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Title: The Woman's Part
A Record of Munitions Work
Author: L. K. Yates
Release Date: December 29, 2011 [eBook #38437]
Language: English
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[Illustration: THE MANUFACTURE OF 4.5-INCH CARTRIDGE CASES: OPERATING THE
DRAWING PRESS]
THE WOMAN'S PART
A Record of Munitions Work
by
L. K. YATES
New York
George H. Doran Company
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE ADVENT OF WOMEN IN ENGINEERING TRADES 7
SHARING A COMMON TASK 9
DILUTION 11
HEROISM IN THE WORKSHOP 12
II. TRAINING THE MUNITION WORKER 14
THE QUINTESSENCE OF THE WORK 15
THE INSTRUCTIONAL FACTORY 17
FIRST STEPS IN INDUSTRIAL LIFE 18
III. AT WORK--I. 20
SHELLS AND SHELL CASES 21
IN THE FUSE-SHOP 23
CARTRIDGES AND BULLETS 25
IV. AT WORK--II. 28
THE MAKING OF AIRCRAFT 28
OPTICAL INSTRUMENTS 30
IN THE SHIPYARDS 33
V. COMFORT AND SAFETY 37
WELFARE SUPERVISION 37
PROTECTIVE CLOTHING 41
REST-ROOMS AND FIRST AID 42
WOMEN POLICE 43
VI. OUTSIDE WELFARE 45
RECREATION 45
MOTHERHOOD 47
THE FACTORY NURSERY 48
VII. GROWTH OF THE INDUSTRIAL CANTEEN 52
GENERAL PRINCIPLES 54
THE WORKER'S OASIS 55
VIII. HOUSING 57
BILLETING 58
TEMPORARY ACCOMMODATION 59
PERMANENT ACCOMMODATION 61
ILLUSTRATIONS
THE MANUFACTURE OF 4.5-INCH CARTRIDGE CASES:
OPERATING THE DRAWING PRESS _Frontispiece_
PAGE
TURNING THE COPPER BAND OF A 9.2-INCH HIGH-EXPLOSIVE SHELL 16
DRILLING SAFETY-PIN HOLE IN FUSE 16
INSPECTING AND GAUGING FUSES 17
TURNING THE OUTSIDE AND FORMING THE NOSE-END OF A 9.2-INCH
HIGH-EXPLOSIVE SHELL 17
ASSEMBLING FUSES 20
COOLING SHELL FORGINGS 20
OPERATING A LUMSDEN PLAIN GRINDER: RE-FORMING 8-INCH
HIGH-EXPLOSIVE CUTTERS 21
ENGRAVING METAL PARTS FOR COMPASSES 28
COLOURING AEROPLANE PLANES 28
CHIPPING AND GRINDING BLADES OF CAST IRON PROPELLER WITH
PORTABLE TOOLS 29
WOMAN ACTING AS MATE TO JOINER MAKING SEA-PLANE FLOATS 29
CUTTING FRAYED-EDGE TAPE 36
BRAZING TURBINE ROTOR SEGMENT 36
MOUNTING CARDS FOR DRY COMPASSES 37
TREADLE POLISHING-MACHINES, FOR SMOOTHING LENSES 37
SLITTING AND ROUGHING OPTICAL GLASS 44
VIEW OF CANTEEN KITCHEN 44
WEIGHING FERRO CHROME FOR ANALYSIS 45
BALSAMING LENSES 52
MAKING INSTRUMENT SCALES 53
PAINTING A SHIP'S SIDE IN DRY DOCK 60
GENERAL VIEW OF WOMEN AT WORK ON AIRCRAFT FABRIC 61
THE CANTEEN 61
THE WOMAN'S PART
CHAPTER I: THE ADVENT OF WOMEN IN ENGINEERING TRADES
SHARING A COMMON TASK--DILUTION--HEROISM IN THE WORKSHOP
In a period of titanic events it is difficult to characterize a single
group of happenings as of special significance, yet at the end of the war
it is likely that Great Britain will look back to the transformation of
her home industries for war purposes as one of the greatest feats she has
ever accomplished. The arousing of a nation to fight to the death for the
principle of Liberty is doubtless one of the most stirring of spectacles
in the human drama; it has repeated itself throughout history; but it has
been left to this century to witness in the midst of such an upheaval the
complete reorganization of a nation's industry, built up slowly and
painfully by a modern civilization for its material support and utility.
Before the outbreak of hostilities Great Britain was supplying the world
with the products of her workshops, but these products were mainly those
needed by nations at peace. The coal mines of Northumberland, the
foundries of the Midlands, the cotton mills of Lancashire were aiding vast
populations in their daily human struggle, but the demand of 1914 for vast
requirements for war purposes found Great Britain unprepared. The
instantaneous rearrangement of industries for war purposes, possible to
Germany by reason of forty years of stealthy war preparations, was out of
the question for a nation that neither contemplated nor prepared for a
European conflagration. Eight or nine months had to elapse before the
people of Great Britain were aroused to the realities of modern warfare.
It was then only that a large public became aware that the Herculean
struggle was not merely a conflict between armies and navies, but between
British science and German science, between British chemists and German
chemists, between British workshops and the workshops of Germany. The
realization of these facts led to the creation of the Ministry of
Munitions in May 1915 and the rapid rearrangement of industries and
industrial conditions. Before the war, three National factories in Great
Britain were sufficient to fulfil the demand for output for possible war
purposes; to-day, there are more than 150 National factories and over
5,000 Controlled Establishments, scattered up and down the country, all
producing munitions of war. The whole of the North Country and the whole
of the Midlands have, in fact, become a vast arsenal.
Standing on an eminence in the North, one may by day watch ascending the
smoke of from 400 to 500 munition factories, and by night at many a point
in the Midland counties one may survey an encircling zone of flames as
they belch forth from the chimneys of the engineering works of war. The
vast majority of these workshops had previously to the war never produced
a gun, a shell, or a cartridge. To-day, makers of agricultural and textile
machinery are engaged on munitions, producers of lead pencils are turning
out shrapnel; a manufacturer of gramophones is producing fuses; a court
jeweller is engaged in the manufacture of optical instruments; a maker of
cream separators has now an output of primers. Nor is this all. New
industries have been started and languishing trades have been revived.
The work of reorganization has been prodigious, and when the history of
Britain's share in the war comes to be written in the leisured days of
peace, it is unlikely that the record will transmit to a future generation
how much effort it has taken to produce the preponderance in munitions now
achieved. With the huge task of securing an adequate supply of raw
material has gone hand in hand the production of a sufficiency of suitable
machinery and machine tools, the equipment of laboratories for chemical
research, the erection, or adaptation, of accommodation in which to house
the new 'plant', and the supply of a continuous stream of suitable labour.
In face of the growing needs of the Navy and Army this labour question has
been a crucial test; it is a testimony to the 'will to win' of the whole
people that the problem from the outset has found its solution. As soon as
the importance of the demand for munitions workers was widely understood,
a supply of labour has continuously streamed into the factory gates. There
are now 2,000,000 persons employed in munitions industries--exclusive of
Admiralty work--of which one-third are women.
The advent of the women in the engineering shops and their success in a
group of fresh trades may be accounted as an omen of deep significance.
Women in this country have, it is true, taken their place in factory life
from the moment that machinery swept away the spinning-wheel from the
domestic hearth, and it is more often the woman mill-hand, or factory
'lass', who is the wealthier partner in many a Lancashire home. Women
before the war, to be sure, took part in factory life where such
commodities as textiles, clothing, food, household goods, &c., were
produced, but by consensus of opinion--feminine as well as masculine--her
presence in Engineering Works, save on mere routine work, or on a few
delicate processes, was considered in the pre-war period as unsuitable and
undesirable.
_Sharing a Common Task_
At the outbreak of hostilities, a few of the most far-sighted employers,
contemplating a shortage of labour through the recruitment of men for
military service, hazarded the opinion that women might be employed on all
kinds of simple repetition work in the Engineering Shops. Further than
that even the optimist did not go. There was also no indication that women
would be willing to adventure into a world where long hours and night-work
prevailed, from which evils they were protected in the days of peace by
stringent Factory Acts. Events have proved that the women of Great Britain
are as ready as their menfolk to sacrifice comfort and personal
convenience to the demands of a great cause, and as soon as it was made
known that their services were required, they came forward in their
hundreds of thousands.
They have come from the office and the shop, from domestic service and the
dressmaker's room, from the High Schools and the Colleges, and from the
quietude of the stately homes of the leisured rich. They have travelled
from far-off corners in the United Kingdom as well as from homesteads in
Australia and New Zealand, and from lonely farms in South Africa and
Canada. Every stratum of society has provided its share of willing women
workers eager from one cause or another to 'do their bit'.
Even in the early days of the advent of women in the munitions shops, I
have seen working together, side by side, the daughter of an earl, a
shopkeeper's widow, a graduate from Girton, a domestic servant and a young
woman from a lonely farm in Rhodesia, whose husband had joined the
colours. Social status, so stiff a barrier in this country in pre-war
days, was forgotten in the factory, as in the trenches, and they were all
working together as happily as the members of a united family.
Employers and former employees likewise often share a common task in the
workshops of the war. At Woolwich, for example, a lady of delicate
upbringing could, at one period, have been seen arriving at the Arsenal in
the early hours of each morning, accompanied by her former maid, both
being the while 'hands' in the employ of the State. It is well known in
certain circles how Lady Scott, the widow of the famous Antarctic
explorer, put aside all private interests to take up work in a munitions
factory, how Lady Gertrude Crawford became an official, supervising
women's work in shipyards, and how Lady Mary Hamilton (now Mrs. Kenyon
Slaney), the eldest daughter of the Duke of Abercorn, and Miss Stella
Drummond, daughter of General Drummond, have won distinction as workers in
'advanced' processes of munitions production.
These are but a few distinguished names amongst a crowd of women of all
degrees of society who have achieved unexpected success in work to which
they were entirely unaccustomed. Amongst this nameless multitude,
attention has been called from time to time to the remarkable feats in the
engineering and chemical trades, in electrical works, and in the
shipyards, of kitchen-maids and of dressmakers, of governesses and
children's nurses.
The underlying motives, all actuated by war conditions, which have turned
the tide of women's work into new and unfamiliar occupations, are,
however, more diverse than is generally supposed. Unquestionably, the two
main driving forces have been patriotism and economic pressure, and of
these patriotism, the love of country, the pride of Empire, accounts for a
large proportion of women recruits. Yet there are other motives at work:
the old human forces of family love and self-sacrifice, pride, anger,
hatred, and even humour. I have questioned workers at the lathes and in
doping rooms, in Filling Factories, and in wood-workers' shops, and find
the mass of new labour in the munitions works is there from distinctive
individual reasons. It is only by the recognition of all these forces that
successful management of a new factor in the labour problem is possible.
An indication of the life-history of one or two individual munitions
workers may exemplify the point.
There is the case of a girl tool-setter in a factory near London. She is
the only child of an old Army family. When war broke out, she realized
that for the first time in many generations her family could send no
representative to fight the country's battles. Her father was an old man,
long past military age. The girl, although in much request at home, took
up work in a base hospital in France, but at the end of a year, when
broken down from over-strain, was ordered six months' rest in England.
Recovery followed in two months, and again, spurred by the thought of
inaction in a time of national peril, she entered a munitions factory as
an ordinary employee. After nine months' work she had only lost five
minutes' time.
Another factory worker is a mother of seven sons, proud-spirited,
efficient, and accustomed to rule her family. The seven sons enlisted and
she felt her claim to headship was endangered. She entered a munitions
factory and, to soothe her pride, sent weekly to each son a detailed
account of her industrial work. At length, the eldest son wrote that he
thought his mother was probably killing more Germans than any of the
family. Since then, she says, she has had peace of mind.
In another factory, in the West of England, there is an arduous munitions
maker who works tirelessly through the longest shifts. Before her entry
into the industrial world she was a stewardess on a passenger-ship. The
vessel was torpedoed by a German submarine, and she was one of the few
survivors. Daily she works off her hatred on a capstan lathe, hoping, as
she tells the visitors, some day to get equal with the unspeakable Huns.
Then there is a typical case of a wife who has learned some of life's
little ironies through her work on munitions production. Her husband, an
old sailor, worked for the same firm before the war. He used to come home
daily and complain of the hardness of his lot. It was 'a dog's life', he
constantly reiterated, and his wife was careful to make reparation at
home.
War broke out and the naval reserve man was recalled to sea. The firm were
put to it, in the labour shortage, for a substitute, and invited the
wife's aid. Having heard so much of the hardships of the work, she
refused, but after some persuasion agreed to give the job a trial. At the
end of a week, she surmised the task was not so hard as she contemplated;
after a month had passed she realized the position. The job had been a
capital excuse to ensure forgiveness for domestic short-comings. The wife
awaits her husband's return with a certain grim humour.
Having arrived in the engineering trades, actuated by whatever motives,
the woman munitions maker has more than justified the hopes of the pioneer
employers who sponsored her cause. As soon as organized labour agreed that
trade union rules and pre-war shop practice should be suspended for the
duration of the war, women were rapidly initiated in the simple repetition
processes of shell-making and shell-filling. Machinery was adapted to the
new-comers, and the skilled men workers were distributed amongst the
factories to undertake the jobs possible only to experienced hands.
_Dilution_
Thus, the principle of dilution, as old as Plato's _Republic_, which as a
theory was reintroduced to British students by Adam Smith, has widely come
into practice through the urgency of the war. Women have been successfully
introduced into a new group of occupations, men have been 'upgraded', so
that many semi-skilled men have become skilled; and the skilled men have
been allocated entirely to employment on skilled jobs.
Once introduced to the munitions shops, women soon mastered the repetition
processes, such as 'turning', 'milling' and 'grinding', as well as the
simpler operations connected with shell-filling. The keenest amongst them
were then found fit for more 'advanced' work where accuracy, a nice
judgment, and deftness of manipulation are essential. Such are the
processes connected with tool and gauge-making, where the work must be
finished to within the finest limits--a fraction of the width of a human
hair; such are the requirements for the work of overlooking, or inspection
of output; and such are the many processes of aeroplane manufacture and
optical glass production, upon which women are being increasingly
employed.
They are also undertaking operations dependent on physical strength, which
in pre-war days would have been regarded as wholly unsuitable to female
capacity. War necessity has, however, killed old-time prejudice and has
proved how readily women adapt themselves to any task within their
physical powers. One may, for example, to-day watch women in the shipyards
of the North hard at work, chipping and cleaning the ships' decks,
repairing hulls, or laying electric wire on board H.M. battleships. High
up in the gantry cranes which move majestically across the vaulted factory
roof, one may see women sitting aloft guiding the movement of the huge
molten ingots; in the foundries, one may run across a woman smith; in the
aeroplane factories, women welders work be-goggled at the anvils.
