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Title: Women and War Work

Author: Helen Fraser

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WOMEN AND WAR WORK

by

HELEN FRASER

G. Arnold Shaw
New York

1918







   "No easy hopes or lies
   Shall bring us to our goal,
   But iron sacrifice
   Of body, will, and soul.
   There is but one task for all--
   For each one life to give.
   Who stands if freedom fall?
   Who dies if England live?"

          Rudyard Kipling in "For All We Have and Are."



[Illustration: A FEW SHELLS]



    DEDICATED TO MOTHER, ANNE, AND THE BOYS.




CONTENTS


Chapter

    1. THE SPIRIT OF WOMEN

    2. ORGANIZATION AND ITS PITFALLS

    3. HOSPITALS--RED CROSS--V.A.D.

    4. BRINGING BLIGHTY TO THE SOLDIERS--HUTS, COMFORTS, ETC.

    5. WOMAN-POWER FOR MAN-POWER

    6. WOMEN AND MUNITIONS

    7. THE PROTECTION OF WOMEN IN INDUSTRY

    8. "THE WOMEN'S LAND ARMY"

    9. WAR SAVINGS--THE MONEY BEHIND THE GUNS

   10. FOOD PRODUCTION AND CONSERVATION

   11. THE W.A.A.C.'s

   12. WAR AND MORALS

   13. WHAT THE WAR HAS DONE FOR WOMEN

   14. RECONSTRUCTION




ILLUSTRATIONS


   A FEW SHELLS (Frontispiece)

   MISS EDITH CAVELL

   DR. ELSIE INGLIS

   FIRST AMBULANCE ON DUTY IN THE FIRST ZEPPELIN RAID

   "SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE"

   CLEANING A LOCOMOTIVE

   WOMEN AS CARRIAGE CLEANERS

   WINDOW CLEANERS

   STEAM ROLLER DRIVER

   TRAINING WOMEN AS AEROPLANE BUILDERS

   RIVETTING ON BOILERS

   FACING BOILER BLUE FLANGES

   ROUGH TURNING JACKET FORGING OF 6-POUNDER HOTCHKISS GUN

   HOW TO DRESS FOR MUNITION MAKING

   BACK TO THE LAND

   WOMEN TACKLE A STRONG MAN'S PROBLEM

   SIX REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD BUY WAR SAVINGS CERTIFICATES

   "FOR YOUR CHILDREN"

   BOOK MARKS ISSUED BY THE N.W.S.C.

   W.A.A.C.'s ON THE MARCH

   WOMEN OF THE RESERVE AMBULANCE

   POLICE WOMEN






FOREWORD


"Our War Loan from England"--That is the heading under which were
grouped the nine lectures given by Miss Helen Fraser at Vassar
College. England has borrowed a billion or so of dollars from us, but
the obligation is not all her way. The moral strength of our cause is
immeasurably increased by her alliance, and the spectacle of a great
democracy organizing itself for complete unity in a world crisis is
worth an incalculable amount to us. Such a vision Miss Fraser has
brought to her wider public among the women of America in this notable
book. Of her personal influence let me quote again from the Vassar
students' newspaper:

"Miss Fraser, here's to you! We don't need to say that we liked Miss
Fraser and everything she had to tell us. The way we followed her
around, and packed every room in which she spoke, out to the doors
and sometimes up to the ceiling, is proof enough of that. And even
the fact that it was Sunday could not check our outburst of song
in the Soap Palace as Miss Fraser departed. Her gracious speech of
appreciation left with us the question not phrased by her before, but
certainly in the minds of every one of us who had been hearing her:
'What are _we_ going to do?'"

An unsolicited testimonial, this, of the most genuine kind. The
College students of today are not easily coaxed into lecture rooms
outside of their own classes.

I believe that Miss Fraser's book will be read with the same eager
attention that followed her first speeches in this country as she
began her work of educating American women to a sense of what the
mobilization of the entire citizen army of a democracy must mean.

Nor will her influence cease there. Miss Fraser's book is a piece of
history; and history is action. The wonderful work of the women of
England is already emulated by the splendid efforts along many lines
of the women in our country. The new lessons of co-operation and of
selfless devotion, learned from this book will, I confidently predict,
within a few months, be translated into action by the Women's War
Service Committees in every state of our land.

And the greatest lesson of all is that women and men must work
together in this new world. I count it an honour--being a man--to be
asked to introduce Miss Fraser in this way to the American public.
For my part I would have no separate women's division, except such
as concerns the tasks exclusively for women. I would have women side
by side with men in every division of labour, working out the task
with equal fidelity, equal authority, and equal rewards. One of the
results of this amazing age is going to be the new comprehension,
understanding, and sympathy of the one sex for the other.

                                                   H.N. MacCRACKEN.
  Vassar College,
  Poughkeepsie, New York.
  January 11, 1918.

       *       *       *       *       *




The women of all the allies are one in this great struggle. Our hopes
and our fears, our anxieties and our prayers, our visions and our
desolations, are the same.

Our work is the same task of supporting and sustaining the energies of
our men in arms and of our nations at home. All the allied women know
more of each other than they ever did before, and this is all to the
good.

The task of women in this struggle and in the reconstruction to come
after, are great tasks, and the world needs in every country not only
the wisdom and knowledge of its own women but the strength in them
that comes from being one of a great world-wide group and conscious of
the unity of all women.

Anything that can help to that unity and understanding seems to me of
great value, and this record is written for American women in the hope
it may be of some small service.

                                                               H.F.
  December 25, 1917.

       *       *       *       *       *




THE SPIRIT OF WOMEN


    "I have no fear nor shrinking. I have seen death so often that
    it is not strange or fearful to me.... I thank God for this
    ten weeks' quiet before the end. Life has always been hurried
    and full of difficulty. This time of rest has been a great
    mercy. They have all been very kind to me here. But this I
    would say, standing as I do in view of God and eternity, I
    realise that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred
    or bitterness towards anyone."

                                     --EDITH CAVELL's last message.

       *       *       *       *       *




CHAPTER I

THE SPIRIT OF WOMEN

TO WOMEN

  Your hearts are lifted up, your hearts
    That have foreknown the utter price,
  Your hearts burn upward like a flame
    Of splendour and of sacrifice.

  For you too, to battle go,
    Not with the marching drums and cheers,
  But in the watch of solitude
    And through the boundless night of fears.

  And not a shot comes blind with death,
    And not a stab of steel is pressed
  Home, but invisibly it tore,
    And entered first a woman's breast.

                          From LAWRENCE BINYON's "For the Fallen."


The spirit of women in this greatest of world struggles cannot, in
its essence, be differentiated from the spirit of men. They are one.
The women of our countries in the mass feel about the issues of this
struggle just as the men do; know, as they do, why we fight, and like
them, are going on to the end. The declarations of our Government as
to conditions for peace are ours, too, and when we vote, we shall show
the spirit of women is clearly and definitely on the side of freedom,
justice and democracy.

Our actions speak louder than any words can ever do, and the record
of our women's sacrifices and work stand as great silent witnesses to
our spirit. There is nothing we have been asked to do that we have not
done and we have initiated great pieces of work ourselves. The hardest
time was in the beginning when we waited for our tasks, feeling as
if we beat stone walls, reading our casualty lists, receiving our
wounded, caring for the refugees, doing everything we could for the
sailor and soldier and his dependants, helping the women out of work,
but feeling there was so much more to do behind the men--so very much
more--for which we had to wait. We did all the other things faithfully
and, so far as we could, prepared ourselves and when the tasks came,
we volunteered in tens of thousands, every kind of woman, young, old,
middle-aged, rich and poor, trained and untrained, and today we have
1,250,000 women in industry directly replacing men, 1,000,000 in
munitions, 83,000 additional women in Government Departments, 258,300
whole and part-time women workers on the land. We are recruiting women
for the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps at the rate of 10,000 a month and
we have initiated a Women's Royal Naval Service. We have had the help
of about 60,000 V.A.D.'s (Voluntary Aid Detachment of Red Cross) in
Hospitals in England and France, and on our other fronts, in addition
to our thousands of trained nurses.

The women in our homes carry on--no easy task in these days of
shortages in food and coal and all the other difficulties, saving,
conserving, working, caring for the children, with so many babies
whose fathers have never seen them, though they are one to two years
old, and so many babies who will never see their fathers.

Some of our women have died on active service, doctors, nurses and
orderlies. Our most recent and greatest loss is in the death of Dr.
Elsie Inglis, the initiator of the Scottish Women's Hospitals, who
died on November 26th, three days after she had safely brought back
her Unit from South Russia, which had been nursing the Serbians
attached to the Russian army.

One who was with her at the end writes, "It was a great triumphant
going forth." There was no hesitation, no fear. As soon as she knew
she was going, that the call had come, with her wonted decision of
character, she just readjusted her whole outlook. "For a long time I
_meant_ to live," she said, "but now I know I am going. It is so nice
to think of beginning a new job over there! But I would have liked to
have finished one or two jobs here first!"

She told us the story of the breaking of their moorings as they lay in
the river in a great storm of wind and of how that breaking had saved
them from colliding with another ship. "I asked," she said, "what had
happened." Someone said "Our moorings broke." I said, "No, a hand cut
them!" Then, after a moment's silence, with an expression in face and
voice which it is utterly impossible to convey, she added, "That same
Hand is cutting my moorings now, and I am going forth!" The picture
rose before you of an unfettered ship going out to the wide sea and of
the great untrammelled, unhindered soul moving majestically onwards.

[Illustration: MISS EDITH CAVELL]

[Illustration: DR. ELSIE INGLIS]

There was no fear, no death! How could there be. She never thought of
her own work--she knew unity. "You did magnificently," was said to her
within an hour of her going. With all her wonted assurance and with a
touch of pride she answered, "My Unit did magnificently."

Her loss is irreparable to us, but there is no room for sorrow. She
leaves us triumph, victory, and peace.

Edith Cavell's name is another that shines upon our roll of
honour--the same serene great spirit--no thought of self, but only a
great love and desire to serve--and a great fearlessness. Her message,
before she went out alone at dawn to her death, which added another
stain to the enemy's pages dark with blood, was the message of one who
saw the eternal verities, the things worth living and dying for.

Our men's Roll of Honor is a heavy Roll. We have lost in killed and
permanently out of the army, a million men and over 75 per cent of our
casualties are our own Island losses. Our women in every village and
in every city street have lost husbands, fathers, brothers, lovers and
friends. From every rank of life our men have died, the agricultural
labourer, the city clerk, the railway man, the miner, the engineer,
the business man, the poet, the journalist, the author, the artist,
the scientist, the heirs of great names, many of the most brilliant
of our young men. We comb out our mines and shipyards, and factories,
ceaselessly for more men. Our boys at eighteen go into the army.
From eighteen to forty-one every man is liable for service. Our
Universities have only a handful of men in them and these are
the disabled, the unfit, and men from other countries. Oxford and
Cambridge Colleges are full of Officers' Training Corps men. The
Examination Schools and the Town Hall at Oxford are Hospitals, and
Oxford and Cambridge streets are full of the blue-clad wounded, as
are so many of our cities. We are a nation at war, and at war for over
three years and everywhere and in everything we are changed.

In these years we women have lived always with the shadow of the war
over us--it never leaves us, night or day. We do not live completely
where we are in these days. A bit of us is always with our men on our
many fields of war. We live partly in France and Flanders, in Italy,
in the Balkans, in Egypt and Palestine and Mesopotamia, in Africa,
with the lonely white crosses in Gallipoli, with our men who guard us
sleeping and waking, going down to the sea in ships and under the sea,
fighting death in submarines and mines, and with those who in the air
are the eyes and the winged cavalry of our forces.

We mourn our dead, not sadly and hopelessly, though life for many of
us is emptier forever, and for many so much harder, and we wear very
little mourning. We mourn silently, and with a sure faith that our
men's supreme sacrifice is not in vain. "Greater love hath no man
than this, that he lay down his life for his friend." The little white
crosses of our graves symbolize the faith for which they die.

The message of our soldier poets who have been created by this war
and have written immortal verse, and many of whom have died, is the
message of men who have seen through the veils of time into eternity,
who are free of life and death, whom nothing can hurt, "if it be not
the Destined Will."

The veils of time grow thin in these days to those of us who take
Death into our reckoning all the time. We think of our men gone on
ahead as eternally young.

  "Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
    Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
  There is music in the midst of desolation
    And a glory that shines before our tears.

         *       *       *       *       *

  "They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old
    Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
  At the going down of the Sun and in the morning
    We will remember them."

We know, too, though we do not often define it, that the forces we
women fight in the enemy are the forces that have left women out in
world affairs.

