CHAPTER VIII

WOMEN'S WAR WORK AS IT AFFECTED PUBLIC OPINION

"A land of settled Government, A land of just and old renown, Where Freedom slowly broadens down From precedent to precedent."

The war revolutionized the industrial position of women. It found them serfs and left them free. It not only opened to them opportunities of employment in a number of skilled trades, but, more important even than this, it revolutionized men's minds and their conception of the sort of work of which the ordinary everyday woman was capable. It opened men's eyes to the national waste involved in condemning women to forms of work needing only very mediocre intelligence. It also opened their eyes to the national as well as the personal value of the ordinary domestic work of women, which has been in their hands for uncounted generations. It ploughed up the hardened soil of ancient prejudice, dissolving it and replacing it by a soil capable of fructifying the seeds of new ideas. Not even the most inveterate of antisuffragists could have ventured to say, after the experience gained by the war, what one of them quoted on a previous page had said just before the war, to the effect that, apart from breeding, women were of no national importance whatever.

It made women themselves, as well as men, realize the great national importance of women's ordinary domestic work. One example which went the round of the Press will illustrate this. In a convalescent camp of 2,820 men in the South of England the employment of women cooks in the place of men caused a saving in one month of £900, and at the same time the men were better and not worse fed. The saving was not effected by cutting down the wages bill or by stinting the supplies, but by the more skilful use of food-stuffs and the sensible expedient of employing those who knew their job in the place of those who did not. As an example, it may be mentioned that in many soldiers' camps, employing men cooks, the tea, served out in ample quantities and of excellent quality, was thrown away in consequence of the adoption of the odious and filthy trick of boiling the water for it in the same vessels, uncleansed, in which the meat for the mid-day dinner had been boiled. The result was illustrative of bad work in general; the tea was wasted, the men were disgruntled, and a general impression created that Government property could be thrown away without doing any harm to anyone.

John Bright used to say that the one good thing about war was that it taught people geography. If he were living now he might very truly say that it taught people political economy; that a nation grows rich by producing, and not by destroying; that all waste is creative of poverty. War even illuminates the abstruse and difficult subject of foreign exchanges, and shows that no nation grows rich by printing promises to pay on pieces of paper. War also teaches the supreme national value of life, and illuminates Ruskin's saying, "There is no wealth but life." It is a realization of this which has fundamentally raised the position of women in every country which has come within the radius of its great searchlights.

The actual steps by which the war raised the industrial status of women from serfdom to freedom are not difficult to trace. In the first eighteen months of the war more than five million young men from every class, but mainly from the flower of the industrial population, volunteered for military service. Before the end of the war Great Britain was maintaining in the war more than eight and a half million men.[6] This naturally left a shortage of labour in nearly all industries, including agriculture. Naturally also there was, simultaneously with this reduction in numbers of the men in industry, a huge increase in the demand of our own Government and the Governments of our Allies for arms and ammunition, cloth for uniforms, boots, ships, hutments, food for the armies, optical glass, and every sort of military equipment. Every man and woman who could work in the fields or factories producing these things could get continuous employment at wages higher than had ever before been paid. In September, 1915, after fourteen months of war, the rate of unemployment registered at Labour Exchanges was only ½ per cent., the lowest on record. The weekly sum paid in wages had gone up by the end of October by £519,484. In March of the same year what is known as the Treasury agreement with the Trade Unionists came into existence, by which the trade unions consented, in face of the national emergency, to suspend for the duration of the war their rules and customs which prevented the employment of women in most of the skilled trades. The Treasury, on its part, gave a solemn promise not to use women as a reservoir of cheap labour, and agreed to give the same wages for the same output, and, moreover, to restore by Act of Parliament when the war was over the pre-war practices of trade unions, which had severely limited the employment of women. Women themselves were not in any way consulted when this agreement was arrived at. They were, therefore, not parties to it; and suffragists generally, while welcoming the breaking down of the barriers which prevented women having a free choice in industry, even if this were only temporary, felt that the restoration of pre-war practices by Act of Parliament when the war was concluded would make the industrial position of women, in a sense, worse than ever; for formerly, as they pointed out, women were excluded from nearly all the best paid trades simply by the rules of private societies: it was a different and a worse position to be excluded from them by statute.

In 1915, however, it was from every point of view of the first importance to get the trade union embargo on women's labour removed; and when it was removed, instantly evidence began to pour in of the high productivity of women's work. It was almost ridiculous to watch the amazement of the ordinary man when he saw how rapidly women learned men's jobs, and how, by their patriotic zeal and entire innocence of the trade union practice of ca' canny, their output frequently exceeded, and exceeded largely, the output of men working the same machinery for the same number of hours. The first evidence which reached the public of the high efficiency of women's labour was contained in an article in the trade journal _The Engineer_ of August 20th, 1915, the following passage from which is here quoted:

"There is a widespread idea that the only machines which women can work are automatic or semi-automatic tools with which it is impossible to make mistakes. This idea is being daily disproved in the factory to which we have referred above, where some most delicate operations, necessitating the exercise of great skill and high intelligence, are being performed. We need only mention one case, but it will appeal to every mechanical engineer. In a certain screwing operation it was customary before the employment of women to rough the thread out with the tool, and then to finish it off with taps. Some trouble having arisen owing to the wearing of the taps, the women of their own initiative did away with the second operation, and are now accurately chasing out the threads to gauge with the tool alone. This is work of which any mechanic might feel proud.... In fact, it may be stated with absolute truth that women have shown themselves perfectly capable of performing operations which have hitherto been exclusively carried out by men."

