THE EFFECTS OF THE WAR ON THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN

The Shock of War.—The great European War broke out in the summer of 1914.

The shock was felt at once by trade and industry. July ended in scenes of widespread trouble and dismay. The Stock Exchange closed, and the August Bank Holiday was prolonged for nearly a week. Many failures occurred, and there was at first a general lack of confidence and credit. Energetic measures were promptly taken by the Government to restore a sense of security, and unemployment among men during the ensuing year was much less than had been anticipated. Unemployment among women was for a time very severe. For this unfavourable position of women there are several reasons.

In the first place, any surplus of male labour was met at once by a corresponding new demand for recruits and the drafting of many hundreds of thousands of young men into the army, aided by the rush of employment in Government factories and workshops, served to correct the dislocation of the male labour market. Women were unfortunate in that the cotton trade, by far the largest staple industry in which a majority of the employees are women, was also the trade to suffer the greatest injury by the war.

The Cotton Trade.—Employment had begun to be slack some time previously, and the cutting off of the German market was naturally a considerable blow. Exact statistics are almost impossible to obtain, as the numbers of looms stopped or working short time varied from week to week; but figures collected for the week ending October 3 show that between 58,000 and 59,000 members of the Amalgamated Weavers’ Association were out of work, and over 30,000 were on short time. At Burnley, over half the looms were stopped; at Preston, over a third. In November, when things had greatly improved, about 36 per cent of the looms were still standing idle.

The amount of short time, or “under-employment,” was also very considerable, as is shown by the fact that the reduction in earnings exceeded the reduction in numbers employed. The following table is taken from the Labour Gazette, December 1914, and shows the state of employment in the principal centres of the cotton trade. The figures include men as well as women; but as women predominate in the industry, they may be considered as a fair index to the women’s position.

Week ending November 28, 1914, Compared with same Month in Previous Year.

In all these districts women would be affected much the same as men, and would be out of work in about the same proportion, but as women form a majority of the occupation, a much larger number of women were in distress and were without any resource comparable to that open to the men of recruiting age. In these circumstances the funds of the Unions suffered a terrible strain. The workers’ organisations were faced with the dilemma whether to pay stoppage benefit to members with a generous hand, in which case they ran the risk of depleting their funds and losing the strength necessary for effective protection of the standard of life; or, on the other hand, to guard their reserve for the future and leave many of their members to suffer distress with the inevitable result of loss of health and efficiency.

As the winter 1914-15 wore onwards unemployment in the cotton trade gradually became less acute, but for several months the suffering of the operatives must have been considerable.

Some other Trades.—In London the position was of course extremely unlike that of Lancashire, but we again find the women suffering heavily, and (but for comparatively a few) without the support and assistance of a union. At the first news of war, dressmakers, actresses, typists, secretaries, and the followers of small “luxury trades” (toilet specialities, manicuring, and the like) were thrown out of work in large numbers. Not only in London, but in the country at large, the following trades were greatly depressed: dressmaking, millinery, blouse-making, fancy boot and shoe-making, the umbrella trade, cycle and carriage making, the jewellery trade, furniture making, china and glass trades. In some cases the general dislocation was intensified by a shortage of material due to war: the closing of the Baltic cut off supplies of flax from Russia, on which our linen trade largely depends. The closing of the North Sea to fishers stopped the curing of herrings, which normally employs thousands of women, and both the chemical and confectionery trades suffered from the stoppage of imports from Germany.

The Board of Trade’s Report on the State of Employment in October 1914 gave the reduction of women’s employment in London as 10·5 per cent in September, 7·0 per cent in October. But this estimate was for all industries taken together, some of which were in a state of “boom” owing to the war, and it is certain that the occupations referred to above must have suffered much more heavily than the average. Many girls spent weeks in the heart-sickening and exhausting search for employment. In November the dressmaking, mantle-making, and shirt- and collar-making were in a worse condition than in the previous month, although trade generally had improved.

