war came, was not compelled to start afresh with totally un-
trained women workers. Less than a tenth of the 4,750,000
employed in Nov. 1918 in agricultural, commercial and industrial
occupations, had been altogether ignorant when they entered
on war work of at least the routine and discipline of an industrial
life, and the majority had really useful experience. It is after all
more difficult to learn to handle a power loom or a power-driven
sewing machine than it is to change from one of these to a semi-
automatic lathe. Employers stated that of the 3,000,000 women
employed in industry alone 700,500 a number nearly equal to
that of the new entrants into the same occupations were directly
replacing men. This did not mean however that they were
necessarily engaged on work that before 1914 had always been
done by men. In many instances the work itself was new. Gas-
masks, depth-charges and anti-aircraft devices, for example, had
not been made in the same way, if at all, before 1914. Some-
times the change made was only nominal, as when a shop full of
girls who had been machining bicycle parts, was turned over to
the manufacture of rifles, and the processes to be performed on
the new object remained unaltered. Again the employment of



women on a particular job, though new to the factory in ques-
tion or even to the district, might be customary in other parts of
England or Scotland. The Midlands could show thousands of
women pressing, stamping, drilling, milling, dressing castings,
core-making, assembling, even working on capstan lathes, and
some of these were turning out articles for use in war such as
fuzes, adaptors and cartridge cases. Any of these processes, if
performed in an engineering shop, was entirely forbidden to a
woman or a girl. Finally, there were very great numbers of women
who merely replaced men on duties which had formerly been
undertaken by either men or women. Familiar examples of
trades in which this occurred have already been given. It is not
too much to say that the majority of the women war workers
were employed on work familiar to their sex, and often not
widely dissimilar except in the conditions under which it was
done from their ordinary occupations.

There were, however, exceptions to this, so interesting that they
obscured the true state of affairs. Women on buses, policewomen
and landgirls, women teaching in boys' public schools, and
perched on ladders washing windows, women in gas-works and
steel foundries and marine-engineering shops produced a com-
prehensive effect which was increased by the uniforms and work-
ing-dresses they wore, and by the fact that many of the war-
workers were drawn from social classes unused to connecting
their women-folk with factory life. There were reasons, too,
which led to the position being misrepresented. It was in the
interest of each employer, anxious to retain the skeleton of his
male staff, to emphasize the length to which he had already
carried direct substitution, and the returns made by them were
found to reflect this anxiety. Moreover, it was in some districts
easier to attract women to work which they believed served the
purpose of releasing a man for the Forces than to obtain them for
uninspiring women's tasks, where the drudgery and hardship to
be faced were not even tinted with glamour.

Numerically, the changes in the employment of women and
girls took the following course. The outbreak of war produced
immediate unemployment. By Sept. 1914 about 250,000 females
(8-4% of those employed in Aug.) had already left their jobs.
This was the lowest point. By Feb. 1915 only 1^5% of these were
still without work; by April the figures showed a surplus of 2%,
and by Oct. igrs the increase already amounted to 150,000. So
far, however, it was still almost entirely in trades recognized as
women's, or in work performed by both men and women. Of
the 429,000 women and girls who entered the metal trades during
the war, only 29,000 had entered by July 1915, though the effect
of the Government's efforts to achieve dilution, which was made
possible by the conferences held that summer, was shown by the
fact that another 20,000 joined during the next three months.

By Oct. 1.917 the percentage of women and girls to the total
number of workpeople employed in industry, commerce, agri-
culture, transport and Government establishments had risen
from 24% to 36% and nearly 1,500,000 women had been drawn
into these occupations. By Nov. 1918 there was a 50% increase
in the number of females employed in the same callings, repre-
senting 1,750,000, though, as has been stated, the addition to the
total number of employed women was only 1,000,000. This is
accounted for by the fact that over half of the 750,000 which
makes the difference were persons who had previously been
employed as dressmakers or domestic servants, while the rest
had been outworkers of other types who were drawn into muni-
tions work either by patriotism or by the superior interest and
rates of pay. At the same time very large transferences of labour
were taking place within the framework of industry, for by no
means all of the great trade groups shared in the general war
expansion. Thus, while industry proper, on a balance of pros-
perous and declining sections, showed an increase of just under
800,000, the figures for the textile trades fell by over 50,000,
for paper and printing by 7,000, and for clothing by 56,000.

