Chapter 2
When Europe went to war, the world had been suffering from depression a year and more. Immediately on the outbreak of hostilities whole lines of business shut down. Unemployment became serious. There were idle hands everywhere. Germany, of all the belligerents, rallied most quickly to meet war conditions. Unemployment gave place to a shortage of labor sooner there than elsewhere. Great Britain did not begin to get the pace until the middle of 1915.
The business situation in the United States upon its entrance into the war was the antithesis of this. For over a year, depression had been superseded by increased industry, high wages, and greater demand for labor. The country as measured by the ordinary financial signs, by its commerce, by its labor market, was more prosperous than it had been for years. Tremendous requisitions were being made upon us by Europe, and to the limit of available labor we were answering them. Then into our economic life, with industrial forces already working at high pressure, were injected the new demands arising from changing the United States from a people as unprepared for effective hostilities as a baby in its cradle, into a nation equipped for war. There was no unemployment, but on the contrary, shortage of labor.
The country calls for everything, and all at once, like the spoiled child on suddenly waking. It must have, and without delay, ships, coal, cars, cantonments, uniforms, rules, and food, food, food. How can the needs be supplied and with a million and a half of men dropping work besides? By woman-power or coolie labor. Those are the horns of the dilemma presented to puzzled America. The Senate of the United States directs its Committee of Agriculture to ponder well the coolie problem, for men hesitate to have women put their shoulder to the wheel. Trade unionists are right in urging that a republic has no place for a disfranchised class of imported toilers. Equally true is it that as a nation we have shown no gift for dealing with less developed races. And yet labor we must have. Will American women supply it, will they, loving ease, favor contract labor from the outside, or will they accept the optimistic view that lack of labor is not acute?
The procrastinator queries, "Cannot American man-power meet the demand?" It can, for a time perhaps, if the draft for the army goes as slowly in the future as it has in the past.
However, at any moment a full realization may come to us of the significance of the fact that while the United States is putting only three percent of its workers into the fighting forces, Great Britain has put twenty-five percent, and is now combing its industrial army over to find an additional five hundred thousand men to throw on the French front. It is probable that it will be felt by this country in the near future that such a contrast of fulfillment of obligation cannot continue without serious reflection on our national honor. Roughly speaking, Great Britain has twenty million persons in gainful pursuits. Of these, five million have already been taken for the army. The contribution of France is still greater. Her military force has reached the appalling proportion of one-fifth of her entire population. But we who have thirty-five million in gainful occupations are giving a paltry one million, five hundred thousand in service with our Allies. The situation is not creditable to us, and one of the things which stands in the way of the United States reaching a more worthy position is reluctance to see its women shouldering economic burdens.
While it is quite true that shifting of man-power is needed, mere shuffling of the cards, as labor leaders suggest, won't give a bigger pack. Fifty-two cards it remains, though the Jack may be put into a more suitable position. The man behind the counter should of course be moved to a muscular employment, but we must not interpret his dalliance with tapes and ribbons as proof of a superfluity of men.
The latest reports of the New York State Department of Labor reflect the meagerness of the supply. Here are some dull figures to prove it:--comparing the situation with a year ago, we find in a corresponding month, only one percent more employees this year, with a wage advance of seventeen percent. Drawing the comparison between this year and two years ago, there is an advance of "fifteen percent in employees and fifty-one percent in wages;" and an increase of "thirty percent in employees and eighty-seven percent in wages," if this year is compared with the conditions when the world was suffering from industrial depression. The State employment offices report eight thousand three hundred and seventy-six requests for workers against seven thousand, six hundred and fifty applicants for employment, and of the latter only seventy-three percent were fitted for the grades of work open to them, and were placed in situations.
The last records of conditions in the Wilkes-Barre coal regions confirm the fact of labor scarcity. There are one hundred and fifty-two thousand men and boys at work today in the anthracite fields, twenty-five thousand less than the number employed in 1916. These miners, owing to the prod of the highest wages ever received--the skilled man earning from forty dollars to seventy-five dollars a week--and to appeals to their patriotism, are individually producing a larger output than ever before. It is considered that production, with the present labor force, is at its maximum, and if a yield of coal commensurate with the world's need is to be attained, at least seventy percent more men must be supplied.
