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Page 2
To give a single instance, what was a few months ago a smiling pasture is
now found covered with vast buildings, in which these manufactures are
carried on by thirty-five hundred working people, of whom a large
proportion are women. I love to quote a single sentence from the utterance
of her companion on a visit to this establishment: "As to the women, they
are saving the country. They don't mind what they do. Hours? They work ten
and a half, or, with overtime, twelve hours a day, seven days a week. The
Government are insisting on one Sunday, or two Sundays a month off. I
don't say they aren't right, but the women resent it. 'We're not tired,'
they say. And look at them! They are not tired."
This unheard-of spectacle of great engineering establishments filled with
women, all hard at work, is a sure proof of the undying purpose of the
whole English race. They are mostly young and comely, and their beauty of
form and feature is only enhanced by their enthusiasm for their labors,
and at the same time it has increased the ardor and intensity of their
fellow workmen. Mrs. Ward found four thousand women to five thousand men
engaged in this nation-saving labor, in a single establishment. They know
that they are setting the skilled laborers free for work which women
cannot do, and the unskilled in large numbers free for the army.
Every building, as well as every man and woman, that could be put to the
work, has been availed of, and the results have been incredible. Another
instance she gives of special interest: "An old warehouse, bought, so to
speak, overnight, and equipped next morning, has been turned into a small
workshop for shell production, employing between three and four hundred
girls with the number of skilled men necessary to keep the new unskilled
labor going. These girls are working on the eight-hours' shift system;
working so well that a not uncommon wage among them, on piece-work, of
course, runs to somewhere between two and three pounds a week," and all
the time they are at work they remember that they are doing common service
with their husbands, and sweethearts, and sons, and brothers, who are
perilling their lives in the trenches.
None of this distinguished writer's romances compare in vivid description
and heart-inspiring eloquence with these accounts that she gives of what
she has seen with her own eyes of the resurrection of England.
It is not for me to anticipate her startling and thrilling narratives on
this subject. She takes for her text what Mr. Lloyd George said in his
speech in the House of Commons on reviewing his new department: "Unless we
quicken our movements, damnation will fall on the sacred cause for which
so much gallant blood has flowed," and Mr. Asquith's serious words in
December: "We cannot go on," said he, "depending upon foreign countries
for our munitions. We haven't the ships to spare to bring them home, and
the cost is too great. We must make them ourselves."
Mrs. Ward dwells with keen insight upon the difficulties met with among
the trade-unions and labor people, and successfully overcome, and explains
in full what they call over there the work of the Dilution Commissioners,
which is a wholly new phrase for us, and she gives this clear definition:
"Dilution means, of course, that under the sharp analysis of necessity,
much engineering work, generally reckoned as 'skilled' work, and reserved
to 'skilled' workmen by a number of union regulations, is seen to be
capable of solution into various processes, some of which can be sorted
out from the others, as within the capacity of the unskilled, or
semiskilled worker. By so dividing them up and using superior labor with
economy, only where it is really necessary, it can be made to go
infinitely further, and the inferior, or untrained, labor can then be
brought into work where nobody supposed it could be used; where, in fact,
it never has been used." This novel experiment, together with the equally
novel employment of women in such work, soon proved a triumphant success,
and the women proved themselves able to do the work of men, some of it
even better. There were, of course, difficulties at first, but the
mischief, whatever it was, was quickly cured, and in one factory that Mrs.
Ward names, "men and women soon began to do their best. The output of the
factory, which had been planned for four thousand shells a week, ran up to
twenty thousand, and everything has gone smoothly since."
The adaptation of firms and factories, already existing, the control of
which was taken by the Government, was wonderful, but the national
shell-factories, founded, financed, and run by the Ministry of Munitions,
are more wonderful still, and give us many new ideas about government
ownership in an emergency, which we may sometimes have to think of more
seriously. The speed, the efficiency, the success of the new system have
been marvellous, so that in the short space of a year the demands of Mr.
Lloyd George and Mr. Asquith have been satisfied, and England will depend
no more upon foreign contracts and foreign supplies for her ammunition,
but will be able not only to manufacture all she can use herself, but to
help to supply her Allies.
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