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excluded, whatever be the economic justification for their admission. Their opposition takes not merely the form of forcibly warning the women off the men's preserves, though the work is well within the women's compass, but frequently the more specious subterfuge of admitting women to the work in question on terms which make it commercially impracticable to employ them on it. There is, on the other hand, a growing body of women possessed not merely with determination to enter every occupation, but fully conscious that their possession of the franchise confers upon them a potent weapon for the attainment of their ambitions. The men's trade unions have great and growing political power, but the women's trade unions and the women's party will soon attain to as great, if not greater, political influence. Unless one has been, like the writer, behind the scenes, so to speak, of both the men's and the women's movements, it is difficult to realise the determination, prejudice and fanaticism which centres round the question of women's industrial position.

No more highly controversial matter than this aspect of the women's question could confront a Government, nor one in which domestic peace, industrial harmony and efficiency in production more directly depend on a sound economic decision. Anything in the nature of an industrial sex-war would be disastrous. It was a noticeable fact that, during the war, the Government regulated the employment of women on women's own work with very remarkable success. In regard, however, to the employment of women on work that was really men's work, the Government's record is of the opposite character. It was marked by frequent indecision and precipitate surrender to the men's unions or the women's unions, as one or other at inconvenient times put on the political screw. There is a real practical danger that, if the Government procrastinates further in this urgent matter of women's position in industry, and does not formulate in time a well-considered policy, it will ultimately, under political pressure, be forced into hasty opportunist action, That would be a calamity. As a preventive, it is essential that the public, who are the final arbiters, should understand the nature of the problem and declare their judgment in no uncertain voice.

A sound national policy is vital to our national prosperity and happiness.

The intention of this article is, therefore, to explain the problem from the economic point of view, in broad outline but at the same time with balanced proportions and in due perspective. I propose, first, to investigate the industrial position of women before the war; next, to examine the position in industry to which women attained during the war; and finally, with the experience we have gained of the potentialities and defects of the industrial woman, to make an attempt to assign to women a definite economic place in the future organisation of industry.

The phrase 'industry' is used in a conventional sense. It must be understood, for the purposes of this article, to mean the various trades at present grouped in the Board of Trade statistics under the heading of 'Industry,' and such analogous trades as may in the future come into being. That is to say, the metal, chemical and textile trades; clothing, food, drink and tobacco; paper and printing; china and earthenware; skins and leather; gas, water, transport, agriculture, and so forth. As used in this article, industry' excludes occupations like domestic service, clerical work or teaching, merely because there is not space to discuss their special circumstances.

Those who desire to make a really profound study of the employment of women should consult the recently published report of the War Cabinet Committee on Women in Industry. The writer was a member of that Committee; and if, in any respect, of which he is not aware, his present expression of views differs from the majority report, it is his own opinion. It becomes him to speak with diffidence of the Report. This much he can say it covers the whole field of women's employment, not merely in industry as defined above, but in commerce, teaching and other occupations.

Starting, then, with women's position in industry before the war, it will be found that there were occupations distinctly earmarked as men's trades, in which only men and boys were engaged; and others equally well defined as women's trades, in which only women and girls were employed. In many trades, however, men

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and boys, women and girls, were all working. These 'composite' trades were of two main kinds: the first, those in which certain processes were assigned to women, all other work being reserved to men; the second, those in which there intervened between the men's work and the women's work a number of processes or a range of work common to both. Every highly organised industry falls into one of these three categories, a man's trade, a woman's trade, or a 'composite' trade in one or other of the foregoing senses.

The broad point to be observed is the rigid division in well-organised trades between men's work and women's work. This demarcation of work, as it is called, is the dominant feature of the pre-war position. The men's unions insist that it exactly corresponded to economic differences between the respective capacities of men and women in industry. That contention is strongly contested by the women. To some extent demarcation has proceeded on the basis of assigning to men machines and processes involving strength or skill, operations requiring protracted exertion, and rough work necessitating exposure to heat or dirt. So far as demarcation has proceeded on the principle of the reservation to men of machines, processes and work which are within the compass of a man's strength and skill and beyond those of a woman, it is economically sound and justifiable. At the same time it must be admitted that a comparatively small amount of demarcation can be so explained. The truth is that the men and their trade unions have been signally successful in staking out their claim to all the best and most highly remunerated classes of work. Around these they have erected impenetrable barriers against the entry of women. The prejudice of many employers to women workers unintentionally but materially assisted in establishing the men's ascendancy.