This is a call for man-power in addition to that suggested by the Fuel Administrator to the effect that lack of coal is partly lack of cars and that "back of the transportation shortage lies labor shortage." An order was sent out by the Director General of Railways, soon after his appointment, that mechanics from the repair shops of the west were to be shifted to the east to supply the call for help on the Atlantic border.
Suggestive of the cause of all this shortage, float the service flags of the mining and railway companies, the hundreds of glowing stars telling their tale of men gone to the front, and of just so many stars torn from the standards of the industrial army at home.
The Shipping Board recently called for two hundred and fifty thousand men to be gradually recruited as a skilled army for work in shipyards. At the same time the Congress passed an appropriation of fifty million dollars for building houses to accommodate ship labor. Six months ago only fifty thousand men were employed in ship-building, today there are one hundred and forty-five thousand. This rapid drawing of men to new centers creates a housing problem so huge that it must he met by the government; and it need hardly be pointed out, shelter can be built only by human hands.
One state official, prompted no doubt by a wise hostility to coolie labor, and dread of woman labor, has gone so far as to declare publicly that any employer who will pay "adequate wages can get all the labor he requires." This view suggests that we may soon have to adopt the methods of other belligerents and stop employers by law from stealing a neighbor's working force. I know of a shipyard with a normal pay-roll of five hundred hands, which in one year engaged and lost to nearby munition factories thirteen thousand laborers. Such "shifting," hiding as it does shortage of manpower, leads to serious loss in our productive efficiency and should not be allowed to go unchecked.
The manager of one of the New York City street railways met with complete denial the easy optimism that adequate remuneration will command a sufficient supply of men. He told me that he had introduced women at the same wage as male conductors, not because he wanted women, but because he now had only five applications by fit men to thirty or forty formerly. There were men to be had, he said, and at lower wages than his company was paying; but they were "not of the class capable of fulfilling the requirements of the position."
The Labor Administration announced on its creation that its "policy would be to prevent woman labor in positions for which men are available," and one of the deputy commissioners of the Industrial Commission of the State of New York declared quite frankly at a labor conference that "if he could, he would exclude women from industry altogether."
We may try to prevent the oncoming tide of the economic independence of women, but it will not be possible to force the business world to accept permanently the service of the inefficient in place of that of the alert and intelligent. To carry on the economic life of a nation with its labor flotsam and jetsam is loss at any time; in time of storm and stress it is suicide.
Man-power is short, seriously so. The farm is always the best barometer to give warning of scarcity of labor. The land has been drained of its workers. A fair wage would keep them on the farm--this is the philosophy of laissez faire. Without stopping to inquire as to what the munition works would then do, we can still see that it is doubtful whether the farm can act as magnet. Even men, let us venture the suggestion, like change for the mere sake of change. A middle-aged man, who had taken up work at Bridgeport, said to me, "I've mulled around on the farm all my days. I grabbed the first chance to get away." And then there's a finer spirit prompting the desertion of the hoe. A man of thirty-three gave me the point of view. "My brother is 'over there,' and I feel as if I were backing him up by making guns."
The only thing that can change the idea that farming is "mulling around," and making a gun "backs up" the man at the front more thoroughly than raising turnips, is to bring to the farm new workers who realize the vital part played by food in the winning of the war. As the modern industrial system has developed with its marvels of specialized machinery, its army of employees gathered and dispersed on the stroke of the clock, and strong organizations created to protect the interests of the worker, the calm and quiet processes of agriculture have in comparison grown colorless. The average farmhand has never found push and drive and group action on the farm, but only individualism to the extreme of isolation. And now in war time, when in addition to its usual life of stirring contacts, the factory takes on an intimate and striking relation to the intense experience of the battle front, the work of the farm seems as flat as it is likely to be unprofitable. The man in the furrow has no idea that he is "backing up" the boy in the trench.