The Woollen and Clothing Trades.—In these trades the war brought a veritable “tidal-wave” of prosperity. The industrial centres of our Allies were to a considerable extent in the hands of the enemy; thus, not only new clothes for our regular troops and reserves, and uniforms for the new armies that were shortly recruited, but also those for the troops of our Allies were called for in the West Riding of Yorkshire. The woollen towns of this district became the busiest places in the world, and orders overflowed into Scotland and the somewhat decayed but still celebrated clothing region of the West of England.

The first expedient to cope with the enormous pressure of orders was to relax the Factory Act. In normal times no overtime is allowed in textile industries to workers under the operation of the Act (viz. women, girls under eighteen, boys under eighteen, and children), and employment is limited to ten hours a day. In view of the tremendous issues involved, permission was given to employ women and young persons for two hours’ overtime. The results, as it turned out, soon showed, however, that overtime is bad economy, for the number of accidents increased greatly in the period of greatest pressure, and averaged one a day in the December quarter, and the secretary of the Union also reported that the period during which these very long hours were worked coincided with a remarkable increase of illness among the operatives involved. Probably one-third more cases were on the Approved Societies’ books during December than in September and October.[59] Although the women rose most pluckily to the occasion and did their heavy task cheerfully in the consciousness of supplying their country’s need, it is certain that many were taxed beyond their strength, and in January 1915 the overtime permitted was reduced to nine hours weekly. The women, when they complained, complained not of overwork but of insufficient pay. An increase of 1½d. per hour during overtime was asked, and considering the strain involved, seems a far from excessive demand; but the trade is unfortunately much less well organised than the cotton trade, and female workers—73 per cent of the whole—could not in most districts enforce this claim. Khaki is more trying to the operatives than some other kinds of cloth to which they are better accustomed, and it is more difficult to weave. Even with overtime work the women did not earn much more than they would working usual hours on ordinary cloth. The wages paid appear to have been, as so often is the case with women’s work, chaotic. Many employers honourably paid a fair or recognised price; others took advantage of the weakness of the workers to pay rates not far from sweating prices. In the clothing trade the Government was conscientiously paying handsome rates to contractors for the making of uniforms, but without effectively enforcing the payment of fair wages to labour by the contractors. Hence even the Trade Board minimum—a low standard, especially considering the rise of prices—was successfully evaded by some firms.[60]

Maladjustment and Readjustment.—The question may well be asked, why women should suffer unemployment in war-time at all. War produces an urgent demand for a great deal of the work women are best fitted to do, such as nursing, the making of clothes and underclothes, the manufacture of food stuffs and provisions on a large scale, the organisation of commissariat and hospitals, the collection and overlooking of stores. In point of fact, the requirements of the troops, as we have seen, provided increased employment for some women, though probably not for nearly as many as those who suffered from the shrinkage of ordinary trade at the beginning of the winter; later on the demand became so great that there was an actual scarcity of women workers in many trades.

One strange feature of those autumn months of 1914 was that while recruits were continually to be seen marching in plain clothes, without a uniform, numbers of London tailors and tailoresses were without employment. Many of the recruits were also, at first at all events, unprovided with needful elementary comforts, and amateurs were continually pressed to work at shirts and knitting for them. Women employed in the manufacture of stuffs or clothing for the troops or in certain processes of the manufacture of armaments or appurtenances were overworked, while other women were totally or partially out of work. The characteristic immobility of labour was perhaps never more clearly seen.

