The employers realised the seriousness of the crisis, not only for themselves but for their workers, and strained every nerve, showing great resource and adaptability in the process, to keep things going and prevent the dismissal of their staff. Two short extracts from the report may be taken as typical:

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'The firms in their own deep anxiety almost without exception showed much concern for their workers, and did their utmost to prevent the unexpected blow falling the heaviest on shoulders least able to bear it.' . . . 'One firm in the darkest days, who told me that they were 'done, killed dead," were yet considering whether they could not utilise the factory kitchen to make bread for the displaced workers when hunger threatened. When the rush of Government orders came and unemployment ceased, the women showed an equally fine spirit. They worked enormously long hours in alternating day and night shifts without a murmur of complaint. They were too absorbed in their work and its objects "for the soldiers and sailors" to think of themselves. The patriotic spirit in which the work was done was indicated by such remarks as, "We would not work like this at any other time."

And yet another element leading to a better mutual understanding may be a result of recent industrial developments. In munition work, and in other kinds of engineering, as well as in fruit-picking and harvesting, etc., men and women, who in ordinary life are members of the capitalist class, have during the last few months been doing industrial work. Their new experience will have given them an insight into the labour point of view, which they could hardly have acquired in any other way. One or two instances may be quoted. A gentleman, over military age, working on a night shift in a munition factory, was white with indignation because he and his fellow-workmen were accused of being slackers and wilfully limiting output, when the truth was that they had been held up between 2 and 4 a.m. by the non-supply of the material necessary for their labour. Again, a group of university women undertook the gathering of raspberries on a fruit farm. They agreed to pick the fruit at d. a pound. They were required to buy their food at a canteen provided by the

employer and at prices under his sole control.

At the end of a week, instead of having anything to receive, the balance of the account was against them. They know more now as to where the shoe pinches the industrial woman than years of previous study could have taught them.

It can hardly be doubted that the experiences just quoted, which could be paralleled by hundreds all over the country, will enable large numbers of intelligent men and women belonging to the capitalist classes to understand and express to others the problems of labour more or less from the labour point of view. It should lead to greater power to understand one another and a greater desire to remove removable grievances. It may be asked, Is any similar process taking place among the working classes? Not certainly to so large an extent, but the comradeship in the trenches and in the workshop must surely have had some good effect in this direction also. It must be remembered to what a very large extent the press, and current literature generally, express the capitalist point of view. The employing class is much more articulate than the employed. They can and do constantly put their own point of view before the public. It is a much more urgent demand for the moment that the point of view of the workman should find expression; and this is probably secured, to a far larger extent than before the war, by the industrial experiences of nonindustrial men and women during the war.

Another change which will leave a lasting mark upon professional and industrial conditions is the degree to which the military needs of the nation have rendered it necessary to make use of the professional and industrial capacities of women. When English women doctors in September 1914 offered to take out a hospital unit to France officered entirely by women, they were refused recognition by the British Red Cross, and had therefore to place themselves under the French Red Cross. These ladies did such fine practical work for our wounded soldiers that in March 1915 Surgeon-General Sir Alfred Keogh put them in charge of a large military hospital in London of 520 beds, and said he would gladly put them in charge of a hospital of 1000 beds if they would consent to undertake it. The British Red Cross no longer refuses to recognise hospitals under the control of women doctors.

They have been up against the real thing,' and know now that all skilled aid available should be not only accepted but welcomed, so as to relieve so far as may be the inevitable sufferings of our soldiers. The shortage of doctors at home has opened many professional posts to women from which, down to 1914, they had been rigorously excluded. The London School of Medicine for Women finds itself under the necessity of increasing its accommodation for students by nearly 50 per cent. In 1900 the average entry was 35, rising later to 60. In the current year 110 new students entered the school.