Germany is the Fatherland, never, it is significant, the Motherland
as our little Islands are, and its mad dream of militarism and
_Weltmacht_ is the dream of men who deny any constructive part to
women in the great affairs of life. The hopes of all the democracies
are bound up in this struggle and its issue, and there is no real
place in the world for the true service and genius and work of women,
any more than for that of the mass of men, save in democracy. We mean
so much in these days by democracy. It seems to be indefinable in its
larger meanings. It is not a system of government, but, on the other
hand, no country can be called democratic that has not established
political freedom, and no country is truly democratic in which such
freedom is only in name, and its women are not included or a group
rule or the demagogue and the worst kind of politician hold sway.

Democracy is not here till all serve and all are given opportunities
so that they have something of value to give to their country and
to the world. Democracy is the ever changing, ever developing, ever
creative spirit of man expressing itself in his institutions and
systems of government and relationships.

Its quarrel with our enemies, who would impose on the mass of men
cast-iron systems, and would set up state idols to be worshipped as
higher than the Conscience and spirit of man, is so profound and goes
so deeply into knowledge and feelings that are too big for words, that
the soldier who never tries to express it but goes out and drills and
works and disciplines himself that he may present his body as a living
shield for the faith that is within him, and the woman who works with
him and behind him, healing and giving, silently, are perhaps wisest
of all.

It is no time for words only, though right words are mighty powers,
but for living faith in deeds and the spirit of the women of all our
allied countries is swift to answer the challenge--by their works
shall ye know them.

The spirit of our women shows, like that of the French women who
tend their farms, keep their shops, work ceaselessly everywhere, most
clearly and wonderfully in their work. In our hundreds of hospitals
night and day, they care for the wounded and the sick and the dying,
bringing consolation, love, skill, heroism, patience and all fine
things as their gift. From myriads of homes they pour forth to
their daily toil, carrying on the work of the country, educating the
children, taking the place of their men on the railways, the factory,
the workshop, the banks and offices. In the munition works, in the
shipyards, in the engineering shops, in the aeroplane sheds, they
work in tens of thousands--risking life and health in some cases,
but thinking little of it, compared with what their men are doing,
knee-deep in snow and mud and water in the trenches. "Is the work
heavy?" you ask. "Not so heavy as the soldiers'." "Are the hours
long?" "Six days and nights in the trenches are longer." "We are going
to win and you are going to help us"--and the munition girl and the
land girl and the workers answer not only with cheers and words but
answer with shells and ships and aeroplanes and submarines and food
produced and conserved, and in industrial tasks done by men and women
together.

The enemy airships and aeroplanes bomb our cities but our girls "carry
on"--no telephone girl has left her post--there have been no panics in
our workshops.

And the spirit of the Waac--the khaki girl--is the spirit of her
brother.

On one occasion in France in an air raid, enemy bombs came very near
some girl signallers. They behaved splendidly and someone suggested
it should be mentioned in the Orders of the Day. "No," said the
Commanding Officer, "we don't mention soldiers in orders for doing
their duty,"--and that tribute to their attitude is deserved and the
right one.

And, like our men, we carry on cheerfully, knowing there is only one
possible end, victory. We fight for the sanctity of the given word,
for honour, for the rights of individuals and nations, for the ideals
that have preserved humanity from barbarism, for the right of service,
for the salvation of common humanity.

More, we women work with a feeling in our hearts that we, who bear
and cherish life, and to whom its destruction is most terrible, have
a great work to do and a great part to play in the settlement of the
problem of war in the future.

The transmutation of the struggles of mankind from the physical to the
spiritual, the solution of national and international problems, the
solution of all the riddles of life that demand an answer or man's
conquest, cannot be done by man alone. It is our task also and to
the great work of building up a new world after we emerge from this
crucible of fire in which the souls of the nations are being tested,
the spirit of women has much to bring.




ORGANIZATION AND ITS PITFALLS

  "The more they gazed, the more their wonder grew
  That one small head could carry all she knew."




CHAPTER II

ORGANIZATION AND ITS PITFALLS


There are people who declare that the winning of this war depends on
organization alone. That is palpably untrue. Good organization can do
much. The greatest thing in all organizations is the living flame that
makes grouping real--the selfless spirit of service that the fighting
man possesses and that is beyond all words of praise.

Talk to a soldier or a sailor, realize how he thinks and
feels about his ship, his battalion, his aircorps. He is
subordinated--selfless--disciplined. The secret of the good soldiers'
achievements and his greatness is selfless service and in our national
organizations behind him that same spirit is the one great thing that
counts.

If you have that as a foundation among your workers, organization is
easy.

We found, at the beginning of the war, a great tendency among women to
rush into direct war work. Masses of women wanted to leave work they
knew everything about to go and do work they knew nothing about.
One thing we have realized, that the trained and educated woman is
invaluable, that the best service you can render your country is to do
the work you know best and are trained for, if it is, as it frequently
is, important civic work. Another point, no younger woman should stop
her education or training--it is the greatest mistake possible. The
war is not over and even when it is, the great task of reconstruction
lies ahead and we want every trained woman we can get for that. Our
women are in Universities and Colleges in greater numbers than ever,
and more opportunities for education, in Medicine in particular have
been opened to them.

The trained woman makes the best worker in practically every
department and is particularly useful in organizing. A scheme that
is only indifferently good but, so far as it goes, is on right lines,
well organized and directed, will be more valuable and get far better
results than a perfect scheme badly organized and run. An organization
or a committee that has a woman as Chairman, President or Secretary,
who insists on running everything and deciding everything for herself,
is bound for disaster.

I should certainly place the will and ability to delegate authority
high up in the qualifications a good organizer must possess.

We cannot afford to have little petty jealousies, social, local, and
individual, on war committees or any other for that matter, but in
this big struggle, they are particularly petty and unworthy.

We have all met frequently the kind of person who tells you, "This
village will never work with that village," or "Mrs. This will never
work with Mrs. That. They never do"; and I always answer, "Isn't it
time they learned to, when their boys die in the trenches together,
why shouldn't they work together," and they always do when it is put
to them.

There is no difficulty in getting women to work together in our
country. We have a link in our Roll of Honor that is more unifying
than any words or arguments or appeals can be. Our women of every rank
of life are closely drawn together.

The appeal to women is to organize for National Service and to realize
that work of national importance is likely not to be at all important
work.

The women in important places in all our countries will be few in
proportion, but the struggle will be won in the Nation, as in the
Army, by the army of the myriads of faithful workers faithfully
performing tasks of drudgery and quiet service--and a realization of
this is the greatest need.

Sticking to the work is of supreme importance. We do not want people
who take up something with great enthusiasm and drop it in a few
months. Nothing is achieved by that.

The good organizer sees her workers do not "grow weary in well doing."

Another important work in organization is to prevent waste of
material, effort and money, by co-ordination whenever possible,
though I should say, as a broad principle, co-ordination should not
be carried to the point of merging together kinds of work that make
a different appeal for work and money and require different treatment
and knowledge and powers. The best results are reached by securing
concentration of appeal and organization on one big issue and getting
the work done by a group directly and keenly interested in the one big
thing and with enthusiasm for it and knowledge of it.

In the personnel of committees and their composition our women have
made it a definite policy to secure the appointment of women to all
Government and National Committees on which our presence would be
useful and on which we ought to be represented and we always prefer
committees of men and women together, unless it be for anything that
is distinctly better served by women's committees.

There is one pitfall in organization into which women fall more
readily than men in my experience. Our instinct as women is to want
to make everything perfect. We instinctively run to detail and to a
desire for absolute accuracy and perfection.

This is invaluable in many ways, but in organizing on a big scale
may be a serious fault. There must, of course, be method, order
and accuracy, but the great essential to secure in big things is
harmonious working--not to insist on a rigid sameness but to allow for
widely divergent views and attitudes and ways of doing things so long
as the essential rules are observed. We should not insist too much
on identity in the way of work of different places and districts.
In essentials--unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things,
charity--that might well be the wise organizer's motto.

The supplementing of governmental organization by national voluntary
organization is a great piece of work and in the beginning of the war,
and still, many of our organizations, voluntary or semi-official in
character, were of great service. The work of the Soldiers and Sailors
Families' Association is an example. The S. and S.F.A. had been
created in the South African War and in peace time and war time looked
after the dependants of the soldier and sailor. Its committees were
composed of men and women--and it administered voluntary funds and
later grants from the National Relief Fund, raised at the outbreak of
war.

When war broke out, all the Reservists were called up and our men
volunteered in tens of thousands. The pay offices of the army, being
small like everything else in our army, could not cope quickly with
the numbers of claims for allowances pouring in, but the S. and S.F.A.
stepped into the breach and looked after the dependants. It secured
vast numbers more of women in every town and village who visited every
dependant and looked after them. They advanced the allowances which
were paid back to them later--and this started in the first week of
the war. They gave additional grants in certain hard cases for rent,
sickness or in event of deaths in family at home. Every home was
visited and no dependant needed to be in distress or want--S. and
S.F.A. offices existed in every town and representatives in every
village and any difficulty or trouble could be brought to them. The
whole of this work is done voluntarily. In some cases workrooms were
started from which sewing and knitting for soldiers and sailors were
given to the dependents and paid for. It was not only the money and
practical help that was of great service--the S. and S.F.A. visitor to
the soldier's wife and mother brought sympathy and help and interest.

Another movement for soldiers and sailors dependents was the founding
of clubs for them in many towns. One hundred and thirty-five of these
clubs are linked up now in the United Services Clubs League. They are
bright, cheery rooms in which the women can find newspapers, books,
music, amusement, and opportunity to sew or knit comforts, can meet
their friends and talk.

The Royal Patriotic Fund was another semi-official organization which
was run voluntarily, gave grants at death of soldier or sailor and
administered pensions. It is now entirely merged in the Naval and
Military War Pensions Statutory Committee and local committees set
up in January, 1916, which administer all grants, pensions, wound
gratuities, etc., and looks after dependants.

Women sit on the Statutory Committee and there must be women members
on every County, Borough and City War Pensions Committee in our
country.

The organization of war charities is now in England controlled by the
War Charities Committee appointed by the Government in April, 1916.
The committee controls not only what could be strictly termed War
Charities, but all war agencies of any kind for which appeals for
funds are made to the public. These organizations must be registered
and approved by the committee, and their accounts must be open to
inspection and audit. This was a wise and necessary step, not so much
because of actual fraudulent appeals--there has been practically none
of that, but there was a certain amount of overlapping and of waste of
money, material and energy, and some very few organizations in which
an undue proportion of funds raised was absorbed in expenses. Comforts
for soldiers and prisoners of war parcels are also now co-ordinated
under two national committees.

The first work of registering Belgian refugees and of providing French
and Flemish interpreters was done by a voluntary organization--the
London Society for Women's Suffrage (a branch of N.U.W.S.S.), which
has always been notable for its admirable organization. It provided
150 interpreters for this work in a few days, and work was carried on
at all the London Centres from early morning till midnight. When the
Government took over the charge of Belgian refugees, the system of
registration used by the London Society was adopted without change by
them and the organizer in charge was taken over also and put in a very
responsible position at the War Refugees Committee's Headquarters.

The work of our Government Employment Exchanges (which were
established before the War by the Board of Trade) and are now under
the Ministry of Labour--has been supplemented by various Professional
Women's Bureaus, by the compiling of a Professional Women's Register,
secured through Universities, Colleges, Headmistresses' Association,
etc., and by the setting up of the Women's Service Bureau by the
London Society for Women Suffrage (N.U.W.S.S.). Various women's
organizations have established most valuable clearing houses for
voluntary workers in Scotland and England and Wales. The Women's
Service Bureau has dealt with 40,000 applications for voluntary and
paid work--mostly paid. Its interviewers take the greatest trouble to
place these applicants suitably, and to find out just what they can do
or would be good at doing.

Our biggest Government arsenal secured their first munition
supervisors through it--and the Government Departments, big firms,
factories, organizations, banks, workshops, institutions of any kind,
send to it for workers.

It not only finds these posts without charge--it is supported entirely
by voluntary contribution--but it has a loan and grant fund to enable
women and girls without money to pay for training and maintenance.

Its records and the letters in its flies provide reading that is
as absorbing as any novel, and it was one of the wise agencies that
realized the older woman had a place and could help as well as the
younger ones.

To find the person and the post and to put them together is its
fascinating and admirably done task.

The organization done by women in Britain has been notable and
admirable.

I can only touch on some of it and must leave out much, but it is
worth while noting that there has been very little overlapping in the
work. The total percentage of overlapping was estimated by the War
Charities Committee on their investigation at 10 per cent and of that
only a very small amount was due to women.




WOMEN HAVE SERVED OR ARE SERVING ON THE FOLLOWING GOVERNMENT
COMMITTEES.


Belgian Refugees' Committee. 1914.