It may be admitted of course that a wholesale transference of workers from the area of slump to the area of boom would never be possible all at once. The machines necessary for special work will not at first be forthcoming in numbers sufficient to meet a demand suddenly increased in so enormous a proportion. Then, again, a new demand for labour is usually a demand predominantly for young workers, and the older women thrown out of work may find it very difficult to adapt themselves to new requirements. Skill and practice in the handling of machines are necessary; machines differ very greatly. A dressmaker cannot, off-hand, be set to make cartridges or even uniforms. In some branches of industry a high degree of specialised skill may be a positive disadvantage in acquiring the methods of an allied but lower skilled trade; e.g. it has been found that tailors and tailoresses who have become expert in the handwork still largely used for the best “bespoke” work, the aristocracy of the trade, cannot easily adapt themselves to the modern “team work” tailoring, in which division of labour and the use of machinery play a considerable part; they may even impair their own special skill by attempting it.[61] In some processes a delicate sensitiveness of finger is a first essential for the work, and the operatives dare not take up any rough work which might impair this delicacy, their stock-in-trade and capital. Again, the difference of wage-levels in different industries is a cause of immobility of labour. Lancashire cotton workers might have adapted themselves without much difficulty to the processes of the Yorkshire woollen trade, but they could not have accepted the rates current in an imperfectly organised trade, and there would have been obvious difficulty in paying imported workers at a scale higher than those enjoyed by the local operatives.

A good deal of dovetailing, however, can be done to bring the work to the workers or the workers to the work, and much more could have been done if the Local Government Board had taken the question of unemployment more seriously in the years preceding the war. But the local bodies were uninstructed, and in many cases had little idea of anything better than doles. In spite of the funds collected, there can be little doubt that much suffering, especially among women, was neglected and let alone, and the irregular payment of separation allowances at the beginning of the war added to the distress.

Voluntary effort, it needs hardly saying, was instantly ready to do its best to meet the occasion. The Suffrage Societies, in especial, did splendid work in improvising employment bureaux and relief workrooms for the sufferers. A special fund and committee were also formed, under the style of the Central Committee for Women’s Employment, to find new channels of employment for women. This Committee was presided over by the Queen, and was aided in its labours by specialists highly versed in industrial conditions, and its efforts for adjustment are full of interest.

The primary aim of this Committee was to equalise employment in factories and workshops. The problem was how to achieve the adaptation, as far as possible, of unemployed firms and workers to new and urgent national needs. It had been supposed that only certain special firms could make army clothing, and that the numerous women and girls thrown out of work in ordinary wholesale tailoring would be unable to do unaccustomed work. A business adviser of the Committee suggested to the War Office authorities some simplifications in the make of military greatcoats and uniforms. The experiment was tried, with the result that many thousand great-coats and uniforms were made by firms which under the dominance of red tape must have stopped work. In the shirt-making, also, much unemployment occurred at first, and the Committee gave information to firms not previously employed by Government that they could apply for contracts. Carpet-yarn factories were utilised for the supply of yarn to satisfy the enormous demand created by the war. Numbers of orders for shirts, socks, and belts were placed in dressmakers’ workrooms, and carried out by women whose normal occupation had failed them.

Another field of this Committee’s work was to stimulate the introduction of new trades and open new fields of work for women wage-earners. This is a difficult undertaking at a time when spending power must be much curtailed, but it may be destined to have good results in happier times, and in any case any widening of the field of employment for women, any development of their technical skill, is much to be welcomed.[62]

Besides these deeply interesting attempts at regulating and adjusting the market for skilled labour, there remains the vast army of the unskilled. Here we had during the first winter of war the influence of a new idea working, the perception that something better than relief work, something infinitely better than charity, was possible. In some of the workrooms started by voluntary effort orders were obtained for underlinen, toys, etc. On a small scale there need be no great objection to this if the educational factor were prominent, but it is necessary to point out that no real adjustment of the labour market is effected by inducing ladies to make purchases in a workroom that they might otherwise have made in an ordinary shop, the employees of those shops probably themselves suffering from shortage of employment. The workrooms started under the Central Committee for this class of workers adopted the plan of setting them to make useful articles, not for sale but for distribution among the poor, such as layettes for infants and clothing for necessitous mothers, also to the mending or remodelling of old clothes, the manufacture of cradles from banana crates, and so forth. In most workrooms a good meal was provided in the middle of the day, and some of the women were instructed in its cooking and service.

