis of unemployment would be but a passing phase, soon followed by unprecedented industrial activity, seems not to have been anticipated. “If the war is prolonged, it will tax all the powers of our administrators to avert the most widespread distress,” said the Fabian Society.[13] A “Central Committee for the Prevention and Relief of Distress,” headed by the president of the local government board was organized as early as August 4; local authorities were asked to form similar local representative committees, and the Prince of Wales sent out an appeal for a “National Relief Fund.” Plans were made for starting special public work, additional government subsidies to trade unions paying unemployment benefits were granted, and the War Office broke precedent and permitted the sub-letting of government contracts as a relief measure in districts where there was much unemployment.

In the industrial depression women were affected far more severely than men and for a considerably longer time. The trades which were hardest hit were for the most part those in which large numbers of women were employed.

Those trades which for want of a better name are sometimes called “luxury trades”—dressmaking, millinery, blouse making, women’s fancy and children’s boot and shoe making, the silk and linen trades, cigar and cigarette making, the umbrella trade, confectionery and preserve making, cycle and carriage making, the jewelry trade, furniture making and French polishing, the china and glass trades, book and stationery making, as well as printing—these were the trades which at the beginning of the war suffered a very severe slump. In some trades a shortage of raw material or the loss of enemy markets only added to the general dislocation.... Thus the shortage of sugar caused very considerable unemployment in jam preserving and confectionery. The chemical trade was affected by the complete cessation of certain commodities from Germany. The practical closing of the North Sea to fishers absolutely brought to a close the occupation of those thousands of women on the English coast who follow the herring round. The closing of the Baltic cut off the supplies of flax from Russia upon which our linen trade largely depends.... The cotton trade was especially hit, before the war a period of decline had set in, and Lancashire suffered in addition from all the disadvantages incidental to an export trade in time of naval warfare. Casual houseworkers such as charwomen and office cleaners and even skilled domestic servants, such as cooks, found themselves out of employment owing to the economies which the public was making. The unemployment of good cooks, however, did not last many weeks.[14]

Nearly half the total number of women in industry (44.4 per cent or 1,100,000) were unemployed or on short time in September, 1914, while among men workers the corresponding figure was only 27.4 per cent. The provision of public work helped men rather than women, and the rush of enlistments was another important factor which helped relieve the situation for working men. Among the women, on the contrary, many relatives of men who had gone to the front were obliged to apply for work for a time, since separation allowances were not immediately available.

In October, 1914, when enlistments were taken into account, the net decrease in the number of male industrial workers was only 6,500, but that of females was 155,000. By December, when 77,000 fewer women were employed than in July, and girls in dressmaking, machine made lace, silk and felt hat making, potteries, printing and fish curing had not yet found steady work,[15] there was a net increase in the employment of men and boys, and a shortage of skilled men. Even in February, 1915, 37,500 women were reported unemployed,[16] and in the latter part of March and the first half of April there were twice as many women applicants for work at the employment exchanges as there were openings available. However, the tide turned in the latter month, and the total number of women workers increased 44,000 over the number employed in July, 1914, though owing to imperfect adjustment a number of women were still unemployed in the middle of 1915, nearly a year after the outbreak of the war.[17]

Organization for Aiding Unemployed Women

During this period the chief agency helping unemployed girls and women was the “Central Committee on Women’s Employment.” The committee mainly owed its origin to the War Emergency Workers’ National Committee, which was formed as early as August 5, 1914, to protect the interests of the workers during the war, at a hastily called conference of nearly all the important national socialist and labor organizations. In the first days of the war an appeal to women was sent out in the name of the Queen asking them to make garments and “comforts” for the troops. The workers’ national committee protested against such use of the voluntary labor of the well-to-do at the very time when thousands of working women in the sewing and allied trades were in need of work.

As a result of such protests an announcement appeared in the newspapers of August 17 to the effect that details of the Queen’s plan for raising money to provide schemes of work for unemployed women would soon be announced. It was stated that “it is the wish of Her Majesty that these schemes should be devised in consultation with industrial experts and representatives of working class women,” and that the aims of the Queen’s needlework guild had been “misunderstood.” “Voluntary aid was meant to supplement and not to supplant paid labor.” A few days later the Queen asked amateur sewers not to make any of a list of garments which the military authorities would ordinarily buy from business firms.

On August 20, the “Central Committee on Women’s Employment” was appointed. Mary Macarthur, secretary of the National Federation of Women Workers, was honorary secretary, and five of the fourteen members were representatives of working women approved by the workers’ national committee. This central women’s committee was given control of the Queen’s Work for Women Fund.

Though the committee met with many delays before it could start its undertakings, and though it was able to provide for only a small fraction of the women in need, its general principles and methods might well be taken as a standard for action in any similar emergency.

The first principle on which the committee worked was that “it is better that workers should be self-maintaining than dependent upon relief, even when that relief is given in the form of work.” To increase the volume of employment the committee set up a “contract department” which aimed to enlarge the number of firms having government contracts. Three different methods were used in doing this. One especially ingenious device was that of inducing the War Office to simplify certain details of the army uniform, so that it could be made up by firms not used to the work. “Thereafter full employment in the clothing trade coincided with a greatly improved supply of army clothing.”[18] Firms in need of orders, who could make shirts, khaki, blankets and hosiery, were brought to the attention of the War Office. Finally, by taking large contracts from the government and dividing them the committee supplied work to a number of small dressmaking and needlework firms, which were too small to secure the contracts direct. Two million pairs of army socks, 10,000 shirts a week cut out in the committee’s own work rooms, and 105,000 flannel body belts for the troops were given out in this way. It is important to note that the work was “only undertaken when the ordinary trade was fully employed.” As a matter of fact, at the same time that thousands of women and girls were out of work, others were working overtime and the government was unable to secure sufficient clothing for the troops. Except that the committee sometimes made advances of working capital, to be returned when the contract was finished, the work was self-supporting. Ordinary trade prices and, after the first few weeks, the usual methods of wage payment, prevailed.

The other main branch of the committee’s work was the provision of relief work rooms under its own supervision in London, and elsewhere under women’s subcommittees of the local representative committees formed by the Board of Trade. The subcommittees were required to include representatives of working women’s organizations among their members. The committee reports that its decision to have the relief work carried on under the auspices of such committees “caused some disappointment to the promoters of certain private charities who hoped to procure grants.”[19]

The work rooms were not allowed to compete with ordinary industry, for which reason their products were not supposed either to be sold or to be given to persons who could afford to buy them. It was stated, however, that this rule was difficult to enforce because many of the provincial work rooms were anxious to make articles for the troops. The work was supposed to be of a nature to train the workers and improve their efficiency, and in this the committee’s aims seem to have been generally realized. The making of cheap but tasteful clothing and other domestic training was usually provided. In many places the women were taught to cook wholesome low cost dinners for themselves. In one work room a rough factory hand who had hardly handled a needle before became so enthusiastic over her handiwork that she remarked, “It’s nice to be learned.”

In London a few “sick room helps” were also trained, some clerical workers were given scholarships to learn foreign languages, and a small number of factory girls were sent into the country to become market gardeners. In selecting applicants girls under sixteen and nonworking wives of unemployed men were not taken, and the younger, more intelligent and more teachable women were given preference. Workers were obliged to register at the employment exchanges[20] and to accept suitable employment if found.

The wages paid by the work rooms aroused not a little controversy. The committee fixed 3d. as the hourly wage rate, forty hours as the weekly working time, making maximum weekly earnings 10s. ($2.40). This wage scale was hotly denounced by certain labor representatives as “sweating.” The committee justified it on the ground that the hourly rate was approximately that set by the trade boards, and that the weekly wage must be kept sufficiently low so that women would not be attracted to the work rooms from ordinary employment. After careful consideration, the scale was endorsed unanimously by the War Emergency Workers’ National Committee.[21] In March, 1915, on account of rising prices, a working week of forty-six hours was permitted, increasing weekly earnings to 11s. 6d. ($2.76). But by this time the state of trade had greatly improved and it had already been possible to give up some of the work rooms. The others were soon closed and the committee gave its attention to investigating new fields for the employment of women. At the end of 1916 it was also running an employment bureau and acting as a clearing house for related organizations. About 9,000 women had passed through its work rooms up to January, 1915, at which time about 1,000 women were employed by the central committee in London, and about 4,000 by the local subcommittees.[22]

CHAPTER IV
Extension of Employment of Women

The rapid growth in the number of women workers and their entrance into hundreds of occupations formerly carried on by men alone are two of the most striking industrial phenomena of the world war. The decrease in women’s employment which marked the beginning of the war disappeared month by month until the level of July, 1914, was passed in April, 1915. In the next month the Labour Gazette noted that the shortage of male labor was now extending to female and boy labor in many lines. Up to this time recruiting had been comparatively slow. Now came Lord Kitchener’s appeal for “men and still more men,” and as the army grew the women had to fill the depleted ranks of industry.