An engineering shop is now sometimes staffed almost entirely by women
'hands', and it is no uncommon sight to find in the centre of the shop
women operators at work on the machines; at one end a group of women
tool-setters, and at another women gaugers who test the products of this
combined women's labour. In the packing-rooms the lustier types of women
may be seen dispatching finished shells, and on the factory platforms
gartered women in tunic suits push the loaded trollies to waiting
railway-trucks for conveyance to the front. One of the most surprising
revelations of the war in this country has, indeed, been the capacity of
women for engineering work, and to none has the discovery been more
surprising and more exhilarating than to the women themselves.
_Heroism in the Workshop_
The work has, in fact, called for personal qualities usually thought to be
abnormal in women. The women in the engineering shops have disproved any
such surmise. Where occasion has demanded physical courage from the
workers, the virtue has leaped forth from the average woman, as from the
average man. Where circumstances call for grit and endurance, there has
been no shirking in the factories by the majority of the operators of
either sex. The heroism of the battlefields has frequently been equalled
by the ordinary civilian in the factory, whether man or woman. Sometimes
incidents of women's courage in the works have been reported in the press
as matters for surprise. They are merely typical instances of the spirit
that animates the general mass of the workers in Great Britain.
A few examples may be added in illustration. On a recent occasion, a woman
lost the first finger and thumb of her left hand through the jamming of a
piece of metal in a press. After an absence of six weeks, she returned to
work and was soon getting an even greater output than before.
Another instance relates to a serious accident in an explosives factory,
when several women were killed and many were injured. Within a few days a
considerable number of the remaining female operators applied and were
accepted for positions in the Danger Zone at another factory. Another
incident is reported from some chemical works in the North. The key
controlling a valve fell off and dropped into a pit below, rendering the
woman in charge unable to control the steam. An accident seemed imminent
and the woman, in spite of the likelihood of dangerous results to herself,
got down to the pit, regained the key and averted disaster.
In a shipyard on the North-East coast, a woman of 23 years had been
engaged for some time in electric-wiring a large battleship. One day, when
working overhead, a drill came through from the deck, piercing her cotton
cap and entering her head. She was attended to in the firm's First Aid
room and sent home. To the surprise of every one concerned, she returned
to work at 6 a.m. on the following day, and laughingly remarked that she
was quite satisfied that it was better to lose a little hair than her
head.
In the trivial accidents which are, of course, of more frequent
occurrence, the women display similar calmness and will stand
unflinchingly while particles of grit, or metal, are removed from the
eyes, or while small wounds--often due to their own carelessness--are
dressed and bound. The endurance displayed during the early period of
munitions production, when holidays were voluntarily abandoned and work
continued through Sundays, and in many hours of overtime, was no less
remarkable in the women than in the men. Action is continuously taken by
the Ministry of Munitions to reduce the hours of overtime, to abolish
Sunday labour, and to promote the well-being of the workers, but without
the zeal and courage of the women munitions makers the valour of the
soldiers at the Front would often be in vain.
As the Premier remarked in a recent speech: 'I do not know what would have
happened to this land when the men had to go away fighting if the women
had not come forward and done their share of the work. It would have been
utterly impossible for us to have waged a successful war, had it not been
for the skill and ardour, enthusiasm and industry, which the women of the
country have thrown into the work of the war'.
CHAPTER II: TRAINING THE MUNITION WORKER
THE QUINTESSENCE OF THE WORK--THE INSTRUCTIONAL FACTORY--FIRST STEPS IN
INDUSTRIAL LIFE
When, in answer to the demand for shells and more shells, factories were
built, or adapted to the requirements of war, it was soon found that a
supply of suitable labour must be ensured, if the maximum output was to be
maintained. The existing practice of the engineering shops, by which a boy
arrived by gradual steps, counted in years, from apprenticeship to the
work of a skilled operator, was obviously impossible where an immediate
demand for thousands of employees of varying efficiency had to be
fulfilled. The needs of the Navy and Army further complicated the problem
by the withdrawal of men of all degrees of skill from factory to
battlefield.
The discovery of an untapped reservoir of labour in women's work, and the
adaptation of a larger proportion of machines to a 'fool-proof' standard,
certainly eased the situation, yet the problem remained of the immediate
provision of workers able to undertake 'advanced', as well as simple work,
in the engineering shops. Factory employers were from the outset alive to
the situation, and at once adopted measures for the training of new-comers
within their shops, but harassed as the managers were by the supreme need
for output, it was hardly possible to develop extensive schemes for
training within the factory gates. Hence, arose a movement throughout the
United Kingdom among the governing bodies of many institutions of
University rank, among Local Education Authorities, and among various
feminist groups, to make use of existing Technical Schools and
Institutions for the training of recruits in engineering work.
The effort was at first mainly confined to the instruction of men in
elementary machine work, and the London County Council may fairly claim to
have acted as pioneer in this connexion. Yet, as early as August 1915, a
group of women connected with the National Union of Women's Suffrage
Societies (of which Mrs. Fawcett, widow of a former Postmaster-General, is
the president) decided to finance a scheme for the training of women
oxy-acetylene welders, converting for this purpose a small workshop run by
a woman silversmith.
It was soon observed by the Ministry of Munitions that these sporadic
efforts--sometimes successful beyond expectation, and sometimes failing
for want of funds, or for lack of intimacy between training-ground and
factory employer--must be co-ordinated, if they were to tackle
successfully the growing task imposed by war conditions. The conception of
a Training Section for factory workers within the Ministry of Munitions
arose, took root. The section was established in the early autumn of 1915.
In the October of that year, authority to finance approved training
schemes throughout the country was given to the new department. Some fifty
colleges and schools, undertaking independent schemes, were then brought
into touch with the Ministry, and steps were taken to develop the existing
systems. Equipment was thereby improved, recruiting of students
stimulated, and a scheme for the payment of maintenance during
training--such as the Manhattan Schools in New York had previously
introduced to social investigators in this country--was established. The
extension of the courses of training from instruction in simple processes
to such advanced engineering work as lead-burning, tool-setting, and
gauge-making soon followed, and was accompanied by necessary theoretical
instruction in the methods of calculation of fine measurements.
_The Quintessence of the Work_
For these advanced classes, men alone were at first eligible as students,
women being only instructed at the outset in elementary parts of the work.
In the early days, the women were invited 'to do their bit', by learning
how to bore, how to drill, how to plane, how to shape, and above all, how
to work to size. The chief battle of the Training Centre with regard to
the instruction of women was then, and still remains, the implanting of a
feeling for exactitude in persons accustomed to measure ribbons or lace
within a margin of a quarter of a yard or so, or to prepare food by a
guess-work mixture of ingredients. I remember, at the beginning of a
course of training for women, how an instructor at a large metropolitan
Centre remarked that 'ninety-nine per cent. of the new students do not
know what accuracy means', and he detailed how difficult it was to instil
into their mind 'that quintessence of their work'.
Scientific methods of tuition, helped no doubt by women's proverbial
patience, have, however, enabled the lesson to be learned after a few
weeks' intensive training. The courses last but six to eight weeks and, at
the conclusion of the carefully graduated tasks, it is not too much to
say that the success of the women has been, in an overwhelming number of
cases, surprising both to teachers and pupils.
I have before me a batch of letters from factory employers, written in the
early period of the training schemes. They all bear testimony to the value
of the outside instruction. One manager notes how the trained women from
the Schools were able 'to become producers almost at once'; another states
that the drafting of the women students from School to factory has enabled
the work of munitions to be carried on 'with greater expedition than would
otherwise have been the case', and yet another, with a scarcely concealed
note of astonishment, relates that his students were able to be engaged at
once on 'all kinds of machinery, capstan lathes, turning lathes, milling
and wheel cutting machinery'.
This discovery of the employer, of the potentialities of women's work in
the engineering trades, soon led to a development of the instruction of
female students in the Training Centres; more advanced machine work was
added to the curriculum, as well as tuition in aeroplane woodwork and
construction, in core-making and moulding, in draughtsmanship and
electrical work, in optical-instrument making, including the delicate and
highly-skilled work of lens and prism making.
New Training Centres are constantly being opened in provincial areas, the
instruction being adapted to the needs of local factories. There are now
(December, 1917) over forty training schools for engineering work in Great
Britain, as well as nine instructional factories and workshops, and the
proportion of women to men trained in all the processes may be reckoned
roughly as two to one.
The system of instruction is based, in some of the Centres, on the general
principle that the School undertakes the preliminary work of tuition in
the simpler engineering processes; the Instructional Factory, or workshop,
specializing in the more skilled processes, acts as a clearing-house for
promising students from the schools. The urgency of warfare does not,
however, permit the application of any hard-and-fast rules. I have seen
specimens of some of the most 'advanced' work produced in a School;
indeed, the delicate work of lens polishing and centring, the intricacies
of engineering draughtsmanship, the precise art of tool-setting and
gauge-making have become specialisms of the Schools in certain localities.
[Illustration: TURNING THE COPPER BAND OF A 9.2-INCH HIGH-EXPLOSIVE SHELL]
[Illustration: DRILLING SAFETY-PIN HOLE IN FUSE]
[Illustration: INSPECTING AND GAUGING FUSES]
[Illustration: TURNING THE OUTSIDE AND FORMING THE NOSE-END OF A 9.2-INCH
HIGH-EXPLOSIVE SHELL]
As I write, the face of an eager girl of 21 years recurs to memory. She
was showing me, the other day, a master gauge produced at a School in the
Eastern counties. 'I made it all myself,' she said joyfully, 'dead exact,
and all the other gauges of this size in the School are made from it. I
have just been appointed assistant instructor in gauge-making.' When it is
recalled that the deviation in the measurements of a gauge is only
tolerated within such limits as a 3/10000 part of an inch, the production
in a School of a master gauge, 'dead exact' in all its dimensions, is a
proof that the student has already gone some way in the mastery of the
craft of the engineer.
_The Instructional Factory_
On the other hand, the Instructional Factory is often forced by war
conditions to enrol raw recruits who seem likely material for the urgent
needs of surrounding factories. In such cases, the candidate is placed on
trial for a week or two in the Instructional Workshop, as in the School.
If, at the close of the period of probation, she is deemed unsuitable, she
is advised at that preliminary stage to return to her former occupation.
Speaking generally, the rejects are extraordinarily few, and although it
would be premature to draw definite conclusions, the experience of the
Training Section suggests that there is considerable latent capacity for
engineering work in a large number of women. A tour of the Instructional
Workshops emphasizes the point; everywhere, women may be seen mastering in
the short intensive course the one advanced job for which each is being
trained. In the Instructional Workshop, the atmosphere of a School is
exchanged for that of a factory, the conditions of a modern engineering
shop being reflected within its precincts. Thus the students 'clock on and
off' on arrival and on departure, observe factory shifts, work on actual
commercial jobs, obtain their tools from an attached store, and so on. The
work varies in these Instructional Factories as in the engineering shop of
the commercial world.
In one section of such a hall of tuition you may see the women intent on
the production of screws, or bolts, or nuts; in another part, such objects
as fuse needles may be in the course of manufacture. You stop to see the
magic which is answerable for the birth of the tiny factor which shall
detonate the explosive, and you are amazed to find that a fuse needle
requires six tools for its production and eight to nine gauges for testing
the accuracy of its measurements. Or, you may perhaps pause before a
machine which is turning out tiny grub screws. To see a rod of steel offer
itself, as it were, to the rightful instruments on a complicated machine
to impress the thread and slit, to watch it proceeding on its way until a
tiny section is divided and a complete screw is handed over to a tray
outside the machine, is, to the uninitiated, a miracle in itself.
To see the whole of these complicated processes guided and operated by a
smiling girl makes one hopeful for the national industries of the future.
Setters-up of tools are at work in another section of the same
Instructional Factory and at other machines are students grinding,
milling, or profiling.
You may then visit another Instructional Factory to find that aircraft is
the specialty. I recall one such training-ground in a bay of an aeroplane
factory. There the girls learn almost every part of aircraft production,
from the handling of the tiny hammers used on the woodwork for the body
and wings, to the assembling, or putting together the tested parts. In
this training factory, a system prevails of lectures by the practical
instructors on the use of necessary tools; questions from the students are
encouraged at the close of the lecture, and, I was informed, when on one
occasion I was one of the audience, that the saving of the instructor's
time by the adoption of this method was beyond expected results.
Again, you may visit an Instructional Factory where foundry work is
included in the curriculum, or where advanced machine work is a feature. I
have stood in one Instructional Workshop where some 600 machines were
whirring simultaneously, and where the spirit of energy and goodwill of
both students and instructors seemed as tangible as the metal objects
produced. In this institution all the accomplished work is for production;
night as well as day shifts are worked, and the needs of our armies, or
those of our Allies, are frankly discussed with the operators. There is no
occasion for other incentive: raw recruits, students from the Schools,
discharged soldiers from the Front, men unfit for active service, all
these denizens of the training-shop vie with each other to produce a
maximum output.
It speaks volumes for this workshop that in spite of the continual changes
of operators--each set of students remaining only for a course of six to
eight weeks--it is entirely maintained on a commercial basis. To reach
such a standard in these circumstances is to imply that the heroism of the
workshop has become an ingrained habit in operators and staff.
_First Steps in Industrial Life_
I remember watching in this training-ground the manufacture of small
aero-engine parts, exact in dimensions to within the smallest limits of
tolerance. I put a query as to the wastage of material in such an
operation, when handled by comparative new-comers. 'Scrapping from this
process', replied the production manager with pride, 'does not exceed a
total average of one per cent.' The women at work at the time had come
from the most varied occupations. A large proportion had never worked
outside their own home, others were domestic servants, cooks, housemaids,
and so on, others were dressmakers from small towns, and one, I recall,
was an assistant from a spa, where she had been engaged handing out
'waters' to invalids. 'It is not the rank of society from which the
student is drawn that matters,' remarked an instructor; 'it is the
personality of the individual that counts.'
Every care has been taken by the Ministry of Munitions to make it easy for
women of all classes to participate in their schemes of instruction. The
middle class girl who has never undertaken independent work, the woman who
has always lived and worked within the shelter of her own home,
undoubtedly felt in many cases debarred from entering industrial life. The
necessity of living away from her family, in order to enter a
Training-School, the absence of home conditions in school or factory, the
dread of an entirely masculine superintendence, all helped to strengthen
artificial barriers between potential students and the needed engineering
work. The Training Section, watching the development of its schemes,
became aware of the necessity of making arrangements for students from the
Welfare point of view, and an organization has thus developed by which the
first steps in industrial life are made easy for the most apprehensive of
new-comers.
Girl students by rail are met by a responsible woman official and are
accompanied to suitable lodgings, or to hostels. In the event of pressure
in accommodation, the new student is introduced to temporary apartments,
or to a 'Clearing Hostel', where she awaits in comfort a vacancy. In the
large Training Centres, a woman supervisor is in charge. She makes all
arrangements as to the provision of meals, rest-rooms, cloak-rooms,
First-Aid centres, and so on, and is ready to advise the women students on
all points relating to their personal interests.