The leading idea of workrooms on these lines is that temporarily the workers should be taken off the labour market altogether, that they should be paid not wages but relief, and that the relief should be robbed of its degrading associations by being combined with a system of training the women to do something they could not do before, or at all events to do it better than before. The requirement of attendance at the workroom (usually for forty hours weekly) was a guarantee of genuine need. This method of dealing with the problem of distress is probably as satisfactory as any that could be devised off-hand, though the workrooms did not escape criticism on the score of attracting girls away from “normal employment.”[63] This is no doubt possible, the scale of women’s wages in “normal employment” being still unfortunately so low. Ten shillings a week would not attract workers away from decently paid work done under decent conditions. The criticisms, however, point to the desirability of such arrangements being carefully co-ordinated to avoid overlapping, especially with the technical training provided by the Education Authority.

Although the working of the plan was good as far as it went, it went unfortunately only a little way. By the first week in November a couple of dozen centres of employment had been started, and perhaps 1 per cent of the unemployed women had been provided with work in the workrooms.[64] There were besides uncounted thousands whose work and wages were reduced to a mere fraction of what they had previously been. Had the local authorities been already educated by the Local Government Board to take a broader view of their responsibilities and more scientific measures in discharging them, a great deal more of the ground might have been effectively covered. It is to be hoped that if similar measures are needed after the war, as seems likely to be the case, the experience of 1914-15 will bear fruit.

The New Demand for Women’s Labour.—With the continuance of war an unexpected situation gradually shaped itself. The clothing and accoutrement of the great army that was speedily recruited, as well as urgently-needed supplies for France, and for Russia, so far as they could be transported thither, created a huge demand for labour, and by December the shortage of skilled labour was a serious problem. More especially was this the case with the munitions group of trades, which became the largest and busiest of all. With some lack of foresight too many men from these industries had been allowed to enlist, and eventually some were even brought back from the front. Thousands of women poured into armament making; factories have been adapted to meet the new demands; trade union rules and legislative requirements have been considerably relaxed; women to a limited extent are replacing men. These are some of the outstanding features of a situation which is already bewildering in its complexity.