Sir William Beardmore, then President of the Iron and Steel Institute, and Chairman of the Parkhead Ironworks, Glasgow, spoke in his presidential address of the high productivity of women's labour. He quoted the case of a new machine introduced by his firm, of which it was desired to test the utility. A good workman was induced with some difficulty to try it and to lay aside, for the sake of the experiment, the traditional restriction of output. The machine did well, but not so well as the firm had been led to expect. Then another experiment was made, that of putting women on the job. "Using the same machines, and working the same number of hours, their output was more than double that of the thoroughly trained mechanic." The newspapers about this time began to be full of articles praising up to the skies the "wonderful," "amazing," "extraordinary" mechanical capability of women. The case was quoted of a woman, formerly a charwoman, who had been put on to do gun breech work. Her job was to bore a hole ⅛ inch in diameter dead true through 12 inches of solid steel. The test was the tally of broken tools, and at the time of writing this woman, the former "char," had a clean slate. Every successive Minister of Munitions, and almost every other Minister, spoke enthusiastically of the extraordinary value to the nation of women's work. Mr. Lloyd George said: "Their work is absolutely indispensable, and they themselves are extraordinarily adaptable." And again: "I am anxious to bear testimony to the tremendous part played by the women of England in this vital epoch of human history." Mr. Montagu said in the House of Commons in his first speech after becoming Minister of Munitions: "Women of every station, with or without previous experience ... have proved themselves able to undertake work which before the war was regarded solely as the province of men, and often of skilled men alone. Indeed, it is not too much to say that our armies have been saved and victory assured by the women in the munition factories." Mr. Churchill confessed that without the work of women it would have been impossible to win the war; and also referred to the excellence of its quality, as well as the enormous character of its volume.

[Facing page 112. ]

Lord Selborne, as Minister of Agriculture, gave unstinted praise to women's work on farms, and said he had heard nothing but unqualified praise of the hundreds of women thus employed.

All the foregoing we were able to reckon among the supporters of women's political enfranchisement. But we began to be aware of a new note among the voices that go to make up public opinion when we discovered commercial and financial magnates, managers of railways and other great industrial concerns, and old-fashioned country gentlemen not hitherto connected in any way with our political aims, joining in the chorus which was now loudly chanting the praises of women's work.

A very interesting and important article on Women in Industry will be found in the _Quarterly Review_, July, 1919, by Sir Lynden Macassey, Chairman of the National Tribunal on Women's Wages, Chairman of the Clyde Dilution Commission, and a member of the War Cabinet Committee on Women in Industry. In this _Quarterly_ article, among other significant things, he says that by the end of the war "women had literally leapt as agents of production, and by inherent economic powers and aptitude, into a position of eminence in the economic world previously undreamt of even by themselves" (p. 79). On another page he says that, "where the work required constant alertness, a sure, deft touch, delicacy of manipulation—in short, a combination of quick intelligence and manual dexterity within a limited ambit—women were invariably superior to men" (p. 81). I, for one, can never believe that any Act of Parliament can thrust women back into the industrial morass in which they were stifled before the war.

Lord Revelstoke, speaking as an expert on finance, said that the tapping of the "new reservoir" of women's labour had saved the financial situation by enabling the country to keep up the volume of its exports. Even Lord Curzon, Chairman of the Antisuffrage League, and Mr. Asquith, our chief political adversary, surprised us by joining with Mr. Balfour in signing a letter to the Press containing a strong appeal for funds for the extension of the buildings of the London School of Medicine for Women. "Is Saul also among the prophets?" we asked each other. Mr. Walter Long, at that date an opponent of our enfranchisement, included women in his National Register Bill, saying that women themselves had made an almost unanimous demand for this, and he would look upon their exclusion "as a serious rebuff wholly unjustifiable in face of the splendid services which they had rendered already to the prosecution of the war." Mr. Walter Long, too, had greatly delighted us at a meeting in Grosvenor House to promote the employment of women on the land by exclaiming that, although the movement was going on well, "yet there were still, unfortunately, villages to be found where the women had become imbued with the idea that woman's place is home." "That idea," he added, "must be met and combated."