A similar change is taking place in the industrial world. Down to the present year women, speaking generally, have been excluded from the skilled trades. The trade unionists explain that they do not object to the competition of women because they are women, but because they are so frequently used by employers to provide cheap labour and to undercut men. It should be fully recognised that the trade unionists have done a valuable national service in building up, by years of effort and self-sacrifice, a rate of wages which represents a reasonably good standard of living, and that it would be a national misfortune seriously to lower the rate thus laboriously secured. But the question arises whether they would not have done better by taking the women along with them, by admitting them to their unions and extending the hand of brotherhood to them. According to their own showing, they fear the cupidity of employers who would use the women as a means of lowering the wages of men. But by the very action of the trade unions, in thrusting the women out of the skilled trades and reducing the general level of their wages, the difference between the cost to the employer of men's and women's labour is increased, and thus the temptation to the employer to supplant male by female labour is increased also.*

That in the richest country in the world large numbers of women should be normally in receipt of less than subsistence wages is not only a scandal, it represents a serious

Some unions have already altered their rules since the beginning of the war and have admitted women to membership, e.g. the National Union of Railwaymen and the Railway Clerks Association.

national danger. These women must be ill-nourished and consequently suffering from low vitality. That this is so is proved by the figures regarding sickness among working women furnished by the Insurance Act. The sum required to provide sickness benefit for women is far beyond anything which was allowed for by actuarial calculation. Even apart from the moral problems suggested by such a condition of things, the increased temptations to drink and other lapses, how is the nation to secure a healthy and vigorous childhood if large numbers of mothers are underfed and habitually below par? The waste of infant life now going on is far larger than it ought to be. It is reckoned to amount to at least 80,000 a year; and, if pre-natal deaths are taken into account, this number may probably be doubled. In comparison with these figures, even the tremendous and tragic loss of life in the war (roughly 120,000 up to the end of 1915) is numerically less important.

The experience of women's industrial capacity gained during the war should put new power into the hands of those who for years have been studying, almost with despair, the problem of the sweated woman wage-earner. Women have shown a very high degree of industrial efficiency in the new work in which they have been engaged; they have done well not merely in the mechanical feeding of automatic machines but in work which requires a high degree of technical skill. About the middle of November almost every newspaper broke out into articles in praise of the industrial efficiency of women in munition work. Some of these articles tell a tale which appears almost too good to be true. But the prevalent notion that a woman in a workshop can only perform automatic tasks, requiring neither strength nor skill, should have received its death-blow; except that, as Carlyle said, things often go on living long after their brains have been knocked out. While it is probably desirable to take a considerable pinch of salt with many of the articles referred to (some of them stated, for instance, that one woman can do the work of two men), it is safe to take the evidence of the well-known technical journal The Engineer' as affording proof that, given opportunities of training, women can and do acquire a high standard of skill and efficiency:

'There is a widespread idea that the only machines which women can work are automatic or semi-automatic tools with which it is impossible to make mistakes. This idea is being daily disproved in the factory to which we have referred above, where some most delicate operations necessitating the exercise of great skill and high intelligence are being performed. We need only mention one case, but it will appeal to every mechanical engineer. In a certain screwing operation it was customary, before the employment of women, to rough the thread out with the tool and then to finish it off with taps. Some trouble having arisen owing to the wearing of the taps, the women of their own initiative did away with the second operation and are now accurately chasing the threads to gauge with the tool alone. This is work of which any mechanic might feel proud. . . . In fact it may be stated with absolute truth that women have shown themselves perfectly capable of performing operations which hitherto have been exclusively carried out by men' ('The Engineer,' Aug. 20, 1915).

There can be little doubt that the experience gained of women's industrial efficiency during the war will have the effect of putting an end to their exclusion from the skilled trades. This in itself will give a great lift to the industrial status of women. The practical problem will be to raise this without lowering the industrial status of men. To use and develop the powers and capabilities of all its citizens, whether men or women, should be the aim of every civilised state. At present women have not only been excluded from what are known as men's trades, they have also been kept out, in a large degree, from what are universally known as women's trades, such as catering, housekeeping and cooking. The disgraceful waste which has characterised the administration of the training camps for soldiers is largely due to the fact that women have not been put to do their own job. If the necessary war economies teach us a truer national economy, for use in peace as well as war, namely, the desirability of giving to every individual a chance of doing the best work which nature and training has fitted him or her for, a new illustration will have been given of the power which has been granted to man to wrest a soul of goodness from things evil.

M. G. FAWCETT.

Vol. 225.-No, 446.

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