Women,' said many employers before the war, 'are seldom trained to any trade.' Such scanty training as they possessed they picked up, not in the course of a formal apprenticeship, but from one another in the workshop or the warehouse. This may have been due to want of opportunity, or to knowledge that, even if trained, they would be allowed no proper scope for the exercise of

their skill, or to disinclination on the part of many women to enter industry as a permanent occupation precluding marriage. Whatever be the explanation-and it varies in different trades-one fact is clear in regard to the pre-war industrial position of women, that, although the number of women engaged in industry increased largely during the years immediately before the war, and the varieties of work and operations on which they were employed also increased, yet the classes of work and operations which had come into being, on which women could have been employed but on which no women were employed, had increased in a vastly greater ratio. Between 1881 and 1911, taking census periods, the proportion of men in industry rose from 43.38 to 47.59, or over 4 per cent.; while that of women rose from 15.47 to 15.96, or about 0.5 per cent. In July 1914, out of a total of 8,479,600 persons engaged in industry, 6,301,000 were men and 2,178,600 were women.

The second striking fact in connexion with the prewar industrial position of women is, speaking generally, the dehumanising conditions under which, in many trades, they were employed. Chief among these were wages and environment. In 1916, the writer, as Chairman of the National Tribunal of Women's Wages, had to investigate and adjudicate upon the rates of wages and piece-prices paid to women engaged on women's work in numerous munitions trades. Their inadequacy, from the human standpoint, was very pronounced in certain districts. In such cases, no woman dependent on her earnings could make sure of keeping herself supplied with reasonable bodily necessities, still less of living in common decency. That many women nevertheless succeeded in doing so is a tribute to their sex.

The explanation of such insufficient remuneration is simple. It represented the pre-war market value of women's labour. There was an ample supply of women at these pittances; that was the real secret. Many women not dependent on their earnings accepted any wage offered, for pocket-money; others took it to supplement the family wage. Few entered industry as a permanent occupation; most regarded it as a temporary employment. In few cases were they organised, so that their collective bargaining power was ineffectual for

their own protection. No wonder, then, that men almost instinctively regarded women's labour as 'cheap' or 'blackleg' labour. The conditions in which women worked before the war were, relatively speaking, very inferior to those of men. Except in trades scheduled by the Home Office as dangerous, there was practically no supervision of the health of either. But, while through Trade Union pressure men were able to secure a reasonably good environment, women had no such driving force behind them. The Factory Inspectors did noble work in improving shop conditions, but what were a few inspectors among a multitude of factories? One may accurately summarise the pre-war position of women in industry by saying that it was pre-eminently characterised by a demarcation of work which handicapped severely women's potentialities, and by conditions of work which seriously impaired their physical and mental well-being.

war.

I now pass to women's industrial position during the It marks a great advance in women's industrial evolution. It presents a picture of extraordinary complicity, intensified by bitter controversies that perpetually threatened their whole industrial position. The circumstances of the disputes look trivial in the retrospect of to-day. To apportion the blame on the men's unions, the women's organisations, or the Governmentalthough an attractive diversion for one who has been engaged, like the writer, in organising women's labour from the beginning of the war-would afford no real insight into fundamentals. I shall confine myself to

delineating in outline the really dynamic facts.

These show that at the end of the war, as compared with pre-war days, women had literally leapt, as agents of production, and by inherent economic powers and aptitude, into a position of eminence in the industrial world previously undreamt of even by themselves. In industry alone the number of females employed rose from 2,178,600 in July 1914, to 2,970,600 in July 1918, an increase of 792,000; and of these 704,000 were females who had directly replaced males and were doing work customarily done by men. Significant as this latter figure is, it must also be remembered that the character of the work in the women's' trades was fundamentally altered

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