point where we recognise that State-societies cannot possibly express the highest idealism in human endeavour, unless they likewise represent the highest grade of morality which mankind has reached at any given time? There will surely be a deep inner cleavage and contra diction in the moral consciousness and intercourse of mankind, if we try to maintain a dualism in the laws for the moral conduct of life, and if that which is considered right and equitable, good and honourable in the intercourse between man and man, may be excluded from consideration soon as the society to which one belongs steps, so to speak, outside its own front door and comes into contact with people belonging to other State-societies. We see remnants of predatory morality, of primitive narrow tribal instincts, where the stranger is not fully recognised as a human being with human rights. But the feeling of universal brotherhood begins to dawn. The whole sum of that energy, heroic courage and self-sacrifice, which unite around the love of country, will stand in a still purer and clearer light on the day when complete harmony in the ideals of life has been attained, and the citizens of a State need no longer observe a double morality, one for his own and the other for his country's actions; on that day when it wil no longer be said: 'My country, right or wrong,' bu when honour and the sense of justice, fidelity to one word and respect for the rights and interests of others are practised to the same extent in the intercourse o States as of individuals, or when, at any rate, a si against them is judged as strictly in the one case asi the other.

BREDO MORGENSTIERNE.

Art. 5.-THE ECONOMIC FUTURE OF WOMEN IN INDUSTRY.

1. Report of the War Cabinet Committee on Women in Industry. Parly. Paper, 1919. [Cmd. 135.]

2. Appendices, Summaries of Evidence and Statements by Economists. Parly. Paper, 1919. [Cmd. 167.]

THE present is proclaimed to be 'a time of reconstruction.' In its ordinary meaning, reconstruction is a process of pulling down and then building up. It is the pulling down that seems to possess, for many reformers, the greater attraction. A remarkable feature in the present process of national amelioration is the absence of effort or admission of any necessity to think things out constructively, to act with prudence, to prefer the sober to the heroic remedy, where both present themselves. With a happy optimism that has escaped the jars and bruises of experience, enthusiastic reformers attribute to that indefinite entity called Government a constructive genius and a wealth of experience in industrial matters that they would hesitate to assign to any individual Minister. They proceed on the convenient assumption that Cabinets can, by a stroke of the pen, or an Act of Parliament, successfully apply, with prescience of results, any measure of reconstruction to any industrial conditions. Another remarkable feature is the apathy of the public in regard to matters in which it is vitally interested. It seems to have dispensed with that critical faculty concerning broad essentials which on so many occasions has been the saving of the nation. It views now-a-days with a complacent tolerance tempered with amusement the visionary pitting his untried theories against experience and economic law. It appears not to realise that, in the end, it will bear the burden. When Governments, whose primal instinct is always to free themselves from organised political pressure, are stampeded into benefiting a section of the community at the expense of the taxpayers or consumers generally, the public seems impervious to a sense of injustice. Its restraint and patience, for example, under the recent 12 per cent. political prodigality form a sufficiently convincing illustration.

But, it may be asked, why this exordium? What is its

relevance to the economic future of women in industry? The answer is, that there is no industrial matter of current moment to which it is more directly pertinent. The Government has pledged itself to bring about 'a new industrial era.' Of what that portends, no one has any very definite conception. Indeed, it may be questioned whether the Government itself has a clear idea, if one may judge from the conflict between vague and contradictory official statements. At any rate it implies an organisation of industry under which all the productive resources of the nation will be utilised to the full. It involves freedom to every member of the community to live his or her life, to develop his or her personality, to use to the best advantage his or her natural aptitude and abilities for production. But predominantly it postulates the precedence of the common good before any sectional or private interests.

To argue the necessity of increasing production is superfluous. No other means are available to rid the country of the incubus of debt, or to enable the standard of life and living of the industrial classes to be improved as they ought to be. While few will controvert the urgency of production, the public in general little appreciates the enormous latent and unutilised capacities for production possessed by the women of the nation. In any scheme for reconstruction of industry, provision, at once clear, equitable and economically sound, must be made by Government for the full and appropriate use of women's talents, skill and ingenuity. Failure in this respect would be not merely ineptitude, but a crime against the taxpayer and gross injustice to women.

It is certain that, however much the responsibility is one for political reasons to be avoided, Government will be compelled in the immediate future to assign to women a fitting place in industry. That responsibility carries within itself the seeds of mischief-hence my opening observations. There are gathering forces operating in the political world to which any Government is specially sensitive. On the one hand, there are the powerful and highly organised men's trade organisations which, especially in the case of the craft unions, are determined to resist to the utmost the permanent introduction of women into industries from which they are now

xcluded, whatever be the economic justification for eir admission. Their opposition takes not merely the orm of forcibly warning the women off the men's preerves, though the work is well within the women's ompass, but frequently the more specious subterfuge f admitting women to the work in question on terms hich make it commercially impracticable to employ nem on it. There is, on the other hand, a growing body f women possessed not merely with determination to nter every occupation, but fully conscious that their ossession of the franchise confers upon them a potent eapon for the attainment of their ambitions. The men's trade unions have great and growing political ower, but the women's trade unions and the women's arty will soon attain to as great, if not greater, political fluence. Unless one has been, like the writer, behind e scenes, so to speak, of both the men's and the omen's movements, it is difficult to realise the deterination, prejudice and fanaticism which centres round e question of women's industrial position.

No more highly controversial matter than this aspect the women's question could confront a Government, or one in which domestic peace, industrial harmony d efficiency in production more directly depend on a und economic decision. Anything in the nature of an dustrial sex-war would be disastrous. It was a noticele fact that, during the war, the Government regulated e employment of women on women's own work with ry remarkable success. In regard, however, to the ployment of women on work that was really men's ork, the Government's record is of the opposite chater. It was marked by frequent indecision and preitate surrender to the men's unions or the women's ions, as one or other at inconvenient times put on the litical screw. There is a real practical danger that, if Government procrastinates further in this urgent atter of women's position in industry, and does not mulate in time a well-considered policy, it will ultiately, under political pressure, be forced into hasty portunist action. That would be a calamity. As a eventive, it is essential that the public, who are the al arbiters, should understand the nature of the proem and declare their judgment in no uncertain voice.

८

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 do mestic 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 no 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 occupa tions distinctly earmarked as men's trades, in which onl men and boys were engaged; and others equally we defined as women's trades, in which only women an girls were employed. In many trades, however, me