By August, 1915, the British Association for the Advancement of Science set the increase of employed women over July, 1914, at over 150,000 in industrial lines alone, besides considerable gains in certain nonindustrial occupations.[23] In November of that year the number of women registering at the employment exchanges for the first time exceeded that of men. In April, 1916, by which time the army had been much enlarged and the first conscription act was in effect, the increase had reached 583,000, according to official estimate, and the number of women workers was growing at least five times as fast as before the war. A year later the net gain in the number of women gainfully occupied was 963,000, and in July, 1918, 1,345,000 more women were at work than in July, 1914.[24] In short, in four years of war more than a million and a third additional women entered work outside their homes.

The increase in the number of working women and girls was greatest, perhaps, in the year from April, 1915, to April, 1916, during which period there was an increase of 657,000 in the occupations covered by the Board of Trades reports.[25] During the last year for which figures are available, July, 1917, to July, 1918, the increase was but 277,000. This check in the rate of increase was due probably to a decrease in the demand for the kinds of munitions on which women were most largely employed, an increase in the number of returned soldiers and apparently the depletion of the supply of women readily available for employment.

Among the various occupational groups factory work showed the largest increase, namely, 792,000 women, during the four years ending July, 1918, and agriculture the smallest, 38,000. Commerce was second to industry, with a gain of 429,000, and national and local government third with an increase of 198,000. The number of women workers decreased only in women’s traditional occupation of domestic service, where a decline of 400,000, or nearly 20 per cent, was registered in the four year period.

EXTENSION OF THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN
DURING FOUR YEARS OF WAR[26]

Turning aside from the increases in the total number of women workers to an analysis of changes in the various occupations, a picture is obtained not only of what the army of new workers did, but also of many of the alterations wrought by war on the fabric of British industry.

First Year of War

Within a few weeks after the beginning of the war the government “came into the market as chief buyer,”[27] with large rush orders for the equipment of troops. This involved an “enormously multiplied demand for women’s services” in certain lines, some time before the period of unemployment was over. Increases in the number of women in the leather, engineering and hosiery industries were noted by October, 1914. Before the end of 1914 there was said to be an increase of 100,000 women in the woolen and worsted industry (for khaki, flannel and blankets); in hosiery; in the clothing trade (for military tailoring, fur coat making, caps and shirts); in the boot and shoe trade; and in the making of ammunition, rations and jam, kit bags and haversacks, surgical dressings and bandages and tin boxes. Yet owing to lack of the necessary skill or because they could not be moved to the locality where their services were in demand, thousands of “capable though untrained young women lacked employment when other factories were overwhelmed with their contracts and girls and women strained nearly to the breaking point.”[28] “The relative immobility of labor was never more clearly shown,” says Miss B. L. Hutchins.[29]

An interesting account of the introduction of women into munitions work speaks of the rush of women to register for it in May, 1915, after the battle of Neuve Chapelle, when the public first became aware of the shortage of munitions.[30] But positions were then “exceedingly difficult to obtain” and the use of women became general only in September or later. An official report states that the employment of women on munitions work was considered “tentative and experimental” as late as November and December, 1915.[31] The success of a group of educated women placed as supervisors in an inspection factory, who were trained at Woolwich Arsenal in August, was said to have been the determining factor in leading to the introduction of female labor on a large scale at Woolwich and other government establishments.

During perhaps the first six or eight months of war, however, the additional women factory workers seldom took the places of men, but entered the same occupations in which women had long been employed. The “new demand was to a large extent for that class of goods in the production of which female labour normally predominates.”[32] Women had for many years operated power machines in the clothing trades and had been employed in the making of cartridges and tin boxes, in certain processes in woolen mills, in boot and shoe factories and in the food trades: The needs of the army so far merely provided more opportunities along the usual lines of women’s work.

It was in the spring and early summer of 1915 that instances of the substitution of women for men first began to be noted in industrial employments. The Labour Gazette first mentioned the general subject in June, and in July stated that the movement was “growing.” In the boot and shoe trade in Northamptonshire efforts were being made in May to put women on “purely automatic machines hitherto worked by men.” About this time a violent controversy broke out in the cotton trade regarding the introduction of women as “piecers,” two of whom helped each male spinner. Boys had been used for this purpose, and the union rules forbade the employment of women. Union officials were strong in opposition, saying that the work was unsuitable for women, and that they would undercut the wage rates. An agreement permitting the use of the women was finally made with the union, but even before it was ratified women “piecers” had become increasingly common.

The frequent use of women on work formerly done by men in the munitions branch of the “engineering” (machinists’) trade also dates from about this time. On August 20, 1915, The Engineer, a British trade paper, stated that “during the past few months a great and far reaching change had been effected.... In a certain factory (making projectiles up to 4.5 inch gun size) a new department was started some time ago, the working people being women, with a few expert men as overseers and teachers.... By no means all of the work has been of the repetition type, demanding little or no manipulative ability, but much of it ... taxed the intelligence of the operatives to a high degree. Yet the work turned out has reached a high pitch of excellence.... It may safely be said that women can satisfactorily handle much heavier pieces of metal than had previously been dreamt of.”

Women are said to have been successful in “arduous” processes, such as forging, previously performed by men, and in managing machine tools not even semi-automatic. “It can be stated with absolute truth that with the possible exception of the heaviest tools—and their inability to work even these has yet to be established—women have shown themselves perfectly capable of performing operations which hitherto have been exclusively carried out by men.”

But for industry as a whole the judgment of the British Association for the Advancement of Science on the extent of substitution during the first year of war is probably accurate. “Broadly speaking,” it was said, “the movement [of women into trades and occupations hitherto reserved wholly or partially to men] has only just begun to assume any appreciable magnitude.... In few industries has the position yet shaped itself.”[33] But in a number of trades, noteworthy among which were leather, engineering, wool, cotton, pottery and printing, women, while not yet undertaking the most highly skilled work, were “undoubtedly slowly undertaking processes that were previously thought just above the line of their strength and skill.”[34]

Very soon after the outbreak of war there began to be an increase in the number of women in certain nonindustrial occupations, most important of which were clerical work, retail trade, and the railway service. Unfortunately no estimate is available of the actual numbers of women so employed in the first year of the war, but the increase must have been considerable. Banks and insurance offices for the first time hired women and girls in any great numbers, mostly for the more routine parts of the work. The civil service took on a good many women in the lower grades of its work, and already complaints were heard of the prejudice which confined trained women to routine work while the “upper division” struggled on understaffed. In the postoffice more women clerks and some postwomen were noted. There was a considerable increase in the number of women in retail trade in various capacities, including shop assistants in dry goods and provision stores, packers and delivery “girls.” In the railway service women were appearing as car cleaners, ticket collectors on the station platforms and in the railway offices. Some cities had hired women as street cleaners and tram car conductors. The exodus of foreign waiters left openings for more waitresses.

In these lines from the first the women took men’s places. And, as the public came into daily contact with women clerks in banks and business offices, postal employes, employes in shops and on delivery vans, tram conductors and ticket collectors, there probably arose an exaggerated idea of the extent to which women did “men’s work” during the first year of war.

The number of women in agriculture, in which the Labour Gazette first noted a shortage of skilled labor in the early months of 1915, is reported to have risen slightly in the spring and summer of 1915. The increases were reported in nearly all the principal branches of the season’s work, first in potato planting, then in turnip hoeing, next in haying and fruit picking and finally in the harvest. In almost every case the additional women were employed on work formerly done by men. But, according to a careful study covering this period:

Most of the press paragraphs referring to the replacement of men by women upon farms have been calculated to give an erroneous impression to the unknowing public. The demand for female labor in agriculture during 1915 was not very great and a large number of girls who offered to take up such work failed to find employment.[35]

Moreover, statistics show that, owing to the keen demand from higher paid and more attractive lines of work, the number of women permanently employed on the land in Great Britain actually decreased from 80,000 in July, 1914, to 62,200 in July, 1915.[36]

Second Year of War

The next convenient date at which to note the changes in the number of women employed and in their occupations is April, 1916, when nearly two years had passed under war conditions. A second investigation by the British Association for the Advancement of Science covers conditions at that period, and the first of the Labour Gazette’s quarterly summaries of “the extension of the employment of women” is of that date.