Even more extraordinary, however, were the signs which now began to be seen of Mr. Asquith's change of view. This was first foreshadowed in his words spoken in the House of Commons on the heroic death of Edith Cavell in September, 1915. Referring to what that year had produced to justify "faith in the manhood and womanhood of our people," he added, speaking particularly of Miss Cavell: "She has taught the bravest man amongst us a supreme lesson of courage; yes, and in this United Kingdom and throughout the Dominions of the Crown there are thousands of such women, _but a year ago we did not know it_." We suffragists rejoiced in this change of tone. At the same time, we wondered where he could have lived all his sixty odd years without discovering that courage was not the exclusive attribute of the male sex. At this time—1916, 1917—conversions of important public men and of newspapers came in, not by twos and threes, but by battalions. The Press became full of wonderful instances of women's courage and capacity, and told of nurses standing back from the lifeboats of a torpedoed ship, who, when the word went forth, "Save the women first," gave the reply, "Fighting men first; they are the country's greatest need." The Prefect of Constanza was quoted, who saw the work of our women orderlies in connection with the Scottish Women's Hospitals, and said: "It is extraordinary how these women endure hardships; they refuse help, and carry the wounded themselves. They work like navvies. No wonder England is a great country if the women are like that." Another instance of the courage of women which deeply affected public opinion was afforded at an inquest on the bodies of the victims of an explosion at a shell factory in the North of England. Twenty-six women had been killed, and about thirty injured. The behaviour of the women was declared to be worthy of the highest praise. "They displayed the greatest coolness and perfect discipline, both in helping to remove the injured and in continuing to carry on the work of the factory." It was announced in the Press that Sir Douglas Haig would be asked to let the men at the front know of the courage and spirit which animated their womenfolk at home. Our feeling about all this was, not that women had changed, but that the public attitude towards them and appreciation of them had changed.

[Facing page 116. ]

Among the conversions to suffrage views at this time, none were more valuable to us than those of which we had evidence in the Press. Our old friends the _Manchester Guardian_, the _Daily News_, the _Aberdeen Free Press_, the _Nation_, the _New Statesman_, etc., stood by us, and were more valued than ever; but we welcomed new recruits in _The Times_, the _Daily Mail_, the _Globe_, the _Evening News_, and _Observer_. Miss Violet Markham, once a chief among the antisuffragists, was known to have withdrawn her opposition. Her war work had brought her in contact with some of our most active societies, and she was understood to have said that she would never in future say anything against suffragists. Her conversion may be assumed to have been fairly complete, as she consented to stand as a Liberal candidate for the Mansfield Division of Nottinghamshire at the General Election in December, 1918. One of our chief opponents in the Press was reported to have said: "The women were wonderful! Their adaptability, freshness of mind, and organizing skill were magnificent. Men were making too great a mess of the world, and needed helpers without their own prejudices, idleness, and self-indulgence."

The conversion of other well-known public men, formerly our opponents, became known about this time. Among these may be mentioned Lord Derby and his brother, Sir Arthur Stanley, Chairman of the British Red Cross and St. John of Jerusalem Nursing Association; Lord Faber, Mr. Winston Churchill, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Sir Croydon Marks. Two former antisuffragists, both Members of Parliament, one a Liberal and the other a Conservative, may be quoted as representative of what was going on in men's minds. The Liberal, who had hitherto pleaded militancy as an excuse for his antisuffragism, said at the annual meeting of Liberals in his constituency: "Any party which did not realize that the women had made good their cause by their services where they had formerly spoilt it by their threats must be blind"; and he held there should be no widening of the franchise for men without bringing in women on the same terms. The Conservative said simply: "I have always been an antisuffragist, but the women have served their country so magnificently that after this I shall support giving them the vote."

It is very significant that, while these wholesale conversions were taking place in this country, thus preparing the way for a sweeping victory for women's suffrage in the House of Commons, a similar change, brought about by similar causes, had already, in 1916, taken place in Canada. In that year a great suffrage movement swept over Canada, like a mighty wind, from the West to the East. One after another, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and British Columbia enfranchised their women. In British Columbia, a referendum (only men voting) showed a majority of more than two to one for women's franchise, and the soldiers' vote, which came in later, only swelled the large majority. Ontario followed. The late Sir Wilfred Laurier, once Liberal Premier, announced his conversion. He had for years been an important opponent.

The Nova Scotia legislature passed a Women's Suffrage Bill without opposition; and in May, 1917, Sir Robert Borden announced his intention to introduce a women's suffrage measure for the whole of Canada, thus giving women the federal vote. This intention was faithfully carried into effect in time for women to vote at the General Election, which was held in 1917. The Province of Alberta, in the meantime, had bettered its own record by returning a lady, Miss Roberta Catherine MacAdams, to its Legislative Assembly. An interesting feature of her election was that she was chosen entirely by men who were performing military service in Europe. There were twenty men candidates and one woman, and Miss MacAdams was elected. Thus the whole Empire seemed by one impulse to be moving in the direction of women's enfranchisement.

About this time a professional man of wide outlook and long experience wrote:

"One of the greatest benefits which I look for from the war is that women will come by their own. The tribute to the efficiency of women's work now being paid by managers of railways and munition works—many of them unwilling witnesses—are most hopeful signs. After this it seems impossible that women should be denied their fair share in the national councils. This opens a wide vista of other resulting reforms, which almost makes one wish to be young again, so that one might see what will happen in the next fifty years."

Women did come by their own, not quite directly, but through "the verdurous gloom and winding mossy ways" of the parliamentary wrangle over the Special Register Bill and the Speaker's conference to be described in the next chapter.