The shortage of skilled workers which has formed and still forms so serious a difficulty in supplying the army, is due not only to the enlistment of skilled men, but also to the tendency which the past thirty years or so have unfortunately shown to be increasing, for the displacement of the skilled by the unskilled worker. The ignorance of parents and the attraction of the “blind alley” occupations for the children of poor homes, where every shilling counts, combined with the organisation of business primarily for profit and the inadequacy of social safeguards in this matter, have created a difficult position. The lack of training and experience is, however, much more general among women than among men, and has formed a serious obstacle to their employment. The replacement of men by women in manufacturing industry has thus been less than might have been expected. Women have to a considerable extent replaced men in commercial and clerical work, in some occupations in and about railway stations, also as shop assistants, lift-attendants, etc. There are even suggestions that the underground railway service of London might be entirely staffed with women; but up to the time of writing this has occurred only to a limited extent. There has of course been an enormous increase in women’s employment, but a large part of the war demand is for goods on the manufacture of which women normally predominate, as clothing, food-stuffs, etc. Another large part of the demand is for work on such processes as the filling of shells, and is now swollen to an unparalleled degree. What has happened has been that subdivision of processes and grading of labour have been introduced, as well as mechanical adjustments to facilitate the employment of women. As usually happens when women are introduced to a new trade or branch of a trade, the work is more or less changed in character. No doubt the pressure of war conditions has had the effect that women are now performing processes that were previously supposed to be beyond their strength or skill or both, especially in leather, engineering, and the wool and worsted trades. The line of demarcation between men’s and women’s occupations is drawn higher up. But women have not to any great extent replaced men in the skilled mechanical trades, the immediate and insurmountable obstacle to such replacement being their lack of skill and training. In certain trades, however, where women have been given opportunity and facilities to undertake work involving judgment and skill, they have, aided by the stimulus of patriotism, shown both intelligence and initiative, revealed unexpected powers on processes hitherto performed by men, and done work “of which any mechanic might be proud” (see report mentioned below; compare the Engineer, Aug. 20, 1915).The lack of training therefore may perhaps explain the very small results that have so far followed from the appeal to women to register for war-work, made by the Government in March 1915. As to the origin of this appeal, little is definitely known. It may have been intended as a recognition of the efforts and sacrifices already made by women during the war. It may have been, as some suggest, probably not without foundation, that the measure was instigated by the Farmers’ Union, in the hope of getting cheap labour on the land instead of raising the wages of men. The women’s organisations were not consulted, and even the Central Committee on Women’s Employment, then anxiously engaged in reviewing and where possible adjusting the dislocation of women’s employment, had, we believe, no previous notice of the appeal. A very small proportion only of the women who registered were called upon to work within the next few months; only three or four thousand out of 80,000. This small result is said to be due to the fact that only a very small proportion were capable of the skilled jobs awaiting them.[65] In great part the new demand for labour has been met by the overflow from other industries, though it has been supplemented by the addition of voluntary workers of the class usually termed “unoccupied,” that is to say, not working for wages. There are obvious risks in bringing women from the upper and middle classes into a labour market the conditions of which are usually much against working-women; on the other hand, such an arrangement as was made, e.g. that amateurs should train so as to replace ordinary working women for the week-end, seems an admirable device to use the superfluous energies of the leisured so as to give the workers time for rest and recuperation.

Another problem arising out of the present extension of women’s employment relates to the enormous strain imposed upon the women and the inadequate pay they have in many cases received. We have touched on this point above in connection with the wool and worsted trades. Incidentally these conditions show that the unorganised state of women prevents their taking full advantage of the labour market even when the position is strategically in their favour. In some of the processes on which women have been introduced the skill required is quite considerable, and the output varies, depending greatly on the worker’s health and strength. High speed cannot be maintained without proper intervals of rest; prolonged fatigue reduces capacity. The prime conditions for a persistently high output are a scientific adjustment of hours of work, adequate food, ventilation, and necessary comforts. These facts in the twentieth century are not unknown, but in war-time they were practically ignored. Many of the women on war-work were grievously overworked, and though praised for their patriotism in working overtime, did not receive wages sufficient to afford them the extra nourishment and comforts they should have had. In some cases, especially if doing men’s work, they were highly paid; in others the pay was not only below the standard of a man, but was inadequate to maintain the physical endurance required. The patriotic feelings of women-workers were shamefully exploited, and the state of mind revealed by persons who should have known better was deplorable. In one case of a prosecution by the Home Office the magistrate refused to convict, although a girl under eighteen had been employed twenty-four hours without a break, after which she met with an accident.

Yet another problem arises out of the substitution of women for men. We have seen reason to suppose that this is taking place less extensively than is supposed, but it undeniably occurs, and may assume much greater proportions before the war is over.

Are women who replace men to be paid merely the wages that women of the same grade of skill usually are paid? In that case they will be undercutting men, and preparing a position of extreme difficulty after the war. Or are the women to be paid the same wages as the men they replace? They certainly should, wherever the work is the same. As we have seen, in many cases the women do not do exactly the same work as men, and indeed in the interests of their health and efficiency it is often highly desirable they should not do quite the same. It may be quite easy, e.g., for a woman to cut off yards of cloth to sell across the counter, but it may happen that the man she replaces not only did this but also at intervals handled heavy bales of goods which are beyond her strength. In such cases as this a rearrangement of work with due regard to relative strength is desirable, and a rigid equality of wages should not be insisted on. Organisation of all women-workers employed to replace men is become a more pressing need than ever, to ensure first that women should not be paid less than men merely because they are women; second, that women should not have work thrust upon them that is an injurious strain on their constitutions; third, that the future interests of the men now serving in the field should not be disregarded. The point insisted on in Chapter IV., that women need not only to be enrolled in Unions but to have a voice in the management and control where they are organised along with men, has been made plainer than ever. So strongly was this felt at Manchester that a special committee was formed for the protection of women’s interests in munition work, and for co-operation with the interested trade unions in any movement towards the organisation of the women. A special campaign for the organisation of munition workers was initiated and carried on by the National Federation of Women Workers.