The total war increase in numbers in industrial occupations was put at 13.2 per cent of the estimated number employed in July, 1914, or 287,500, by April, 1916. In the metal trades, chemicals and woodworking, the increases were by far the largest, being 88 per cent or 126,900, 84 per cent or 33,600, and 33 per cent or 13,200 respectively. These figures show the rush of women into the engineering branch of munitions work, which began to be heavy in the fall of 1915, and into the manufacture of explosives. Both patriotism and the economic incentive of high wages helped to secure women to meet the rapid expansion in these trades. The increase in woodworking trades likewise had a direct connection with war orders, as it involved the work of women on aeroplanes and in making ammunition boxes. Other marked increases, though not proportionally as large, were found in the textile and food trades.

During the autumn of 1915 and the early months of 1916 the replacement of men by women in industry progressed much more rapidly than in the first year of war. During nearly every month of this period the Labour Gazette noted the increasing shortage of male help as men were called into the army, the growing substitution of women and the need for still further replacement. By the end of 1915, the “Principal Lady Inspector of Factories” stated in her report for that year that though the replacement of men of military age was still “probably very much less than is generally supposed” the employment of women on “men’s work” in the expanding munitions industry and in many staple trades had so “spread that an entirely new industrial position and outlook has opened for women.”[37]

In April, 1916, it was estimated by the British Association for the Advancement of Science that about one woman industrial worker out of every seven was replacing a man, the total number of substitutes in industry at this time being approximately 226,000. By far the largest number, 117,400, were found in the “metal trades” (munitions), and textiles, clothing, miscellaneous trades, food, paper and printing, and woodworking followed in the order named. Estimates by the Board of Trade were somewhat more conservative. A month or two later the Labour Gazette could state that there were few industries or occupations “in which some substitution of females for males had not taken place.”

By the spring and summer of 1916, also, the effect of extending the employment of women had begun to be felt by those lines which, before the war, had been considered pre-eminently “woman’s work.” The British Association for the Advancement of Science reported in April a decline of 100,000 in the number of domestic servants and a slight decrease in the number of women in the paper and printing trade. In July the Labour Gazette found decreases also in dressmaking, confectionery and the linen, lace and silk trades. By October, 1916, 40 per cent of the firms in the textile trades, 21 per cent in clothing and 19 per cent in paper and printing were unable to fill their demands for female help, as contrasted with 5 per cent in the metal trades, 3 per cent in chemicals and 8 per cent in woodworking. “It is clear therefore ...” states the Gazette, “that the process of transference from these trades (which are ordinarily women’s occupations) to munition work or other better paid occupations still continues.”[38]

The largest increases in the employment of women, however, both absolutely and proportionally, were to be found in April, 1916, in the nonindustrial group. The total increase in this group over prewar numbers was 310,000. In “commercial” work alone the number of women had risen by 181,000. The gain in “banking and finance,” i. e., women clerks in banks and financial offices, was 242 per cent or 23,000, and in “transport,” that is to say railway work was 16,000, or 168 per cent.[39]

In agriculture during 1916 the increase in employment of women was much more rapid, both among regular workers and among such temporary workers as fruit pickers and harvest hands. An increase of 18,700 or 23 per cent in the number of regular women workers in Great Britain alone was reported in July. In the autumn the numbers fell off, however, on account of the physical strength required for the ploughing and other work carried on at that season.

Third Year of War

The next group of figures carries forward the story of the increase in women workers more than a year further, to July, 1917. This third year of war was a period of striking developments, both in growth in the number of women workers and in the extent to which they filled men’s jobs.

Best known of these changes to American readers is the constant expansion in the number of women munition makers. The number of government munition factories had risen from four at the beginning of the war to 103 in January, 1917, and the number of women employed in them and in docks and arsenals increased by 202,000, or 9,596 per cent, between July, 1914, and July, 1917. At Woolwich Arsenal there were 125 women in 1914 and 25,000 in 1917. The number of women in 3,900 of the 4,200 “controlled” establishments doing munitions work was reported to be 369,000 in February, 1917.[40] In July, 1917, the increase in the number of women in the trades which covered most of the munition work outside national factories, namely, metals, chemicals and woodwork, was 358,000, 52,000 and 26,000, respectively. In June, 1917, Dr. Christopher Addison, then Minister of Munitions, told the House of Commons that from 60 to 80 per cent of all the machine work on “shells, fuses and trench warfare supplies” was performed by women. One shrapnel bullet factory was said to be run entirely by women.

Part of the total gain of 518,000 in the number of women in industrial occupations under private ownership in July, 1917, was likewise found outside munitions work in a great variety of staple trades less directly connected with war orders, many of which were far removed from the scope of women’s work previous to the war. For instance, the number of women in grain milling rose from 2,000 to 6,000, in sugar refining from 1,000 to 2,000 and in brewing from 8,000 to 18,000 by July, 1916.[41] Women became bakers and butchers and even stokers.[42] The employment of women increased in the building trades, in surface work in mining, in quarrying, brick making and cement work, in furniture manufacture and in the making of glass, china and earthenware. Women were reported to be building good-sized electric motors, working in shipbuilding yards, testing dynamos, working electric overhead traveling cranes, gauging tools to a thousandth of an inch and less and performing the most highly skilled work on optical instruments.[43] The British mission from the Ministry of Munitions described a former kitchen maid who was running a 900-horsepower steam engine without assistance.

A committee of industrial women’s organizations stated, in the winter of 1916-17 that, except for underground mining, some processes in dock labor and steel smelting, and iron founding, “the introduction of women in varying numbers is practically universal.” And even in steel works women were sometimes employed in breaking limestone and loading bricks, though not on the actual smelting of the metal, while in iron foundries negotiations were going on to see where women could be used.

Meanwhile, the decrease in women workers in what, before the war, were distinctively “women’s trades,” became more marked. For instance, in April, 1917, the number of women was falling off in textiles and the food trades, though these were still above prewar levels, in dressmaking and domestic service, where the decline was put at 300,000, and in laundry work, for which exact figures were not obtainable.

The following table brings out the changes in the employment of women in several of the more important industrial occupations between July, 1914, and January and April, 1917:

INCREASE OR DECREASE IN THE NUMBER
OF WOMEN EMPLOYED SINCE JULY, 1914[44]

It had become so difficult for the London high class dressmaking and millinery shops to secure employes that in the fall of 1916 some of the employers met with representatives of the London County Council and the employment exchanges and planned considerable improvements in working conditions. The changes included a reduction of the seasonality of the trade and a shortening of the working hours. But in July, 1917, their supply of labor was still “insufficient.”[45]

In nonindustrial occupations also during the period from April, 1916, to July, 1917, there was a continued increase in the number of women employed and the kinds of work they were doing. Next to “government establishments” the largest percentage of increase (though the absolute numbers are comparatively small) were found in some of these groups. In “banking and finance” the gain over July, 1914, was 570 per cent, in “transport” 422 per cent and in civil service 150 per cent. The gain in numbers in the whole group, exclusive of agriculture, was 639,000, of which 324,000 were found in “commercial occupations.”[46]

Along with the growth in numbers the kinds of work done by women in these lines continued to extend. On the railroads, to the women clerks, car cleaners and ticket collectors of the first months of war were added shop laborers, engine cleaners and porters. In several Scottish and a few English and Welsh cities, women became tram drivers as well as conductors. Cities employed not only women street cleaners and a larger number of women clerks and teachers but women in various capacities in power stations, sewage farms, gas works and parks, and as scavengers. A few official “policewomen” were appointed, and there were numerous women “patrols” or voluntary police. There were women lamp-lighters and women window cleaners, and the errand girl had practically replaced the errand boy.

While in July, 1917, according to the Labour Gazette, the number of women employed permanently on the land in Great Britain had increased by 26,000 or 32 per cent since July, 1914, the number of casual workers had increased 39,000 or 77 per cent during the same period. The total number of women employed in farm work in July, 1917, may therefore be estimated as 192,000, in addition to women relatives of farmers, who are seldom counted in the returns.