Clerical and Commercial Occupation Committee, do (Scotland.) 1915.

Disabled Officers and Men.

Education After the War. April, 1916.

Educational Reform. (August, 1916.)

Food, Committee of Inquiry Into High Cost of--June, 1916.

Advisory Committee on Women in Industry. March, 1916.

Labor Commission to Deal with Industrial Unrest. (Ministry of Labor.)
June, 1917.

Munitions Central Labor Supply Committee.

Munitions, Arbitration Tribunals.

Munitions, Committee on the Supply and Organization of Women's Service
in Canteens, Hostels, Clubs, etc. December, 1916.

Naval and Military War Pensions Statutory Committee. January, 1916.

Nurses, Supply of--October, 1916.

Polish Victims' Relief Fund.

Prevention and Relief of Distress. 1914.

Professional Classes Sub-Committee.

Prisoners of War Help Committee.

Reconstruction Committee. (To advise the Government on the many
national problems which will arise at the end of the war.) 1916.

Shops: Committee of Inquiry, to Consider Conditions of Retail Trade to
Secure the Enlistment of Men. (November, 1915.)

Teachers' Salaries. Departmental Committee of Enquiry. June, 1917.

War Charities. April, 1916.

National War Savings Committee. April, 1916.


COMMITTEES EXCLUSIVELY COMPOSED OF WOMEN.

Committee, Report on Joint Standing Industrial Councils. 1917.

Women's Wages Committee. 1917.

Central Committee on Women's Employment. 1914.

Drinking Among Women, Committee of Enquiry. November, 1915.

There are also two women on the--

Executive Committee of National Relief Fund.

Ministry of Food has two women Co-Directors--

  Mrs. C.S. Peel
  Mrs. Pember Reeves




HOSPITALS--RED CROSS--V.A.D.

  "Come, ye blessed of my Father;
  I was sick and ye visited me."

                    --MATT., Chap. 25.


  "A lady with a lamp shall stand
  In the great history of the land,
  A noble type of good
  Heroic womanhood."

                    --H.W. LONGFELLOW, "To Florence Nightingale."




CHAPTER III

HOSPITALS--RED CROSS--V.A.D.


When war broke out on August 4, 1914, probably the only women in our
country who knew exactly how they could help, and would be used in the
war, were our nurses in the Navy and Army nursing services.

In the Army, Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service
had in it at that time about 280 members, matrons, sisters and staff
nurses, Miss Becher, R.R.C., being Matron-in-Chief for Military
Hospitals. The Q.A.I.M.N.S. had a large Reserve which was also
immediately called out and these nurses were used at once, six parties
being sent to France and Belgium by August 20th.

The Second Branch was the Territorial Force Nursing Service, which was
in 1914 eight years old. It was initiated by Miss Haldane and a draft
scheme of an establishment of nurses willing to serve in general
hospitals in the event of the Territorial Forces being mobilized, was
submitted at a meeting held in Miss Haldane's house, Sir Alfred Keogh,
Medical Director General, being present. This scheme was approved and
an Advisory Council appointed at the War Office.

The Matrons of the largest and most important nurse-training centres
in the Kingdom were appointed as principal matrons (unpaid) and to
them the success of this Force is largely due. They received the
applications of matrons, sisters and nurses willing to join, looked
after their references and submitted them, after approval by the Local
Committee, to the Advisory Council. To their splendid work was due the
ease of the vast mobilization of nurses when war broke out. There were
then 3,000 nurses on their rolls. On August 5th they were called out
and in ten days 23 Territorial General Hospitals in England, Wales and
Scotland were ready to receive the wounded and the nurses were also
ready.

Each hospital had 520 beds, but this accommodation was quite
inadequate after a few months of war, and the accommodation of
practically every hospital was increased to 1,000 to 3,000 beds and
many Auxiliary Hospitals had to be organized. By June, 1915, the
Territorial Nursing Staff was 4,000 in number and in Hospitals in
France and in Belgium and in clearing stations, there were over 400
Territorial Nurses as well as Imperial Nurses.

The Naval Nurses were about 70 in number with a Reserve, and their
Reserve was called up at once also, and they went to their various
Hospitals. The other two great organizations, the British Red Cross
and the order of St. John of Jerusalem, now working together through
the joint committee set up to administer the _Times_ Fund for the Red
Cross, which has reached over $30,000,000, had their schemes also. In
time of war they are controlled by the War Office and Admiralty. The
Red Cross had, since 1909, organized Voluntary Aid Detachments to
give voluntary aid to the sick and wounded in the event of war in home
territory. There were 60,000 men and women trained in transport work,
cooking, laundry, first aid and home nursing. St. John's ambulance had
the same system of ambulance workers and V.A.D.'s to call on.

As the war proceeded it was quite clear that the nursing staffs,
though we had secured 3,000 more trained nurses through the Red Cross
in the first few weeks of the war, would be quite inadequate, and it
was found necessary to use V.A.D.'s and to open V.A.D. Hospitals,
most of them being established in large private houses lent for the
purpose. Within nine months there were 800 of these at work in every
part of England, Scotland and Wales. The V.A.D.'s suffered a little
at first from confusion with the ladies who insisted on rushing off to
France after taking a ten day's course in first aid. We had suffered
a great deal from that kind of thing in the South African War and
were determined to have no repetition of it, so they were firmly and
decisively removed from France without delay.

[Illustration: FIRST AMBULANCE ON DUTY IN THE FIRST ZEPPELIN RAID ON
LONDON]

To get more trained nurses, rules were relaxed and the age limit
raised. Many nurses, retired and married, returned to work, but very
quickly it was perfectly clear our trained nurses were inadequate in
number for the great work before us, and in less than a year in most
hospitals every ward had one V.A.D. worker assisting who had been
nominated by her Commandant and County Director, and in March, 1915,
the Hospitals were asked by the Director General of the Army Medical
Service to train V.A.D.'s in large numbers as probationers, for
three or six months, to fit them for work under trained nurses.
Every possible woman, trained or partially trained, was mobilized and
thousands have been trained during the three years of war, and V.A.D.
members have been drafted to military and Red Cross Hospitals, abroad
and at home, in addition to doing the work of the V.A.D. Hospitals. A
V.A.D. Hospital with a hundred beds will have two trained nurses, and
all the other work is done by V.A.D.'s. The Commandant-in-Chief now
is Lady Ampthill. Dame Katharine Furse was Commandant-in-Chief until
quite recently, but is now head of the new Women's Royal Navy Service.

Many have gone to France and done distinguished work and there is no
body of women in our country who have done more faithful and useful
work than our V.A.D.'s, who nurse, cook and wash dishes, serve meals,
scrub the floors, look after the linen and do everything for the
comfort and welfare of our men, with a capacity, zeal and endurance
beyond praise. About 60,000 women have helped in this way. Our nurses
and V.A.D.'s have distinguished themselves at home and abroad.
They have been in casualty lists on all our fronts. They have been
decorated for bravery and for heroic work. The full value of all
they have done cannot yet be appraised. They have spent themselves
unceasingly in caring for our men. They have nursed them with shells
falling around. Hospitals have frequently been shelled and in one
case two nurses worked in a theatre, wearing steel helmets during the
bombardment, with patients who were under anaesthetics and could not
be moved. They have waited out beside men who could not be got in from
under shell fire of the enemy until darkness fell. Two V.A.D. nurses
in another raid saw to the removal of all their patients to cellars
and, while they themselves were entering the cellars after everyone
was safe, bombs fell upon the building they had just left and
completely demolished it. Some of our nurses have died of typhus. They
have been wounded in Hospitals and on Hospital Trains, and they have
done all their work as cheerfully and with the same high courage
as our men have. We have had helping us in our nursing numbers of
Canadian nurses, not only for the beautiful Canadian Hospital at
Beechborough Park, but for many other Hospitals in England and France,
and nurses from Australia and New Zealand.

We have had American nurses, also, but these will now be absorbed, as
needed, by the American Army in France.

The records of our Medical women in the war are among the very best.
The belief that nursing was woman's work but that medicine and surgery
were not, was dying before the war, but it existed, and it was the
war that gave it the final death blow. Immediately war broke out Dr.
Louisa Garrett Anderson, a daughter of our pioneer woman doctor, Dr.
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, and Dr. Flora Murray formed the Women's
Hospital Corps, a complete small unit and offered it to the British
Government. It was refused but accepted by the French Government,
and was established by them at Claridge's Hotel in Paris, where it
did admirable work. Its work aroused the interest and admiration of
the British Royal Army Medical Corps, and they were asked to form a
Hospital at Wimereux, which afterwards amalgamated with the R.A.M.C.
Later Sir Alfred Keogh established them in Endell Street, London,
where they have a Hospital of over 700 beds. The women surgeons and
doctors and staff are graded for purposes of pay in the same way as
men members of R.A.M.C.

In July, 1916, the War Office asked for the services of 80 medical
women for work at home and abroad, and later for 50 more.

The Women's Service League sent a unit to Antwerp which did some
excellent work, though it was there only a very short time. The
members of the unit were among the last to leave the city, escaping in
the last car to cross the bridge before it was blown up.

The work of the Scottish Women's Hospitals, organized by the Scottish
Federation of the Nation Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, and
initiated by Dr. Elsie Inglis, of Edinburgh, would require a volume
to themselves, and American women, who have given so generously and
so freely to them, know a great deal about their work. The first
unit went to Royaumont in France, and established itself at the old
Abbaye there. It stood from the beginning in the very first rank for
efficiency. A leading French expert, Chief of the Pasteur Laboratory
in Paris, speaking of this Hospital, said he had inspected hundreds
of military Hospitals, but not one which commanded his admiration so
completely as this. Another unit was sent to Troyes and was maintained
by the students of Newnham and Girton Colleges. Dr. Elsie Inglis's
greatest work began in April, 1915, when her third unit went to
Serbia, where she may he truly said to have saved the Serbian nation
from despair. The typhus epidemic had at the time of her arrival
carried off one-third of the Serbian Army Medical Corps, and the
epidemic threatened the very existence of the Serbian Army. She
organized four great Hospital Units, initiated every kind of needful
sanitary precaution, looked into every detail, regardless of her
own safety and comfort, hesitating at no task, however loathsome and
terrible. Her constant message to the Serbian Medical Headquarters
Staff was "Tell me where your need is greatest without respect to
difficulties, and we will do our best to help Serbia and her brave
soldiers."

Two nurses and one of the doctors died of typhus. Miss Margaret Neil
Fraser, the famous golfer, was one of those who died there, and many
beds were endowed in the Second Unit in her memory.

The Third Serbian Unit when on its way out was commandeered by Lord
Methuen at Malta for service among our own wounded troops, a service
they were glad to render. Later when the Germans and Austrians overran
Serbia, one of the Units retreated with the Serbian Army, but the
one in which Dr. Inglis was, remained at Kralijevo where she refused
to leave her Serbian wounded, knowing they would die without her
care. She was captured with her staff and, after difficulties and
indignities and discomforts, were released by the Austrians and
returned through Switzerland to England. On her return she urged
the War Office to send her, and her Unit, to Mesopotamia. Rumors had
already reached England of the terrible state of things there from
the medical point of view, which was fully revealed later by the
Mesopotamian Commission. She was refused permission to go, though it
is perfectly clear their assistance would have been invaluable and
ought to have been used. Once more she returned to help the Serbians
and established Units in the Balkans and South Russia. The Serbian
people have shown every token of gratitude and of honor which it
was in their power to bestow upon her. The people in 1916 put up a
fountain in her honor at Mladenovatz, and the Serbian Crown Prince
conferred on her the highest honor Serbia has to give, the First Order
of the White Eagle. Dr. Inglis died, on November 26th, three days
after bringing her Unit safely home from South Russia. Memorial
services were held in her honor at St. Margaret's, Westminster, and
in St. Giles's Cathedral, Edinburgh. Those who were there speak of
it not as a funeral but as a triumph. The streets were thronged; all
Edinburgh turned out to do her homage as she went to her last resting
place. The Scottish Command was represented and lent the gun-carriage
on which the coffin was borne and the Union Jack which covered it.

[Illustration: "SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE"]

In the Cathedral the Rev. Dr. Wallace Williamson, Dean of the Order of
The Thistle, said: "We are assembled this day with sad but proud and
grateful hearts to remember before God a very dear and noble lady,
our beloved sister, Elsie Inglis, who has been called to her rest. We
mourn only for ourselves, not for her. She has died as she lived, in
the clear light of faith and self-forgetfulness, and now her name is
linked forever with the great souls who have led the van of womanly
service for God and man. A wondrous union of strength and tenderness,
of courage and sweetness, she remains for us a bright and noble memory
of high devotion and stainless honor.... Especially today, in the
presence of representatives of the land for which she died, we think
of her as an immortal link between Serbia and Scotland, and as a
symbol of that high courage which will sustain us, please God, till
that stricken land is once again restored, and till the tragedy of
war is eradicated and crowned with God's great gifts of peace and of
righteousness."

