Council on Education survey (27). In that period almost 4,000 persons received the doctor's degree in chemistry in addition to more than 500 in biochemistry. Almost two-thirds of these chemists and more than half of the biochemists who reported their employment at the time of the study were engaged primarily in research. Less than onethird were primarily in teaching. This means that the employment of chemists at the doctoral level before the war depended more upon the demand for research than upon the demand for educational or other services. In this it represented one extreme in comparison with other fields in which the doctorate is offered. The other extreme was English, in which 5 percent were primarily in research and almost 90 percent in teaching.

Separate statistics on the number of women receiving the doctorate were not available, but just before the war the number of women graduated each year with bachelor's degrees in chemistry has been estimated at about 500 (65). This would be about 11 percent of all graduates with bachelor's degrees in chemistry in a single year, which checks almost exactly with the percentage women were among the co-educational college majors in chemistry as shown in the 1939 study by Ethel L. French (23). The first comprehensive figures on women graduates with bachelor's degrees in chemistry are for the war year of 1942, when the United States Office of Education reported that 835 women received such degrees, 20 percent of a total of 4,116 bachelor's degrees in chemistry (56).

Although reports from placement bureaus and comments from women chemists indicate that women graduated with majors in chemistry found jobs in which their training was useful, one woman chemist in 1939 described the situation as follows:

During the past few years women chemistry graduates have found it difficult to secure employment in positions for which their training had supposedly qualified them (23).

Perhaps this discouraging state was responsible for the slight decline of some 200 in the number of women chemists between 1930 and 1940 (43). During this period, teaching, medical laboratories, and such nonlaboratory jobs as technical library, editing, and secretarial work were the principal outlets for women. Openings for them in industrial laboratories were rare and seldom occurred outside pharmaceutical laboratories. Women interested in chemistry were advised to seek work in fields related to home economics (textiles or foods) or to biology (in medical laboratories or pharmaceutical firms). They were advised to take special training in home economics, biology, or nursing to improve their chances for employment.

Figure 5.-A woman with a major in chemistry conducting mineral analysis on feedstuffs.

Increase in Demand

Wartime Changes

World War II transformed this picture suddenly. As early as 1942, and rising to a peak in 1943-44, the demand for women trained in chemistry became not only fantastic in relation to the supply available but virtually nondiscriminating. According to reports from the colleges, the poorest student in chemistry had an almost infinite choice of jobs. A southern school which had never had any calls for women graduates in chemistry before the war reported 353 openings in 1944. An experienced woman chemist, interested in changing positions in 1944, was interviewed by 71 employers at a meeting of the American Chemical Society at which an employment clearing house was conducted for members (7). Previously unheard-of calls for girls with a course in high school chemistry to work as laboratory assistants were received by high school placement bureaus, as early as 1942.

In Industry.-In Cleveland, the number of women employed in local industrial laboratories in 1944 was declared to be "little short of miraculous." Half or more of the analytical laboratory and metallurgical laboratories personnel of one large metal plant in 1944 were women (17). In Detroit, the technically trained women on the staff of one

local company had increased 450 percent, and one-fifth of its testing and chemical research staff were women (32).

By far the largest increase was in chemical manufacturing. First, the munitions plants, which normally employ few women because of the hazards involved, began to hire women as chemists, laboratory technicians, and assistants. A number of women teachers of chemistry were recruited for these plants to train the routine testers, many of whom had had little or no college chemistry. Synthetic rubber laboratories followed suit.

The rapidly growing plastics industry also employed women, especially those with specialization in organic chemistry, as plastic substitutes were developed for certain metals and other scarce products or parts (40). An enormous increase in the number of women employed in laboratory work in paper mills, which normally employ few women, was revealed in a 1943 survey covering approximately half of the total employment in this industry. The number of women fully qualified as chemists had increased from 5 in 1941 to 41 in 1943. Below the skill level of the chemist, 500 women were employed as laboratory testers and 47 as laboratory inspectors, as compared with 13 testers and no inspectors 2 years earlier (12).