As indicated by the variety of occupations, both industrial and nonindustrial, in which their employment increased, the substitution of women for men went forward rapidly during the third year of war. The total number of “females substituted for male workers” amounted in July, 1917, to 1,354,000, exclusive of casual farm laborers, or to 1,392,000 if such laborers be included. In “government establishments” the number of women on men’s work was 9,120 times as great as the whole number of women employed in July, 1914; in “banking and finance” the number was 555 times as great; in “transport,” 437 times, and in “civil service” 152 times as great. About one working woman out of every three was replacing a man in July, 1917, in the occupations covered by the tables of the Labour Gazette.

The report of the “Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops” for 1916 gives an interesting description of the progress of substitution and of the work of women in heavy occupations formerly carried on exclusively by men. The Principal Lady Inspector, Miss Anderson, says, in part:

It appears that the one absolute limit to the replacement of men by women lies in those heavy occupations and processes where adaptation of plant or appliances can not be effected so as to bring them within the compass even of selected women, of physical capacity above the normal. Very surprising, however, is the outcome of careful selection, even in fairly heavy work, in rubber manufacture, paper mills, oil cake and seed crushing mills, shale oil works, shipyards, iron and tube works, chemical works, gas works and stacking of coal, tan yards, coarse ware and brick making, flour milling and other trades. “If they stick this, they will stick anything,” a manager is reported as saying of the grit and pluck of the women in a gas works in the recent severe weather.[47]

She adds, however, what may occur to many students of women’s work, that “it is permissible to wonder whether some of the surprise and admiration freely expressed in many quarters over new proofs of women’s physical capacity and endurance is not in part attributable to lack of knowledge or appreciation of the very heavy and strenuous nature of much of normal prewar work for women, domestic and industrial.”

Nevertheless, despite these increases, the amount of substitution varied widely between different trades and even between different firms in the same trade, and opportunities for replacement still existed. Often women had been more widely introduced into occupations like railway trucking, for which they did not appear well fitted, than into such work as electroplating, which seemed in every way suitable.

Women’s lack of trade training, their inferior strength, the special restrictions of the factory acts, moral objections to having men and women in the same workshop, and the need of increasing sanitary accommodations and providing women supervisors had been from the first alleged as objections to putting women in men’s places.[48] But the strongest obstacles were apparently trade union opposition, frequently expressed in restrictions in trade agreements, and the prejudice of employers. “The progress of substitution probably depends in many cases on the pressure exercised by military tribunals,” said the “Principal Lady Inspector of Factories,” early in 1917. “Employers will not experiment with women as long as they can get men, though once they do so they are pleased with the result.”[49]

Fourth Year of the War

In the words of the Chief Woman Factory Inspector, 1917-1918, the fourth year of the war, was as far as woman’s work was concerned “one mainly of settling down into the new fields of work which were so rapidly marked out in the three previous years.” Yet she enumerates several lines of work employing women for the first time during this year, among which were ship and marine engineering, blast furnaces and forge works, copper and spelter works, concrete and other construction work for factories and aerodromes, electric power stations and retorts of gas works. The entrance of women as unskilled laborers in iron and steel plants and chemical works was proceeding steadily in November, 1918.

Another interesting indication of the extent and variety of women’s work in the latter months of the war is a list of placements made by an employment exchange. The list includes learners in sheet metal working, engine cleaners for a railway company; machinists in a torpedo factory; drivers for a tramway company; gas meter inspectors; crane drivers; insurance agents; sawmill laborers; cemetery laborers; railway porters; painters of motor car bodies; machinists for engineering firms; plumbers in a shipyard; bill posters; electric welders; foundry workers; armature winders; postwomen; lorry drivers; wood cutting machinists for shipbuilding; moulders at a grinding mill; chauffeurs; lift attendants; tinsmiths; solderers in gas meter works; telephone repairers; hay balers; laboratory assistants for wholesale chemists; tailors’ pressers; cinema operators; bank clerks; glass blowers; pipe plasterers; bake house assistants; cork cutters; gardeners; core makers in an iron foundry, and mechanics of many kinds.[50]

A Home Office report on the “Substitution of Women in Nonmunition Factories” adds to the above classifications employment in scientific work and in management and supervision, which a number of women entered during the latter months of the war, though a lack of suitable candidates retarded the movement. Educated women found places in factory laboratories where, also, intelligent working women took up the more routine processes. Most of the women engaged in managerial work were found in the prewar “women’s industries” like laundries and clothing factories, while the opening of new trades provided opportunities for many forewomen.

In July, 1914, the total number of women at work for pay was officially estimated as 5,966,000. Four years later this total had risen to 7,311,000 which, as has been noted, was a net increase of over a million and a third. An increase was found in all the major industrial groups except domestic service, in which the numbers decreased by 400,000, or about 20 per cent, during the war period. In private industrial establishments the number of women workers rose in four years from 2,176,000 to 2,745,000, an increase of 569 000, or 26.1 per cent, while in government industrial establishments, only 2,000 women were employed in July, 1914, and 225,000 in July, 1918, or over a hundred times as many.

By far the greater part of the increase in the number of women factory workers was to be found in the munition trades. Indeed, in the three trades of paper and printing, textiles and clothing, the last two of which had been “women’s trades” even before the war, there was an actual decrease of 86,000 in the number of women workers during the four year period under discussion. Out of the total increase of 792,000 in this group of occupations, 746,000 were to be found in the metal, chemical and wood trades, which cover most of the munition work done by private firms and in government establishments, which were mainly munition factories.

Another interesting sidelight on the contribution of English working women to the needs of the war is brought out by the numbers employed in the manufacture of all kinds of military supplies, including such things as uniforms, shoes and food, as well as munitions. In April, 1918, a total of 1,265,000 women were employed by private concerns on war orders, while government work brought the total up to 1,425,000, about equally divided between munitions and shipbuilding.

EXTENSION OF THE EMPLOYMENT OF FEMALES
IN INDUSTRY DURING FOUR YEARS OF WAR[51]

• (A) = Estimated Number of Females Employed July, 1914
• (B) = Estimated Number of Females Employed July, 1918
• (C) = Increase (+) or Decrease (-) July, 1914-July, 1918
• (D) = Per Cent of Females to Total Number of Work People Employed

The addition of orders for the Allies brought the total number of women on war orders up to 1,750,000.

The following table gives comparisons for April, 1917, and April, 1918, for the various classes of industry:

NUMBER OF WOMEN ENGAGED ON GOVERNMENT
ORDERS IN PRIVATE CONCERNS,
APRIL, 1917, AND APRIL, 1918[52]

In nonindustrial employments, including commerce, banking, work for the central and local government, transportation, hotels and theaters, agriculture and the professions, the increase over the prewar level of July, 1914, was 871,000 in July, 1918, a rise from 1,098,000 to 1,969,000 women workers. The increase in these occupations for the fourth year of war alone was much greater than the increase in factory workers during the same period, being 209,000 in contrast to 68,000.

The latest figures available for commerce are for April instead of July, 1918, and show that 850,000 women were then employed in wholesale and retail trade, about a 70 per cent increase since the beginning of the war. The new workers were employed principally by wholesale establishments and by grocery, fish, provision and hardware stores. In the latter months of the war a number of women were promoted to managerial and other positions of responsibility in stores. But in spite of all the extension of their employment, a considerable number of establishments reported a shortage of workers in April, 1918.

INCREASE IN EMPLOYMENT OF FEMALES IN
COMMERCE, JULY, 1914-APRIL, 1918, AND
PERCENTAGE OF FIRMS REPORTING A
SHORTAGE OF FEMALE LABOR
IN APRIL, 1918.[53]

• (A) = Estimated No. Employed July, 1914
• (B) = Estimated No. Employed April, 1918
• (C) = Percentage of Firms Reportinga Shortage of Female Lsbor April, 1918

The term “transportation” in the statistics applies chiefly to steam railroads, as the employes of the many municipally owned tramways are classed under “local government.” The number of women in the transportation group was four times as great in April, 1918, as in July, 1914, or 68,000 instead of 17,000. A list covering the principal lines of work in July, 1918, shows that the largest number of women were employed as telegraph and telephone operators, porters and carriage cleaners.[54]

NUMBER OF FEMALES EMPLOYED
BY STEAM RAILWAYS.

In agriculture the increase was less than in most other kinds of work, the number of permanent women workers rising only from 80,000 to 113,000 in the four years. For the fourth year of war alone the number of permanent women workers in Scotland showed a rise for the first time, and there was a slight increase in England and Wales, the total gain over July, 1917, being 7,000. The number of casual workers dropped from 88,000 in 1917 to 65,000, however. This fact is ascribed to two causes. A larger number of male workers were available, including soldiers on furlough, war prisoners, enemy aliens and school boys. Also there was a much lessened demand for women in the two lines in which casual workers were most extensively employed—hops, in which the acreage was reduced by government order, and fruit, in which the crop was a failure in several localities.