Women students are also enabled to wear a khaki uniform, as members of the
Mechanical Unit of the Women's Legion, a privilege found to be of distinct
value to girls unaccustomed to steering an independent course in the more
boisterous streams of life. The appreciation of the students of the
safe-guarding of their individual desires crops out in unexpected places.
In a handful of correspondence from students, one gleans such remarks as
the following:
'Mrs. H. never spares herself any trouble as long as she can make
things pleasant for me, she considers it her "war work" to make
munition workers happy, and it is very nice to meet people that
appreciate what we are doing for our country.'...
'We were met at the station by the works motor. All at once we turned
up an avenue of lime-trees and drew up at the door of our country
estate. It is a real lovely house and we revel in the glories of fresh
air, lawns and gardens, good beds and well-spread tables. We cross a
field to the works. Dinner and tea await us when we get here, and
there is a well-stocked vegetable garden to give us fresh vegetables,
so we all feel indeed that our lines are fallen in pleasant places,
and we are very grateful.'
In these ways a bridge has been built by the Ministry of Munitions between
the normal life of the women in this country and the work in the munitions
factory.
CHAPTER III: AT WORK--I
SHELLS AND SHELL CASES--IN THE FUSE SHOP--CARTRIDGES AND BULLETS
Arrived in the munitions factory, the new-comer, whether from a Government
Training Centre, or from another occupation, is given two or three weeks'
trial on the task she has come to undertake. Only a very small proportion
of the women offering their services--one experienced manager puts it at 5
per cent.--are found unsuitable, and these are discharged during the
probationary period.
Except in the case of those who have received a preliminary training, or
of those who have merely transferred their energies from other factory
work, the average woman has, at the initial stage in the munitions shops,
to overcome an instinctive fear of the machine. Occasionally, the fear is
intensified into an unreasoning phase of terror. 'One has to coax the
women to stay with such as these,' said one understanding foreman,
pointing to a monster machine with huge-toothed wheels. 'We don't ask a
woman to sit alone with these at first, for she wouldn't do it, so we put
a man with her, and let her sit and watch a bit, and after a while she
loses her fear and won't work anything else, if she can help it.'
The women, in fact, soon get attached to the machines they are working, in
a manner probably unknown to the men. 'I've been here a year on this
machine, and I can't do near so well on any other,' is a remark many a
girl has made to me as I have watched her on a difficult job. From time to
time, a girl will even confess that she 'can't bear to think of some one
on the night-shift working _her_ machine'. An understanding has arisen
between the machine and the operator which amounts almost to affection. I
have often noticed the expression of this emotion in the workshops; the
caressing touch of a woman's fingers, for instance, as a bore is being
urged on to the job on the machine. This touch, which cannot be taught, or
imparted, enables the operation to be started in the most effective method
possible, and goes to the making of an excellent and accurate worker.
The femininity of the worker has, however, its drawbacks, and for the sake
of successful handling of women in the munitions factory, it is as well
that these psychological points should be noted. If, for example, a
machine is out of gear, or if the operation is held up for any other
cause, the women munition makers will sometimes behave in an unreasonable
manner, quite bewildering to a foreman accustomed only to dealing with
men. The temporary cessation of work may make only a slight money
difference to the woman operator by the end of the week: 'not enough to
fuss about,' as the foreman judges. But the woman nevertheless often
_does_ fuss, because in her eyes the wages do not loom so large as the
interruption to her work. She 'hates standing-by', she will say, for she
cannot express the emotion of which she is but dimly conscious, that a
woman's deep instinct is to give freely of her fullness, and it frets her
very soul to be balked in the middle of a job.
[Illustration: ASSEMBLING FUSES]
[Illustration: COOLING SHELL FORGINGS]
[Illustration: OPERATING A LUMSDEN PLAIN GRINDER: RE-FORMING 8-INCH
HIGH-EXPLOSIVE CUTTERS]
Other initial obstacles in the employment of 'new' female labour in the
factories result from the exchange of the manifold duties of the woman in
her own home for repetition work performed in the company of hundreds of
other human beings. These difficulties are, however, soon overcome, and
the new-comer, generally speaking, rapidly becomes one of a large and
merry company. The whirr of the wheels and the persistent throb of the
machinery may at first distract her, but after a short time the factory
noises are unnoticed, save as an accompaniment to her thoughts, her
laughter, or her song. I have indeed met in the England of to-day nothing
more inspiriting, outside the soldiers' camps, than the women munition
workers at work or at play.
In August 1916, there were some 500 different munitions processes upon
which women were engaged. To-day, they are employed upon practically every
operation in factory, in foundry, in laboratory, and chemical works, of
which they are physically capable. Within the limits of this publication
it is not possible to follow them into every field of their endeavours,
yet a glance at their work in a few typical products may give some slight
indication of women's contribution to Britain's effort in the World War.
_Shells and Shell Cases_
Of the numbers of operations that go to the making of a shell, women now
undertake every process, in some works, including even the forging of the
billets in the foundry. It was the urgent need of a greatly increased
output of shells in 1915 which led to the widespread introduction into the
engineering shops of female labour, and the women have repaid this unique
opportunity by their unqualified success. So rapid, and so marked, has
been their progress in shell production that by the spring of 1917 the
official announcement was justified, that, by March 31 of that year,
Government contracts for shells of certain dimensions would only be given
where 80 per cent. of the employees were women.
At first, the women were mainly engaged in simple machine operations, such
as boring, drilling, and turning, or in filling the shells. They are, at
present, working hydraulic presses, guiding huge overhead cranes,
'tonging', or lifting the molten billets, 'setting', or fitting the tools
in the machines, inspecting and gauging, painting the finished shell
cases, making the boxes for dispatch of the finished product, and trucking
these when finally screwed up and ready for exit from the factory to the
Front. It is not possible to describe here in detail women's entire
contribution to the production of a shell, but, from foundry to railway
truck, she has become an alert and promising worker.
In the foundry, her appearance is as yet exceptional, yet in the North
country it is no unusual sight to find a woman in the cage suspended from
the overhead travelling crane, operating its protruding arm. Now, she will
pick up with the clumsy iron fingers a pig of iron and thrust it into the
glowing depths of a furnace, or she will lift the red-hot billet and bring
it to the hydraulic press, where it is roughly hollowed into its
predestined shape.
In the shell shop proper you may watch the woman operator on some scores
of processes; at one machine, she may be attacking the centre of the
billet with a revolving nose, at another she may be 'turning' the outside
of a shell. The shavings curl off in this process like hot bacon rind and
fall in iridescent rings around her: blue, purple, peacock, or gleaming
silver. Or, you may watch the woman worker 'threading' the shell, a
process by which the screw threads are provided, into which the nose of
the shell is afterwards fitted; or, you may stand and marvel at the skill
of the worker who so deftly rivets the base-plate into the shell's lower
end. But, perhaps, the most attractive operation to the visitor to the
shell shop is the fitting and grooving of the shell's copper band, a
process which leaves the machine and worker half-hidden in the glory of
sunset tints, as the copper scrap falls thickly from the machine.
At every stage, the shell is gauged and tested, examined and re-examined,
since accuracy is the watch-word of its production. Sometimes, the
machine-operator will gauge her own product; at other stages, the shell
passes into the hands of women overlookers of the factory, the final tests
being made by Government 'viewers'. The inside, as well as the outside of
the shell is submitted to such inspection, and you may see women peering
into the interior of the shells, aided by the light from a tiny electric
bulb, mounted on a stick. This contrivance is thrust successively into
rows and rows of shells.
Women are now exclusively used for the painting of the shells, a process
accomplished, not by means of a brush and paint-pot, but by the operator
playing a fine electrically-worked syringe on to the surface of the shell.
This process is undertaken in what is often called 'the butcher's shop',
the shells, in pairs, being swung up on a rope into a compartment where
the operator works from behind a protective iron screen.
In the Filling shops, women's devotion to their work has been proved once
and again. Whether the process undertaken be in company of a few comrades,
or in isolated huts where lonely vigils are kept over stores of
explosives, the munition-girls are hardly known to flinch in their duty.
Sometimes, they have volunteered to work throughout the night when
air-raids are in progress, at other times, women-workers have returned to
the Danger Zone immediately after some bad experience there; and, in every
case, the woman worker in the Filling Factory cheerfully sacrifices much
which she holds dear in life. It may signify but little to a man to give
up his small personal possessions whilst at work in the danger areas, but
to many a woman worker it means much, that she may not wear a brooch, or a
flower, while on duty, and that her wedding-ring, the only allowable
trinket, must be bound with thread while she works. Her tresses, which she
normally loves to braid, or twist into varying fashions, must also be left
hairpinless beneath her cap. She must relinquish her personal belongings
before going to her allotted task; no crochet-hook or knitting-pin may
accompany her into the zone where friction of steel, or hard metal, might
spell death to a multitude of employees. Yet this sacrifice of
individuality is given freely by the woman in the Filling shop, and she is
still merry-hearted and blithe as she fills the small bags with deadly
powder, or binds the charge which shall fire the shell.
When the shell is finally filled and passed 'O.K.', or perfect, it is a
woman who packs it into its box and who wheels it on a truck, sometimes
for a mile or more over narrow platforms, to hand it to another woman who
stacks it into the waiting railway-wagon. Any one who has watched
throughout the production of a shell in a factory of to-day can only echo
a well-known author's recent salute: 'Hats off to the Women'.
_In the Fuse Shop_
The fuse, that small and complicated object which explodes the shell, is a
war-product now largely produced by women's labour. A few inches in
length, it requires some hundreds of operations for its manufacture, even
if the initial processes on the metal are excluded from the count. In
section, it looks like a complicated metal jig-saw puzzle of exquisite
finish and cohesion: viewing it externally, a child might mistake it for a
conjurer's 'property', a bright metal egg, or roll often surrounded by a
metal ring marked with time measurements.
The care and accuracy necessary for the production of this small object
can hardly be imagined by the uninitiated: it is measured and re-measured
in every diameter, since on its perfection depends the life of the gunner
and his team. The fuse shop is usually characterized by its cleanliness
and quietude. I recall one such shop stretching far away into distance
both in length and breadth. Under its roof some 1,500 women were at work.
Conversation could be held in any part of the shop, undisturbed by the
usual factory noises. The fuse parts are, indeed, so small that the
machinery is necessarily light, and in such a shop it is dexterity and
accuracy that tell, rather than physical strength.
Rows of graceful women and girls were standing at their machines, and I
recall how their overalls and caps of varied hues made a rainbow effect,
as one watched from a distant corner. Some were in cream colour and some
in russet-brown, or apple green, the caps sometimes matching the overall
and sometimes offering a strong contrast. A splash of purple, or a deep
magenta, mingled with the head-dresses of softer hue, for in this shop,
away from the Danger Zone, no insistence was made on uniformity of factory
costume. Other women, wearing a distinctive armlet, were passing in and
out between the rows of workers, now stopping and bending over a machine,
now making some bright remark to the operator, as a ripple of laughter
indicated, or again, pointing out in sterner wise some danger, or some
error in the job. These itinerary women are the overlookers, who since the
war have perfected themselves in their special job and can now supervise
the operators.
At long tables, other women were sitting; some quite elderly and
grey-haired, some mere girls. They were measuring with small gauges parts
of the fuse, some the size of a good-sized bead. There are 150 different
gauges authorized for the measurement of one type of fuse, and in practice
even more are used, to ensure perfection of accuracy. I stood spell-bound
at one of these gauging tables and watched the examination of small screws
and flash plugs. There were six little squares of felt on the table, on
which the examiner placed rejects, classified according to the detected
flaw. The work proceeded with the utmost dispatch, the 'accepted' or
'perfect' heap growing as if by magic.
At another table, a girl was testing springs of about an inch long. If any
of these showed the smallest fraction too much length after being
submitted to a given pressure, they were put aside as 'scrap'. At yet
another table, tiny fuse needles were being examined for length,
thickness of phlange, and accuracy of point, and on a high flat desk,
near a machine, I noticed seventeen different gauges were ranged for the
examination of the percussion end of the fuse-body, one ten-thousandth
part of an inch being the limitation or variation allowed in such parts.
When all the parts have been examined they are passed to other tables for
assembling, or putting together. In this operation almost superhuman care
is required, and the work is reserved for the best operators and
time-keepers as a reward for long service. 'Assembling' is regarded as the
plum of the fuse-room. The operators are well aware of the importance of
the task, as they stow away in the time fuses the pea-ball, pellet,
spring, stirrup, ferrule, and other components of the fuse. The needle is
fixed by blows from a small hammer, and at length the fuse is completed
and passes out of the room of its creation to receive its 'filling' from
other hands.
_Cartridges and Bullets_
The production of cartridges and bullets is another branch of munitions
production in which women are mainly employed. These objects, which, when
completed, are together no longer than a ball-room pencil, make in their
manufacture no great demand on physical strength.
On entering a cartridge and bullet shop, one is at once struck with its
individuality. There is more stir and movement than in a fuse-room, but
less of the imperiousness of the machinery than in the shell or gun shop.
There is in the cartridge and bullet room still the whirr of wheels and,
above that, the deep constant throb of the driving-force, that makes
conversation almost inaudible to the new-comer. But beneath this bass
accompaniment, one can hear the lesser sounds belonging to the cartridge
and bullet-room alone. There may be the buzz of the circulating gas
machines--which resemble miniature merry-go-rounds--the tap, tap, of the
cartridges as they are thrown out of the machine into a box below, and the
tinkle of bullets as they are poured into weighing machines, or on to
tables, or into huge barrels, such as are used on the wharves for the
transport of herrings.
A cartridge and bullet-shop sometimes is as animated and as picturesque as
an open-air market under a southern sky. I remember such a shop where the
girls were in various factory costumes, some at the machines in khaki and
some in cream-coloured overalls and caps; some, who were 'trucking', or
removing the product in boxes, were in cream trouser-suits, with smart
head-dresses fashioned from brightly-coloured oriental handkerchiefs. In
between the rows of girls men in dark suits were passing to and fro, now
stopping to examine, or alter a machine and now taking up a box of
bullets and pouring out its glittering contents like a silver stream, so
that the output from each worker might be weighed and assessed.
Through an open door, at one side of the shop, one could see other men,
like stern magicians, dropping cartridges into vats of acid, and just to
the side of the vats I caught sight of two girls vigorously shaking a sack
of cartridges, hot from the furnace. As they shook, they sang an army
refrain: 'Take me back to dear old Blighty,' with a chorus of laughter. At
the extreme end of the shop, near the door whence the product made its
exit, were long narrow tables, piled with bullets, reminding one of a haul
of silver sprats on the quay-side. These were the inspecting tables where
the bullets receive minute attention from women viewers.
The women's work in the bullet-shop is of extraordinary interest to the
onlooker, although many of the processes must be infinitely more
monotonous, from the worker's standpoint, than operations in other
munitions productions. The elongation of the little metal vessel,
resembling an acorn-cup, into a full-length cartridge, or bullet,
necessitates many operations in which the dexterity of human fingers and
the ingenuity of the machine both come into play. In the shop I recall, in
one machine employed for semi-annealing, the cartridge was being 'fed'
into a metal revolving plate. This passed behind an asbestos screen into a
double row of gas jets, where the semi-annealing or hardening process was
being accomplished. The dexterity of the operators was so great that one
woman was often feeding two machines, apparently without effort, and never
missed placing the cartridge into the correct aperture in the revolving
plate.