After the War. From Nov. 1918 the fall in numbers naturally
begins, but up to July 1920 which is in some ways a better date
for the purpose of comparison than Nov. 1920, though figures for
that month will be found in the tables accompanying this



WOMEN'S EMPLOYMENT



1047



article there were still 28,000 more women and girls in industry
than there were in 1914, and 824,000 more women and girls in
industry, commerce, the Civil Service, transport, hotels, theatres,
<etc., taken together. These figures amount to a loss of women
for industry of 512,000, between the Armistice and July 1920, as
compared with the 800,000 who entered during the war, and for
the larger group of occupations already referred to a corre-
sponding loss of 824,000 as against their gain of 1,648,000. On
the other hand the 80,000 women in the women's services had all
been demobilized, and so had most of the 60,000 women V.A.D.'s,
who, however, being voluntary workers, have not been taken
account of in these figures. In July 1918 1,458,000 women were
stated to be directly replacing men and 1,874,000 were on
Government work, including the Civil Service, the women's
services and the land army, but not workers in hospitals. The
last figure, however, must be accepted with caution, as many
of the contracting firms were not in a position to make accurate
returns, and others varied in their views of the basis on which
their figures should be compiled. Firms accepting contracts to
be filled from stock already in their warehouses could not tell,
while the goods were in process of manufacture, which part would
be bought by the Government and which by private firms, nor
which of their private customers were purchasing the articles
against Government orders. In addition to this, many work-
people were engaged for part of a day or week on Government
contracts, and for the rest of their time on the firm's normal
work. Some firms returned all their munitions work a far
wider and vaguer term, and one made continually more wide and
vague by various decisions of the Courts as Government work,
and generally there was a tendency, in view of the privileges it
conferred, to bring as much under this head as possible, even
when the figures were supplied for statistical use.

These incfeases in the numbers of women employed in 1920
as compared with 1914 are interesting because they seemed to
show that the war might result in a permanent growth in the
industrial use of women. The natural growth of the population
explains a certain part of them, but it should be noted that
whereas the number of males employed had grown during the
same period by only 177,000 on a 1914 figure of nearly 10,000,000,
women had increased by between four and five times that num-
ber on a pre-war figure of 3,250,000. This discrepancy cannot
nearly be explained by the casualties. Moreover in commerce
and finance, where the rise for women is 344,000, there is an
actual decrease for men of 155,000. These figures may alter
again to the detriment of women; but, except in so far as bad
trade causes general unemployment, there is no obvious reason
why they should alter much. The replacement of the temporary
women workers has not been left to economic factors which
might be thought not yet to have operated to their full extent.
On the contrary, non-economic pressure has in many cases pre-
vented employers from keeping women they would have wished
to keep. Under the Munitions of War Acts certain trades have
been compelled to discharge all women and girls brought in to do
work formerly done by men or boys. Trade agreements have
had the same wholesale effects in other cases, though in both
groups of occupations the natural tendency may be deduced
from the fact that new firms, not within the scope of the pledges,
are making a large use of women. And in addition to this practi-
cally every employer of women has been confronted by a cam-
paign, both sentimental and practical and in some cases bitter,
against their continued employment. It has been carried on
partly by, or on behalf of, the returning troops, and partly by
the men in the industries in which women had been working, and
has certainly resulted in the dismissal of large numbers of them
who were performing their work to their employer's satisfaction.
These causes, though effective, are for the most part temporary
in their effect, but those that tend to the increased employment
of women are more lasting in character. The war advertised the
fact that women are suited for a wider range of occupations than
most employers who as a class tend to be ignorant of what is
going on in industry outside their own affairs and those of their
immediate friends had realized. They are also on much work