The increase of opportunities for women in the professions was one of the most significant of the war time changes. The number of professional women more than doubled during four years of war, rising from 50,500 in July, 1914, to 107,500 in April, 1918. There was, of course, a much enlarged demand for nurses, and the number of women in Red Cross and military hospitals rose from 10,000 in July, 1914, to 38,000 in January, 1918. While the number of men teachers fell off by 22,000, the number of women teachers increased by 13,000, and they secured a larger proportion of appointments to the higher and better paid posts. In January, 1918, the Society of Incorporated Accountants and Auditors obtained permission to change their articles of incorporation so as to admit women, and a few weeks later reported that very desirable women candidates were applying for examination.

By the fourth year of the war women were also largely employed in the various government departments. In August, 1914, there were 36,000 women and 191,000 men in government work, but in January, 1918, the balance of the sexes had been reversed and the number of women had risen to 143,000, an increase of 296 per cent, while the number of men had been reduced to 135,000, a decrease of 29 per cent.

NUMBER OF FEMALES EMPLOYED BY
GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS

Perhaps the most direct help given by women to the progress of the war was their employment in work for the army behind the lines in France. In July, 1915, a member of the government, in answering an inquiry in the House of Commons as to the number of soldiers detailed for clerical work, remarked that on the continent “obviously neither old civilian clerks nor women clerks would be suitable.” But two years later thousands of English women were at work there not only as clerks, stenographers, telegraphers and postal employes, but also as army cooks and cleaners and in the handling of supplies and various sorts of repair work. The majority were clerical or domestic workers, however. The women employed in this way were carefully selected and organized under semi-military discipline, as the “Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps” (popularly known as the “Waacs”), and numbered over 50,000 before the end of the war. They wore uniforms of different colors, according to the branch of work which they undertook. They lived in small huts, often unheated, not far behind the battle lines, and were constantly exposed to danger. “Waacs” were at times killed in air raids, and a considerable number suffered from shell shock. Other smaller bodies of women organized on similar semi-military lines were the “Wrens,” who were employed in certain shore duties for the navy, and the “Wrafs” who did woodcutting under the Board of Trade.

The number of women replacing men, as well as the total number of women employed, reached its highest level during the fourth year of the war. In April, 1918, the latest date for which these figures were available at the date of writing, there were 531,000 substitutes in industry, 187,000 in government establishments, and 1,098,000 in nonindustrial occupations, or a total of 1,816,000 women who were carrying on work formerly done by men.[55] Ninety per cent of the women munition makers were said to be employed on men’s jobs.[56] An index of the distribution of substitutes among different types of factory work may be gained from the results of a special questionnaire sent to manufacturers employing 277,000 women.[57] Fifteen per cent were doing clerical work, 7 per cent warehouse work and packing, and 5 per cent other nonmanufacturing work, such as sack mending in flour mills and meter inspecting and show room work in the gas industry. Of the remaining 73 per cent, 9 per cent were engaged in “general laboring work,” and many others in work requiring similar strength. “It is clear, therefore,” says the report, “that the employment of women on heavy work has become an important factor in the situation. Though many of the processes mentioned were unskilled, it was noticeable how many of the women were engaged on skilled or semi-skilled processes.”

CHAPTER V
Organized Efforts to Recruit Women’s Labor

The increase in the number of women workers and in the scope of their work by no means “came of itself.” It was the result of a long process of agitation by private individuals, propaganda, organization and negotiation by the government, and in the production of munitions, where the need was most acute, even of legislation. Besides parliamentary action in the munitions industry, agreements between employers and trade unions, local committees on women’s war employment, “Women’s County Agricultural Committees” and a “Shops” and a “Clerical Occupations” committee of the central government were the chief agencies promoting a greater utilization of the services of women. In dealing with the various obstacles to an extension of women’s employment, the wisdom of securing the cordial cooperation of organized labor in making industrial changes was clearly demonstrated. In the manufacturing industries a system of local representative committees under central official control brought much better returns than were obtained in agriculture without such committees—which points to satisfactory wages and working conditions as an essential addition to propaganda for securing more women workers. And, naturally enough, such methods as the use of photographs, personal visits by persons familiar with local needs, and the trial of a few expert women workers, all proved effective when general printed appeals had but slight effect.

Munitions Work

Probably the most serious obstacle to the recruiting of women workers was the body of trade union restrictions against their employment. A prime purpose of the well known munitions acts, which put a new aspect on many of the relations between employers, employes and the state, was the abrogation of these trade union rules.

The change thus made compulsory on the industry was known as the “dilution” of skilled labor by less skilled—which, according to official definition, “fundamentally means increased employment of women with a view to releasing men.”[58] The “dilution” movement is one of the most far reaching labor developments of the war, alike in the industrial transformation entailed, in the change in the status of women workers, and in its probable after war consequences. The events leading up to the passage of the acts, and the subsequent recruiting of women, form a fascinating chapter in English industrial history.

The increasing demand for munitions found workmen in the “engineering” (roughly, the machinists’) trade, thoroughly organized, mainly in the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. This was one of the strongest unions in the skilled crafts, having a membership of 174,253 in 1914. The A. S. E., as it is familiarly called, did not admit women, and its rules among other things restricted the kinds of work which could be done by women, unskilled men, and nonunionists, limited the amount of overtime, and the number of machines to be tended by a single worker. In December, 1914, shortage of labor and the expanding demand caused the employers’ federation in the engineering trades to ask the unions to give up these rules during the war period, but the negotiations which followed were fruitless. About this time the “industrial truce” was broken by the great strike of engineers on the Clyde, when their demand for a raise of pay at the expiration of their wage agreement was refused.

Labor unrest, charges that employes lost much time from work—in many cases, it was said, because of drink—and difficulties in getting a sufficient supply of munitions, caused the government to appoint, on February 15, 1915, a “Committee on Production in Engineering and Shipbuilding to inquire and report ... as to the best steps to be taken to ensure that the productive power of the employes in engineering and shipbuilding establishments working for government purposes shall be available so as to meet the needs of the nation in the present emergency.”

The second report of the committee, issued February 20, on “Shells and Fuses,” recommended as methods of increasing production, first, that the workers should cease to restrict earnings and output, in return for which no attempts to cut piece rates should be allowed, and second, that “there should be an extension of the practice of employing female labor on this work under suitable and proper conditions.” The third report, issued March 20, made an analogous recommendation that, with proper safeguards to protect union interests, a greater use should be made of unskilled and semi-skilled labor during the war.

The “Treasury Agreement”

The next step toward “dilution” was the calling of a conference of representatives of the chief unions doing war work, which met with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lloyd George, and the president of the Board of Trade on March 17, 1915. No women’s labor organizations were represented. At the conference Lloyd George showed that the need for munitions was greater than had in any way been anticipated, and begged the unions to give up all restrictions on output and to submit all disputes to arbitration during the war period. In return, the government would take control of the establishments affected and would limit their profits. A committee of trade unionists, also having no women members, was then appointed to draw up proposals embodying these principles. Their work is embodied in the so-called “Treasury Agreement,” which was accepted on March 19, 1915, by all the union representatives present, except those of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers.

The clauses which permitted the increased employment of women included the following provisions: Each union was recommended “to take into favorable consideration such changes in working conditions or trade customs as may be necessary with a view to accelerating the output of war munitions or equipments,” provided the government imposed on contractors for munitions, war equipment, or “other work required for the satisfactory completion of the war,” certain conditions intended to safeguard the unions and their wage rates. All changes were to be only for the war period, and should “not prejudice the position of the work people ... or of their trade unions in regard to resuming prewar rules or customs after the war.” After the war also preference of employment should be given workers who had enlisted or who were employed at the time the agreement was made. When semi-skilled men were introduced on work formerly done by skilled men, “the rates paid shall be the usual rates of the district for that class of work.” Moreover, “the relaxation of existing demarcation restrictions or admission of semi-skilled or female labor shall not affect adversely the rates customarily paid for the job.” A record of all changes was required to be kept, open to government inspection, and “due notice” of intended changes was to be given “where practicable,” with opportunity for consultation by the workers or their representatives, if desired.