The National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies also sent the
Millicent Fawcett Unit, named after its honoured President, to Russia
in 1916 to work among the Polish refugees, especially to do maternity
nursing, and work among the children.

In February a Maternity Unit started work in Petrograd. With an
excellent staff of women doctors, nurses and orderlies, the little
hospital proved a veritable haven of helpfulness to the distressed
refugee mothers. It soon established so good a reputation for its
thorough and disinterested work that the help of the workers was asked
for by the Moscow Union of Zemstovos (Town and Rural Councils) for
Middle Russia and Galicia.

In May the Millicent Fawcett Hospital Units were sent out and at
Kazan on the Volga a badly needed Children's Hospital for infectious
diseases was opened. The only other hospital in the place was so full
that it had two patients in each bed. They had a fierce fight against
diphtheria and scarlet fever, which in many cases was very bad, and
they succeeded in saving most of the children, who would certainly
have died in their miserable homes.

In the summer, the Units took over a small hospital at Stara Chilnoe,
a district without a doctor, and they treated not only refugees,
but the peasants who came in daily in crowds from the surrounding
districts. Other Units of the same kind were started in remote
districts and in summer a Holiday Home at Suida was run to which the
women and children could come from the Petrograd Maternity Hospital
for a rest. They also took charge of two hospitals, temporarily
without any medical staff, in a remote part of the Kazan district,
where they were objects of the most intense curiosity.

The interpreters were kept busy answering questions about the ages,
salaries and husbands of the staff, and the nurses' wrist watches
roused great excitement.

That their gratitude and kindness was very real, though their notions
of suitability of place and time were primitive, was shown by the gift
of three live hens being dumped, at 4 a.m., on the bed of a sister
sound asleep.

The final piece of work was the establishing of an infectious Hospital
for peasants and soldiers in Volhynia, sixty miles behind the firing
line in Galicia. This was done at the urgent request of the Zemstovos
Union.

There they had to deal with a great deal of smallpox and in another
case with scabies which they stamped out in one small village. These
Units left Russia before the recent changes, but their work was
valuable and appreciated, and again American women helped us in
raising the necessary funds, having subscribed $7,500 towards the
Units.

One of the workers, Ruth Holden, of Radcliffe College, Boston, died in
one of the epidemics. We have had American women, as we have had men,
helping us from the beginning of the war. The American Women's War
Relief Fund most generously offered to fully equip and maintain a
surgical hospital of 250 beds at Oldway House, Paignton, South Devon,
at the beginning of the war, and this offer was gratefully accepted by
the War Office through the Red Cross Society.

They also gifted six motor ambulances for use at the front--and these
and the hospital have been of the very greatest service to our wounded
men.

Others of our medical women are with mixed Units, such as The Wounded
Allies' Relief Committee. Dr. Dickinson Berry went out with others in
a Unit from the Royal Free Hospital to help the Serbian Government,
and Dr. Alice Clark is in the Friends' Unit.

Our medical women have won rich laurels and have established
themselves in their own profession permanently and thoroughly. Behind
the Hospitals, we have the thousands of women who every day are
working at the Hospital Supply Depots of our country. These are
everywhere and nothing is more wonderful than the way in which our
voluntary workers have gone on faithfully working, conforming to
discipline and hours and steady service as conscientiously as any paid
worker.

The organizing ability displayed by our women in this amounts to
genius. The buying of material, cutting and making up, parcelling,
storing, and packing of gigantic supplies, all the secretarial and
clerical work involved has been the work of women and mostly of women
of the leisured classes, many of them without any previous training.
From the organization of the big schemes of supply down to such work
as the collecting of sphagnum moss, everything that was needed has
been done, and done well.




"BRINGING 'BLIGHTY' TO THE SOLDIER"

  "It's a long, long way to Tipperary,
  But my heart's right there."

                             "Cheero."




CHAPTER IV

"BRINGING 'BLIGHTY' TO THE SOLDIER"


"Blighty" is Home, the British soldiers in India's corruption of the
Hindustanee, and Blighty is a word we all know well now.

The full records of this are not easy to give--so much has been done.
Perhaps the simplest way is to begin with the soldier at the training
camp and follow him through his soldier's existence. The first work
lies in giving him comforts, and the women of our country still knit
a good deal and in the early days knitted, as you do now to get your
supplies, in trains and tubes and theatres and concerts, and public
meetings. This was happening while many of our working women were
without work and it was felt that this was likely to compete very
seriously with the work of these women. The Queen realized there was
likely to be hardships through this and also that there would probably
be a great waste of material if voluntary effort was not wisely
guided. So she called at Buckingham Palace a committee of women
to consider the position and Queen Mary's Needlework Guild was the
outcome of it. The following official statement, issued on August 21,
1914, intimated the Queen's wishes and policy.

    Queen Mary's Needlework Guild has received representations to
    the effect that the provision of garments by voluntary labor
    may have the consequence of depriving of their employment
    workpeople who would have been engaged for wages in the making
    of the same garments for contractors to the Government. A very
    large part of the garments collected by the Guild consists,
    however, of articles which would not in the ordinary course
    have been purchased by the Government. They include additional
    comforts for the soldiers and sailors actually serving, and
    for the sick and wounded in hospital, clothing for members of
    their families who may fall into distress, and clothing to
    be distributed by the local committees for the prevention and
    relieving of distress among families who may be suffering from
    unemployment owing to the war. If these garments were not made
    by the voluntary labor of women who are willing to do their
    share of work for the country in the best way open to them,
    they would not, in the majority of cases, be made at all. The
    result would be that families in distress would receive in
    the winter no help in the form of clothing, and the soldiers
    and the sailors and the men in hospitals would not enjoy
    the additional comforts that would be provided. The Guild is
    informed that flannel shirts, socks, and cardigan jackets
    are a Government issue for soldiers; flannel vest, socks, and
    jerseys for sailors; pajama suits, serge gowns for military
    hospitals; underclothing, flannel gowns and flannel waistcoats
    for naval hospitals. Her Majesty the Queen is most anxious
    that work done for the Needlework Guild should not have a
    harmful effect on the employment of men, women, and girls in
    the trades concerned, and therefore desires that the workers
    of the Guild should devote themselves to the making of
    garments other than those which would, in the ordinary course,
    be bought by the War Office and Admiralty. All kinds of
    garments will be needed for distribution in the winter if
    there is exceptional distress.

    The Queen would remind those that are assisting the Guild that
    garments which are bought from the shops and are sent to the
    Guild are equally acceptable, and their purchases would have
    the additional advantage of helping to secure the continuance
    of employment of women engaged in their manufacture. It is,
    however, not desirable that any appeal for funds should be
    made for this purpose which would conflict with the collection
    of the Prince of Wales's Fund.

Branches of Queen Mary's Needlework Guild were started everywhere
and the Mayoresses of practically every town in the Kingdom organized
their own towns. Gifts came from all over the world and a book kept
at Friary Court, St. James', records the gifts received from Greater
Britain and the neutral countries.

The demand for comforts was very great and in ten months the gross
number of articles received was 1,101,105, but this did not represent
anything like all. It was the Queen's wish that the branches of her
Guild should be free to do as they wished in distribution, send to
local regiments, or regiments quartered in the neighborhood, or use
them for local distress. Great care was taken to see there was no
overlapping, and this is secured fully by Sir Edward Ward's Committee.

Our men have been well looked after in the way of comforts, socks and
mitts and gloves and jerseys, and mufflers and gloves for minesweepers
and helmets, everything they needed, and the Regimental Comforts Funds
and work still exists as well, all co-ordinated now.

The Fleet has also had fresh vegetables supplied to it the whole time
by a voluntary agency.

At the Training Camps, in France, in every field of war, we have the
Y.M.C.A., and there is no soldier in these days and no civilian who
does not know the Red Triangle. There are over 1,000 huts in Britain
and over 150 in France. It is the sign that means something to eat and
something warm to drink, somewhere cozy and warm out of the cold and
chill and damp of winter camp and trench, somewhere to write a letter,
somewhere to read and talk, somewhere that brings all of "Blighty"
that can come to the field of war. In our Y.M.C.A. huts, 30,000
women work. In the camp towns we have also the Guest Houses, run by
voluntary organizations of women. In the Town Halls we have teas and
music and in our houses we entertain overseas troops as our guests.

Our men move in thousands to and from the front, going and on leave,
moving from one camp to another, and Victoria Station, Charing Cross
and Waterloo are names written deep in our hearts these days. We have
free buffets for our fighting men at all of these, and at all our
London stations and ports, and these are open night and day. All the
money needed is found by voluntary subscriptions.

Our men come in on the leave train straight from the trenches, loaded
up with equipment, with their rifles canvas-covered to keep them dry
and clean, with Flanders mud caked upon them to the waist, very tired,
with that look they all bring home from the trenches in their eyes,
but in Blighty and trying to forget how soon they have to go back. The
buffets are there for them, and those who have no one to meet them in
London and who have to travel north or west or east to go home, are
met by men and women who direct them where to go by day and motor them
across London to their station at night. The leave trains that get
in on Sunday morning brings Scottish soldiers that cannot leave till
evening, and St. Columba's, Church of Scotland, has stepped into the
breach. The women meet the train, carry off the soldier for breakfast
in the Hall, which is ready, and they entertain them all day.
Thousands have been entertained in this way, and "It's just home,"
said one Gordon Highlander.

The soldier is in France and there he finds we have sent him Blighty,
too--canteens and Y.M.C.A. Huts. Our books and our magazines,
everything we can think of and send, goes to every field of war.

He is followed where he can be by amusement and entertainment. Concert
parties are arranged by our actors and actresses, and they go out
and sing and act and amuse our men behind the lines. Lena Ashwell has
organized Concert parties and done a great work in this way.

Such work as Miss McNaughton's, recorded in her "Diary of the War,"
and for which she was decorated before her death, largely caused by
overwork, as Lady Dorothie Fielding's ambulance work, for which she
also was decorated, and the work of the "Women of Pervyse" stand out,
even among the wonderful things done by individual women in this war.

The "Women of Pervyse," Mrs. Knocker, now the Baronnes de T'Serclas,
and Miss Mairi Chisholm, went out with the Field Ambulance Committee,
and were quartered with others at Ghent before and during and after
the siege of Antwerp. When the ambulance trains started to come in
from Antwerp they worked day and night moving the wounded from the
station to the hospitals--they worked for hours under fire moving
wounded, unperturbed and unshaken.

After the battle of Dixmude and the armies had settled on the
Neuport-Ypres line, Mrs. Knocker started the Pervyse Poste de Secours
Anglis, a dressing station so close to the firing line that the
wounded could literally be lifted to it from the trenches.

There they have worked and cared for the men in conditions almost
incredible. In February, 1915, they were decorated by King Albert, and
since March they have been permanently attached to the Third Division
of the Belgian Army.

In June, 1915, they were mentioned in dispatches for saving life under
heavy fire. They have saved hundreds of lives by being where they can
render aid so swiftly, and the military authorities do not move them,
not only because they wish to pay tribute to their valor but because
they are so valuable.

Most of all, "Blighty" goes to the soldier in his letters and there
is nothing so dear to the soldier as his letters, and nothing is worse
than to have "no mail." The woman who does not write, and the woman
who writes the wrong things, are equally poor things. The woman who
wants to help her man sends him bright cheerful letters, not letters
about difficulties he can't help, and that will only worry him, but
letters with all the news he would like to have, and the messages that
count for so much. Every woman who writes to a soldier has in that an
influence and a power worthy of all her best. Not only our letters but
our thoughts and our prayers are a wall of strength to, and behind our
men.

In this war some have talked of spiritual manifestations that
saved disaster in our great retreat. In that people may believe or
disbelieve, but no person of intelligence fails to realize the power
of thought, and love, and hope, and the spirit of women can be a
great power to their men in arms. There are so many ways of giving and
sending that none of us need to fail.

Then he is in it--in the trenches--over the top--and he may be safe
or he may be wounded--a "Blighty one," as our men say, and we get him
home to nurse and care for--or he may make the supreme sacrifice and
only the message goes home.

To everyone it must go with something of the consolation of the poem
written by Rifleman S. Donald Cox of the London Rifle Brigade.

  "To My Mother--1916

  "If I should fall, grieve not that one so weak
      And poor as I
      Should die.
  Nay, though thy heart should break,
  Think only this: that when at dusk they speak
      Of sons and brothers of another one,
      Then thou canst say, 'I, too, had a son,
  He died for England's sake,'"

He may be a prisoner and then we follow him again. There are over
40,000 of our men prisoners and we have over 200,000 of the enemy. The
treatment and conditions of our prisoners in Germany were sometimes
terrible--the horrors of Wittenberg we can never forget, and we are
deeply indebted to the American Red Cross, for all it did before
America's entry into the war, for our prisoners.

