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Page 21
A great achievement that!--for both employers and employed--for the
Minister also who appointed the Commission and thus set the huge stone
rolling yet another leap upon its way.
It will be readily seen how much depends also on the tact of the
individual employer. That employer has constantly done best who has called
his men into council with him, and thrown himself on their patriotism and
good sense. I take the following passage from an interesting report by a
very shrewd observer,[A] printed in one of the northern newspapers. It
describes an employer as saying:
I was told by the Ministry that I should have to double my
output. Labour was scarce and I consulted a deputation of
the men about it. I told them the problem and said I should
be glad of suggestions. I told them that we should either
have to get men or women, and I asked them for their
co-operation, as there would be a great deal of teaching to
be done. "Probably," I said, "you would like to find the
men?" They agreed to try. I gave them a week, and at the end
of a week they came to me and said they would rather have
women. I said to them: "Then you must all pull together."
They gave me their word. Right from the beginning they have
done their level best to help, and things have gone on
perfectly. On one occasion, a woman complained that the man
directing her was "working against her." I called the men's
committee together, said the employer. I told them the
facts, and they have dealt with the offender themselves.
[A] _Yorkshire Observer_, February 1, 1916.
The general system now followed in the shell factories is to put so many
skilled men in charge of so many lathes worked by women workers. Each
skilled man, who teaches the women, sets the tools, and keeps the machines
in running order, oversees eight, ten, or more machines. But sometimes the
comradeship is much closer. For instance (I quote again the witness
mentioned above), in a machine tool shop, i.e., a shop for the making of
tools used in shell production, one of the most highly skilled parts of
the business, you may now see a man, with a woman to help him, operating
two lathes. If the woman falls into any difficulty the man comes to help
her. Both can earn more money than each could earn separately, and the
skilled man who formerly worked the second lathe is released. In the same
shop a woman watched a skilled man doing slot-drilling--a process in which
thousandths of an inch matter--for a fortnight. Now she runs the machine
herself by day, while the man works it on the night shift. One woman in
this shop is "able to do her own tool-setting." The observer thinks she
must be the only woman tool-setter in the country, and he drops the remark
that her capacity and will may have something to do with the fact that she
has a husband at the front! Near by, as part of the same works, which are
not specialised, but engaged in _general_ engineering, is a bomb shop
staffed by women, which is now sending 3,000 bombs a week to the trenches.
Women are also doing gun-breech work of the most delicate and responsible
kind under the guidance of a skilled overseer. One of the women at this
work was formerly a charwoman. She has never yet broken a tool. All over
the works, indeed, the labour of women and unskilled men is being utilised
in the same scientific way. Thus the area of the works has been doubled in
a few months, without the engagement of a single additional skilled man
from outside. "We have made the men take an interest in the women," say
the employers. "That is the secret of our success. We care nothing at all
about the money, we are all for the output. If the men think you are going
to exploit women and cheapen the work, the scheme is crabbed right away."
I myself came across the effect of this suspicion in the minds of the
workmen in the case of a large Yorkshire shell factory, where the
employers at once detected and slew it. This great workshop, formerly used
for railway work, now employs some 1,300 women, with a small staff of
skilled men. The women work forty-five hours a week in eight-hour
shifts--the men fifty-three hours on twelve-hour shifts. There is no
difficulty whatever in obtaining a full supply of women's labour--indeed,
the factory has now a waiting-list of 500. Nor has there been any
difficulty with the men in regard to the women's work. With the exception
of two operations, which are thought too heavy for them, all the machines
are run by women.
But when the factory began, the employers very soon detected that it was
running below its possible output. There was a curious lack of briskness
in the work--a curious constraint among the new workers. Yet the employers
were certain that the women were keen, and their labour potentially
efficient. They put their heads together, and posted up a notice in the
factory to the effect that whatever might be the increase in the output of
piece-work, the piece-work rate would not be altered. Instantly the
atmosphere began to clear, the pace of the machines began to mount.
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