However, an agreement of this kind to which the Amalgamated Society of Engineers had refused assent was not a little like the play of Hamlet with Hamlet left out. Further negotiations were immediately held with the A. S. E., and on March 25, when certain additional safeguards had been added, they likewise accepted the agreement. The additions pledged the government to limit profits in the shops where union rules had been given up “with a view to securing that benefit resulting ... shall accrue to the State,” and to use its influence in the restoration of trade union conditions after the war. The restrictions were to be removed solely on work “for war purposes,” and the workers might demand a certificate to that effect from the government department concerned. Most important of these additions in view of the sweeping changes taking place in the engineering industry was the clause to the effect that where new inventions were introduced during the war, the class of workmen to be employed on them after the war “should be determined according to the practice prevailing before the war in the case of the class of work most nearly analogous.”

In accordance with the terms of the agreement an advisory committee of labor representatives was appointed, to help in carrying out its recommendations, and several local “munitions committees” representing employers, employes and the public were formed for the same purpose.

But it is claimed of the “Treasury Agreement” that “except in so far as it prepared the mind of the worker for later compulsion, the agreement completely failed to achieve its purpose. The main cause of this failure was a feeling on the part of the men that they were being called upon to surrender what they regarded as their heritage, without the employers being called upon to make any corresponding sacrifice.”[59]

At any rate, the agreement was tried but little more than three months before it was superseded by legislation. A coalition ministry which the Labour party entered was formed in May. The shortage of munitions, which hindered the spring advance and which had been brought forcibly to general attention through the loss of life in the battle of Neuve Chapelle, was one of the chief causes for the fall of the Liberal party. In June a “Ministry of Munitions” was created, and Lloyd George was made minister.

The Munitions Acts

The first munitions of war act was passed July 2, 1915.[60] Its purpose as expressed in its title was “to make provision for furthering the efficient manufacture, transport and supply of munitions for the present war.” It was drafted with the active cooperation of the Labour Advisory Committee, and was approved before passage by the majority of a conference of representatives of unions in the munitions industry. The radicals claim that the bill was passed primarily not so much to give a legal sanction to “dilution” as to prohibit strikes and to minimize the leaving of munitions work by individuals.[61]

As amended in January, 1916, the possible scope of the act was wide. It might cover, to name the principal items, any articles “intended or adapted for use in war,” any metals, machines, tools or materials required for their manufacture or repair, any construction or repair of buildings for military purposes, and even the erection of houses intended for munition workers, and the supply of heat, light, water, power and tramway facilities for munitions work. A commentator has said that it included practically “all work intended to aid the warlike operations in any way.”[62]

Whatever its primary purpose, the act contained important sections relating to the abandonment of union rules and the dilution of labor. The Ministry of Munitions might declare any establishment in which munitions work was carried on, including government plants, a “controlled establishment.” In such an establishment all trade union restrictions were to be given up, and on the other hand the employer’s profits were limited to a maximum of one-fifth more than the average for the two years before the war. In February, 1917, there were reported to be 4,285 “controlled” establishments and 103 government munition factories. The rules and safeguards relating to the abandonment of trade union restrictions were, word for word, those of the “Treasury Agreement.”[63] The maximum penalty for violating the regulations was, for the workman £3 ($14.40), and for the employer £50 (about $240). The rest of the act was for the war period only, but the “dilution” clauses held for a year after the end of the war, for the purpose, obviously, of tiding over the demobilization period and making effective the government pledge of a restoration of trade union rules and the dismissal of the women and unskilled men. But it will be noted that there was no reference to the provisions of the agreement with the Amalgamated Society of Engineers supplementary to the “Treasury Agreement.” In this omission it would seem that the unions had seriously weakened their weapons for ensuring restoration of their rules and customs after the war. The importance of the “new machines” clause has already been discussed, and the specific pledge of the government to aid in restoration might also have been of value.

Organization for “Dilution”
under the Munitions Acts

The Ministry of Munitions immediately began, during the summer of 1915, to develop an elaborate organization for increasing production and for “dilution” and, as has been noted, by the fall of 1915 the great rush of women into munitions work was under way. Besides numerous departments dealing with the various branches of production from the technical side, the Ministry organized a large labor department. One section, called the “Labour Regulation Department,” dealt with working conditions and trade disputes. The other section was the “Labour Supply Department,” which had charge of “dilution” and the supply of labor. In organizing the production of munitions the country was divided into forty-three districts, and in August, 1915, the Ministry of Munitions appointed three commissioners in each district to promote “dilution.”

As a further aid the “National Advisory Committee,” which had helped draft the “Treasury Agreement” and the munitions act, was enlarged to include additional labor members, representatives of the Ministry of Munitions and others, and became the “Central Labour Supply Committee,” whose purpose was “to advise and assist” the Ministry of Munitions regarding the “most productive use of all available labor supplies.”[64] “Local Advisory Boards” of labor representatives were also appointed to help the central committee.

However, the officials on whom fell the brunt of the work of increasing “dilution” in individual shops were the “dilution officers” of the Labour Supply Department. These officials went from establishment to establishment, finding out the employer’s needs in the way of labor and working out, with his cooperation if possible, plans by which the use of unskilled labor, especially woman labor, could be extended. The “dilution officer” reported to the central authorities and was advised to submit all plans to them for approval. In case complaints were made that women were not doing satisfactory work, where the use of women was not progressing as rapidly as desirable or if there was difficulty in finding suitable women workers, a woman dilution officer might be sent to straighten out the difficulty.[65] The women officers were also sent to investigate where women were being used for the first time “in order to ensure a good beginning,” and in some cases they advised on the suitability of work before women were tried.

While the government gained the legal power to force dilution on munitions work through the first munitions act, “in practice it has been found necessary, almost without exception, to proceed by way of negotiation.”[66] The London Times complained, in the spring of 1917, that after “the suspension during the war of all restrictions on output having been first agreed with the trade unions and then passed into law, the Ministry, instead of securing that these restrictions were in fact removed, proceeded to debate them ‘from town to town, from lodge to lodge, and from works to works.’”[67] But those administering the act gave instances in which the men refused to obey compulsory awards suspending trade union rules made without their consent, and believed that “it is impossible to set these practices aside except on the basis of their voluntary suspension, first by the representatives of all labor and then by the actual workers themselves.”

At all events, the instructions sent by the Ministry of Munitions in November, 1915, to employers in controlled establishments, outlining the steps to be taken in effecting dilution, stressed the importance of consulting the workers, and, if possible, of obtaining their cooperation. The workmen should be asked to form a “deputation” which might include their union officials if desired. Any proposed change should be explained to this body and its consent secured, if possible. Only in the event that an agreement could not be reached either with the deputation or with the local trade union officials, should the change be put into effect and the dispute settled under the compulsory arbitration clauses of the munitions act. In addition “before female labor is hereafter employed in the highly skilled branches of the engineering trade the proposal of the employer in question should be submitted to the Ministry for approval.”

Propaganda by the Ministry of Munitions

Besides its legal powers, its “dilution officers,” and its various advisory boards, the Ministry of Munitions carried on by a number of devices what was to all intents and purposes an advertising campaign to secure the utmost possible extension of female labor in diluting male labor. Over and above its numerous official instructions, the Ministry has published not a little propaganda material. In February, 1916, a large illustrated booklet was issued, “Notes on the Employment of Women on Munitions of War, with an Appendix on the Training of Munitions Workers.” It contained photographs and descriptions of processes on which women were then employed. Its purpose, as given in a preface by Lloyd George himself, was as follows:

This book has been prepared by an expert engineer, who at my request visited workshops in various parts of the country where the dilution of skilled labor is in actual operation. It illustrates some of the operations which women, with the loyal cooperation and splendid assistance of the workmen concerned, are performing in engineering shops in many parts of the kingdom.

The photographic records and the written descriptions of what is actually being done by women in munition factories, on processes hitherto performed solely by skilled men, will, I believe, act as an incentive and a guide in many factories where employers and employed have been skeptical as to the possibilities of the policy of dilution.

Being convinced that until that policy is boldly adopted throughout the country we can not provide our armies with such an adequate supply of munitions as will enable them to bring this war to an early and successful conclusion, I very earnestly commend this book to the most serious consideration of employers and employes.

D. Lloyd George.[68]

January 28, 1916.