The Results the War may have.—It is impossible as yet to estimate what effects the war will ultimately have in modifying the position of women. The surplus of women, in itself a source of much social ill, will be increased; the young girls of to-day have a diminished prospect of marriage. At the same time the spending power of the community must almost certainly be curtailed, and apart from military requirements there will be a less demand for women’s work in many occupations. Thus at the very time that women will need more than ever to be self-dependent, their opportunities of self-dependence will be narrowed. Another aspect, a more hopeful one, is that the scarcity of men may improve the position of women and lead to their being entrusted with posts, not necessarily identical with those of men, but more responsible and more dignified than those women have usually filled. Objections of a merely conventional nature are likely to disappear. It seems also possible that the present shifting of women’s employment out of the luxury trades that ebb and flow according to fashion and idle caprice, into Government service and trades vitally necessary to national existence, may remain after the war, only that women’s energies may then, as we hope, be turned once again to save life rather than destroy it.

There are signs that a deeper and more intimate consciousness of society as a whole may operate in favour of women. The recruiting campaign, for instance, may induce certain reflections. Between 1891 and 1900, 781,475 male infants died under a year old in England and Wales alone, making an average death-rate of 168 per thousand births. If even the very mild measures for the improvement of sanitation and the care of infants and nursing mothers that have been adopted in recent years had been customary twenty years ago, we should have now in England some hundreds of thousands more lads of recruiting age or approaching it than are actually here, and many of those who survived the high death-rate of those years would have escaped damage in early years and be stronger and finer men than they are. If we now adopted much more generous measures to the same end, we could probably save some hundreds of thousands more to serve their country in twenty years’ time. And all this would cost an infinitesimal sum in comparison with what is now being poured forth to make these young men as strong and fit for the field as possible. The militarists, if they were consistent, would realise that at the back of the army stands another army—the army of the poor working women, underfed, overworked, badly housed, and insufficiently clad. The patriots, if they were more clear-sighted in regard to their own desires, would spend a great deal more time and energy in demanding, for the sake of military efficiency, that the conditions under which the nation’s babies are brought into the world and the mother nursed and nourished should be changed in a quite revolutionary manner. Some of us may not love this style of argument; the view of men as “food for powder” and women as mere feeders of the army may seem an ignoble one. Those who hold such views will, however, have to consider their implications more closely.

It was a curious coincidence, perhaps even not a wholly fortuitous one (who can say?), that in the very week preceding our declaration of war, when Europe was already resounding with the tramp of armed men and the rumble of artillery wheels, the Local Government Board should have issued its first memoranda on the subject of Maternity and Child Welfare. These circulars, addressed to County Councils and Sanitary Authorities, advocated a considerable extension of the work of Public Health Departments in the direction of medical advice and treatment for pregnant and nursing mothers and their infants, and an extensive development of the system of home-visiting of women and infant children already in existence in some places. Parliament has already voted a grant to the extent of 50 per cent of the cost in aid of local schemes for Maternity and Child Welfare. The immediate appeal of the War Relief Fund and the difficulties of its administration have, no doubt, combined with the inertia characteristic of many local authorities to efface any very bold initiative on the more fundamental but less clamant questions raised in the Local Government Board memorandum. Still, the fact remains that the needs of the woman and the young child have been at last recognised as vital, however inadequate the means taken to meet them have so far been. These needs will be urged by Women’s Societies and by labour organisations, and the war will have the effect of bringing them into stronger relief as time goes on, and may supply the impetus for a still more drastic scheme, on the lines advocated by the Women’s Co-operative Guild.[66]