In another process, I watched young girls sitting round a table and
placing bullets into circular apertures in small trays, resembling
solitaire-boards. Many of the girls were working with such speed that it
was impossible to follow the movements of their fingers, but they,
unconscious of their prowess, worked with averted heads, smiling in
amusement at the visitor's astonishment.
In yet another operation, it was the machine that held one's attention.
The operator was feeding cartridges into a metal band which slipped out of
view while the process of 'tapering' was performed. When finished, a metal
thumb and index finger appeared, which delicately picked up the
cartridges, one by one, and threw them aside. The displaced cartridge then
hopped out of the machine into a box at the side of the machine.
Entranced by the many mysteries in the production of cartridges and
bullets in the shop I am recalling, I had not noticed that the
tea-interval had arrived, and suddenly found that the work-room was almost
empty of human beings. Only two girls remained. They were sitting sewing,
whilst they devoured thick slices of bread and butter out of a newspaper
packet. The woman inspector, who was my guide, turned sharply. 'What are
you doing here?' she said, 'Eating your tea in the workshop, instead of
outside, or in the canteen. Be off at once into the fresh air.' Then, with
the indignation fading out of a good-humoured face: 'What next?' she said.
Looking out of the open door at the streams of bright and happy girls
laughing, singing, dancing, and running, as only healthy youth can do in
the midst of these dark days of war, I seemed to see other and brighter
days ahead stretching out into the years of the future, when the workfolk
would all taste a fuller joy in life. With renewed hope, I gave her back
her challenge: 'Well! and what next?'
CHAPTER IV: AT WORK--II
THE MAKING OF AIRCRAFT--OPTICAL INSTRUMENTS--IN THE SHIPYARDS
_The Making of Aircraft_
The production of aircraft, undertaken in this country on a large scale
only since the outbreak of the war, has fallen more naturally into the
hands of women. The work is for the most part light, and the new
factories, often erected in open country, are bright, airy, and largely
free from the noise of machinery. Added to these special attractions to
the woman worker, there is apparently a distinct appeal to the youth of
both sexes and to women of all ages in anything connected with the art of
flying.
It is no secret that our output of aircraft is steadily increasing, and
that during 1917 it has been doubled. In one factory in London, the output
has been trebled within three months; in Lancashire, there are instances
in which it has been doubled, and other areas show an improved production
varying from 25 to 50 per cent. Yet the increased demand for labour for
this work has always been immediately answered, and there is a steady flow
into the factories of the best type of women workers from every class of
society. Here and there, one already meets a woman who, during the short
period of the war, has risen to be manager or partner in an aircraft
factory. Unconsciously, such a one emphasizes the fact that the mastery of
the element of the future is likely to be an affair of both the sexes.
A visit to any aeroplane factory repeats the hint, and reveals the
extraordinary versatility of skill latent in women, which can well be
applied to this form of industry. 'Women _must_ have been cabin'd,
cribbed, and confined before the war', said a foreman in taking me over
his shop in an aircraft works. 'Look what they can do at this kind of job,
and yet many of them are ladies, from homes where they sat about and were
waited upon.' The wonder of it cannot fail to impress a visitor, since
only four years ago women were allowed to undertake in aircraft
construction merely those parts which convention deemed suitable for
feminine fingers: such processes, for instance, as the sewing of the wings
by hand, or by machine, or the painting of the woodwork.
[Illustration: ENGRAVING METAL PARTS FOR COMPASSES]
[Illustration: COLOURING AEROPLANE PLANES]
[Illustration: CHIPPING AND GRINDING BLADES OF CAST IRON PROPELLER WITH
PORTABLE TOOLS]
[Illustration: WOMAN ACTING AS MATE TO JOINER. MAKING SEA-PLANE FLOATS]
To-day, they undertake almost every other process both at the carpenter's
bench and in the engineering shop, and the chief impression you carry away
from a stroll through such a factory is that the women are thoroughly at
home in the work. The operations are often so clean that the workers'
overalls and caps of the daintiest shades of pink, blue, white, and
heliotrope, remain fresh; the material for aeroplane parts is usually so
light that the handling of it presents no difficulty to a slip of a girl.
When within the works, the visitor is constantly stimulated to the thought
that the hand which rocks the cradle should obviously be the one to make
the air-machine.
One expects, of course, women's familiarity with the occupation in the
room where the fine Irish linen is cut out and fashioned into wings. One
is not surprised at the facility with which the measuring and cutting out
are accomplished, and, maybe, an emotion of admiration arises, similar to
that evoked by the contemplation of old tapestries, when one watches the
hand-sewing of a seam in a wing of some 10 feet in length. Not a stitch of
the button-holing of such a seam deviates by a hairbreadth from its
fellows. Such work has, however, been women's province through the ages.
But a new sensation is awakened in the carpenter's shop where women are
working with dexterity at the bench, handling woodwork like the men, now
dealing with delicate wooden ribs, or again, fashioning propellers out of
mahogany or walnut with such nicety that there is not the slightest
deviation between the dimensions of a pair. In the room where the linen is
stretched over the wooden ribs, I have seen women working with tiny
hammers, giving fairy blows that never miss their mark on tiny nails.
It is with fascination that a visitor stands by be-goggled women as they
undertake the welding of metal joints by the oxy-acetylene process. Here,
conscientiousness is a vital quality in the operator, since an undetected
flaw in the weld, as a works foreman recently remarked, 'might easily send
an airman to Kingdom Come'. For this process, women of education are more
often selected.
It is with awe that you watch the women at work on the metal parts of the
aeroplane, drilling, grinding, boring, milling on the machine, or
soldering tiny aluminum parts for the fuselage, and in each process
gauging and re-gauging, measuring and re-measuring. Women also work on
aero-engines, and help in the manufacture of the magneto, the very heart
of the machine. They even undertake special processes, which before the
war were only entrusted to a select body of men. I stood one day, for
example, watching a woman splicing steel rope, a process undertaken in
pre-war days by sailors. She was working with extraordinary speed and
unconcern, and had learned the job in three or four days. Before then, she
told me, she had been her employer's cook.
But the most alluring scene of all is the assembling of aircraft. The
infinite number of separate parts are now ready; they have been tested by
factory overlookers and retested by Government inspectors. The greatest
care is taken in these examinations: it is the only possible insurance of
the lives of the brave youths on their journey above the clouds. All the
workers know this, and the seriousness of the job is reflected on their
faces. But now all the parts are ready and to hand in the Erecting
shop. Then wings and propeller are added to body, the engine and
leather-upholstered seats introduced, the electric apparatus fitted up,
the compass, ammunition box and other instruments and weapons placed in
position.
The aeroplane is at length complete, and stands in the hangar like some
great bird, with outstretched pinions, awaiting its first flight into the
Unknown. Women undertake every process of this assembling, and have
acquired familiarity with all the parts. This was put to the test recently
in a certain works when a woman operator was directed to dismantle a
machine. Without hesitation, she stripped the complex network of the
structural stay-wires and the control wires, and then re-assembled them,
correct in every particular, at the first attempt.
_Optical Instruments_
Of the many industries developed by the war, the production of optical
instruments offers a striking example of rapid progress. Before 1914, the
optical glass industry of Europe was largely in the hands of Germany and
Austria, and the outbreak of hostilities meant the total closing of that
market to the Allies. The lack of optical instruments thus occasioned was
at first a source of grave national peril, since optical glass provides,
as it were, eyes for both Navy and Army. The eyes of the guns are the
range-finder, the director, the sighting telescope, periscope, prism
binoculars, and other instruments for observing fire and correcting the
aim; the tank would be blind without its periscope, and observations are
made from aircraft by means of photographic cameras and lenses.
At sea, the tale is repeated; the submarine requires at least one eye, and
the submarine chaser needs many, while, by means of optical instruments,
the naval gunner can fire at a target which is about 15 to 20 miles away.
The very health of the army depends, in great measure, on optical glass,
since the Royal Army Medical Corps fights malaria and other diseases due
to parasites, which must be magnified by a microscope a thousand times
before they can be identified. Hence, the solution of the problem of
optical munitions was a vital matter in the early days of the war.
With characteristic energy, Great Britain set to work and soon restored a
languishing trade. The task was enormous; the industry had to be revived
from its very foundations. The production of the peculiar types of glass
required for optical instruments in itself presented a formidable
obstacle, even its principal ingredient, a special quality of sand, being
formerly derived mainly from Fontainebleau and Belgium. But by widespread
investigation efficient substitutes were soon discovered, the problem of
mixing the ingredients was at length solved, formulæ for special glasses
devised, and we are now producing large quantities of optical glass of
perfect quality. The production of the raw material was, however, only a
first step in obtaining an adequate supply of optical instruments.
Numbers of delicate processes stand between the rough glass and the
finished implement. The glass must be cut, ground, and curved exactly to
the requisite design, which in itself takes many days of high mathematical
computation; it must be smoothed and polished, cleaned with meticulous
care, and adjusted to a nicety in the particular instrument for which it
is fashioned. The difficulties and pitfalls are incalculable; from start
to finish the glass obeys no fixed laws, but answers only to the skilled
handling of the scientist and craftsman. 'Optical glass is the mule of
materials', comments a recent writer with sincerity.
The absence of requisite labour for what was practically a new industry
was a serious menace, and it is to the credit of Englishwomen that, as
soon as the need for their services in this direction was made known, they
stepped without hesitation into this unfamiliar and highly skilled
industry. Their success therein is remarkable, and many, from such
callings as high-class domestic service, kindergarten instruction, music
teaching, blouse and dressmaking, have achieved a wonderful record in the
delicate and highly technical processes of lens-smoothing and polishing
and in the production of prisms of faultless polish and cut.
There is, I take it, no more interesting munitions development than in
factories where these lenses and prisms are produced. The work is so fine
and so delicate that one feels it might be more suitably transferred for
manipulation to elves, or fairy folk, who might undertake the various
processes standing at a large-sized toad-stool. But with the stern reality
of war upon us, willing feminine fingers have had to be trained to handle
these lenses, the smallest of which, when ranged in trays, resemble a
collection of dewdrops, and the largest of which would easily fill the
port-hole of an ocean-liner.
Optical glass when it comes into the workshop has the appearance of small
blocks of rough ice of a greyish hue. These blocks are roughly sliced and
cut into shape by a rotating metal disk charged with diamond dust. The
prisms and lenses in their initial stage are then handed on to women, who
complete the work on their surfaces. Each process has its particular lure
for the interested visitor. You may watch the slices of glass being shaped
into prisms by handwork against the tool; you may follow these embryo
prisms through the various processes of smoothing and polishing until a
small magnifying prism is obtained for use in a magnetic compass, or until
a large prism is completed suitable for a submarine periscope. You may
follow the creation of a lens from the roughing and grinding of the glass
slices with emery, or carborundum, until the approximate shape is given,
or you may follow a later process of sticking the smaller lenses on to
pitch, so that they may form a single surface for smoothing and polishing.
Again, you may watch the superlatively difficult operation of centring a
lens. This task is necessary to ensure the polished surfaces of the lens
running perfectly true and it requires a skilled touch and a trained eye
to undertake it satisfactorily.
In a shop in a certain optical munitions factory I met the first woman who
worked a centring machine in that area. She was formerly a housemaid, and
told me that, at first, all the men had discouraged her from the job and
had said it was 'impossible for a woman to do such work'. But she 'stuck
it'--so she said--and in a few weeks, to her own surprise and the men's
dismay, this peculiarly skilled job became familiar to her. 'Now I feel I
am doing something,' she said in triumph. This sentiment was echoed by
another worker in that factory who was accomplishing the surprising task
of 'chamfering', or putting a tiny bevel onto the edge of a lens.
The large lenses measure only 2 inches in diameter; the smaller ones are
about the size of a threepenny bit, and every operation, whether grinding,
trueing, smoothing, polishing, or centring, must be accomplished with the
utmost care. Even the final process in the manufacture of the lens or
prism, 'wiping off', is fraught with responsibility to the operator.
'Wiping off,' or cleaning the lens, can only be done with a silken duster,
for the finished glass, like a dainty lady, will tolerate the touch of
nothing coarse.
In cases where the glass is graticulated, or marked with fine lines for
measurement purposes, the task of 'wiping off' is of extraordinary
difficulty; in the opinion of at least one foreman with whom I have
discussed this question, the operation is only perfectly successful when
performed by a girl's fingers. It is of supreme importance that no speck
of dirt or hint of grease from a finger-mark be left on the glass when
finally adjusted, or the instrument would become a source of danger to the
user. No wonder that the feeling of the optical instrument workshop
expresses itself in the words: 'Cleanliness is more than godliness at this
job.'
The completed glass at length reaches the stage where it is set in its
instrument, be it periscope, dial-sight, telescope, and so on. Although
the most exact measurements have been observed both in the metal part and
on the glass, small adjustments are necessary; for the fit must be so
perfect that even if the metal case suffers shell-shock, the glass must
still not rattle. But it is the metal alone which is submitted to
alteration, and it is wonderful how women have been able to obtain
sufficient dexterity to make these infinitesimal changes in the metal
parts. One can see a mere girl undertaking such a task by giving the metal
three or four delicate strokes from a file so fine that it would not hurt
a baby's skin. Meantime, the lens or prism is finally examined (also by
women) for size, scratches, and other imperfections, and is then
re-cleaned. Girls and women take a full share in the production of the
metal parts for the optical instruments and also assemble, or collect the
parts, for the adjustment of the glass, but so far they do not generally
adjust or test the completed instrument.
The operations used in the production of optical instruments for war
purposes are, of course, similar to those required in the manufacture of
implements used in peace-time, such as opera-glasses, telescopes,
microscopes, surveying instruments, photographic and cinematograph
apparatus, &c., and it is expected that women who have entered the new
war-time industry will happily find themselves, when peace dawns, in
possession of a permanent means of livelihood in a skilled occupation.
_In the Shipyards_
'Ships, ships, and still ships': such is the main need of the Allies in
this, the fourth year of the war. To answer this demand, every dockyard in
the country is working at the highest pressure. Into this work, strange as
it may seem to those familiar with the rough-and-tumble life of a
shipyard, women have penetrated and have so far surmounted all obstacles
in the tasks to which they have been allocated.
At first, dilution in shipyards was looked upon as a hazardous experiment.
The work is mostly heavy and clumsy, and the type of men undertaking it,
splendid fellows enough in their physique and general outlook, are mainly
accustomed to dealings with the boisterous elements and with men comrades
of their own pattern. Their attitude towards women, it was feared, would
make for trouble immediately that the other sex was introduced as
fellow-workers. Even the most optimistic amongst shipbuilders were aghast
at the idea of women working shoulder to shoulder with men on board ship.