The farmer in his turn does not find himself part of the wider relations that attract and support the manufacturer. Crops are not grown on order. The marketing is as uncertain as the weather. The farmer could by higher wages attract more labor, but as the selling of the harvest remains a haphazard matter, the venture might mean ruin all the more certain and serious were wage outlay large. In response to a call for food and an appeal to his patriotism, the farmer has repeatedly made unusual efforts to bring his land to the maximum fertility, only to find his crops often a dead loss, as he could not secure the labor to harvest them. I saw, one summer, acres of garden truck at its prime ploughed under in Connecticut because of a shortage of labor. I saw fruit left rotting by the bushel in the orchards near Rochester because of scarcity of pickers and a doubt of the reliability of the market. The industry which means more than any other to the well-being of humanity at this crisis, is the sport of methods outgrown and of servants who lack understanding and inspiration. The war may furnish the spark for the needed revolution. Man-power is not available, woman-power is at hand. A new labor force always brings ideas and ideals peculiar to itself. May not women as fresh recruits in a land army stamp their likes and dislikes on farm life? Their enthusiasm may put staleness to rout, and the group system of women land workers, already tested in the crucible of experience, may bring to the farm the needed antidote to isolation.
To win the war we must have man-power in the trenches sufficient to win it with. To win, every soldier, every sailor, must be well fed, well clothed, well equipped. To win, behind the armed forces must stand determined peoples. To win, the people of America and her Allies must be heartened by care and food.
The sun shines on the fertile land, the earth teems with forests, with coal, with every necessary mineral and food, but labor, labor alone can transform all to meet our necessities. Man-power unaided cannot supply the demand. Women in America must shoulder as nobly as have the women of Europe, this duty. They must answer their country's call. Let them see clearly that the desire of their men to shield them from possible injury exposes the nation and the world to actual danger.
Our winning of the war depends upon the full use of the energy of our entire people. Every muscle, every brain, must be mobilized if the national aim is to be achieved.
III
MOBILIZING WOMEN IN GREAT BRITAIN [2]
In no country have women reached a mobilization so complete and systematized as in Great Britain. This mobilization covers the whole field of war service--in industry, business and professional life, and in government administration. Women serve on the Ministry of Food and are included in the membership of twenty-five of the important government committees, not auxiliary or advisory, but administrative committees, such as those on War Pensions, on Disabled Officers and Men, on Education after the War, and the Labor Commission to Deal with Industrial Unrest.
In short, the women of Great Britain are working side by side with men in the initiation and execution of plans to solve the problems which confront the nation.
Four committees, as for instance those making investigations and recommendations on Women's Wages and Drink Among Women, are entirely composed of women, and great departments, such as the Women's Land Army, the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, are officered throughout by them. Hospitals under the War Office have been placed in complete control of medical women; they take rank with medical men in the army and receive the pay going with their commissions.
When Great Britain recognized that the war could not be won by merely sending splendid fighters to the front and meeting the wastage by steady drafts upon the manhood of the country, she began to build an efficient organization of industry at home.
To the call for labor-power British women gave instant response. In munitions a million are mobilized, in the Land Army there have been drafted and actually placed on the farms over three hundred thousand, and in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps fourteen thousand women are working in direct connection with the fighting force, and an additional ten thousand are being called out for service each month. In the clerical force of the government departments, some of which had never seen women before in their sacred precincts, over one hundred and ninety-eight thousand are now working. And the women civil servants are not only engaged in indoor service, but outside too, most of the carrying of mail being in their hands.
Women are dock-laborers, some seven thousand strong. Four thousand act as patrols and police, forty thousand are in banks and various financial houses. It is said that there are in Great Britain scarce a million women--and they are mostly occupied as housewives--who could render greater service to their country than that which they are now giving.
The wide inclusion of women in government administration is very striking to us in America. But we must not forget that the contrast between the two countries in the participation of women in political life and public service has always been great. The women of the United Kingdom have enjoyed the municipal and county franchise for years. For a long time large numbers of women have been called to administrative positions. They have had thorough training in government as Poor Law Guardians, District and County Councilors, members of School Boards. No women, the whole world over, are equipped as those of Great Britain for service to the state.
In the glamor of the extremely striking government service of British women, we must not overlook their non-official organizations. Perhaps these offer the most valuable suggestions for America. They are near enough to our experience to be quite understandable.
The mother country is not under regimentation. Originality and initiative have full play. Perhaps it was well that the government failed to appreciate what women could do, and neglected them so long. Most of the effective work was started in volunteer societies and had proved a success before there was an official laying on of hands. Anglo-Saxons--it is our strong point--always work from below, up.
A glance at any account of the mobilization of woman-power in Great Britain, Miss Fraser's admirable "Women and War Work," for instance, will reveal the printed page dotted thick with the names of volunteer associations. A woman with sympathy sees a need, she gets an idea and calls others about her. Quickly, there being no red tape, the need begins to be met. What more admirable service could have been performed than that inaugurated in the early months of the war under the Queen's Work for Women Fund, when work was secured for the women in luxury trades which were collapsing under war pressure? A hundred and thirty firms employing women were kept running.