In oil refining the increased need for high-octane gasoline and other petroleum products created an overwhelming demand for careful control work in the laboratory. Almost all the oil companies hired large numbers of women with high school education or some college work (preferably with courses in chemistry), who were trained to do routine testing but were not in any sense chemists. However, a smaller number of college graduates in chemistry or teachers of chemistry were hired to supervise them and to handle the more difficult control problems.

In the metal industries, where women have been traditionally few both in the plant and in the laboratory, women were sought for laboratory work. An iron mining company, with its staff of ore analysts cut in half, trained women with college chemistry to make determinations of iron, manganese, phosphorus, and other chemicals in the ore to grade it for steel-making. In steel mill laboratories, women were trained to run analyses of molten samples of the steel brought from the furnaces at various stages in its manufacture. As in other laboratories, a Women's Bureau representative found in a wartime survey of the steel industry that the testing processes were broken down, so that much of the routine testing could be done by women without degrees in chemistry working as laboratory aids. Devices for the routine testing of the hardness of steel and of carbon content were operated by women, and they assisted the chemists in preparing samples for inspection (55). Later a number of women were trained to take

readings on the spectograph and to make the appropriate calculations of wave lengths to identify metals.

The highly publicized increased use of women in chemical laboratories was verified by the reports obtained by the Women's Bureau from the 100 firms visited in its special survey of laboratories. Eightytwo of these firms employed women, with at least some college chemistry, in their laboratories during World War II, compared to 42 at its outbreak. An additional 4 firms employed women high school graduates as laboratory assistants but had none with college background. The increase in the number of firms using women was greatest for commercial testing laboratories and for firms engaged in the manufacture of paper, metal, glass, and petroleum products.

In any one firm, however, the wartime number of women with college degrees in chemistry employed in laboratory work was more likely to be under 20 rather than over, except in very large corporations. Only at the lower level of routine testing in oil refining, in munitions, and in similar work where high school women were used were the numbers larger, often in the hundreds. Many of these nonchemists were trained on the job or in brief Engineering Science and Management War Training courses to do such laboratory operations as filtering, weighing, matching of colors, and specimen polishing, and to operate laboratory equipment and record data.

In Federal Government, Civilian and Military.-The wartime demand for chemists in Federal Government service, as in industry, was overwhelming, especially at the lower professional grades. The United States Civil Service Commission in 1942 opened examinations for chemists, for junior chemists, and for chemical aids. The juniorchemist announcement predicted: "Unusual opportunities for women throughout the United States."

Part of the demand was new and came from the War and Navy Departments and such war agencies as the Office of Scientific Research and Development, the Office of Emergency Management, and later, the War Production Board and the Office of Price Administration, which used chemists on problems of allocation of chemicals and on the pricing of chemical products. Part of it stemmed from war projects assigned to established agencies like the National Bureau of Standards and the Bureau of Mines. Some of it was caused by the need to replace young men chemists who were drafted.

The total number of women chemists employed by the Government at the peak of the war is not known. But statistics from 12 separate bureaus, administrations, and offices indicate that these alone employed approximately 250 women chemists, including 10 to 15 metallurgists, as compared with a probable maximum of 50 for all agencies

Figure 6.-A chemist in a Federal laboratory determines the particle size of DDT crystals in a sample under test.

before the war (53). These figures do not, of course, include the scientific or laboratory aids with experience or training below the level of the junior chemist. The Bureau of Mines, alone, employed almost 150 women as such aids in its laboratories and pilot plants during the war, and the Chemical Corps of the War Department employed more than 100. Since many other agencies have no separate records of the number of women chemists employed and since others group the chemists under a general heading like "physical science personnel," the picture painted by these partial statistics is far from complete.

In military service, some women were also assigned to chemical laboratory work. In the United States Marine Corps Reserve, 12