Yet here and there a pioneer employer has arisen, and the experiment has
been tried. It is succeeding unquestionably.
I have been into the shipyards and seen the amazing sight and am convinced
of its expediency, at all events as a war-time measure. Special care must,
of course, be taken in the planning and the supervision of women's work on
board ship, but given the right type of inspectress, charge hand, and
workers, there is no reason why women should not, in increasing numbers,
fill the gaps in the shipyards, as in the factories. The women chosen to
undertake such tasks are well aware of the service they are rendering to
the nation at this juncture, and to the women workers the first day on
board ship is one of supreme happiness. 'They are so excited when they
actually get on board,' said a dockyard inspectress to me recently 'that
they forget all about the difficulties and objections to the work.' It is
well that this is so, for it is not too easy for the novice to move about
below, even on a big battleship.
I was taken over one where the women were working. It was in a big yard
crammed with shipping of every kind--so full that one could echo the words
of the old Elizabethan, who said of a crowd: 'There was not room for a
snail to put out its horns.' A stiff breeze was blowing, and the sea
beyond ran full and blue. The great battleship along the dock lay serene
and stately, bearing, as it were, with grim humour the meddlesome tappings
and chippings of impertinent human beings, who presumed to furbish her up.
There were men on the conning-tower, busy with paint-pots, and there was a
tangle of ropes and pots on the upper decks where the guns were biding
their time. Men were calling lustily to each other, and were darting here
and there as brisk and wholesome as the breeze.
'We go down here,' said the inspectress, pointing to a ladder as steep as
the side of a house. She bounded down with the ease of an antelope.
Another ladder, and yet another. The inspectress seemed to have forgotten
their steep incline and I was left, a helpless landlubber, cautiously
descending step by step. When I joined her in the engine-room she was
already deep in conversation with one of her staff. And then I noticed the
secret aid to her agility. All the women aboard ship were dressed in
trouser suits. The suits, of blue drill for the supervisors, and of a
similar material in brown for the labourers, were made with a short tunic,
and the trousers were buckled securely at the ankle. A tight-fitting cap
to match completed the smart workmanlike costume which permits of perfect
freedom of movement in confined places. Without such a costume it would be
hardly possible for women to work on board.
The women workers on this particular battleship were engaged in renewing
electric wires and fittings, a job which requires a good deal of care and
accuracy. On the lower deck, they were fitting up new cables and were
perched in high places, here 'sweating in' a distribution box, there
marking off the position for the wires. Others were drilling holes, others
again were 'tapping', or making a thread in the holes. In the engine-room
the women were busy stripping worn-out electric wiring and were working by
the light of tall candles, as merry as a party preparing a Christmas tree.
Everywhere the women were working in pairs, an arrangement found
especially advisable on board. Behind a small iron door we found one
couple working on a fire-control in a nook where the entrance of a single
visitor caused bad overcrowding. 'These are my mice', said the
inspectress; 'they always get away into the cupboard-jobs, and very well
they work there too. But we have to maintain a strict discipline on board,
far stricter than anything known in the factories.'
No talking, I was informed, is allowed in that dockyard, during the
working hours on board, between the sailors or men labourers and the women
and there is constant supervision of the women employed. These work on
board in parties of 20-22, each party being under the care of a charge
hand. When the staff included three charge hands for supervision on board,
an inspectress was appointed for this special branch of the work. The
system seems to work well, and I noticed how the men and women had
evidently accepted each other as comrades. Coming into a secluded gangway
a man-labourer, who had finished his job, was unconcernedly shaving before
a square of mirror, while two or three women just beyond went on, just as
unconcernedly, tap, tapping at the electric fittings. There was no
chaffing, no 'larking', between the men and women, but a sense of
comradeship, such as one notices in a Co-education School.
The women on electric-wiring receive, in that dockyard, one month's
instruction on dummy bulk-heads before going on board; their
instructors--expert men--accompany them to the number of two to every
party of twenty or so, and remain with them for ten to twelve months.
After that, the women are able to work without an instructor, and I was an
eyewitness to this arrangement on a cargo vessel, where electric wiring
was also being undertaken.
Besides the work on board, women in dockyards are employed in the various
engineering shops where almost every description of construction and
repair work for vessels is undertaken. I have seen numbers of women at
work in such an electrical department, winding armatures, making parts for
firing-gear, polishing, or buffing and repairing electrical apparatus, &c.
The work in such a repair section is full of interest and variety. From
day to day the operators receive consignments of electrical apparatus
damaged on board by the elements, or worse. Great dispatch is needed, and
the women work with the utmost zeal and efficiency. I noticed them
undertaking such varying operations as lackering guards for lamps and
radiator fronts, repairing junction and section boxes, fire-control
instruments, automatic searchlights, &c., and they were turning out their
work, the foreman said, just like men. In the constructional department,
women are now employed in making bulkhead pieces, or metal-work of various
kinds, in oxy-acetylene welding, and occasionally in the foundry.
When it is recollected that before the war only elderly women--the
grandmothers--were, generally speaking, employed in the dockyards, and
those only on such ornamental tasks as flag-making or upholstery for
yachts, it is hardly credible that the granddaughters are now working
successfully on intricate processes and even at jobs where physical
strength is a qualification. 'We can hardly believe our eyes,' said a
foreman recently, 'when we see the heavy stuff brought to and from the
shops in motor lorries driven by girls. Before the war it was all carted
by horses and men. The girls do the job all right though, and the only
thing they ever complain about is that their toes get cold.' 'They don't
now', said a strapping young woman-driver, overhearing the conversation.
'We've got hot-water tins.' Then, in a low voice, for my ears alone, 'I
love my work, it's ever so interesting.'
It is this note that one finds above all, amongst the women in the
dockyards. The spirit of the sea, the almost forgotten heritage of an
island population, has been stirred once more, and the sight of the good
ships in harbour thrills the woman-worker, as the man, with a sense of
independence, freedom, and love for 'this England, ... this precious stone
set in the silver sea'.
No wonder that Englishwomen find their work in the dockyards 'ever so
interesting'.
[Illustration: CUTTING FRAYED-EDGED TAPE]
[Illustration: BRAZING TURBINE ROTOR SEGMENT]
[Illustration: MOUNTING CARDS FOR DRY COMPASSES]
[Illustration: TREADLE POLISHING-MACHINES, FOR SMOOTHING LENSES]
CHAPTER V: COMFORT AND SAFETY
WELFARE SUPERVISION--PROTECTIVE CLOTHING--REST-ROOMS AND FIRST AID--WOMEN
POLICE
The problems arising from the sudden employment of thousands of women in
the factories have obviously been connected not only with the technical
training of the workers and with the adaptation of machinery to their
physical strength. Something had to be done, and that without delay, to
ensure the comfort and safety in the workshops of these new-comers to
industrial life.
In the first great rush for an increased munitions supply, war emergency
dictated the temporary suppression of the Factory Acts. There was no demur
within the factory gates. Women worked without hesitation from twelve to
fourteen hours a day, or a night, for seven days a week, and with the
voluntary sacrifice of public holidays. Their home conditions in a vast
number of cases offered no drop of consolation. Many of these women were
immigrants from remote corners of the Empire, or from faraway towns and
villages of the United Kingdom. Housing accommodation in crowded
industrial areas, or in a thinly populated countryside, was strained to
breaking-point. Undaunted, these workers--many of whom had previously led
an entirely sheltered life--rose before dawn to travel long distances to
the factory, and returned to take alternative possession with a
night-shift worker of a part share of a bedroom. The shameful conditions
to which the factory children were subjected at the period of the
Industrial Revolution seemed about to return.
_Welfare Supervision_
Such a state of things could not be tolerated, and Mr. Lloyd George, then
Minister of Munitions, grasped the situation. 'The workers of to-day', he
said, 'are the mothers of to-morrow. In a war of workshops the women of
Britain were needed to save Britain; it was for Britain to protect them.'
Measures were immediately adopted to improve the conditions of the workers
in the factory. A Departmental Committee was appointed to consider all
questions relating to the health of munition workers, and at the Ministry
of Munitions, on their recommendation, a Welfare and Health Department was
established, charged with 'securing a high standard of conditions for all
workers in munitions factories and more especially for the women and
juvenile employees'. Since then, step by step the machinery is being set
in motion for improving the conditions of life of munition workers.
Yet Welfare work in the factory is no new thing in England. In pre-war
days it had not, it is true, reached as widespread a development as in the
United States, but as long ago as 1792 it was in practice in this country
under another name. It is recorded of that period of one David Dale, whose
factory was a model to his contemporaries, that he 'gave his money by
shovelfuls to his employees' to find that 'God shovelled it back again.'
From the early part of the nineteenth century, sporadic attempts were
successfully made to improve the conditions of the factory workers over
and above the requirements of legislation, and before 1914 a number of
enlightened factory owners had won renown by the practice of Welfare work
within their precincts. The seal of official sanction has, however, only
been gained since the war, through the influx of women into munitions
trades.[1]
The Health of Munitions Workers Committee has, since its inception,
investigated at factory after factory such questions as the employment of
women, hours of labour, Sunday labour, juvenile employment, industrial
fatigue, canteen equipment, the dietary of workers. It has published its
conclusions in memoranda, stripped bare of officialism, so as to reveal
with frankness facts acquired by scientists in touch with reality.
Working in connexion with this Committee is the Welfare and Health
Department of the Ministry of Munitions. It follows closely the
suggestions of the experts, its Welfare officers moving up and down the
country, now offering a suggestion to the management of a factory, and
again, assimilating some practical experiment in Welfare work, originated
by a progressive factory-directorate. Thus, a pooling of ideas is being
effected, and isolated experiments of value are now being propagated
throughout the country.
But possibly one of the most valuable tasks of the Welfare and Health
Department is the selection and training of candidates for the work of
Welfare Supervision in the factories. A panel of approved candidates is
kept in readiness, so that a busy factory-manager may have at hand a
choice of Welfare workers who will, if necessary, undertake the entire
supervision of the personal interests of his female, or juvenile staff.
These officers, after engagement by the factory management, are
responsible solely to the firms that employ them and not to the Ministry
of Munitions. In establishments where T.N.T. (Tri-nitro-toluene) is
handled, the presence of a lady Welfare Supervisor is compulsory; in all
National factories such an officer is recognized as a necessary part of
the staff; and in Controlled Establishments, where a number of female
operators are employed, the management is officially encouraged to make
such an appointment.
In many cases, engineering shops are for the first time employing female
operators, and the management depute with relief all questions as to the
personal requirements of the 'new labour' to the lady superintendent; in
other instances, such matters as the engagement of the employees, canteen
arrangements, and so on, are placed in the hands of other officials.
Hence, the duties of the lady Welfare Supervisor differ from factory to
factory. Generally speaking, the supervisor, or lady superintendent within
the factory is made responsible for some, or all, of the following
matters:
1. She aids, or is entirely responsible for, the selection of women,
girls, and boys for employment.
2. The general behaviour of the women and girls inside the factory falls
under her purview.
3. The transfer of a woman employee from one process to another is
suggested by the Welfare Supervisor where health considerations make such
an alteration advisable.
4. She is consulted on general grounds with regard to the dismissal of
women and girls.
5. Factory conditions come under her observation, and reports are made,
when necessary, to the management, on the cleanliness, ventilation, or
warmth of the establishment.
6. The necessity of the provision of seats is suggested, where this is
possible.
7. In large factories, where the canteen is under separate management, the
Welfare Supervisor reports as to whether the necessary facilities are
available for the women employees. In smaller factories, the Welfare
Supervisor may be called upon to manage the canteen.
8. While not responsible, except in small factories, for actual attention
to accidents, the Welfare Supervisor works in close touch with the factory
doctors and nurses. She also helps in the selection of the nurses, and
should see that their work is carried out promptly. She supervises the
keeping of all records of accidents and illness in the ambulance room, and
of all maternity cases noted in the factory. She keeps in touch with all
cases of serious accident or illness and with the Compensation Department
inside the works.
9. She supervises cloak-rooms and selects the staff of attendants
necessary for these.
10. The protective clothing supplied to the women at work comes under her
supervision.
In large establishments where the female and juvenile staff is counted by
the thousand, these multifarious duties are necessarily divided among many
individuals, and the Welfare work within the factory (Intra-mural Welfare,
as it is now termed) develops into a Department. A typical example of such
an evolution may be seen at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich. In pre-war days,
the female staff numbered 125; to-day some 25,000 women are there at work.
The Welfare supervision is happily in charge of a super-woman. In addition
to her manifold duties she has trained a staff of assistants who, like
herself, spare no effort to promote the health and happiness of those
under their care. I have stood many an hour in this super-woman's office
and watched her, surrounded by a throng of workers, fitting new-comers
into vacancies, listening to reasons from others for a desired
transference, or advising as to work, or meals, health, or recreation. No
girl was refused a hearing, however trivial the difficulty, and a
grievance as to the colour of a factory cap was discussed with as much
attention with one employee as the causes of a 'shop' disagreement was
with another complainant. I have accompanied her on visits through the
works (the entire tour would take almost a week to accomplish), and have
noted the diplomacy with which a suggested improvement in ventilation, or
a needed cloak-room alteration, was discussed with the official in charge,
and carried through. I have seen the faces of rows of workers light up as
this modern Florence Nightingale passed through their shop, and have
walked through the Danger Zone amazed at the arrangements for the
protection of the worker.
What is true of the life in such large concerns as Woolwich Arsenal, or
His Majesty's Factory, Gretna, is typical on a large scale of the
development of Welfare work in many a munitions factory throughout the
kingdom. Protective clothing has been universally adopted, ambulance-rooms
and rest-rooms have been opened, cloak-room accommodation improved,
canteens established, sane recreation encouraged, and the protection of a
women-police service introduced. In short, an atmosphere is being
introduced by which the old-time barrier between employer and employed is
being helped to disappear.
_Protective Clothing_
So much has been accomplished since the advent of women in the munitions
factories with regard to protective clothing for the worker that the
subject might well fill a chapter to itself. A separate Department in the
Ministry of Munitions now concerns itself solely with its supply, and is
continually experimenting with improvements in aprons, gloves, boots,
caps, and tunics. Cotton overalls are now generally worn by the women
employees and much thought has been given to the production of these
garments in suitable materials and design. They are made with firmly
stitched belts and with inset pockets, so as to avert accidents by contact
of loose ends in the machinery, and are more often in the popular shades
of khaki, or brown, with scarlet facings, or dark blue faced with crimson.
But there is no set rule either as to colour, or design, so long as the
principle of protection is followed.
Caps, which at first were much disliked by the workers, have at length
found general favour, not, it is true, by reason of the immunity they
offer against accident, but because they have been fashioned so as to add
'chic' to the wearer. They are usually of the 'Mob,' or 'Dutch' variety,
and match the overall in colour and texture; they are all designed so that
there is no pressure round the head. Sometimes, the cap of safety has been
skilfully used as a mark of distinction, and one may see, in a shop
staffed by women, the operators at the machines in khaki headgear, the
setters-up of machines in scarlet caps, and the overlookers or inspectors
of the product in bright blue head-dress.