From the beginning of the war we have had to feed our prisoners, and
for the first two years parcels of food went from mothers, sisters and
relatives of the men. Regimental Funds were raised and parcels sent
through these. Girls' Clubs and the League of Honour and Churches and
groups of many kinds sent also. The Savoy Association had a large fund
and did a great work.

Parcels, which must weigh under eleven pounds, go free to prisoners
of war and there are some regulations about what may be sent. Now the
whole work is regulated by the Prisoners of War Help Committee--an
official committee, and parcels are sent out under their supervision
to every man in captivity.

Books, games and clothing also go out from us. In most of the Camps
and at Ruhleben, where our civilians are interned, studies are carried
on, and classes of instruction, and technical and educative books are
much needed and demanded. Schools and colleges have sent out large
supplies of these.

We have also raised funds for the Belgian Prisoners of War in Germany.

We have exchanged prisoners with Germany and have secured the release
and internment in Switzerland of some hundreds of our worst wounded,
and permanently disabled, and tubercular and consumptive men. In
Switzerland, among the beautiful mountains, they are finding happiness
and health again and many of them are working at new trades and
training.

We sent out their wives to see them and some girls went to marry their
released men. Some of our prisoners have escaped from Germany and
reached us safely after many risks and adventures.

"Blighty" goes out to our men also in our Chaplains, the "Padres"
of our forces, and many times soldiers have talked to me of their
splendid "Padre" in Gallipoli, or France or Egypt. They have died with
the men, bringing water and help and trying to bring in the wounded.
They have been decorated with the V.C., our highest honor, the simple
bronze cross given "For Valour." They write home to mothers and wives
and relatives of the men who fall, and send last messages and words of
consolation.

Their task is a great one, for to men who face death all the time,
and see their dearest friends killed beside them, things eternal are
living realities and there are questions for which they want answers.
There is so much the Padre has to give and his messages are listened
to in a new way and words are winged and living where these men are.

We have so many of our men from overseas among us who are far from
their own homes, and in London we have Clubs for the Canadians, the
Australians, the New Zealanders, for the two together, immortally to
be known as the "Anzacs," and for the South Africans, where they can
all find a bit of home. We have also just opened American Huts and
the beautiful officers' Club at Lord Leconfield's house, lent for the
purpose.

For the permanently disabled soldier we are doing a great deal. St.
Dunstan's, the wonderful training school for the blind, has been the
very special work of Sir Arthur Pearson, who is himself blind, and
Lady Pearson.

The Lord Roberts Workshops for the disabled are doing splendid work in
training and bringing hope to seriously crippled men.

The British Women's Hospital for which our women have raised $500,000,
is on the site of the old Star and Garter Hotel at Richmond, and is to
be for permanently disabled men.

There, overlooking our beautiful river, men who have been broken in
the wars for us, may find a permanent home in this monument of our
women's love and gratitude.




WOMAN-POWER FOR MAN-POWER


  "She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands.
  She is like the merchant's ships; she bringeth her food from afar.

         *       *       *       *       *

  "She girdeth her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her arms.

         *       *       *       *       *

  "Strength and honour are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in
          time to come."

                                                  --PROV., Chap. 31.




CHAPTER V

WOMAN-POWER FOR MAN-POWER


The first result of the outbreak of war for women was to throw
thousands of them out of work.

Nobody knew--not even the ablest financial and commercial men--just
what a great European war was going to mean, and luxury trades ceased
to get orders; women journalists, women writers, women lecturers, and
women workers of every type were thrown out of work and unemployment
was very great.

A National Relief Fund was started for general distress and the Queen
dealt in the ablest manner with the women's problem. She issued this
appeal: "In the firm belief that prevention of distress is better than
its relief, and employment is better than charity, I have inaugurated
the 'Queen's Work for Women Fund,' Its object is to provide employment
for as many as possible of the women of this country who have been
thrown out of work by the war. I appeal to the women of Great Britain
to help their less fortunate sisters through the fund.

"MARY R."

This appeal was instantly responded to and large sums were subscribed.
A very representative Committee of Women was established, with Miss
Mary MacArthur, the well known Trade Union leader, as Hon. Secretary
and the Queen was in daily touch with its work.

In the dislocation of industry which had caused the committee's
formation, it was found that there was great slackness in one trade or
a part of it and great pressure in other parts of it or other trades.
The problem was to use the unemployed firms and workers for the new
national needs.

The committee considered it part of their work to endeavor to increase
the number of firms getting Government contracts, and they created a
special Contracts Department, under the direction of Mr. J.J. Mallon,
of the Anti-sweating League. They, as a result, advised in regard
to the placing of contracts and they undertook to get articles for
the Government, or ordered by other sources, manufactured by firms
adversely affected by the war or in their own workrooms. They worked
with the firms accustomed to making men's clothing and now unemployed,
and found that they could easily take military contracts if certain
technical difficulties were removed. They interviewed the War Office
authorities, modifications were suggested and approved and the full
employment in the tailoring trade which followed gave a greatly
improved supply of army clothing. Contracts were secured from the war
office for khaki cloth, blankets, and various kinds of hosiery, and
these were carried out by manufacturers who otherwise would have had
to close down.

The Queen gave orders for her own gifts to the troops, and
considerable work was done through trade workshops, care being taken
to see that this work was only done where ordinary trade was fully
employed. Two contracts from the War Office, typical of others, were
for 20,000 shirts and for 2,000,000 pairs of army socks. Over 130
firms received contracts through the committee.

New openings for trades were tested and the possibility of the
transference of work formerly done in Germany.

In its Relief Work the committee had its greatest problems. It was
clear that if rates paid were high, women would come in from badly
paid trades, and it was clear that if they sold the work, it would
injure trade--so in the end it was decided to pay a low wage, 11/6 a
week--and to give away, through the right agencies, the garments and
things made in the workrooms.

The inefficiency of many workers was very clear and training
schemes resulted--for typing, shorthand, in leather work, chair seat
willowing, in cookery, dressmaking and dress-cutting, home nursing,
etc.

Professional women were helped through various funds and workrooms
were established by other organizations, several being started in
London by the N.U.W.S.S.

[Illustration: CLEANING A LOCOMOTIVE]

[Illustration: WOMEN AS CARRIAGE CLEANERS]

As the months went on women began to be absorbed more and more into
industry. Men were going into the army ceaselessly, our war needs were
growing greater and our women found work opening out more and more.
The Women's Service Bureau had been opened within a week of the
outbreak of war and had done valuable work in placing women, before
the Board of Trade issued its first official appeal to women,
additional to those already in industry, to volunteer for War Service.
It was sent out by Mr. Runciman, President of the Board of Trade, and
read as follows:

    The President of the Board of Trade wishes to call attention
    to the fact that in the present emergency, if the full
    fighting power of the nation is to be put forth on the field
    of battle, the full working power of the nation must be made
    available to carry on its essential trades at home. Already,
    in certain important occupations there are not enough men and
    women to do the work. This shortage will certainly spread
    to other occupations as more and more men join the fighting
    forces.

    In order to meet both the present and the future needs of
    national industry during the war, the Government wish to
    obtain particulars of the women available, with or without
    previous training, for paid employment. Accordingly, they
    invite all women who are prepared, if needed, to take paid
    employment of any kind--industrial, agricultural, clerical,
    etc.--to enter themselves upon the Register of Women for War
    Service which is being prepared by the Board of Trade Labour
    Exchanges.

    Any woman living in a town where there is a Labour Exchange
    can register by going there in person. If she is not near a
    Labour Exchange she can get a form of registration from the
    local agency of the Unemployment Fund. Forms will also be sent
    out through a number of women's societies.

    The object of registration is to find out what reserve force
    of women's labour, trained or untrained, can be made available
    if required. As from time to time actual openings for
    employment present themselves, notice will be given through
    the Labor Exchanges, with full details as to the nature of
    work, conditions, and pay, and, so far as special training
    is necessary, arrangements will, if possible, be made for the
    purpose.

    Any woman who by working helps to release a man or to equip a
    man for fighting does national war service. Every woman should
    register who is able and willing to take employment.

The forms were sent out in large numbers through the women's societies
of the country, and it was stated on them that women were wanted
at once for farm-work, dairy work, brush-making, leather stitching,
clothing, machinery and machining for armaments.

By next day the registrations were 4,000, mostly middle-class women,
and in the first week 20,000 registered and an average of 5,000 a week
after, but the mass of women who registered waited with no real lead
or use of them for a long time. The Government seemed to suffer from
a delusion a great many people have, that if you have enough machinery
and masses of names something is being done, but you do not solve any
problem by registers. You solve it by getting the workers and the work
together.

The Government had not approached employers at first, but had left
it to them entirely to take the initiative in this great replacement.
This they had to a considerable extent done, using the Labour
Exchanges and the other agencies and women were more and more quickly,
steadily, ceaselessly replacing men.

The appeals for women for munition work were most swiftly responded to
and educated women volunteered in thousands, as did working girls and
women.

The question of assisting employment by fitting more women for
commercial and industrial occupations was considered by the
Government, and in October, 1915, the Clerical and Commercial
Occupations Committee was appointed by the Home Office--a similar
committee being set up for Scotland. It arranged with the London
County Council and with local authorities that their Education
Committees should initiate emergency courses all over the country for
training in general clerical work, bookkeeping and office routine. The
courses lasted from three to ten weeks, and the age of the students
varied from eighteen to thirty-five.

Many free courses were inaugurated by business firms in large London
stores, notably Harrods and Whiteleys, where their courses included
all office and business training. Six week courses of free training
for the grocery trade, for the boot trade, lens making, waiting,
hairdressing, etc., were also given.

Our woman labor has been found to be quite mobile and girls have moved
in thousands from one part of the country to another, and the munition
girl travelling home on holiday on her special permit is a familiar
figure.

The registration, placing and moving of our workers is all done by
our Labour Exchanges, now renamed Employment Exchanges and transferred
from the Board of Trade to the Ministry of Labour.

When the National Service Department was set up, a Women's Branch
was established with Mrs. H.J. Tennant, and Miss Violet Markham as
Co-directors, and they made various appeals, registered women for the
land, munitions, W.A.A.C. and for wood cutting and pitprop making.
A great demonstration of "Women's Service" was held in the Albert
Hall in January 17, 1917, at which Mrs. Tennant and Miss Markham,
Lord Derby, Minister of War; Mr. Prothero, President of the Board of
Agriculture, and Mr. John Hodge, Minister of Labour, spoke and at
which the Queen was present. It was an appeal to women for more work
and a registration of their determination to go on doing all that was
needed. The men's message was one to equals--they asked great things.
A message from Queen Mary was read for the first time at any public
meeting and it was the only occasion on which she has attended one.

The number of women now in our industry directly replacing men,
according to our latest returns, is over one and a quarter millions.
This does not include domestic service, where our maids grow less and
less numerous and Sir Auckland Geddes, Director of National Service,
tells us he is considering cutting down servants in any establishment
to not more than three, and it does not include very small shops and
firms.

The processes in industry in which women work are numbered in
hundreds. The War Office in 1916 issued an official memorandum for
the use of Military Representatives and Tribunals setting forth the
processes in which women worked and the trades and occupations, and
giving photographs of women doing unaccustomed and heavy work, to
guide the Tribunals in deciding exemptions of men called up for
Military Service.

In professional work today women are everywhere. There are 198,000
women in Government Departments, 83,000 of these new since the war.
They are doing typing, shorthand, and secretarial work, organizing and
executive work. They are in the Censor's office in large numbers and
doing important work at the Census of Production. There are 146,000 on
Local Government work. The woman teacher has invaded that stronghold
of man in England, the Boys' High and Grammar Schools, and is doing
good work there. They are replacing men chemists in works, doing
research, working at dental mechanics, are tracing plans. They are
driving motor cars in large numbers. Our Prime Minister has a woman
chauffeur. They are driving delivery vans and bringing us our goods,
our bread and our milk. They carry a great part of our mail and trudge
through villages and cities with it. They drive our mail vans, and
I know two daughters of a peer who drive mail vans in London. I know
other women who never did any work in their lives who for three years
have worked in factories, taking the same work, the same holidays, the
same pay as the other girls. Women are gardeners, elevator attendants,
commissionaires and conductors on our buses and trams, and in
provincial towns drive many of the electric trams.