It is now recognised, or is coming to be recognised, that it is not alone the soldier who serves his country in war; the great part played by industry in building up the nation’s life is equally vital. “Industry and commerce,” writes Mr. Arthur Greenwood, “are not primarily intended as a field for exploitation and profit, but are essential national services in as true a sense as the Army and Navy.” Such a recognition should have its effect in raising the woman’s position, the special economic weakness of which is, that her value to the community is greater than any that can be measured in pounds, shillings, and pence, while nevertheless she, like others in a competitive society, is compelled to measure herself by competitive standards. During the war industrial women have been working day and night to supply military and naval requisites, taking their part in national defence as truly as if they could themselves aid in slaughtering the enemy, and not without considerable overstrain and damage to their own health and strength. Others, again, have spent their time and strength toiling to make good the deficiencies in Government organisation, not only for the relief of distress and unemployment, but even for the needs of recruits themselves. Working women in their homes bear a disproportionately heavy share of the burden of trouble and anxiety caused by the rise of prices in the necessaries of life. Vast numbers of women have offered up their sons and brothers in battle; hundreds of thousands have lost their employment and been reduced to poverty and distress. The efforts and sacrifices made by women cannot have passed wholly unnoticed by the Government, and we may hope that some real development of the position of woman, especially of the working woman, will follow the hoped-for settlement of this terrible crisis.

Even the thoughtless sentimentality of the well-to-do leisured woman has been touched to finer issues. Impelled to “do something” for the soldiers, she turned instinctively to the traditional or primeval occupations of women, and wanted to make shirts, etc., with her own hands. She was, however, here confronted with the new idea that the needs of the unemployed working woman must be considered. In the autumn it was suggested those who could afford new clothes should order some to stimulate employment. In the spring and early summer, on the contrary, the utmost economy was advocated, capital being scarce. The most irresponsible class in the community were thus asked to realise themselves as members of society, to understand that philanthropy was not merely an opportunity for them to save their own souls, that even their personal expenditure was not a merely private matter, but that both must be considered in relation to the needs of the commonweal.[67]

Constructive Measures.—The experience of the war should certainly lead to some better-thought-out method of dealing with times of stress and unemployment than has ever yet been in operation, especially with regard to women. It would be beyond the scope of this volume to draw up such a scheme in detail, but some points may be indicated. The need of better training has become plain. To raise the upper limit of school attendance is urgent, if education is to be worthy of the name. A better all-round training at school would give girls more choice of occupation, and would not leave them so much at the hazard of one particular process or trade. Develop a girl’s intelligence, train her hand and eye, and she will be helped to master the technical difficulties of whatever occupation she may wish to follow or work she may need to do. For older girls special technical and domestic courses may be most valuable, especially if taught in such a manner as to occupy the mind and increase the capacity, and not as mere mechanical routine. It was noted during the boom of work for the army that girls who had been trained in a trade school could adapt themselves more readily to a new and unaccustomed process than could those who had only ordinary workshop training. As a further development of the education question the experience of 1914-15 should lead to the provision of increased facilities for physical exercise in the open air (and time to use them) for young people of both sexes. In the first winter of war we were all amazed at the change effected by a few months’ training and fresh air, at the fine well-set-up young men who had lately been weedy clerks and pale-faced operatives. It may perhaps dawn upon us after the war that if the country can afford to satisfy the elementary needs of healthy life in young men when they stand a good chance of dying for her, it might be worth while to do something of the same kind for those who are to live for her and make her future. Perhaps eventually even the physical health and soundness of girls may be held to justify some provision for exercise in the open air.