For wet and dusty work there are trouser suits in cotton, woollen, or
mackintosh, or tunic suits with knee breeches and leggings, or gaiters.
Mackintosh coats are also provided for outdoor work in shipyards, or for
trucking and lorrying, or for overhead crane-work within the factory.
Acid-proof and oil-proof aprons are now furnished for certain operations,
and for other processes specially prepared gloves are supplied. The
varieties in workshop gloves are now very great; they are made in such
materials as india-rubber, canvas, or leather, or a union of these three,
or in teon-faced canvas or teon-faced leather. Some are cuffless; others,
for work in acids, have turned-up cuffs, and others again are gauntlets
reaching the elbow. In every case, the process for which they are provided
is minutely studied, and the fashion adopted is dictated by utility.
Footgear has also received a considerable amount of attention, and there
are now available Wellington boots, or half-Wellingtons, for outdoor work,
or wooden clogs for processes in the shops where the flooring is apt to
become persistently wet.
But, possibly, factory fashions receive most care when designed for
wearers in Filling shops. For these, suits in wool lasting-cloth are found
satisfactory, the most popular and smartest being in cream-colour, faced
with scarlet. Fire-proofed blue serge overalls and asbestos coats with
caps of the same material are also employed in certain of these factories.
For work in the Danger Zone no metal fasteners are permissible, and the
coat, or overall, is cut so as to protect the neck and throat from contact
with the powder used in the process.
Boots and shoes for this type of work are also specially designed. No iron
must enter into their composition, the soles being either machine-sewn, or
riveted with brass. Sometimes, cloth and india-rubber over-shoes are the
chosen footwear of the Danger Zone, and in this case the fasteners must
also be free from iron. These precautions are no mere fad, but essential
safeguards where friction between a fragment of iron and a combustible
powder might lead to an explosion. Respirators, and in some cases veils,
are also needful accessories of the Filling factory, and these too are
provided for the workers.
A complete factory uniform has thus evolved since the war: it is a model
of suitable clothing for industrial work. Arising from within the
workshops to meet essential needs, these fashions are not only free from
vulgarity, or eccentricity, but have a distinct beauty of their own. It is
unlikely that women, once accustomed to the comfort and cleanliness of
such garments, will desire to return to the discredited habit of tarnished
finery worn at work.
_Rest-Rooms and First Aid_
Ambulance and First-Aid work within the factory was not unusual even in
pre-war days. Since the development of munitions production it has become
almost a commonplace, and from December 1, 1917, its provision has been
obligatory in blast furnaces, foundries, copper-mills, iron-mills, and
metal works. Where T.N.T. is handled, the employment of at least one
whole-time medical officer is compulsory, if the employees number 2,000,
and, if in excess of that figure, at least one additional medical officer
must be employed. The professional work of these doctors is supervised by
the medical officers of the Welfare and Health Department, who also in a
similar way supervise the safety of workers employed upon the manufacture
of lethal gases.
The extra expense involved in the provision of such safeguards is by no
means unproductive. In one factory, for example, it has been estimated
that 2,500 hours were saved in a single week by prompt attention to minor
ailments; in another factory, where the firm meets all smaller claims for
Workmen's Compensation, it was found that in a period of eighteen months
following the establishment of a First-Aid organization, a credit balance
of nearly £500 accrued to the management after all expenses connected with
the factory doctor and the nurses had been defrayed.
Tribute should be paid to the medical staff for their share in the triumph
of First-Aid work within the munitions factory, for without their
extraordinary devotion the record of misadventure would undoubtedly be
higher. One hears from time to time how, in a temporary breakdown of such
a staff, a single worker will hold the fort. A typical case is recorded in
the press as I write. It tells of a young nurse who worked shifts of
twenty-four hours at a stretch, for a fortnight, during the absence of her
colleagues.
The development of the factory rest-room and cloak-room has also been a
marked feature in the munitions factories where women are employed.
Formerly, it was usual to see the women workers' outdoor garments hung
round the workshop walls; to-day, in numbers of munitions works, the
women's cloak-rooms are provided with cupboards where hot pipes dry wet
boots and clothing, where each girl has her own locker with lock and key,
and where the maximum of wash-hand basins supplied with hot and cold water
are set up. In T.N.T. workshops compulsory washing facilities are even
more elaborate. Bath-rooms are available, as well as a generous supply of
towels, and face ointment, or powder, are supplied as preventatives to any
ill effects from handling explosives.
Inside the workshops the spirit of reform is equally apparent; seats are
provided where possible, and lifting-tackle, or sliding boards, are
introduced to minimize strain when dealing with heavy weights. Sometimes,
one hears how such improvements, suggested for the women employees, are
extended to the men. At a certain engineering works, for example, where in
pre-war days women had never been employed, it was suggested by a
Government official that seats should be supplied for the women. The
management looked askance. It would be 'such a bad example to the
apprentices', it was said. The point was, however, pressed, and after a
short time the suggestion materialized. The manager then stated, with
surprised satisfaction, that the seats 'seemed to renew people', and he
had accordingly extended the improvement to the men.
_Women Police_
One of the most recent developments in the protection of women in the
factories is the employment of women police. In the summer of 1916, when
it was found necessary to obtain further control and supervision of the
women employees in munitions works, Sir Edward Henry, the Chief
Commissioner of Police, recommended that the Ministry of Munitions should
apply to the Women Police Service for a supply of trained women police.
This request has now created an extensive development of such work, and
to-day women police are undertaking numerous duties in munitions works.
They check the entry of women into the factory; examine passports; search
for such contraband as matches, cigarettes, and alcohol; deal with
complaints of petty offences; assist the magistrates at the police court,
and patrol the neighbourhood of the factory with a view to the protection
of the women employed.
As many of the works have been erected in lonely places, and as the shifts
are worked by night as well as by day, it can easily be imagined what a
safeguard to the young employee is the presence of these female guardians
of the peace. Even within the precincts of the factory, the security
assured by the patrolling police-women is of great importance, since many
of the factories are built on isolated plots extending perhaps six miles
from barrier to barrier, and within these boundaries women are often
employed in isolated huts, should they be engaged on the production of
explosives. The preventive work of the women police is, in these areas,
incalculable.
In such ways, Welfare work has taken root in the factories of Britain, and
in the words of Mr. Lloyd George, '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.'
[Illustration: SLITTING AND ROUGHING OPTICAL GLASS]
[Illustration: VIEW OF CANTEEN KITCHEN]
[Illustration: WEIGHING FERRO CHROME FOR ANALYSIS]
CHAPTER VI: OUTSIDE WELFARE
RECREATION--MOTHERHOOD--THE FACTORY NURSERY
_Recreation_
The gift in the early days of munitions development of several thousands
of pounds from an Indian prince, the Maharajah of Gwalior, for the benefit
of munitions employees, helped to focus attention from the outset on their
needful recreation. The necessity for a maximum output, bringing in its
train long shifts, overtime, and a minimum of holidays, at first left
scant leisure at the munition girl's disposal, yet it was at once apparent
that some effort must be made to render that leisure healthful and
invigorating. As soon as the Welfare Supervisors took up their positions
in the factories and came into living touch with the needs of the women
employed, requests found their way to the Ministry of Munitions for grants
for recreation purposes from the Maharajah's fund.
At first, 'a piano for the recreation-room or canteen' was the more
general appeal; for, strangely enough, after the long hours in the
engineering shops the normal munitions girl craves most, not for passive
amusement, such as 'the pictures', but for free movements of her own body.
Above all, she desires to dance, or to enjoy the rhythm of physical drill,
or, in the summer, to swim or dive, or to chase a ball in one or other of
the popular team games. Within doors, the piano provides, as it were, a
spring-board from which she can jump into a leisure-time atmosphere of
merriment; it is the send-off to her dance, the guide to her song, and the
backbone to the joy found in the united action of physical drill.
The piano once provided in canteen, or recreation-room, you will find the
munition girl footing it in the dinner-hour, or tea-interval, or in any
other period when she is off duty. So long as the tune be bright, the
merry-hearted munition-maker will dance the old dances, or the more
complicated modern steps, as her mood suggests.
From self-taught dancing, the desire for a more perfect expression in
movement is a natural evolution, and in certain cases grants from the
Maharajah's fund have defrayed the fees of dancing mistress, or sports
instructor. Sums from the same source have been paid to assist the
organization of a club, for the provision of a recreation-room, for the
erection of swings and see-saws, for the installation of a swimming-bath,
for tools and seeds for factory girls' gardens, for dramatic
entertainments, for lectures for the instruction of apprentices, and in
Ireland, for the enlargement of schools for children of women munition
workers.
Side by side with these endeavours, other efforts to promote sane
amusement for munition makers have been fructifying. Many an enlightened
factory employer, studying the problem of woman-labour within his own
works, has come to the conclusion that 'if women are called upon to work
continuously, especially at repetition jobs, their pleasure in life must
be kept alive'. Being business men, they have soon turned the theory into
practice, and have encouraged, started, and financed recreation schemes
for their own employees.
In Sheffield, for example, successful dramatic entertainments have been
given, the actors and actresses emerging from the engineering shops; near
Birmingham, a firm has provided a cinema, an orchestra, and a dancing-room
for their workpeople, and on Saturday evenings, free conveyance in an
omnibus is arranged for those workers resident in outlying hostels and
married quarters.
At Norwich, another firm has appointed a woman recreation officer to teach
the girls physical drill, dancing, tennis, and other games. Dances and a
fancy-dress ball have been organized there, and in the summer, tennis,
bowls, and cricket are played in a large recreation ground. These are but
a few instances, typical of the growing understanding amongst employers in
this country of the value of playtime to a women's staff.
Outside the factory other agencies have been at work, voluntarily
attempting to provide rest and refreshment for the women whose sacrifices
for the war are so great and so patiently endured. Such bodies as the
Young Women's Christian Association or local Civic Associations have
opened recreation clubs--sometimes for girls only and sometimes
'mixed'--where concerts, dramatic entertainments, and lectures are given,
and classes in useful arts or games are held. Women from the aristocracy
and working women, civic authorities and the clergy, have joined hands
throughout the country to help forward this effort for the physical,
spiritual and intellectual recreation of the munitions worker.
The very spontaneity and eagerness of the movement have naturally led here
and there to overlapping, and in the spring of 1917 it was found advisable
to co-ordinate local streams of goodwill and energy. A branch of the
Welfare and Health Department of the Ministry of Munitions was thus
established to keep in touch with all agencies outside the factory which
deal with schemes regarding recreation, sickness, maternity-cases,
crèches, housing, and transit facilities. Extra-mural Welfare officers
have since been appointed to undertake such duties in various localities.
These act as _liaison_ officers between existing associations of every
denomination in a given district, and centralize all outside efforts for
the protection and relaxation of the munition women of that area.
The Welfare officer at first surveys carefully the needs of the district,
and institutes an inquiry as to provisions for their satisfaction. If
necessary, a conference is then called of individuals and representatives
of local bodies dealing with these matters, and sub-committees are
appointed for each part of the work. When the numbers of women workers are
comparatively small in a given area and no adequate provision has been
made for their recreation, a central club is often opened. In other
localities, existing clubs, or institutions, are adapted to new
requirements, or new ones are added, according to local needs. Where night
shifts are worked in the local factories, it is usual to arrange the open
hours of the club to suit the workshop leisure hours. Thus, a club may be
open from 6 to 8 a.m.; at midday, for two hours, and again from 4.30 to
9.30 p.m. In such cases, it is often necessary to employ paid club
managers, as well as local voluntary help.
The clubs, however, vary, both in scope and management, the general
principle followed by the Welfare officer being to ensure provision for
recreation, and then to leave the administration to local effort.
Encouragement is given by the Ministry of Munitions to employers of
Controlled Establishments and to the management of National factories to
help forward the movement for recreation for their staffs by allowing
Treasury grants out of excess profits to be made towards approved schemes.
In many districts the grants are 'pooled' for recreation purposes for the
whole area. Recreation for the munition worker thus rests on a secure
basis. In the winter months, dancing, physical drill, theatricals, games,
and classes are in full swing in the principal munitions areas, and in the
summer, outdoor sports are encouraged, as well as the tending of vegetable
plots and flower gardens.
_Motherhood_
A more difficult task falling to the 'Outside Welfare' officer is the
supervision of maternity cases arising among munition workers. The
all-important question of motherhood necessarily crops up in the factories
where hundreds of thousands of women are in daily employment. Numbers of
them are wives of men hard at work in war industries at home; others are
war-widows, and while the illegitimate birth-rate has not gone up
disproportionately in munitions areas, the unmarried mother, from time to
time, presents a special problem.
The care of the expectant mother necessarily begins within the factory
gates. We have so far no published conclusions from an authoritative
survey of this question, such as Dr. Bonnaire (Chief Professor of
Midwifery at the Maternity Hospital, Paris) has provided for France, yet
scientific investigations and experiments undertaken by the Health of
Munition Workers' Committee are in progress. As far as possible, the women
Welfare Supervisors within the works keep their management informed of
maternity cases as they are noted, and, where possible, the expectant
mother is placed on lighter work.
No woman known to be in that condition is, after a certain period, kept on
at night work, nor is she allowed to work in an explosives factory, nor
yet to handle T.N.T. 'We send the girl to the doctor and we act on his
advice. If we can keep her, we always take her off night work and heavy
machines and where there is a good deal of exertion,' is a report typical
of the procedure in such cases in many factories. 'It is too risky for an
expectant mother to stay on at all,' is a characteristic opinion from a
Filling Factory; and from a high-explosives factory comes the verdict that
an expectant mother should, after a certain period, be discharged from the
works in view of the occasional occurrence there of small explosions. Such
maternity cases are, when possible, transferred, through local agencies,
to lighter national work outside the factory.
_The Factory Nursery_
Closely connected with the safeguarding of motherhood is the case of the
munition workers' children of pre-school age. After two months' interval
from the baby's birth, many of the maternity cases from the factory return
to their previous work, and the infant must, in the mother's absence, be
nursed by others. A similar condition applies to the work of other mothers
whose labour is required for munitions production.
It sometimes happens that in a given area the call to the munitions
factories has been answered by practically all the available women in the
neighbourhood whose home ties are light, and the local labour reserve is
found amongst the women with one or two young children. If these women are
to offer their services, it is essential that their young family should
not be neglected. Sometimes, the mothers are able to make their own
arrangements and a 'minder', either a relative, or a neighbour, is
forthcoming, but, generally speaking, such a plan is not satisfactory in a
locality where every active individual is undertaking urgent war work.