[Illustration: WINDOW CLEANERS]

[Illustration: STEAM ROLLER DRIVER]

In the railways they are booking clerks, carriage and engine cleaners
and greasers, and carriage repairers, cooks and waiters in dining
cars, platform, parcel and goods porters, telegraphists and ticket
collectors and inspectors, and labourers and wagon sheet repairers.
They work in quarries, are coal workers, clean ships, are park-keepers
and cinema operators. They are commercial travellers in large numbers.
They are in banks to a great extent and are now taking banking
examinations.

There was a very strong feeling as the replacement by women went on
that there must be no lowering of wage standards which would not only
be grossly unfair to women but imperil the returning soldier's chance
of getting his post back.

Mrs. Fawcett, on behalf of the Women's Interests Committee of the
N.U.W.S.S., called a conference on the question of War Service and
wages in 1915, and Mr. Runciman stated at the conference:

    As regards the wages and conditions on which women should be
    employed, as a general principle the Exchanges did not, and
    could not, take direct responsibility as to the wages and
    conditions, beyond giving in each case such information as
    was in their possession. In regard, however, to Government
    contractors, it had been laid down that the piece rates for
    women should be the same as for men, and further special
    instructions had been given to the Exchanges to inform
    inexperienced applicants of the current wages in each case,
    so that they should be fully apprised as to the wage which it
    was reasonable for them to ask. A general safeguard against
    permanent lowering of wages by the admission of women to take
    the place of men on service would be made by asking employers,
    so far as possible, to keep the men's places open for them on
    their return.

Wages in most cases are at the same rate as men, and as women are
organized in Britain in large numbers, the Trades Unions and Women's
Committees are always alive and ready to act on the question of
payment and conditions. Our workers, men and women, are very well paid
and despite high prices, were never more comfortable, and never saved
more. The call for women to replace men still goes on in Britain.
Miners are going to be combed out again. The Trade Unions have been
again approached by the Premier and Sir Auckland Geddes on this
question of man power. The Battalions must be filled up--in France we
need 2,000,000 men all the time and of these 1,670,000 are from our
own Islands.

It is calculated there are in Britain today--Ireland is not tapped in
woman power any more than in man power--less than a million women who
could do more important work for the war than they are now doing.
Most of these are already doing work of one kind or another, but could
probably do more.

Our homes, our industries, munitions, the land, hospitals, Government
service and the Waac's are absorbing us in our millions. Britain could
not have raised her Army and Navy and could not now keep her men in
the field without the mobilization of her women and their ceaseless,
tireless work behind her men, and as substitutes for them, in the
working life of the community.




WOMEN IN MUNITIONS


  "For all we have and are,
    For all our children's fate--
  Rise up and meet the war,
    The Hun is at the gate.

       *       *       *       *       *

  "Comfort, content, delight,
    The ages' slow-bought gain,
  Have shrivelled in a night,
    Only ourselves remain.

       *       *       *       *       *

  "Though all we knew depart,
    The old commandments stand,
  In courage keep your heart,
    In strength lift up your hand."

                                --RUDYARD KIPLING.




CHAPTER VI

WOMEN IN MUNITIONS

    "Hats off to the Women of Britain!"--Sir ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE in
    _The Times_, November 28, 1916.


When war broke out the Government had three National workshops
producing munitions--today it has 100, and it controls over 5,000
establishments through the Ministry of Munitions, many of which are
continually growing in size.

The total output has increased over thirty-fold but in many cases
increase in production has been far greater. In guns, the production
of 4.5 field howitzers is over fifty times as large; of machine guns
and howitzers over seventy times and of heavy howitzers (over 6 inch)
over 420 times as large.

More small shell is now made in a fortnight than formerly in a year,
and the increase in output of heavy shell has been still larger.
Equally striking results have been attained in the production of
machine guns, aeroplanes motor bodies, and the other war supplies, for
which demand and replacement have necessarily grown with the demand
for guns and shells. To these have to be added the ships and the
anti-submarine and anti-aircraft machines and devices that have been
demanded by the enemy's method of warfare.

This work has only been possible in a country that has raised five
million men, 75 per cent from our own islands, because of what women
have done.

Today there are between 800,000 and 1,000,000 women in munitions works
in our country, and the history of their entry and work is a wonderful
one. Women themselves were quicker than the Government to realize how
much they would be needed in munitions, and started to train before
openings were ready.

Women realized vividly what Lloyd George's speech of June, 1915, made
clear, the urgent, terrible need of our men for more munitions--the
Germans could send over ten shells to our one--and women volunteered
in thousands for munition work.

The London Society for Women's Suffrage, which was running "Women's
Service," had women volunteers for munitions in enormous numbers and
tried to secure openings for them. It investigated and found that
acetylene welders were badly needed. There were very few in Britain,
and welding is essential for aircraft and other work, so they started
to find out if there were classes for training women, and found none
in Technical Schools were open to women. They found welders were
needed very much in certain aircraft factories in the neighborhood of
London and the manager of one assured them that if women were trained
satisfactorily for oxy-acetylene welding, he would give them a trial.
So "Women's Service" decided to open a small workshop and secured Miss
E.C. Woodward, a metal worker of long standing, as instructor. The
school was started in a small way with six pupils. Oxy-acetylene
welding is the most effective way of securing a perfect weld without
any deleterious effect upon the metal.

The great heat needed for the purpose of uniting two or more pieces of
metal so as to make of them an autogenous whole is obtained, in this
process, by the burning of acetylene gas in conjunction with oxygen.

Carbide, looking like little lumps of granite, is placed in a tray at
the bottom of the generator for acetylene gas, which is of the form
of a small portable gasometer. The tap, admitting water to the carbide
trays, is turned on, and gas at once generates, and forces up the
generator in the way so familiar to those who often see a gasometer.
This gas passes through a tube to the blow-pipe of the welder, or to
any other use for which it is destined.

[Illustration: TRAINING WOMEN AS AEROPLANE BUILDERS]

In oxy-acetylene welding, the process employs the flame produced by
the combustion in a suitable blow-pipe of oxygen and acetylene. When
a light is applied to the nozzle of the pipe a yellow flame, a foot
long, flares up, and in the centre of it, close to the nozzle, appears
a very small, dazzling, bluish flame, which can only safely be gazed
upon by eyes protected by coloured glasses. The temperature of this
flame at the apex is about 6,300 degrees Fahr., and it is with this
that the metals to be welded together are brought to a suitable degree
of heat.

The workers' eyes are protected by black goggles, their hair confined
by caps or handkerchiefs, and overalls or leather-aprons protect their
clothes from the sparks and also from the smuts which naturally
accrue on surrounding objects. Each welder holds in her right hand the
blow-pipe of the craft, from which depends two long flexible tubes,
one conducting oxygen from the tall cylinder in the corner, and the
other acetylene from the generator. In her left hand she holds the
welding-stick of soft Swedish iron, from which tiny molten drops fall
upon the glowing edges of the metal to be welded together. The work
is fascinating even to the onlooker, and to see the result, metal so
welded you feel it is impossible it ever could have been two pieces,
is still more fascinating.

The first welders triumphantly passed their tests and gave every
satisfaction in the factory, and the training went on and the School
was enlarged.

The oxy-acetylene welders turned out by this School have gone all
over the country and 220 were trained and placed in the first year.
Those selected were, with few exceptions, educated women, which was
undoubtedly a material factor in the success of their work. This
School opened training to women and welding is now taught to women in
many of our Technical Schools. A class in Elementary Engineering has
also been carried on by Women's Service with great success and the
women placed in workshops.

The Ministry of Munitions has also arranged, in conjunction with the
London County Council and other Educational Authorities, to have
free munition training for women at every centre in the Kingdom. The
courses vary from six to nine weeks and maintenance grants are paid
during the period of training.

In October, 1915, the Central Labour Supply Committee which dealt
with women's and men's conditions, issued certain recommendations
in Circular L.2. These dealt with the conditions and rates of pay
of women and fully skilled and unskilled men. The provision of this
much-discussed circular that affected women doing skilled work was
in Clause 1, which provides that "Women employed on work customarily
done by fully skilled tradesmen shall be paid the time rates of the
tradesman whose work they undertake."

These provisions were then only binding on the Government
establishments, and could not be enforced by the Ministry of Munitions
in controlled establishments. On December 31, 1915, a conference
was held between the Prime Minister, the Minister of Munitions and
representatives of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, when an
agreement in regard to "dilution" was arranged. Circular L. 2 was
adopted at this conference as the basis of the undertaking given by
the Ministry in regard to dilution of labor. An employer under it can
be punished as contravening the Munitions Act if he fails to carry out
the direction of the Minister. The power of enforcing the provisions
of L. 2 were acquired in January, 1916, and it is quite obvious that
in this circular a principle of the greatest importance to men and
women is laid down. Women were wholly averse to being "blacklegs" in
industry.

The great work of "Dilution" in Munitions--and by dilution we mean
the use in industry of unskilled, semi-skilled and woman labor, so
that highly skilled men may not be used except for the most important
work--is done by the Dilution Department of the Ministry of Munitions,
which issues Dilution of Labour Bulletins and Process Sheets
periodically, showing the work women are doing. A series of
exhibitions of women's work have also been arranged by the Technical
Section of the Labour Supply Department in all the big towns
in England. In Sheffield over 16,000 people came to see the
Exhibition--the largest number of these being foremen and workmen sent
by their firms.

[Illustration: RIVETTING ON BOILERS]

[Illustration: FACING BOILER BLUE FLANGES]

The Exhibitions consist of two main sections, one of which shows
actual samples of munitions made by women, and the other of
photographs of women doing work on apparatus or processes that could
not be shown. A complete Clerget engine, for instance, was lent by the
Air Board to illustrate the final assembly of the numerous parts of
these engines being made wholly or partly by women. In the same way,
many parts of complete Stokes Guns, Vickers Machine Guns and Service
Rifles were exhibited. The exhibits were divided into fifteen groups.
The first group dealing with engines for aircraft. The second group
showed engines for motor cars, tanks, tractors, motor buses, motor
lorries and motor vehicles.

A separate group consisted of a variety of accessories for internal
combustion engines, including air pump for the Clerget engine, which
is completely manufactured and assembled by women, largely under women
supervision; and magnetos, a very important and accurate industry,
before the war largely in German hands, of which women now undertake
the entire manufacture.

The fourth group dealt with steam engines, including details of
locomotives, high speed engines, steam winches, and steam turbines.

The next two groups dealt respectively with guns and components and
with small arms.

The next three groups included gauges, drills, cutters, punches and
dies, trucks, jigs, tap pieces and general tool-room work. The gauges
included plug, ring, cylinder and screw gauges to the closest degrees
of accuracy, which in practice are verified by the rigid inspection of
the National Physical Laboratory.

A fair illustration of the accuracy that is habitually required in a
large volume of work is to be seen in the final gauging and inspection
of a screw gauge for a fuse, in which the women inspectors were
described in the catalogue as examining these screws by an optical
projection apparatus, magnifying fifty times, with the help of which
the inspector notes the defects in size and form, and the necessary
corrections.

The cutting tools included sets of cutters for the manufacture of
shells, as well as twist drills, reamers, milling cutters, gear
cutters, screwing dies, taps and lathe tools. Some of this work is
of high accuracy, and a set of solid screwing dies has the particular
interest that almost all the operations are carried out by women after
they have been in the shop for a fortnight. The general tool-room
work included an exhibit of seventy-one punches and dies for cartridge
making. Another set of dies was shown for small-arms ammunition, and
specimens were also exhibited of chucks, die-heads and other work.

Two other groups dealt with the metal fittings and wooden structural
parts of aircraft, and to see girls work on these is intensely
interesting--anything more fragile looking and more beautiful than the
long uncovered wing it would be difficult to find. A notable feature
of the metal group was a number of parts that are marked off from
drawings by women working under a woman charge-hand, and themselves
making their own scribing-templates when necessary. Many examples of
welding work were also shown.

There were Optical Munitions and medical and surgical glass and X-ray
tubes made entirely by women, and the Exhibitions record the progress
of women in Munitions in the most wonderful and striking way.

Mr. Ben. H. Morgan, Chief Officer, in a recent speech on Munitions and
Production said:

    "Labor had to be found to staff the thousands of factories in
    which this stupendous production was to be carried out, and it
    has been possible to find it only by subdividing work closely,
    and entrusting a large variety of machinery and fitting to
    women, with the help of the fullest possible equipment of jigs
    and all available appliances for mechanically defining and
    facilitating the work, and of instruction by skilled men.
    By this means an output has been obtained that will compare
    favorably with that of any class of workers in any country.
    Comparing, for instance, our women's figures of output on
    certain sizes of shell and types of fuses with those of men in
    the United States, I found recently that the women's machining
    times were not only as good but in many cases better than
    those of men in some of the best organized American shops.