What more thrilling example of courage and forethought has been shown than by the Scottish Women's Hospitals in putting on the western front the first X-ray car to move from point to point near the lines? It but adds to the appeal of the work that those great scientists, Mrs. Ayrton and Madame Curie, selected the equipment.
It was a non-official body, the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, which opened before the war was two weeks old the Women's Service Bureau, and soon placed forty thousand women as paid and volunteer workers. It was this bureau that furnished the government with its supervisors for the arsenals. The Women's Farm and Garden Union was the fore-runner of the official Land Army, and to it still is left the important work of enrolling those women who, while willing to undertake agricultural work, are disinclined to sign up for service "for the duration of the war."
Not only have unnumbered voluntary associations achieved miracles in necessary work, but many of them have gained untold discipline in the ridicule they have had to endure from a doubting public. I remember hunting in vain all about Oxford Circus for the tucked-away office of the Women's Signalling Corps. My inquiries only made the London bobbies grin. Everyone laughed at the idea of women signalling, but to-day the members are recognized officially, one holding an important appointment in the college of wireless telegraphy.
How Scotland Yard smiled, at first, at Miss Damer Dawson and her Women Police Service! But now the metropolitan police are calling for the help of her splendidly trained and reliable force.
And the Women's Reserve Ambulance Corps--I climbed and climbed to an attic to visit their headquarters! There was the commandant in her khaki, very gracious, but very upstanding, and maintaining the strictest discipline. No member of the corps entered or left her office without clapping heels together and saluting. The ambulance about which the corps revolved, I often met in the streets--empty. But those women had vision. They saw that England would need them some day. They had faith in their ability to serve. So on and on they went, training themselves to higher efficiency in body and mind. And to-day--well, theirs is always the first ambulance on the spot to care for the injured in the air-raids. The scoffers have remained to pray.
If Britain has a lesson for us it is an all-hail to non-official societies, an encouragement to every idea, a blessing on every effort which has behind it honesty of purpose. Great Britain's activities are as refreshingly diversified as her talents. They are not all under one hat.
In the training for new industrial openings this same spirit of non-official service showed itself. In munitions, for instance, private employers were the first to recognize that they had in women-workers a labor force worth the cost of training. The best of the skilled men in many cases were told off to give the necessary instruction. The will to do was in the learner; she soon mastered even complex processes, and at the end of a few weeks was doing even better than men in the light work, and achieving commendable output in the heavy. The suffrage organizations, whenever a new line of skilled work was opened to women, established well-equipped centers to give the necessary teaching. Not until it became apparent that the new labor-power only needed training to reach a high grade of proficiency, did County Councils establish, at government expense, technical classes for girls and women.
Equipment of the army was obviously the first and pressing obligation. Fields might lie fallow, for food in the early days could easily be brought from abroad, but men had to be registered, soldiers clothed and equipped. It was natural, then, that the new workers were principally used in registration work and in making military supplies.
But in the second year of the war came the conviction that the contest was not soon to be ended, and that the matter of raising food at home must be met. Women were again appealed to. A Land Army mobilized by women was created. At first this work was carried on under a centralized division of the National Service Department, but there has been decentralization and the Land Army is now a department of the Board of Agriculture. It is headed by Miss M. Talbot as director. Under this central body are Women's Agricultural Committees in each county, with an organizing secretary whose duty it is to secure full-time recruits.
The part-time workers in a locality are obtained by the wife of the squire or vicar acting as a volunteer registrar. Many of these part-time workers register to do the domestic work of the lusty young village housewife or mother while she is absent from home performing her allotted task on a nearby farm. The full-time recruits are not only secured by the organizers, but through registrations at every post office. Any woman can ask for a registration card and fill it out, and the postmaster then forwards the application to the committee. The next step is that likely applicants are called to the nearest center for examination and presentation of credentials. When finally accepted they are usually sent for six weeks' or three months' training to a farm belonging to some large estate. The landlord contributes the training, and the government gives the recruit her uniform and fifteen shillings a week to cover her board and lodging. At the end of her course she receives an armlet signifying her rank in the Land Army and is ready to go wherever the authorities send her.