very much cheaper than men. Before the war their average
wages were about half those received by men for the same work.
In many trades during the war this proportion rose to two- thirds.
But even in 1921 in the work which women do well, this dis-
crepancy was a good deal greater than the difference which would
be warranted by the difference in their value to their employer;
and wherever this is so the employment of men on that work, if
women are available, must be regarded as a luxury. It is one of
which many employers, for good and bad reasons, are most un-
willing to deprive themselves, but falling prices and restricted
demand will operate to increase the desirability of the women.
Further, they themselves had learned to prefer a life outside the
home, to employment within it, while the losses of the war and
the diminished prosperity of the nation turned for many of them
a matter of choice into one of necessity. It might therefore be
thought probable that though the bulk of the work to which
women were introduced during the war had by 1921 disappeared
or been taken from them, their share of paid work outside private
houses would remain considerably larger than it was before the
war and also more varied, and it was likely that these new oppor-
tunities of employment would be large enough not only to absorb
the new workers but also to draw upon the supply of those who
would formerly have undertaken domestic service or employ-
ment in small workshops.

Number Employed. The table on next page gives the figures of
British women's employment for July 1914, Nov. 1918, and Nov.
1920; the numbers employed on Government work; and the num-
bers stated to be directly replacing men. It should be noticed that
they do not include outworkers, or persons employed on their own
account, or employers.

Workers Classified. The first winter of the war did little more than
absorb the workers who had been thrown out of employment during
its opening months. They moved from one part of the clothing trades
to another, from cottons on to woollens, and from cotton, too, on
to metals, from little brass rings and tips and handles and discs
and plates on to fuzes, from lace on to leather, and from the food
trades into the filling factories. The conditions were more or less
familiar, and as far as they could they chose work that was similar to
their own, for at this stage no arrangements had been made for train-
ing any abnormal proportion of new workers. The supply lasted
until the beginning of the next year, as is shown by the fact that of
the 79,000 women who enrolled in March 1915 for the Women's
War Register under 2,000 had been placed by June, as all vacancies
were first offered to suitable applicants on the ordinary register of
unemployed persons. When these came to an end industry could
still be fed from the immense reserve of fit and experienced workers
created by marriage. Former employees in the printing and paper
trades, textile trades and boot and shoe trades, returned to the work-
shops in very large numbers, a few going straight on to munitions
in the narrower sense, but most preferring to take up their former
employment in order to replace men who had entered the army, or
the younger women who were beginning to drift away to more en-
ticing work. It was for the sake of the Lancastrian cotton weavers
that the policy was adopted of scattering the new National Factories
through the chief provincial towns of the north instead of erecting
them in the old armament centres under the eyes of the great arma-
ment firms, and it was on their skill and experience that the Ministry
of Munitions was able to base its new programme.

These married women perceptibly altered the type of woman
munition worker. They increased the average age, and, being tied
to their homes and so restricted in their field of possible employment,
they reduced the amount of wastage. On the other hand they were
in certain respects undisciplined it was never found possible to
apply to them, for instance, the provisions of the Munitions of War
Act with regard to Leaving Certificates and their bad time-keep-
ing, due to the pressure of domestic duties, detracted from the value
of their work.

Their movement into industry continued roughly all through the
autumn and winter of 1915. They came partly as a result of the
feelings that were aroused by their husbands attesting or entering
the army, and partly as a result of the appeals that the Government
were now making to them. By the spring of 1916, however, thesupply
was falling short. Congestion was increasing in the munitions
areas, and many married women, instead of themselves earning wages
in the factories, were taking toll of the wages of others, by letting
rooms for sums which were sometimes increased concurrently with
every increase in wage rates. Demand for women's labour was
rapidly growing, and in March 1916 the Central Committee on
Women's War Employment (Industrial) was set up by the Home
Office and the Ministry of Labour, and established local committees
to superintend on the one hand the recruitment of suitable women
and on the other their housing, reception and general well-being
outside the factory.