Beginning with October, 1916, dilution officers were aided by an illustrated monthly, Dilution Bulletin. Aside from instructions to the “D. O.’s” as to reports and procedure, the periodical was practically given over to descriptions of the work women were doing, and exhortations to the dilution officers to promote the use of still more women on munitions work. “Process Sheets,” containing details of operations successfully carried on by women, were also issued. A special collection of photographs of women workers was likewise available for the use of dilution officers, and was said to have been effective in convincing skeptical employers that they could use women. Expert women “demonstrator-operatives” might be secured by the dilution officers either to act as pacemakers in speeding up production or to demonstrate that a particular job lay within women’s powers. In the spring of 1917, the Ministry developed still another method of propaganda, namely, an exhibition of women’s work which was shown in different industrial centers.

The results of all this activity in the rising numbers of women munition workers have already been pointed out. The gain during the war of 424,000 in the metal trades, which was nearly three times the prewar level, the introduction of 25,000 women into Woolwich Arsenal, and the statement by representatives of the Ministry of Munitions in November, 1917, that 80 per cent of all munitions work was then performed by female labor, have been cited.

Yet, as late as October, 1916, the Ministry of Munitions stated that the “average of dilution remains very low.” Beginning March 31, 1917, all contracts for shells were let on the conditions that on all shells from two and three quarters to four and one-half inches, 80 per cent of the employes must be women, and that on all larger shells the instructions of the Labour Supply Department as to the proportion of women, semi-skilled and unskilled males must be obeyed. Nevertheless, in March, 1917, it could be said that “we have by no means reached the limits of the possibilities of employing women in connection with war work,”[69] and in May the Times complained that only a fraction of the replacement which had been proved possible had actually been made.[70]

While in America in November, 1917, Mr. G. H. Baillie, the “Chief Technical Dilution Officer” of the Labour Supply Department, said that “dilution” was progressing on a large scale, and even up to the last months of the war the increase of women in the munitions trades continued.

“Dilution” in Other Industries
by Trade Union Agreement

In a number of other trades besides engineering where union rules hindered the replacement of men by women, agreements were reached between employers and employes which permitted substitution during the war period. The agreements were not the subject of legislation, but were, in most cases, the result of trade conferences called jointly by the Board of Trade and the Home Office at the request of the Army Council. The purpose was to reorganize each industry so as to release as many men as possible for the army.

Most of the agreements were made during 1915 and 1916. Among the industries covered in that year, either nationally or in some localities, were cotton, hosiery, leather, woolen and worsted, silk and felt hats, printing, bleaching and dyeing, woodworking, biscuit, pastry baking, wholesale clothing, boot making and earthenware and china. In 1916, similar agreements were concluded in lace making, hosiery finishing, printing, electroplating, cutlery, textile bleaching, tobacco and brush making. Heavy clothing and flint glass decorating were covered in 1917, and several local agreements were also made in light leather tanning and scientific instrument making, two occupations in which women substitutes were particularly successful.[71]

The trade unions were, on the whole, as unfavorable to the introduction of women in other new lines as they were in munitions and yielded only reluctantly, under pressure of the necessities of war. Even after agreements had been signed in the electroplating and leather glove trades, the continued opposition of individual workers greatly hindered the progress of substitution. They frequently alleged that a given kind of work was unsuitable for women on moral or physical grounds. But their real objection was probably the fear either that women would lower the men’s wage rates directly, or that the existence of a reserve of experienced female labor would endanger the men’s position in any postwar industrial depression.

The union’s point of view is revealed in the conditions which they required before they would sign substitution agreements. “The operatives,” said the factory inspectors, “not unnaturally asked for guarantees that those who left to join the Forces should have their places kept open for them, that suspension of rules should be regarded as a war emergency only, that there should be a return to former conditions at the end of the war, and that there should be a fair settlement of the wage question affecting the employment of women or other labor called in to take the place of the men.”[72]

The conditions of the agreement made in June, 1915, between unions and operators in the leather trade, whose needs had been greatly increased by the demand for military equipment, were typical of these settlements, and of the precautions taken to safeguard the regular employes. Women were to be allowed on “men’s work” during the war period when men could not be obtained. Their work was, however, limited to operations “they are physically fit to perform,” they were to be paid men’s rates, and the local trade union officials were to be consulted in each case before substitution was made. When men and women were employed in the same department, it was recommended that they be separated, as far as possible.[73] It should be emphasized that wherever women replaced men under these agreements or under the munitions acts, unless the trade unions consented to other arrangements, the women were supposed to hold their new positions only during the war period.

Other Measures to Increase Substitution—Industrial

The activities of the government to enlarge the scope of women’s work in cases where no trade union rules stood in the way form still another interesting series of propaganda efforts.

The first such attempt was a scheme of national voluntary registration for women, begun in March, 1915. Stating that its object was to find out what reserve of woman labor could be made available if required, the government invited all women who were “prepared, if needed, to accept paid work of any kind—industrial, agricultural, clerical, etc.,—to enter themselves upon the register of women for war service at the labor exchanges.”

The appeal caused many protests among representatives of labor, first because there was still believed to be much unemployment among women wage earners, and second, because of the failure to propose any safeguards to ensure good working conditions or “equal pay for equal work.” It was charged that the farmers’ union was behind the plan and that it was trying to get cheap woman labor instead of raising the wages of the men.

The War Emergency Workers’ National Committee immediately passed a resolution pointing out “that there are still 60,000 men and boys and 40,000 women and girls on the live register of the labor exchanges.... The committee is strongly of opinion that in drafting women into any industries care must be taken to prevent the stereotyping of bad conditions and low wages, or to endanger standard conditions where they obtain; that this should be secured by a tribunal representative of the organized wage earners—men and women; and that further efforts should be made to find situations for those persons now on the register before taking steps to bring in fresh supplies of female labor.”

The Woman’s Freedom League, a suffrage society, issued a strong protest along similar lines, with the emphasis on “equal pay for equal work.”

The Women’s Freedom League are glad to note the tardy recognition by the government of the value of women’s work brought before the country in their schemes of war service for women. We demand from the government, however, certain guarantees.

Firstly, that no trained woman employed in men’s work be given less pay than that given to men.

Secondly, that some consideration be given when the war is over to the women who during the war have carried on this necessary work.

Thirdly, that in case of training being required proper maintenance be given to the woman or girl while that training is going on.

Recognizing that the government’s scheme offers a splendid opportunity for raising the status of women in industry, we urge that every woman should now resolutely refuse to undertake any branch of work except for equal wages with men. By accepting less than this women would be showing themselves disloyal to one another, and to the men who are serving their country in the field. These men should certainly be safeguarded on their return from any undercutting by women.

The “War Register” having brought the question of increased employment of women to the front, on April 17 the workers’ national committee called a national conference of trade unions with women members and other women’s labor organizations at which the chief resolution demanded “that as it is imperative in the interests of the highest patriotism that no emergency action be allowed unnecessarily to depress the standard of living of the workers or the standard of working conditions, adequate safeguards must be laid down for any necessary transference or substitution of labor.” The safeguards outlined included membership in the appropriate trade union as a prerequisite for war service, “equal pay for equal work,” no war employment at less than a living wage, maintenance with training where necessary, preference being given in this to unemployed women who were normally wage earners, and reinstatement of the displaced men at the end of the war, with, at the same time, “guaranteed employment” to the discharged women.

The “War Register” did not, after all, prove to be of much importance in the extension of women’s employment. Though 33,000 women registered within a fortnight, and 110,714 during the whole period of registration, up to the middle of September, jobs were found for only 5,511 of them,[74] because, it was said, they lacked the necessary skill to fill the vacancies for which they were wanted.[75]

Much more effective than the war register was the work of the interdepartmental committee of the Home Office and the Board of Trade appointed in November, 1915, “to consider the question of utilizing to the full the reserve of women’s labor.”[76] The committee worked principally through local committees, which were at work in thirty-seven towns in November, 1916. The members of these committees were “chosen for their interest in women’s employment,” and included employers, employes and representatives of such societies as the Young Women’s Christian Association and the Women’s Cooperative Guild. An officer of the local employment exchange acted as secretary of each such committee, and representatives of the Home Office and the Board of Trade attended its meetings “in a consultative capacity.”

The work of the committees varied according to local needs, and included efforts to keep up the supply of women in their normal occupations as well as to secure substitutes for men’s work. In several textile towns a shortage of workers in the mills was relieved by securing the services of women formerly occupied, who were now living at home. In one town enough women were obtained by a house to house canvass to restart 400 looms. An appeal for women workers placed in the Glasgow trams brought good results. In places where there were many unemployed or unoccupied women the local committee tried to persuade some of them to migrate to places needing additional labor. In Cambridge, for instance, several meetings were held for this purpose and a loan fund for traveling expenses was raised.