In the second place, the local authorities should at times of stress offer all the useful employment they possibly can find to women at fair rates of wages. The more genuine employment a municipal body can find for women in time of need the better, whether by anticipating work that would normally be wanted a few months later or by increasing the efficiency of special services, such as the educational or health services, district nursing, cleansing and sweeping of schools and other buildings. Why not organise a grand “spring cleaning” of neglected homes, with domestic help to aid the overtaxed mothers of families? Special investigation of particular industrial or sanitary conditions as to which information was needed might well be carried out at times when educated women of the secretarial and clerical professions are unemployed.

It is evident that we need a better scheme of Employment Bureaux for women. There should be a centre of information and a clearing-house where workers, found superfluous in their previous occupation, could be drafted into such new ones as they were capable and willing to undertake, and this might possibly be worked in conjunction with a system of training. The comparative success of the work hurriedly improvised, and with many difficulties, by the Central Committee on Women’s Employment, is a clear indication that some similar organisation on a larger scale, say a National Advisory Council, linked up with the Labour Exchanges and representative of women’s organisations, might be infinitely valuable.

Another constructive movement that seems to be gaining ground is that for the organisation of women as consumers. At the end of Chapter V., written early in 1914, I ventured to prophesy that some such form of association would be needed as a complement to the work of organising industrial women-workers. In June 1915 a number of women’s societies were engaged in forming an association to take measures to counteract the war scarcity and increase the supply of food, to extend agricultural and horticultural training for women, to improve the feeding of children in schools, to establish cost-price restaurants for the poor, and to urge the Government to form an Advisory Committee to deal with the whole subject and take steps to control the rise of prices, such a committee to include representatives of women householders.[68] Such an association may have great results, directly in the attainment of the objects set forth, indirectly in the stimulating of public spirit and a sense of citizenship among women.

There is, however, little ground for hoping that the war will of itself lead to social measures of reconstruction or to the development of a better-organised state, whether in regard to women or in regard to labour generally. Some can find spiritual comfort and sustenance in the idea that by fighting German militarism we are destroying tyranny and despotism among ourselves. On the contrary, it may be that in fighting we are impelled to use as a weapon and may be giving a new lease of life to precisely those tendencies, those forces in our own social life which we are opposing among the Germans for all we are worth. Class domination, the rule of the strongest, and the idealisation of brute force are not peculiar to Germany, although unquestionably, as we have been driven to see, they have there reached an extraordinary exuberance. But the same tendencies are here, and we may be sure democracy will not come of itself, merely as a result of the war. War inevitably means for the time the predominance of man over woman, the predominance of the soldier over the industrial, the predominance of reaction over democracy. It is significant that the stress of war was quickly seized as a pretext for suspending the protection of industrial workers by the State, and for relaxing the Education Acts which normally interpose some hindrance to the exploitation of children by the capitalist employer. The clamour for compulsion and the shameless underpayment of women in some branches of war work are signs of the same reaction. Yet in the long run the apparently weaker elements of society are as vitally necessary as the stronger, and to ignore or silence their needs is to strike at the heart of life. The problems offered by the great war, gigantic and staggering as they are, are not so different in kind from, though vaster in degree and more appalling than, the problem of the industrial revolution itself. Each is a problem of the development of material civilisation, which has (we know it now too poignantly) far outdistanced the growth of civilisation on its social and spiritual side. Each includes the question whether man is to be the master or the slave of the mechanic powers his own genius has evoked. Neither can ever be solved without the conscious co-operation of Woman and Labour, failing which we must for ever fall short of the highest possibilities of our race. “If Great Britain is to lead the way in promoting a new spirit between the nations, she needs a new spirit also in the whole range of her corporate life. For what Britain stands for in the world is, in the long run, what Britain is, and when thousands are dying for her it is more than ever the duty of all of us to try to make her worthier of their devotion.”[69]

Changes in Employment during the War 1914-1915.