1048



WOMEN'S EMPLOYMENT

British Women's Employment, 1914, ipi8, 1920.



Nature of Work


Women and Girls Employed


No. on Govern
ment work in
July 1918


No. stated to be
replacing males
in July 1918


July 1914


November 1918


July 1920


November 1920


Building
Mines and Quarries ....
Metal Trades
Chemical Trades ....
Textile Trades
Clothing Trades
Food, Drink and Tobacco Trades .
Paper and Printing Trades
Wood Trades ...
Other Trades (including Gas, Water,
and Electricity under local Author-
ities) .......

Government Establishments (Arse-
nals, National Factories, Dock-
yards, etc.)

Total in Industries, including Mu-
nicipal and Government Establish-


7,000
7,000
170,000
40,000
863,000
612,000
196,000
148,000
44,000

90,000

2,200


31,000
13,000
597,000
103,000
818,000
556,000
231,000
141,000
83,000

156,000

247,000


9,900
9,600
305,000
71,000
883,000
57.1,000
241 ,000
165,000
65,000

138,000
6,300


9,900
9.500
287,000
68,000
840,000
530,000
226,000
162,000
61,000

132,000
5,100


18,000
6,000
534,000
66,000
335,000
142,000
37,000
40,000
40,000

73,000

(private firms
only)

225,000


1 1 ,900
6,900
194,200
33,700
65,500
45,900
62,600
21,200
25,600

46,000
187,000


2,179,000


2,976,000


2,464,000


2,330,000


1,516,000
(not including
municipal)


700,500
(not including
municipal)




Municipal Tramways.
Tramways and Omnibus Services
(other than municipal) .
Railways
Docks and Wharves ....
Other Transport

Total in Transport Work . . .


1,200

400
12,000
Num
4,600


19,000

9,300
66,000
>er of females en
21,000


3,100

2,700
29,000
iployed insignifii
1 1 ,500


2,900

2,500
28,000
:ant.
11,300







18,000


115,000


46,000


45,000





79,500
(excluding mu-
nicipal tram-
ways)


Banking and Finance. . .


9.5o
496,000


75,000
880,000


56,000
794,000


55,000
792,000




59,500
352,000


Total, Finance and Commerce .


506,000


955-000


850,000


847,000




411,500


Hotels, Public Houses, Cinema Thea-
tres, etc


181,000
142,000
33,000

18,000

54,000


222,000
154,000
80,000

40,000
75,000


242,000
140,000
37-000

38,000
74,000


235,000
152,000
37,000

38,000
75,000





44,500
22,500


Teachers (under local Authorities) .
Hospitals (Civil and Military) .
Other Professions (persons employed
by Accountants, Architects, Solici-
tors, etc.)
Municipal Services, not covered above


Civil Service


66,000


228,000


120,000


112,000


230,000


153,000


Women's Services (Naval and Mili-
tary)
Land Army


80,000
30,000











80,000


80,000
30,000


Grand Total


3,307,000


4,845,000


4,051,000


3,871,000


1,826,000


1,521,500



The new efforts tapped new sources of supply. Along with women
from the normal industries of Great Britain totally unskilled workers
had now to be engaged. They included dress-making hands, do-
mestic servants, girls from school and married women unused to
factory life. Of these the domestic servants, with their more adapt-
able intelligence, comparative readiness to take responsibility, and
good physique, were perhaps the most valuable. They are stated
by employers to have been much sought in marriage, and to have
affected considerably the habits and outlook of the ordinary in-
dustrial workers with whom they were brought into contact. They
certainly showed no eager desire to return to domestic service.

