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Page 3
In one department of labor, it is a very startling thing to learn that "in
a single fuse factory, what they call the danger buildings, mostly women
are employed. About five hundred women are found at work in one of these
factories on different processes connected with the delicate mechanism and
filling of the fuse and gaine, some of which is really dangerous, like
detonator work." It is the insertion in the shell of the little pellet
which gives it its death-dealing power, that is so risky, but the women do
not shrink from even this. In the largest fuse shop known, quite new,
fourteen hundred girls, in one shift, are at work.
"An endless spectacle of gun-carriages, naval turrets, torpedo-tubes, army
railway-carriages, small Hotchkiss guns for merchant ships, tool-making
shops, gauge shops, seems to be going on forever, and in the tool-making
shops the output has risen from forty-four thousand to three million a
year." The vastness of the work, and the incessant and enormous
multiplication of all the products for war must be as overwhelming as it
is monotonous. And then there were the huge shipyards, which before the
war were capable of the berth of twenty ships at once, from the largest
battleship downward, and which, as we have already had Mr. Balfour's word
for it, have since the beginning of the war added a million tons to the
navy, but Mrs. Ward in her rapid journeys had not time to stop and inspect
these, to our very great regret, for her description of them would have
been most instructive.
She declares from actual observation that in the Clyde district, in whose
populous centre some threats of disquiet have existed, the work done by
thousands and tens of thousands of workmen since the beginning of the war,
especially in the great shipyards, and done with the heartiest and most
self-sacrificing good-will, has been simply invaluable to the nation, and
will never be forgotten, and the invasion of women there has, perhaps,
been more startling to the workmen than anywhere else. Where not a single
woman was employed in the works and factories before the war, except in
textiles, "there will soon be fifteen thousand of them in the munition
workshops alone, and that will not be the end."
Wherever she goes, Mrs. Ward's eyes are wide open. From her own home,
which is in the midst of one of the most patriotic regions of the realm,
she can witness the perpetual activity which has come about in preparation
for the war in all its varied phases and branches; everything and
everybody is in vigorous motion, both there and in all the counties of
England which she has visited. Great camps in every direction for the
shelter and training of recruits, all coming and going, all marching and
countermarching, training and drilling everywhere, and as fast as the
citizen is converted into a soldier, he is bound for the seat of war with
all the equipments that war requires, tramping everywhere, tramp, tramp,
along the land; tramp, tramp, along the sea, until the new supports, all
ready for vital service, reach their destination on French soil.
Mrs. Ward has made a careful study of the effect of the novel introduction
of women into all these works of men, especially in the munition
factories, and dwells with great significance upon the rapidity of the
women's piece-work and the mingling of classes, where educated and refined
girls work side by side and very happily with those of an humbler type.
What Mrs. Ward well calls "the common spirit" inspires them all, and holds
them all in just and equal relations. At every step she is startled by the
vastness of the work and the immense hand that women have in it, finding
one shop turning out about four thousand shrapnel and four thousand
high-explosive shells per week, heavy shell work all, which they thought
at first they must furnish men to lift in and out of the machines, but
"the women thrust the men aside in five minutes." Surely this new
education of women, of these girls and women who are to become the mothers
of the next generation, must have a most inspiring and exalting effect
upon the days to come. War may be postponed for whole generations, but
England will never fail to be ready for it as a necessary part of the
education of the race.
It is quite evident that this war is breaking down the barriers that have
heretofore been impassable, not only between men and women, but between
the various classes of society, and that it cannot possibly end without
bringing these more closely together, all working to the same end in a
more perfect harmony, and that the result of it must be that England will
hereafter be an even more perfect democracy than it has been up to this
time.
France! Glorious France! The conduct of whose government and people in the
war seems to have been absolutely perfect, has at last reached a wonderful
result after her hundred years of agonies and revolutions. We hear from
France no complaints, no internal dissensions, but all the people, mankind
and womankind, working together, each in its proper sphere, to the one
common end, the salvation of the State. I trust that we shall never
forget all that the world and we, especially, owe to France. She is adding
to our obligations now by fighting our battles for us.
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