Thus has arisen in many districts the claim that a nursery for munition
workers' children should be established. A local association, or an
individual, often finds it possible to finance such a scheme; in other
cases, monetary aid is required and obtained from the Ministry of
Munitions. In the latter circumstances, the Ministry of Munitions,
co-operating with the Board of Education, grants 75 per cent. of the
approved expenditure on the initial provision and equipment of the
nursery, as well as 7_d._ a day for each attendance of a child, the
balance of the expenses being met partly by fees (varying from 7_d._ to
1_s._ a day, or from 7_s._ 6_d._ to 9_s._ 6_d._ a week) charged to the
mothers, and partly by contributions from the local originators of the
scheme.
Where night shifts are worked, the munition workers may claim night
accommodation for their children; arrangements are also made to board the
infants by the week. In the schemes approved by the Ministry it has
generally been found possible to adapt existing buildings, but where no
suitable accommodation is available within reasonable distance of the
mothers' homes a new building is erected.
Such a nursery has been erected near Woolwich and provides a useful model
for this country. It is a long low building of bungalow type, surrounded
by a small garden. The main room, the babies' parlour, is a long apartment
enclosed on two sides by a verandah, and on the third, by a wide passage
well ventilated at each end. The room itself is full of light and air,
there is plenty of play room, and no awkward corners to inflict bruises
unawares. A lengthy crawl brings a baby-boarder into the sunshine of the
verandah and the safe seclusion of its play-pens, and a longer crawl and a
hop is rewarded by entrance into the surrounding garden, where a
delectable sand-pit is a permanent feature.
Brightly-coloured flowers enliven the garden in spring and in summer and
attract bird and insect visitors, companions often more interesting to a
two-year-old than the most sprightly of humans. Mattresses occupy part of
the floor space of the nursery, and at night-time are developed into
full-fledged beds. At one end of the room are cupboards let into the
walls, at the other, furniture fashioned for the needs of each 'two feet
nothing'. There, instead of being perched on a high chair to feed with
giants from an elevated table-land, the infant visitor sits on a miniature
arm-chair at a table brought to the level of childhood. The low tables
are, in fact, kidney-shaped and hollowed on the inside, so that a nurse,
or attendant, seated in the centre, may feed half a dozen children in
turn. The toddler's dinner in this retreat recalls the feeding time in a
nest. A smiling nurse in the centre feeds, turn by turn, her open-mouthed
charges whose satisfaction is expressed in human 'coos'.
Another room in this delightful babies' house is devoted to infants: a
brigade in cots, of which the advance-guard, during fine weather, invade
the verandah. The daintiness of the room with its blue curtains and
cot-hangings and the chubby satisfaction of the cot-dwellers must be a
constant inspiration to the visiting working mothers. Spotless kitchens
for the preparation of the children's meals are situated in the rear of
the nurseries; there is also an isolation room where suspect infectious
cases are detained, and a laundry with an indefatigable laundress. The
bathing room, fitted with modern appliances, is in many respects
excellent. The whole establishment is warmed by a central-heating
installation, the radiators being well protected with guards.
It may not always be possible, through lack of funds, to reproduce these
ideal conditions, but where the accommodation is less and the ground space
more limited, every care is taken that the factory nursery shall have an
ample provision of fresh air. Efforts are also made to obtain as much
local support as possible.
In some districts, the whole of the clothing provided at the nursery is
made by the little girls from a neighbouring Elementary School. At Acton,
Middlesex, for example, I was shown piles of the daintiest little
underwear, diminutive shoes and charming cotton frocks, all made in the
sewing classes at their school, by pupils of eleven to thirteen years of
age. The boys of the local manual schools--not to be outdone--contributed
to this nursery all the carpentry for the cots for the elder babies. These
small beds, fashioned out of hessian cloth, swung on long broom poles,
with a wooden board at head and foot, seemed of a particularly economical
and practical pattern.
The factory nursery is certainly gaining popularity as a war-time measure;
as a permanency in peace times it is recognized that there are some
objections to its establishment. An alternative scheme, even in the war
period, is being mooted. The suggestion is made that babies should be
'billeted', or boarded out in the munitions area amongst women who are not
employed outside their home. Supervision of the baby boarders, it is
thought, might be undertaken by inspectors under the Local Authority. This
scheme might, it is true, largely prevent the congregation of many
children in one nursery and the resultant danger of the spread of
contagious infantile disease. On the other hand, the proposal, if
accepted, might open the doors to overcrowding in thickly populated areas
and to the neglect of the baby boarder, undetected by a local
inspectorate, already overstrained by war-time conditions. The scheme is,
however, only at the discussion stage, as I write.
In any case, the care of the munition workers' children is attracting
considerable public attention, since in spite of the war, or because of
it, the importance of the health and well-being of the ordinary
individual, and more especially of the young, is becoming part of the
creed of the average citizen.
CHAPTER VII: GROWTH OF THE INDUSTRIAL CANTEEN
GENERAL PRINCIPLES--THE WORKER'S OASIS
'Money hardly counts; it is labour we have to consider nowadays', recently
remarked the managing director of a large munitions works. It is this new
conception that has given impetus to the development of the industrial
canteen, now a feature of the munitions factory. In the opinion of Mr.
John Hodge, M.P., Minister of Pensions, who since the war has acted for a
long period as Minister of Labour, canteens in the engineering shops were
'necessary from the start', and one of the earliest investigations of the
Health of Munition Workers' Committee was on the subject of the provision
of employees' meals. The results of the inquiry are embodied in three
valuable White Papers.[2]
I have since been into many canteens connected with munitions works, and
so far I have not met a factory manager who has regretted their
introduction. Yet, only three or four years ago, the average employer
would have told you that a dinner brought by a worker in a newspaper, or
tied up in a red handkerchief, stored in the works, heated anywhere, and
eaten near the machines, was 'quite all right': and, as for the boys in
the factory, it was considered shameful to 'coddle them'; if necessary, a
factory lad should 'eat his dinner on a clothes line'.
To-day, when the utmost ounce of energy is needed from man and woman, and
boy and girl, wherever munitions production is concerned, it is recognized
that the quality and quantity of the workers' food matters, and that even
the surroundings where the meal is partaken of counts in the conservation
of the essential reserve of human energy and power of will. Thus, the best
type of industrial canteen is designed not only 'to feed the brute', but
to rest his mind. This is especially the case in certain Filling
Factories, where immunity from ill-effects from the handling of T.N.T. has
been found to depend largely on the physical fitness of the workers. In
such factories, as well as in establishments where women are employed on
night shifts, the provision of canteens is obligatory on employers and,
indeed, recent legislation (the Police, Factories, &c. (Miscellaneous
Provisions) Act, 1916) has empowered the Home Secretary to require the
occupiers of workshops and factories to make arrangements, where
necessary, for the supply of meals for their employees. In the stress of
warfare, when the demand for a maximum output is necessarily the
pre-occupation of the factory manager, it was, however, recognized that
the canteen must be State-aided. A Canteen Committee was therefore
appointed under the Central Control Board (Liquor Traffic). The work of
this committee is twofold: it aids the factory management to open its own
canteen or canteens, and it supervises and helps approved dining-rooms
managed by voluntary bodies. In the first case, the expense for any
necessary canteen is entirely borne by the Government, if the factory is a
'National' one. In Controlled Establishments, the employer is allowed to
charge the cost of the canteen as 'a trade expense', a concession by which
the State practically bears the expense out of funds which would otherwise
reach the Exchequer. In the case of canteens provided by voluntary bodies,
such as the Young Men's Christian Association, the Young Women's Christian
Association, the Church Army, the Salvation Army, the National People's
Palace Association, Ltd., &c., the Board pays half the capital
expenditure, where approved.[3]
[Illustration: BALSMING LENSES]
[Illustration: MAKING INSTRUMENT SCALES]
The efforts of these voluntary bodies have been of the utmost service,
especially at the outset of munitions production on a vast scale, when the
factory proprietors, or directors, were unable to devote even a fraction
of their time to matters not obviously connected with output. The devotion
of the unpaid workers in the voluntary canteen has through the turmoil of
war hardly received due recognition, but it is no less than that of the
nurses in the military hospitals, or of the munitions workers themselves.
Women of aristocratic families, accustomed to personal service from a
large staff of domestic servants, and entirely unused to physical labour,
as well as women hard-worked in their own homes or in livelihood
occupations, have, since the need of the canteen was declared, come, by
day and by night, to undertake the arduous duties of cooking and scrubbing
for vast numbers of working-people. _Mr. Punch's_ delightful illustration,
'War, the Leveller', where the rough scullery-maid from the slums is
depicted issuing the emphatic order to the well-bred marchioness, 'Nah
then, Lady Montgummery Wilberforce, 'urry up with them plates',[4] is by
no means a fancy picture of the hither side of canteen-life.
In one factory, substantial meals have been provided daily by 17
voluntary assistants for some 1,200 workers; in another locality, the food
of 2,000 to 3,000 munitions employees has been arranged by 23 volunteers;
and in another establishment, 6,000 workers have been provided with
standing-up refreshments by 17 voluntary helpers. The rapid growth of the
canteen system during the past fifteen months, accompanied by the
increasing difficulties of catering for vast numbers under war-time
conditions, has, however, led to the transference of numbers of voluntary
canteens to the care of the factory management.
_General Principles_
Industrial canteens differ from one another in many respects, partly
because there was at first no fund of common experience in this country
from which to draw, and partly because hours of work, tastes and customs
in industrial areas vary considerably. Hence, methods of administration
and catering, found possible or popular in one canteen, are sometimes a
complete failure when tried in other districts. In one canteen, with a
seating capacity for 2,000 women, I found that three gallons of pickles
were sold in pennyworths daily; in another district, the popular taste ran
in the direction of jam tarts. Yet, even with the small store of
experience so far accumulated, certain general principles at least as
regards site, construction, equipment, and administration of the canteen
have been evolved. For instance, as regards site, a gloomy dining-room is
never popular. If possible, a garden outlook should be arranged, and at
the least, the canteen walls should be of a restful colour. It seems
obvious that if pictures are introduced, they should be varied and bright,
yet I have seen one canteen of which the walls were covered at intervals
with reproductions of the same uninteresting print.
Another obvious point, too often neglected, is the insurance of good
ventilation in canteen and kitchen. The dining-room should, if possible,
provide separate accommodation for men and women, and should have a
buffet-bar and serving-counter with separate hatchments for different
items of the menu. Again, it is a matter of common consent that the
'ticket system' of payment for the food handed over the counter is the
best. Ticket-offices, where the 'checks' are obtainable for cash, should
be carefully placed with regard to entrance doors, serving-counters and
dining-tables, so that the minimum time is expended in preliminaries by a
_clientèle_ who has but a strict dinner-hour at its disposal. In a
well-organized canteen I have seen over a thousand workers seated and
served within ten minutes of the announcement of the dinner-hour within
the factory shops.
In the larger canteens, developments, as may be expected, run chiefly
along the lines of labour-saving appliances. Electric washing-up machines,
electric bacon-cutters, as well as electric bread-cutters, tea-measuring
machines, counter hot-closets for warming food brought by employees may
now be seen in many kitchens where the needs of thousands of diners must
be considered.
But it is perhaps in the smaller concerns that the development of the
industrial canteen is most assured. Experiments can there be more easily
tried, and if necessary, discarded, where the customers are counted by
hundreds, rather than by thousands. From a tour of canteens, I select a
couple of such instances. The other day I happened, during the
dinner-hour, to be in a new munitions factory concerned with the
production of magnetos, aero-engines, electric switches, and so on, work
undertaken by men and women, boys and girls. The manager of this works has
studied the labour question up and down the country, and has set down his
conclusions, not on minute sheets, but in the bricks and mortar of new
buildings, in green lawns and flower beds bright with colour, and in
allotments round his shops.
_The Worker's Oasis_
The canteen is a feature of the place. It stands apart from the factory, a
long low building, one side looking on to a tennis court and the other on
to homely but delightful vegetable plots. The workers' dining-room is
divided down the centre: one side for the men, the other for the women. A
serving-table, but no partition-wall, separates it from the kitchen,
which, in its turn, is divided by further serving-tables from mess-rooms
for the engineers and staff employees. The kitchen, in reality a series of
ovens, stoves, and steamers, is a revelation of labour-saving appliances,
heated by electricity. On the day of my visit there was not the slightest
odour of cooking from these various utensils, although hot meals for some
250 persons were in preparation.
The factory hooter 'buzzed'. The dinner hour, the workers' oasis, had
arrived, yet there was no clatter of dishes, or bustle of serving-maids,
in the canteens. An atmosphere of repose was as manifest as in a
well-appointed reception-room of some stately English home. The workers
evidently react to these conditions, and standing at the back of the
kitchen I was quite unaware of the diner's entry. 'When do the people come
in?' I asked from my shelter behind a huge steamer where puddings were
rising to the occasion. 'A hundred men are already seated and served', was
the amazing reply. They had entered through a side door leading out of the
garden, had there purchased a 'check' for the value of the dinner
required, and presenting the 'check' at the serving-counter, had received
their portion, piping hot from the hot shelves fitted beneath.
Picking up the necessary cutlery from an adjoining table, the customers
had seated themselves at any special small marble-topped table of their
fancy. Waitresses, some voluntary workers garbed in rose-coloured overalls
and mob-caps, and some staff employees in white or blue uniforms, moved
about amongst the tables, supplying small wants. Through the open windows
floated the scent of hay and flowers; it seemed almost ludicrous to
connect the scene with war and the manufacture of its engines of
destruction. The quality of the food was excellent and the variety great.
A dinner hour spent in such a canteen is a refreshment to both body and
soul of the employees.
In another instance, the firm have handed over the canteen and its
management to a workers' committee upon which the managing director also
sits. I noticed in this canteen various devices worthy of imitation, where
catering is undertaken for large numbers. The method adopted, for example,
of dividing the serving-counter into hatchments for the various items on
the menu, and separating by rails the floor-space in front of each
compartment, seems to economize both the time and patience of the
customers. The note of economy with efficiency is emphasized in this, as
in many canteens, and I was shown with pride some 'little brothers' on an
adjoining piece of land--pigs that were fattening on the canteen 'waste'.
These developments, started in munitions areas during the urgency of
warfare, will, without doubt, have permanent importance in the days of
peace, and it is probable that the munition workers' canteen, doubtingly
adopted by employers some two years ago, is symptomatic of a revolution in
the home life of the industrial worker, as well as of new methods of
economy in the national supply of fuel and food.
CHAPTER VIII: HOUSING
BILLETING--TEMPORARY ACCOMMODATION--PERMANENT ACCOMMODATION
Of the indirect problems arising from a prolific output of munitions the
most acute has undoubtedly been the affair of the housing of the workers.
The opening of a new factory, or the conversion of existing works to the
needs of the State, often involve the transference of thousands of
workers, and in some cases the districts to which the stream of
immigration is directed are already congested, and already suffering from
inadequate housing accommodation.
In one town in the North, for example, the population has since 1914
increased by immigration from 16,000 to 35,000; in another town, where the
1911 census showed a population of 107,821, an unexaggerated estimate
gives the figure for the end of 1917 as 120,000; in other munition areas a
similar inflation of population has taken place. The housing problem has
been further complicated by the almost total prohibition of building
during the war period, save for Government purposes.