    "This is an extraordinary result to have been obtained from
    women who, for the most part, had never known either the work
    or the discipline of factory life, and were wholly unused
    to mechanical operations. More than one circumstance has
    doubtless contributed to making it possible; but it is my
    assured conviction that foremost among the incentives by
    which women have been helped has been their constant thought
    of their flesh and blood, their husbands, brothers, sons,
    sweethearts, in the trenches. I know a typical example in a
    Yorkshire mother, who early in the war sent her only son to
    the fighting line. The lad was a skilled mechanic, and she
    took his place at his lathe in the Leeds shops where he
    worked. She is not only keeping this job going, but her output
    on the job she is doing is a record for the whole country."

The women workers' productions has been admirable and is steady
and continues so. The _Manchester Guardian_ of November 15, 1915,
astounded women and men alike by its announcement that "figures were
produced in proof of the very startling assertion that the output of
the women munition workers is slightly more than double that of men."

In the latest Dilution of Labour Bulletin this is recorded:

"A GOOD BEGINNING

    "A firm in the London and South Eastern district making
    propellers for aeroplanes has recently begun the employment of
    women, and the results are exceeding all expectations. As an
    instance it is reported that five women are now doing the work
    of scraping, formerly done by six men, with an increase of 70
    per cent in output."

The way in which managers, foremen and skilled men have trained and
helped the women and work with them cannot be too highly praised--the
success of "dilution"--the ability of women to help their country in
this way, was only possible through the good will and co-operation of
our great Trade Unions and skilled men.

Women supervisors and examiners are trained at Woolwich, and the first
of these were found by "Women's Service," and we find women control
and manage large numbers of women in the big works extremely well.
One girl of twenty-three, the daughter of a famous engineer, is
controlling the work of 6,000 women who are working on submarines,
guns, aircraft, and all manner of munitions.

One great engineer who believes in women and women's future in
engineering has started what we might term an engineering college for
women.

He has built a model factory away in the hills "somewhere in Scotland"
with four tiers of ferro-cement floors. It is built with the idea of
taking 300 women students and eight months after it opened, it had
sixty women students. It is a factory entirely for women, run by,
and to a large extent managed by women, with the exception of two men
instructors. In the ground floor the girls are working at parts of
high power aeroplane engines, under their works superintendent, a
woman who took her Mathematical Tripos at Newnham College, and was
lecturer at one of our girls' public schools. The women rank as
engineer apprentices and their hours are forty-four a week. The first
six months are probationary with pay at 20/- ($5) a week, and the
students are doing extremely well.

"Women are now part and parcel of our great army," said the Earl of
Derby, on July 13, 1916, "without them it would be impossible for
progress to be made, but with them I believe victory can be assured."

[Illustration: ROUGH TURNING JACKET FORGING OF 6-POUNDER, HOTCHKISS
GUN]

Mr. Asquith, too, has paid his tribute to the woman munition maker
and to others who are doing men's work. In a memorable speech on
the Second Reading of the Special Register Bill, he admitted that
the women of this country have rendered as effective service in the
prosecution of the war as any other class of the community. "It is
true they cannot fight in the gross material sense of going out with
rifles and so forth, but they fill our munition factories, they are
doing the work which the men who are fighting had to perform before,
they have taken their places, they are the servants of the State and
they have aided in the most effective way in the prosecution of the
war."

Our munition women are in the shipyards, the engineering shops, the
aeroplane sheds, the shell shops, flocking in thousands into the
cities, leaving homes and friends to work in the munition cities we
have built since the war. When our great arsenals and factories empty,
women pour out in thousands. Night and day they have worked as the men
have and it has been no easy or light task. We know that still more
will be demanded of us, but we think, as our four million men do, that
these things are well worth doing for the freedom of the souls of the
nations.

In the munition factories that feeling and conviction burns like a
flame and the enemy who thinks to demoralize our men and our women by
bombing our homes and our workshops finds the workers, men and women,
only made more determined.

The women handle high explosives in the "danger buildings" for ten and
a half hours in a shift, making and inserting the detonating fuses,
where a slip may result in their own death and that of their comrades.
Working with T.N.T. they turn yellow--hands and face and hair--and
risk poisoning. They are called the "canary girls," and if you ask why
they do it they will tell you it isn't too much to risk when men risk
everything in the trenches--and sometimes the one they cared for most
is in a grave in France or on some other front, and they "carry on."

The Prime Minister paid a tribute to munition makers in one of his
speeches when he said:

"I remember perfectly well when I was Minister of Munitions we had
very dangerous work. It involved a special alteration in one
element of our shells. We had to effect that alteration. If we had
manufactured the whole thing anew it would have involved the loss of
hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition at a time when we could
not afford it. But the adaptation of the old element with a fuse is a
very dangerous operation, and there were several fatal accidents. It
was all amongst the women workers in the munition factories; there
was never a panic. They stuck to their work. They knew the peril. They
never ran away from it."




THE PROTECTION OF WOMEN IN INDUSTRY


  "Are our faces grave, and our eyes intent?
  Is every ounce that is in us bent
  On the uttermost pitch of accomplishment?
  _Though it's long and long the day is._
  Ah! we know what it means if we fool or slack;
  --A rifle jammed--and one comes not back;
  And we never forget--it's for us they gave.
  And so we will slave, and slave, and slave,
  Lest the men at the front should rue it.
  Their all they gave, and their lives we'll save,
  If the hardest of work can do it;--
  _Though it's long and long the day is._"

                                   --JOHN OXENHAM.




CHAPTER VII

THE PROTECTION OF WOMEN IN INDUSTRY


The Ministry of Munitions has a great department devoted to the work
of looking after our workers' interests.

This department of the Ministry was established by Mr. Lloyd George.
Mr. Rowntree, whose work is so well known, was put in charge.

The health of the Munition Workers' Committee was set up when the
Ministry was established with the concurrence of the Home Secretary,
"To consider and advise on questions of industrial fatigue, hours of
labor, and other matters affecting the personal health and physical
efficiency of workers in munition factories and work shops."

Sir George Newman, M.D., is chairman of the committee and the two
women members are Mrs. H.J. Tennant and Miss R.E. Squire. Memoranda
on various industrial problems have been drawn up by the committee and
acted upon--the first being on Sunday labour.

In the early part of the war our men and women frequently worked
seven days in the week and shifts were very long for women as for
men. Practically no holidays were taken in answer to Lord Kitchener's
appeals. The regulations preventing women from working on Sunday had
been removed in a limited number of cases. The investigation of the
committee in November, 1915, showed that Sunday labor when it meant
excessive hours was bad and it did not increase output, that the
strain on foremen and managers in particular was very great, and they
recommended a modification of the policy.

In a later Memorandum, No. 12, on output in relation to hours of work,
very interesting figures were given, practically all showing increased
output as a result of shorter hours of labor.

The committee reported in Memorandum No. 5 that it was of the opinion
that continuous work by women in excess of the normal legal limit of
sixty hours per week ought to be discontinued as soon as practicable,
and that the shift system should be used instead of overtime.

A special Memorandum, No. 4, was entirely concerned with the
employment of women and dealt with hours, conditions, rest and meals,
management and supervision, and it strongly urged every precaution and
protection for women.

The Welfare Department meantime had started on its work of securing,
training and appointing Welfare Supervisors, Miss Alleyne looking
after that branch of the work.

The Department was "charged, with the general responsibility of
securing a high standard of conditions" for the workers.

The growth of the work has been enormous. The Ministry of Munitions
today has large numbers of Welfare Supervisors with every Government
establishment and the controlled establishments have them also.
In Government shops they are paid by the Ministry, in controlled
establishments by the management and their appointment is notified to
the Welfare Department.

The Ministry has issued a leaflet on "Duties of Welfare Supervisors
for Women," which is given at the end of this chapter.

It will be seen that the Welfare Worker must be a rather wonderful
person. She must be tactful, know how to handle girls, and be a person
of judgment and decision. We have succeeded in securing a very large
number of admirable women and excellent work is being done. The
Welfare Workers are in their turn inspected by Welfare Inspectors and
Miss Proud, the Chief Inspector in dangerous factories, who sees the
precautions against risk of poisoning from Tri-nitro-toluol, Tetryl,
the aeroplane wing dope, etc., are all carried out by the management,
has written an admirable textbook on welfare work. The country for
this purpose is divided into nine areas, and two women inspectors work
in each.

Woolwich Arsenal is one of our great centres of women's work and
the Chief Welfare Supervisor there, Miss Lilian Barker, is the most
capable woman Supervisor in Britain, a statesman among Supervisors.
Any visitor to the Arsenal cannot help being struck by the general
impression of contentment, happiness and health of the woman worker
there in her thousands. It is rare to see a sickly face among them,
even among the girls in the Danger Zone. Miss Barker is constantly
adding to her own staff of supervisors and training others for
provincial centres. She and her Assistants interview new hands
and arrange changes and transfers of women. She enquires into
all complaints, advises as to clothing, keeps an eye on the vast
canteen organization of Woolwich, and initiates schemes for
recreation--notices of whist drives, dances and concerts are
constantly up on the boards. The housing of the immigrant workers--no
small problem, she and her assistants deal with. They suggest
improvements in conditions and are awake to signs of illness or
overfatigue. They follow the worker home and look after the young
mother and the sick girl and women.

Hostels have been built there and all over the country by the
Government and by factory owners, and the Hostel Supervisors have a
big and useful work to do.

They are very well arranged with a room for each girl and nice rest
rooms, dining rooms and good sickroom accommodations. Rules are cut
down to a minimum. Most Supervisors find out ways of working without
them.

"Smoking is allowed at this end of the restroom," said one
Superintendent, "but since we have permitted this recreation, it seems
to have fallen out of favour," which seems to show munition girls are
very human.

Hutments have also been built for married couples. Lodgings are
inspected and when suitable, scheduled for workers coming to the area.
In some cases the management in private factories do not adopt formal
welfare workers but get a woman of the right type and put her in
charge of the female operatives, with generally excellent results.
The value of the influence of this work on our girls cannot be
over-estimated--it is an influence of the very best kind, and our
experiences in munition and welfare work, every class of women working
together, is going to be of great and permanent good.

[Illustration: AN OFFICIAL BOOKLET FOR MUNITION WORKERS]

The professional woman and the girls who flock to London in large
numbers for work in Government Departments, must be housed also, and
there are many extremely good Hostels. Bedford House, the old Bedford
College for Women, is now a delightful Hostel run by the Y.W.C.A.,
whose work for munition girls deserves very special mention. They had
Hostels over the country before the war and have added to these. They
have set up Clubs all over the country for the girls in munitions and
industry in 150 centres, and these are very much appreciated and used
by thousands of girls.

The feeding of the munition worker is another great piece of work.
It started, like so many of our things, in voluntary effort. The
conditions of the men and women working all night and without any
possibility of getting anything warm to eat and drink and, exhausted
with their heavy work, made people feel something must be done, and
the first efforts were to send round barrows with hot tea and coffee
and sandwiches, etc. More and more it was realized that the provision
of proper meals for the workers, men and women, was indispensable for
the maintenance of output on which our fighting forces depended for
their very lives--and the Government, the Y.M.C.A., the Y.W.C.A. and
various other agencies, started to establish canteens. The Y.W.C.A.
alone in its canteens serves 80,000 meals a week. Large numbers of
private firms have established their own canteens.

The Health of Munition Workers Committee reported, in November, 1915,
that it was extremely desirable to establish canteens in every factory
in which it would be useful. Many canteens existed before the war,
but they have been added to enormously and the recommendations of the
committee as to accessibility, attractiveness, form, food and service
carried out.

The Canteen Committee of the Liquor Control Board who have looked
after this work have issued an admirable official pamphlet, "Feeding
the Munition Worker," in which plans for construction and all details
are given. An ideal canteen should always provide facilities for the
worker to heat his or her own food.

The prices are very reasonable, and in most cases only cover cost of
food and service, soup and bread is 4 cents--cut from joint and two
vegetables, 12 to 16 cents.

  Puddings, 2 to 4 cents,
  Bread and cheese, 3 to 4 cents,
  Tea, coffee and cocoa, 2 cents a cup,

and a variety is arranged in the week's menu.

The Y.W.C.A. Huts are very popular. In some of them the girls get
dinners for 10 cents, and the dinner includes joint, vegetables and
pudding.

There are comfortable chairs in them in which girls can rest and
attractive magazines and books to read in the little restrooms. The
workers in charge of these canteens are educated women and the waiting
and service is done by voluntary helpers. There is not only excellent
feeding for our workers in these canteens, but there is great economy
in food and fuel. To cook 400 dinners together is much less wasteful
than to cook them separately, and the cooks in these are generally
trained economists.

The children, too, are not forgotten. Our welfare workers follow the
young mother home and find out if the children are all right and well
taken care of. We have done even more in the war than before for
our babies and the infant death rate is falling. We have established
excellent creches and nurseries where they are needed.