Some of the most important work of the local committees was done in munition centers where it was necessary to bring in women workers. In such places, members of the committee met the strangers on arrival, took them to suitable lodgings, and “initiated schemes for their welfare outside the factory.” In Gloucester, where, the committee investigated lodgings for 2,000 women, it was entrusted by the Ministry of Munitions with establishing a temporary hostel for women for whom lodgings could not be found.

The committees were active in various other forms of “welfare work.” They arranged a conference of “welfare workers,” and fostered the introduction of factory “canteens.” The Woolwich committee started a club and recreation ground for the women employes of the great arsenal, and a nursery for the children of employed mothers.

Several towns reported “active efforts,” including conferences with employers, on the substitution of women for men. Interesting work of this kind was done in Bristol where a number of unemployed women were persuaded to train for “men’s work” in the shoe trade.

The next effort by the two departments was a joint appeal, in March, 1916, to employers to keep up production by taking on women. Noting that there were already complaints of a labor shortage and of idle plants, the appeal continued:

There is one source, and one only, from which the shortage can be made good—that is the great body of women who are at present unoccupied or engaged only in work not of an essential character. Many of these women have worked in factories and have already had an industrial training—they form an asset of immense importance to the country and every effort must be made to induce those who are able to come to the assistance of the country in this crisis. Previous training, however, is not essential; since the outbreak of war women have given ample proof of their ability to fill up the gaps in the ranks of industry and to undertake work hitherto regarded as men’s.[77]

Concerted action by employers was necessary to reorganize their work so as to use the maximum number of women and to let the local employment exchange know their exact requirements for women. The Home Office, the Board of Trade and the factory inspectors would give all the help in their power in making any such rearrangements. “We are confident that the women of the country will respond to any call that may be made, but the first step rests with the employers—to reorganize their work and to give the call.”

By July, 1916, the Board of Trade had established “an information bureau for the collection and circulation of information as to the replacement of male by female labor,” and soon after, again cooperating with the Home Office, it issued a series of “Pamphlets on the Substitution of Women for Men in Industry,” describing branches of work which were considered suitable by the factory inspectors and in which women were successfully employed. The twenty-seven little pamphlets covered trades as far out of women’s ordinary field as brick making, “oil seed and feeding cake,” leather tanning and currying and flour, as well as the more usual clothing and cotton trades. Under each trade were enumerated the processes on which women had been substituted for men, opportunities for training, and any relaxation of the factory acts, or of trade union rules which favored their employment. The results of this propaganda by the Home Office and the Board of Trade have nowhere been exactly estimated, but whether due to it, or to the necessities of the labor situation, or to both, it was soon followed by a marked increase in the number of women doing men’s work.

In September, 1916, the War Office took a hand in the propaganda. Its contribution was a large illustrated pamphlet listing occupations on which women were successfully employed. The purpose of the book was primarily to guide the administrators of the conscription act and to reduce the number of exemptions from military service on the grounds of industrial indispensability. Incidentally, it was “offered as a tribute to [women’s] effective contribution to the Empire in its hour of need.” It was much criticised because of the lack of discrimination shown in recommending certain kinds of work. It would seem that the heavy lifting involved or the disagreeable nature of the surroundings made such work as loading coal, planks and miscellaneous freight, moving coke and beer barrels, handling heavy steel bars, stoking and the removal of leather from dipping beds entirely unsuitable for women. But much of the work pictured, such as reaping, the care of horses, driving a steam roller and bakery work, though far removed from the usual lines of “women’s work,” did not seem to be objectionable. Still other occupations, where little strength and considerable skill were required, for instance, piano finishing and tuning, making ammunition boxes, modeling artificial teeth, repairing railway carriage seats and the preparation of soldiers’ dinners, would seem positively desirable additions to the field of women’s work.

The most ambitious of the government’s attempts to keep up the essential industries of the country under war conditions was the “National Service Department,” created early in 1917. It commandeered a hotel for its headquarters, and assembled a large staff. Through this department it was planned to secure the enrollment of all persons of working age, who were then to be transferred to “trades of national importance,” if not already so employed. Volunteers to go wherever they were assigned were first called for, and as the response was only slight, conferences with employers and employes were begun to find out what men various firms could spare, and to arrange for their transference to essential war work by the “Substitution Officers” of the Department. The duplication of the work of the employment exchanges is evident. Enrollment and transference were to be purely voluntary, though among the labor groups there were murmurings that the scheme was but a prelude to industrial conscription. But in April the plan was called a “fiasco,” and it was alleged that only a few hundred placements had actually been made.[78] In August, however, the department was reorganized and its purpose was stated to be that of coordinating to the best advantage the labor power of the nation rather than of acting as an employment agency.

In the winter of 1917 a “Woman’s Section” had been set up by the “Director of National Service” in charge of two women well known for their interest in the problems of women’s work, Mrs. A. J. Tennant and Miss Violet Markham, of whom it was said that they had been “asked to bring order out of chaos at the eleventh hour.”[79] The principal achievements of the women’s section were the formation of the “Waacs” for work behind the lines in France, which has been previously described, and also a moderate sized “land army” of women for agricultural work. An effort to carry through another registration of women for war work does not seem to have been particularly successful.

Other Measures to Increase Substitution—Trade
and Commerce

The chief governmental reports covering nonindustrial lines of work are those of the “Shops Committee” and the “Clerical and Commercial Employments Committee,” both formed in the spring and reporting in the fall of 1915. The former stated that it was organized to see how Lord Kitchener’s demand for “more men, and yet more men” could be met by releasing men employed in stores. In the judgment of the committee very few men needed to be retained, except in the heavier branches of the wholesale trade. The committee distributed circulars to shopkeepers throughout the country asking how many men could be released for the army and calling attention to the emergency. A large meeting of representatives of the unions and the employers’ associations was held in London and fifty-five local meetings for the trade through the country, at which resolutions were passed pledging those present “to do everything possible” to substitute women for men. “What we feel we have done,” said the committee, in summing up its work, “is to bring home to shopkeepers in England and Wales the necessity (and the possibility) of rearranging their business so as to release more men for service with the Colours.”

The other committee, on “Clerical and Commercial Employments,” was formed to work out a plan for “an adequate supply of competent substitutes” for the “very large number of men of military age” still found in commercial and clerical work. The committee estimated that 150,000 substitutes must be secured, and that they must be drawn mainly from the ranks of unoccupied women without previous clerical experience. It recommended the securing of such women from among friends and relatives of the present staffs, the starting of one and two months’ emergency training courses by the education authorities and the placement of the trained women through cooperation with the local employment exchanges. The committee went on record in favor of the reinstatement of the enlisted men after the war, and meanwhile “equal pay” for the women substitutes. It brought the need of substitution before the various commercial and professional associations whose members made use of clerical help.

Campaign for Substitution
in Agriculture

Propaganda efforts in agriculture were numerous, but judging from the comparatively small increase in the number of women workers, they were relatively less successful than those in industry and trade. In the minds of both farmers and country women as well as in the public mind, women’s work on the land was usually associated with backward communities, seasonal gangs and a low class of worker. Such prejudice was overcome largely by the work of educated women on the farms. The large number of employers in comparison with the number of workers, and the reluctance of the farmers to make use of the employment exchanges, are mentioned as other handicaps to agricultural substitution.[80] The failure to raise wages materially or to improve living conditions was also not an unimportant factor in holding back the movement of women workers to the land.

In 1915 the Board of Agriculture started a movement for the formation of “women’s war agricultural” or “farm labor” committees. In the spring of 1916 the Board of Trade joined the Board of Agriculture in the work. The committees were supposed to cooperate with the war agricultural committees of men which had been formed in each county, but the connection was considered often to be less close than was desirable. The women’s committees were made up of “district representatives,” who, in turn, worked through local committees, or “village registrars” or both. In the late autumn of 1916 there were sixty-three county committees, 1,060 “district representatives” and over 4,000 “village registrars.” The Board of Agriculture formed a panel of speakers for meetings, and the Board of Trade appointed women organizers for various parts of the country. Local meetings to rouse enthusiasm were followed by a house-to-house canvass in which women were urged for patriotic motives to enroll for whole or part time work. The village registrar then arranged for employment of the women listed either through the local employment exchange or as they heard of vacancies. The women were told that “every woman who helps in agriculture during the war is as truly serving her country as the man who is fighting in the trenches or on the sea.” Each registrant was entitled to a certificate, and after thirty days’ service might wear a green baize armlet marked with a scarlet crown.