The effect of these conditions in the early days of the war was, as may be
imagined, highly unsatisfactory to the residents in certain munition
areas, as well as to the immigrant work-people. Overcrowding became rife;
lodgers were at the mercy of unscrupulous landladies, and all the evils
associated with bad housing conditions began to make their appearance.
Then the Ministry of Munitions came to grips with the question, and
although it remains a thorny subject, the activities of the Department may
be fairly said to have accomplished a miracle in some areas in the housing
of the munition workers.
The infinite variety of local conditions, as well as the humanness of the
workers, obviously complicate the matter, and while it has been found
possible to synthesize the factory system of a given area, no stereotyped
regulations can conceivably be produced to cover the accommodation of its
employees. The problem is therefore attacked piece-meal, each local
proposition being decided on its own merits. A broad guiding principle
has, however, been educed wherever the housing situation occasioned by the
output of munitions demands State intervention. In the first place, it is
decided whether the needed accommodation can be met in part, or
altogether, by existing houses--a system now sanctioned by the Billeting
Act of May 1917. Secondly, when it is found necessary to provide further
housing room, consideration is given as to whether new buildings shall be
of a temporary or of a permanent type.
_Billeting_
Chronologically, an authorized system of billeting munition workers has
been the latest development in the State housing schemes, but even in the
early days of the war this arrangement existed in embryo. Local committees
were then appointed which, with the aid of the Employment Bureaux,
compiled lists of suitable lodgings for immigrant women workers. From the
earliest war period, too, provision was made to meet young women
new-comers at railway stations and to place them, if necessary, in
temporary unimpeachable lodgings, until permanent accommodation was
available. This scheme has now developed into the regularized activities
of a Billeting Board (established August 1917), working under powers given
by the Billeting Act. Under this enactment, compulsory billeting is
provided for, but in practice is not adopted, sufficient facilities having
so far been forthcoming from voluntary sources.
The Billeting Board works in hearty co-operation with local authorities
and individuals, and has met with extraordinary success. In the first
instance, two executive members of the Board proceed to a congested
munitions area and, with local aid, institute an inquiry as to whether
billeting can be successfully carried out. In such areas as the Clyde, or
Woolwich, billeting would, for example, be out of the question, but in
other localities, such as Barrow and Hereford, where public opinion ran
that there was no further accommodation even for a stray cat, the Board
has yet found suitable billets for 900 persons in Barrow and 1,200 in
Hereford.
The question of transit, it is true, is intimately connected with the
housing problem, and through the action of the Billeting Board it has in
many cases been possible to remove difficulties of locomotion, and hence
to bring further accommodation within reach of the factories. The Board
has also been enabled to form local committees on which sit
representatives of each housing interest (e. g. landlady, locality,
lodger), and it has authority to recover rent from defaulting tenants.
These, and other powers, have resulted in throwing many additional
apartments on to the market. Yet difficulties remain in the administration
of the Act in that the industrial workers are under no discipline such as
that applied to soldiers, and there is no local authority to compel a
munitions worker either to go into a given billet, or to remain there
when placed. The goodwill of the locality and of the employees has,
however, been so great that the system works smoothly, and from August
1917 to December 31, 1917, 3,000 to 5,000 munition workers have been
placed in existing houses. In a congested district where lodging
accommodation is exhausted, the Billeting Board reports on the need for
further houses, and at such centres as Barrow and Lincoln new houses are
now being erected on their recommendation.
_Temporary Accommodation_
Excluding the utilization of local lodgings and the adaptation of existing
buildings such as Poor-Law structures, Elementary Schools, charitable
institutions, three distinct types of provisional accommodation for
munition workers have made their appearance: temporary cottages, hostels,
and colonies. The temporary cottage corresponds fairly closely to the
ordinary type of permanent industrial cottage, save that the former is
built of wood or concrete and is usually one story instead of two; it
contains three to five rooms, and is rented on the basis of about 5_s._
6_d._ to 7_s._ 6_d._ per week for a three-roomed abode.
Generally speaking, these rooms are allocated to married rather than to
single women; sometimes the wife, as well as the husband, works in the
neighbouring factory, but more usually the wife, housed in the temporary
cottage, remains at home, housekeeping for the man worker. The unmarried
girls and women workers in crowded districts are generally accommodated in
hostels, or in colonies, the term used for a group of hostels. The hostel,
which is designed to accommodate from 30 to 100 persons, is provided with
its own kitchen, dining-room, and common-room, and to a certain extent
life therein approximates to that of a large family.
The Colony, or group of hostels, has been found convenient where a large
number of women must be housed. Each hostel, or hutment, in the group is
arranged for the sleeping accommodation of 100-130 persons, the
dormitories being divided into cubicles (some single, some double),
accommodation for bath-rooms being always made in these dormitory blocks.
Under the Colony system, meals are usually partaken of in a separate
building or buildings. The residents from all the hutments also meet in
the recreation-room and in the laundry, common to all.
Experience, however, teaches that each hostel should have its own common
room and that a Colony should not shelter very large numbers. About 500
girls, in five hostels, seems to be the ideal number for effective
home-making, yet we have large housing schemes for the accommodation of
many thousands which are at present answering their purpose as a war-time
measure. For the management of the Colony an exceptionally capable lady
superintendent is needed, into whose hands usually falls the selection of
the hutment matrons and their staffs, as well as the canteen managers and
their subordinates. In the most developed Colonies a recreation officer is
often appointed.
I recall a visit to one of the largest Colonies for munition workers in
the Midlands. The scheme embraces the housing and feeding of some 6,000
women, drawn from every part of the United Kingdom, indeed, possibly from
every corner of the Empire. The staff, in all, comprises some 300 persons.
Perfect harmony reigned, and the girls seemed thoroughly at home in their
novel surroundings. Each girl can claim a separate cubicle, which is
divided from the adjoining compartment by a wall and door. Here and there,
indeed, the arrangement was varied and two friends--terrified at sleeping
alone--had secured permission to pool their bedrooms and to arrange a
double sleeping-room and dressing-room.
The cubicle system is, notwithstanding, much appreciated by the woman,
who, working in company of hundreds of her fellows, and sharing perhaps a
common life for the first time, rejoices in the possession of some spot in
which to express her inner self. In some cubicles in that Colony a desire
for beauty asserted itself and the walls were gay with prints from
illustrated papers; in others, dainty coloured curtains had been
introduced and the locker was covered with a cloth to match. In another
room, the owner had evidently a taste for embroidery, and all the toilet
accessories bore this feminine touch. But, generally speaking, the chief
feature I noticed in that, as well as in other Colonies where the cubicle
system prevails, was the cleanliness and order of the apartments. A taste
for purity is infectious, and it is unlikely that girls, having once come
under an influence that induces them to leave their sleeping apartment
immaculate before going to work before dawn, will ever again tolerate slum
conditions.
The many problems involved in the housing of these girls of various types
are indeed almost lost sight of by the visitor, but, as a lady
superintendent once reminded me, there are difficulties inherent in the
job. Some girls will arrive with uncleanly habits, even when the medical
officer has sorted out those unclean in person; others will, at first,
show signs of violent antipathies and strange fears, and there is always
the need for upholding an atmosphere of religious and racial toleration.
In the Midlands Colony a system has been adopted of placing the bedrooms
of girls from one part of the United Kingdom in the same corridor, the
Irish in one wing, the Scotch in another, and so on, but in the other
parts of the country I have found perfect harmony where such
classification is not observed.
[Illustration: PAINTING A SHIP'S SIDE IN DRY DOCK]
[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF WOMEN AT WORK ON AIRCRAFT FABRIC]
[Illustration: THE CANTEEN]
The feeding of the hostel residents presents its own difficulties,
especially in these days of war. In some hostels and colonies, such as the
one in the Midlands, the residents take their meals in their own canteen;
it being possible to supply the needs of a shift in the interval from
work. In other hostels, arrangements are made by which meals can be had
either at the hostel or the factory canteen.
In these days of fluctuating food prices, it is difficult to indicate the
cost of up-keep of a munition-workers' hostel, but, in general, it has not
been found practicable to put the hostel on an entirely self-supporting
basis. This is especially the case in the Government establishments, where
the return on expended capital is at present only sought in increased
munitions output.
_Permanent Accommodation_
At first sight, the provision of temporary accommodation alone may appear
the obvious method for the housing of munition workers. Cheaper and more
rapid construction is obtainable by this method, and existing buildings
may be adapted. But if, in an area of pre-war housing shortage, there is
good prospect of permanent manufacturing activity, it is more often
decided that permanent, rather than temporary, structures are provided.
It may be of interest to note the methods that have been adopted by the
State in the provision of permanent accommodation. These may be detailed
under four heads:
1. In a certain number of cases loans have been made to Public Utility
Societies for the construction of dwellings for munition workers. Such
loans are conditioned after the manner already made familiar to the public
by Garden Suburb and other Associations.
2. Loans have been made directly to certain individual firms to enable
them to house their immigrant employees. These loans have been issued at
the current rate of interest--usually 5 per cent.--and run, generally
speaking, for a period of forty years.
3. In a few exceptional cases, certain private firms--now Controlled
Establishments--are permitted to charge a part of the increase on the cost
of building (due to war conditions) to that portion of the firm's profits
which would otherwise have gone to the Exchequer.
4. A contribution is, in some instances, made by the State to certain
local authorities of a part of the capital cost of building. In all cases
this contribution is less than the estimated increase due to war
conditions.
The type of permanent building erected by such means is that which
characterizes many of our newer industrial districts, namely a two-story
brick cottage, containing two or three bedrooms, a living-room and a
kitchen, a bath, in some cases a bath-room. Sometimes a complete village
or township has arisen, as it were from the earth, to shelter the working
population who have so willingly left their homes to further the common
cause by land and sea. In another instance, a large National factory has
been erected on an isolated waste in the North country. The workers come
from long distances, and not only need accommodation, but some reasonable
provision for recreation and the amenities of life.
Beyond the great high road sweeping on to Scotland, some one- or
two-roomed cottages, a village shop or two, and a few more imposing
residences there was, in June 1915, nothing but bogland in the immediate
neighbourhood of the site of this new factory. The landscape presented a
view of coarse grass and brackish water; beyond that, beach and sea, and a
horizon bounded by rugged mountains, capped in winter by snow. It needed
courage, as well as genius, to undertake the transformation of such a
desolate waste into surroundings which should offer a lure to industrial
workers. But the work has been done in silence, quickly as well as
efficiently, with imagination, as well as thoroughness, and with an eye to
the future destiny of the place.
By July 1915, the first huts were occupied, and by December 1917, when I
was a privileged visitor, there had arisen a thriving busy township and a
village some five miles beyond. Excellent railway communication between
township, village, and factory has been established, many good roads have
been built, there are permanent cottages, churches, a school, shops, a
staff club, an institute, a large entertainment hall, a cinema house, and
a central kitchen, providing cooked meals for all the workers in the
factories, and raw food-stuff for hostels and huts. Little gardens
surround the houses big and small, temporary or permanent, and allotments
are in great request, and there is also provision for outdoor recreation,
such as bowls, tennis, cricket, &c. The permanent brick cottages are built
in blocks of twelve, which are now thrown together to form a hostel. The
construction is so planned that ultimately these cottages can be
re-separated for family use.
There is housing accommodation for over 6,000 women operators, which was
practically all in use. The task of supervising the home conditions of
this army of women falls into the hands of a lady Welfare Superintendent,
who keeps all the complicated machinery of hostels, huts, and lodgings in
running order. The possibilities in the housing of industrial women away
from their own homes have, I believe, never been so clearly demonstrated
as in this town on the marshes. The lady superintendent who has pioneered
this movement is of the opinion that its success is bound up with the fact
that the hostels are limited to the accommodation of from 70 to 100 girls
in each. Other key-notes to the prevailing happiness of the women
residents are, I gathered, that a minimum number of rules are enforced and
that the women are treated as responsible human beings. The elder women
are often housed in bungalows under the care of a housekeeper-cook, and
they greatly enjoy the greater independence and the appeal to their
individuality possible in such surroundings.
The hostels, at the time of my visit, were in most hospitable mood. It was
the eve of Christmas, and festivities, tempered to war-time needs, were
the order of the day. The sound of a piano and singing outside a certain
hostel suggested a frolic within. We entered, the lady superintendent and
myself. The lower floor had been converted into reception-rooms and supper
was laid out on tables decorated with spoils from the hedge. Gleaming red
berries and glistening holly-leaves were on walls and brackets and here
and there a sprig of mistletoe placed in suitable places for 'auld lang
syne'. There were present young men, as well as girls, and a lively game,
'the Duke of York', was in progress.
Suddenly the singing and accompaniment came to a sudden halt and the whole
of the company trouped in from adjoining rooms. A young girl came forward.
'We wish to take this opportunity', she said, 'of thanking our matron and
our secretary for the most happy time we have had under this roof. We do
it now because we hope not to be here next year, but instead to be
welcoming our boys home from the Front'. It was a simple, spontaneous
expression of the general emotion of the hostel residents in that area.
Everywhere I found a similar joy of life among the workers: in the
Institute clubs, where both girls and men were reading, studying, singing,
and dancing; in the cinema hall, where the ever-popular 'movies' were
taking place; and in the big recreation hall, where a weekly 'social' was
being held. There, two girls provided the band, to which other girls
danced with girls, or with men in khaki, or with factory workers in
civilian dress. There was a healthy comradeship between girls and men and,
when the hour of parting came there were leave-takings of which no one
could be ashamed. Laughter and jollity in plenty, and snatches of song up
and down the darkened streets, as group after group found its way home,
but self-respect and dignity noticeably present.
In a new town, emerging during the hurry and bustle of the war, amongst
new occupations, at which women needs must wear a masculine costume, we
have at least accomplished this: that the spirit of home-life, of joy,
and of love has not been discouraged: rather has it been fostered, or
rekindled, in these unaccustomed homes provided by the State. Indeed, many
of the girls passing through this strange war-time adventure have
assuredly gained by their pilgrimage precisely in those qualities most
needed by the wives and mothers of the rising generation.
It was an inspiring glimpse into a new industrial world, a portent, maybe,
of the time to come. The words of a golden sonnet welled up:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when, with eagle eyes,
He stared at the Pacific--and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise--
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Welfare work has since been officially extended to factories other
than those engaged in munitions production by Clause 7 of the Police,
Factories, &c. (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act (1916).
[2] _Health of Munition Workers Committee_, Memorandum No. 3, Report on
Industrial Canteens (Cd. 8133); Memorandum No. 6, Appendix to Memorandum
No. 3, Canteen Construction and Equipment (Cd. 8199); Memorandum No. 19,
Investigation of Workers' Food and Suggestions as to Dietary: Report by
Leonard E. Hill, M.B., F.R.S. (Cd. 8798).
[3] A Food Section of the Ministry of Munitions has since been established
to carry on the work of the Central Control Board (Liquor Traffic).
[4] _Punch_, September 6, 1916.
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