It is impossible to overestimate the value of all this work in
industry. The Prime Minister, speaking last year on this subject,
said, "It is a strange irony, but no small compensation, that the
making of weapons of destruction should afford the occasion to
humanize industry. Yet such is the case. Old prejudices have vanished,
new ideas are abroad; employers and workers, the public and the State,
are all favourable to new methods. The opportunity must not be allowed
to slip. It may well be that, when the tumult of war is a distant echo
and the making of munitions a nightmare of the past, the effort now
being made to soften asperities, to secure the welfare of the workers,
and to build a bridge of sympathy and understanding between employer
and employed, will have left behind results of permanent and enduring
value to the workers, to the nation and to mankind at large."

I am no believer in the gloomy predictions of industrial revolutions
after the war. We will have revolutions--but of the right kind and one
thing has been clearly shown, that the workers of our country are
not only loyal citizens but realize every issue of this conflict as
vividly as anyone else. On their work, men and women, our Navy, our
Army and our country, have depended--and they have not failed us in
any real thing.


MINISTRY OF MUNITIONS.



DUTIES OF WELFARE SUPERVISORS FOR WOMEN.

(Sometimes called EMPLOYMENT SUPERINTENDENTS.)



    NOTE.--It is not suggested that all these duties should be
    imposed upon the Employment Superintendent directly she is
    appointed. The size of the Factory will to a certain extent
    determine the scope of her work, and in assigning her duties
    regard will of course be had to her professional ability to
    cope with them.

    These officers are responsible solely to the firms that employ
    them, and in no sense to the Ministry of Munitions.



The experience which has now been obtained in National and other
Factories making munitions of war has demonstrated that the post of
Welfare Supervisor is a valuable asset to Factory management wherever
women are employed. Through this channel attention has been drawn to
conditions of work, previously unnoted, which were inimical to the
well-being of those employed. The following notes have, therefore,
been prepared for the information of employers who have not hitherto
engaged such officers, but who desire to know the position a Welfare
Supervisor should take and the duties and authority which, it is
suggested, might be delegated to her.


POSITION.

It has generally been found convenient that the Welfare Supervisor
should be directly responsible to the General Manager, and should be
given a definite position on the managerial staff in connection with
the Labour Employment Department of the Factory. She is thus able to
refer all matters calling for attention direct to the General Manager,
and may be regarded by him as a liaison between him and the various
Departments dealing with the women employees.


DUTIES.

The duty of a Welfare Supervisor is to obtain and to maintain a
healthy staff of workers and to help in maintaining satisfactory
conditions for the work.

In order to obtain a staff satisfactory both from the point of view of
health and technical efficiency, it has been found to be an advantage
to bring the Welfare Supervisor into the business of selecting women
and girls for employment.


I. THE OBTAINING OF A HEALTHY STAFF.

Her function is to consider the general health, physical capacity and
character of each applicant. As regards those under 16 years of
age, she could obtain useful advice as to health from the Certifying
Surgeon when he grants Certificates of fitness. The Management can, if
they think fit, empower her to refer for medical advice to their panel
Doctor, other applicants concerning whose general fitness she is in
doubt. This selection of employees furnishes the Welfare Supervisor
with a valuable opportunity for establishing a personal link with the
workers.

Her function is thus concerned with selection on general grounds,
while the actual engaging of those selected may be carried out by the
Overlooker or other person responsible for the technical side of
the work. In this way both aspects of appointment receive full
consideration.

The Management may find further that it is useful to consult the
Welfare Supervisor as to promotions of women in the Factory, thus
continuing the principle of regarding not only technical efficiency
but also general considerations in the control of the women in the
Factory.


II. THE MAINTAINING OF A HEALTHY STAFF.

The Welfare Supervisor should ascertain what are the particular needs
of the workers. These needs will then be found to group themselves
under two headings:

    (a) Needs within the Factory--Intramural Welfare.

    (b) Needs outside the Factory--Extramural Welfare.


INTRAMURAL WELFARE.

I. SUPERVISION OF WORKING CONDITIONS.

The Welfare Supervisor may be made responsible for the following
matters:

    (a) _General behaviour of women and girls inside the
    factory._--While responsibility for the technical side of
    the work must rest with the Technical Staff, the Welfare
    Supervisor should be responsible for all questions of general
    behaviour.

    (b) _Transfer._--The Welfare Supervisor would, if the health
    of a woman was affected by the particular process on which
    she is engaged, be allowed, after having consulted the Foreman
    concerned, to suggest to the Management the possibility of
    transfer of the woman to work more suited to her state of
    health.

    (c) _Night Supervision._--The Welfare Supervisor should have
    a deputy for night work and should herself occasionally visit
    the Factory at night to see that satisfactory conditions are
    maintained.

    (d) _Dismissal._--It will be in keeping with the general
    suggestions as to the functions of the Welfare Supervisor
    if she is consulted on general grounds with regard to the
    dismissal of women and girls.

    (e) _The maintenance of healthy conditions._--This implies
    that she should, from the point of view of the health of the
    female employees, see to the general cleanliness, ventilation
    and warmth of the Factory and keep the Management informed of
    the results of her observations.

    (f) _The provision of seats._--She should study working
    conditions so as to be able to bring to the notice of the
    Management the necessity for the provision of seats where
    these are possible.


II. CANTEEN.

Unless the Factory is a small one it would hardly be possible for the
Welfare Supervisor to manage the canteen. The Management will probably
prefer to entrust the matter to an expert who should satisfy the
Management in consultation with the Welfare Supervisor on the
following matters:--

    (1) That the Canteen provides all the necessary facilities for
    the women workers; that is to say, suitable food, rapidly and
    punctually served.

    (2) That Canteen facilities are provided when necessary for
    the women before they begin work so that no one need start
    work without having taken food.

    (3) That the Canteen is as restful and as comfortable as
    possible so that it serves a double purpose of providing rest
    as well as food.


III. SUPERVISION OF AMBULANCE RESTROOM AND FIRST AID.

While not responsible for actually attending to accidents, except
in small Factories, the Welfare Supervisor should work in close
touch with the Factory Doctor and Nurses. She should, however, be
responsible for the following matters:--

    (1) She should help in the selection of the Nurses, who should
    be recognised as belonging to the Welfare staff.

    (2) While not interfering with the Nurses in the professional
    discharge of their duties, she should see that their work is
    carried out promptly and that the workers are not kept waiting
    long before they receive attention.

    (3) She should supervise the keeping of all records of
    accident and illness in the Ambulance Room.

    (4) She should keep in touch with all cases of serious
    accident or illness.

It would further be useful if she were allowed to be kept in touch
with the Compensation Department inside the Factory with a view to
advising on any cases of hardship that may arise.


IV. SUPERVISION OF CLOAK-ROOMS AND SANITARY CONVENIENCES.

The Welfare Supervisor should be held responsible for the following
matters:--

    (1) General cleanliness.

    (2) Prevention of Loitering.

    (3) Prevention of Pilfering.

The Management will decide what staff is necessary to assist her, and
it should be her duty to report to the Management on these matters.


V. PROVISION OF OVERALLS.

The Welfare Supervisor should have the duty of supervising the
Protective Clothing supplied to the women for their work.


EXTRAMURAL WELFARE.

The Welfare Supervisor should keep in touch with all outside agencies
responsible for:--

    (1) Housing.

    (2) Transit facilities.

    (3) Sickness and Maternity cases.

    (4) Recreation.

    (5) Day Nurseries.

In communicating with any of these agencies it will no doubt be
preferable that she should do so through the Management.


III. RECORDS.

_A_. The Welfare Supervisor should for the purpose of her work have
some personal records of every woman employee. If a card-index system
is adopted, a sample card suggesting the necessary particulars which
it is desirable should be kept by Welfare Supervisors is supplied to
employers on request.

_B_. The Welfare Supervisor should have some way of observing the
health in relation to the efficiency of the workers, and if the
Management approved this could be done:

    (a) By allowing her to keep in touch with the Wages
    Department. She could then watch the rise and fall of wages
    earned by individual employees from the point of view that
    a steady fall in earnings may be the first indication of an
    impending breakdown in health.

    (b) By allowing her to keep in touch with the Time Office she
    should be able to obtain records of all reasons for lost time.
    From such records information can be obtained of sickness,
    inadequate transit and urgent domestic duties, which might
    otherwise not be discovered. Here again, if a card-index
    system is adopted a sample card for this purpose can be
    obtained from the Welfare and Health Section on request.

    (c) By keeping records of all cases of accident and sickness
    occurring in the Factory. Sample Ambulance Books and Accident
    Record Cards can also be obtained from the Welfare and Health
    Section.




"THE WOMEN'S LAND ARMY"


    "If it were not for the women, agriculture would be at an
    absolute standstill on many farms in England and Wales today."

                          --_President of the Board of Agriculture._




CHAPTER VIII

"THE WOMEN'S LAND ARMY"


The Land Army of Women, which now numbers over 258,300 whole and
part-time workers, has done splendid work. For some years before the
war women had been very little used on the land in certain parts of
England and Wales. In Scotland and in some of the English counties
there had always been, and still were, quite fair numbers of women on
the land.

Within eighteen months of the outbreak of war, about 300,000
agricultural laborers had enlisted and the work had been carried on
with difficulty by the farmer in the first year of the war. The farmer
secured all the labor he could, old men returned to help, and the army
released skilled men temporarily, from training, to help. Soldiers
were used in groups for seasonal work, the farmer paying a good rate
for them. Groups of women were also organized for seasonal work by
various voluntary organizations, two of these being the Land Council
and the Women's National Land Service Corps. The Women's Farm and
Garden Union also did good work. The Land Service Corps made one of
its most important objects the organization of village women into
working gangs under leaders. One interesting piece of work undertaken
by the Corps last year was finding a large number of women for
flax-pulling in Somerset. This the Flax-Growers' Association asked
them to do as sufficient local labor could not be raised. The War
Agricultural Committee made all the local arrangements. This was
pioneer work of great value and importance as flax is essential in the
making of aeroplane wings.

The Corps sent a group of 100 women under competent gang leaders.
The workers were housed in an empty country house and the War Office
provided bedding. The Y.W.C.A. undertook the catering at the request
of the Corps. The work, which was a great success, consisted in
pulling, gating, wind mowing, stocking and tying flax.

The Corps has already been asked to undertake this again next year.
Owing to the Russian troubles and the closing of the Port of Riga, it
will be necessary to put many more hundreds of acres under cultivation
and it is probable four or five times as many women will be needed
next year.

Some of the Corps members are doing good work in Army Remount Depots,
working in the stables and exercising the horses. One of the latest
interesting developments of women's work is in the care of sick
horses, carried out in the Horse Hospital in London.

Within nine months of the outbreak of war, it was clear we must secure
help for the farmers, in order to enable them to do their work. As the
submarine menace developed, and the supply of grain in the world was
affected by the numbers of men taken away from production, it was
clear we must try to grow more food.

Our grain production at the best was only twelve weeks of our supply,
and even to keep up to that seemed to be a problem.

It was clear that in agriculture, as in so many other things, women
must fill up the ranks, and in the first official appeal of the
Government for additional woman labor, the land had an important
place.

Lord Selborne, President of the Board of Agriculture, drew up a
scheme for the organization of agriculture throughout the country.
It consisted of War Agricultural Committee set up in each county who
look after production, use of land, procuring use of motor machinery,
etc., and of Women's Agricultural Committees. The latter undertake the
organization of securing women workers for the land, choosing them,
and arranging for training and placing out.

The voluntary groups of women who have been working at the problem in
the war are now practically all merged in the Board of Agriculture's
organization. The Women's Branch of the Food Production Department
now controls and arranged the whole work and Miss Meriel Talbot is the
able chief.

The Women's Land Corps, like the other organizations, was prepared to
be merged in the new Land Army of the Board and to cease to exist as a
separate organization. Its members were willing to become part of the
new Land Army.

The Board found there was a distinct need for a voluntary association
which would continue to enroll women, who could not sign on for the
duration of the war, and who were able to forego the benefits of free
training, outfit and travelling given under the Government scheme.
Over 100 members of the Corps did enroll and the original Corps
members do not require to appear before the local Selection Committees
nor to submit references, which marks the Board's confidence in the
Corps.

Many of the Corps Workers are now organizing Secretaries for the
Counties or Assistant Secretaries, or are travelling Inspectors under
the Board of Agriculture.

The Corps still organizes the supply of temporary workers for seasonal
jobs such as potato dropping, hoeing, harvesting, fruitpicking, potato
and root lifting, etc., done by groups under leaders. The work of
organizing in the Counties is carried out by the appointment of a
woman as District representative. She is responsible for a general
supervision of the work in all the villages in her distr