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

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.

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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 Finstinctively 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 y a demarcation of work which handicapped severely vomen's potentialities, and by conditions of work which eriously impaired their physical and mental well-being.

I now pass to women's industrial position during the var. It marks a great advance in women's industrial volution. It presents a picture of extraordinary comlicity, intensified by bitter controversies that peretually threatened their whole industrial position. The ircumstances of the disputes look trivial in the retropect of to-day. To apportion the blame on the men's nions, the women's organisations, or the Governmentlthough an attractive diversion for one who has been ngaged, like the writer, in organising women's labour om the beginning of the war-would afford no real sight into fundamentals. I shall confine myself to lineating in outline the really dynamic facts. These show that at the end of the war, as compared ith pre-war days, women had literally leapt, as agents production, and by inherent economic powers and titude, into a position of eminence in the industrial orld previously undreamt of even by themselves. In dustry alone the number of females employed rose om 2,178,600 in July 1914, to 2,970,600 in July 1918, an crease of 792,000; and of these 704,000 were females ho had directly replaced males and were doing work cusmarily done by men. Significant as this latter figure it must also be remembered that the character of the ork in the women's' trades was fundamentally altered

by munitions requirements. In many cases, so far as precision, intricacy and workmanship were concerned, it involved a much higher standard of efficiency than the pre-war work which it superseded. Nor must it be forgotten that the whole period of the war, during which women attained to this development of powers was considerably less than the duration of the apprenticeship served in the skilled trades in normal times.

The war-time experience can with substantial accuracy be thus epitomised: on work involving severe physical effort, or prolonged strain, or exposure to exhausting conditions-and there was a certain amount of that work done by women under the dire necessity of war, which ought not to have been done by them-women in a given time did less work than men. According to the class of work, it was possible to state, after a little experience, the excess number of women required to do the work of a given number of men. On all-round skilled and jobbing work ordinarily done by a fully qualified tradesman, women were much less efficient than men. It has accordingly been urged by many employers and by the craft unions that women can never become skilled tradesmen. My experience is to the contrary. It would have been absurd to expect that a woman with little training could in a few months equal. a trained craftsman. The Clyde Dilution Commission, of which I was Chairman, was the first to put women on to do skilled work; that is to say, to do particular jobs ordinarily done by skilled men. As quick as, and in many cases quicker than, youths put on at the same time, the women learnt to do the jobs efficiently. If they could do one such job, why not every job within a woman's strength and manual compass?

In point of fact, during the war, many women were promoted on merit to the responsible position of fitters and turners in the tool-room, and of tool-setters' in the machine-shop. The feature of war-time industry was 'mass production'-a sustained output of many kinds of) similar articles, effected by specially contrived machines where the skill was in the machine and not required of the worker, or by a succession of separate operations each performed by an adept at that one operation. On such repetition work the women proved equal, often

superior, to men. They seemed temperamentally immune to the deadening effect of monotonous work, to which men on the other hand are peculiarly susceptible. Paradoxically enough, where the work required constant alertness, a sure deft touch, delicacy of manipulation, in short a combination of quick intelligence and manual lexterity within a limited ambit, women were invariably uperior to men. I could give many illustrations of these acts that have come within my own experience.

On the other hand, as against these efficiencies, women xhibited during the war certain defects. They lost rather more time than men. In some cases this was due to a eries of wage advances accruing at short intervals. If The standard of living lags behind the standard of wages, and the worker cannot at once assimilate beneficially an ncrease in wages, lost time very commonly results. That is only human nature. In the majority of cases, 10wever, it was undoubtedly due to long hours. A eduction from a 12-hour working day to an 8-hour shift lmost always improved time-keeping in the case of women workers. The increased domestic responsibilities f a woman worker with a soldier-husband at the front lso tended to increase 'absence from work without otice.' Assuming, however, reasonable working hours nd a fairly uniform wage, the war experience proves "hat, apart from the urgent call of domestic and personal xigency peculiar to the sex, there is no reason to assume n the normal working woman less inclination or ability o keep time than in the ordinary man. The general ircumstance which has been mentioned and is not conined to the war-period-namely that women do not nter industry intending to remain permanently in itiscounts to some extent their industrial potentialities. The employment of women during the war loubtedly threw upon an employer certain expenses ot incident at that time to the employment of men, or example, extra supervision, due to women's want of echnical skill; but with training that would largely isappear. Then there was the cost of special canteens, loak-rooms and lavatories for women workers. In the ase, however, of men similar improvements in respect f these matters, inevitable in the near future, will tend o equalise this particular item of comparative expense Vol. 232.-No. 460.

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