The married women were said to be less quick to learn, and less
disciplined in the sense of observing regulations. On the other
hand they were considered very hard workers, and in some cases
as was natural on the part of women, most of whom were soldiers'
wives formed a definitely anti-strike body during serious industrial
disputes. The last class of married women to be touched were per-
haps the village women, large numbers of whom were recruited by
the land army, and taught afresh the agricultural work which had
been familiar to their great-grandmothers. They were difficult to
persuade, being shy and unwilling to defy village gossip, and further

as is so often the case with poor men's wives they were chained

to their houses by a lack of proper clothing, neither their coats, their
skirts, nor their shoes being suitable or adequate for an outdoor life.
It was only when outfits were provided, and the idea of women on
the land had become commonplace, that it was possible to induce
them to come forward.

The girls from school perhaps suffered more than any other class



of women engaging in war work. They were particularly sought after
by bad employers, for though quicker than any older woman to train,
and often able to produce as much as an adult woman, their rates
of pay were very much lower and they could be dismissed as soon
as they demanded an adult wage. Even so, however, their pay was
enormously more than the half-crown or five shillings they would
have received as learners in pre-war days, and this, and the in-
dependence of spirit and habit which flowed from it, were supposed
to exercise a widespread demoralizing effect. .By the end of the war
the output of the younger workers was said to have fallen, and
great anxiety for their moral condition was felt by parents, officials
and certain employers. It is, however, difficult to isolate this alleged
fall in output from the general fall in output that was taking place
in many industries, or to separate out the factors which caused ex-
ceptional demoralization, if any existed, in this particular class. It
is certain that the end of the war found them in a more helpless
position even than other women. Their training on munitions work
was of little use to them when they sought to enter regular industry.
It had been restricted as a rule to a few standardized operations
on a particular garment or article, and employers refused to accept
it as entitling the women to ordinary rates of pay on ordinary work.
The learners' rates which they were prepared to give were in many
cases little more than pocket money, and always quite inadequate to
the support of adult women whose parents were as a rule no longer
able or willing to maintain them. By lack of knowledge and of suit-
able clothing here again a serious factor by taste, associations
and personal habits, they were disinclined to enter domestic serv-
ice and unfitted for the life it offered, and at the time of thl



WOMEN'S EMPLOYMENT



1049



Armistice they were acknowledged to constitute a serious prob-
lem and a grave responsibility for the Government which had
recruited them. Efforts were made to deal with those still juve-
niles, but the large numbers who had reached the age of 18 during
the course of the war were left outside them. At that date they
were themselves very generally alarmed as to their industrial pros-
pects, and it was agreed by all those watching the situation, includ-
ing the trade-union officials, that if immediate training were offered
under suitable conditions it would be possible to attract large
numbers of them into domestic service, which was not only the
one opening available but the direction in which their labours would
be socially most beneficial. Schemes agreed to by the trade unions
were put forward by the Ministries of Labour and Munitions, but
the Treasury, though obliged to permit the payment of unemploy-
ment donation to women in idleness, were unwilling to allow the
relatively small additional payment which would have coupled it
with productive training. A restricted scheme was finally set up
which provided training in occupations which had been recognized
as women's work prior to the war, and within the limits imposed
it was very successful. It was not, however, able to reach the bulk
of the women who most needed it or to provide a satisfactory flow
of recruits for domestic service.

The other great class which entered wage-earning occupations as
a result of the war were the women from secondary schools and
universities, who had looked forward to leading idle lives, or to
entering the teaching profession. They flowed rather into com-
merce, finance, the Civil Service and the war services than into
industry, but the comparatively small numbers who did enter the
munitions factories exercised a disproportionate influence. It was
they as a rule who made it possible to set up women foremen, super-
visors, and charge hands, and it was generally those better educated
women who were first placed on really skilled or technical work.
The managing director of the one great marine-engineering shop
which trained women to perform the whole of a skilled man's work
done in that shop, i.e., to perform any operation of which their
machines were capable, accepted only girls from the secondary
schools. He stated that in his opinion this degree of intellectual
training was essential if they were to learn the work in the time
allowed about six months and said,too, that his men made far less
objection to training them than women of the industrial type whom
they regarded as potential black-legs. The Ministry of Munitions
Training Department also laid great stress on the importance of
general education, going so far as to select only girls with a secondary