our Allies for clothing and military stores of all kinds caused abnormal activity in many trades, calling for a corresponding demand for labour. Unemployment among men was quickly reduced to a very low figure. There was never any need for the opening of relief work for men; but for a time there was acute distress among women, especially those who had been employed in the luxury trades. The closing of the Stock Exchange also threw a large number of typists and shorthand writers (mainly women) out of work. Many such women, continually living as they did below the poverty line, were desperately hard hit by the war.

In September and October 1914, while the percentage of unemployed men registered at the Labour Exchanges was relatively small, the percentage of unemployed women was four times as great as usual. Gradually, however, the prospect for these women also brightened. The Queen opened her Work for Women Fund; and a committee was formed to administer it, to deal with the problem of the displacement of women's labour, and to devise schemes for its relief. The greatest and most widely reaching relief came, however, from another source the placing of army orders in various trades on a quite unprecedented scale. Government orders for socks, shirts, boots, the production of cloth, the making of uniforms by the million, the packing of army stores, the production of munitions, caused an immense new demand for labour from both men and women, with the result that unemployment caused by the war was wiped out with comparative rapidity by new employment, also caused by the war. The manufacturing districts of England were worked to their fullest extent in supplying the needs not only of our own army but also of the armies of our Allies; for instance, it has recently been stated that the Allied Governments had placed orders in the textile districts of Lancashire and Yorkshire for 43,000,000 yards of cloth.

We do not overlook the fact that the ultimate economic result of this war expenditure tends to destruction of wealth rather than its production; but for the moment the problem of unemployment ceased to exist. In September 1915, after fourteen months of war, the rate of unemployment registered at Labour Exchanges Vol. 225.-No. 446.

I

was only per cent., the lowest on record. Throughout the year it fell continuously. There was a set-off against this, so far as the prosperity of the working classes was concerned, of a rise in prices; but it was computed that the sum paid in wages had risen by the end of July 1915 by 369,6351. weekly, and by the end of October by 519,4841.* At the outset of the war this had not been foreseen; and almost every one anticipated more widely extended and far more severe economic distress than was actually experienced. It was to deal with this expected distress that the National Relief Fund was opened, and a large amount of private effort was also made.

The main principles of War Relief laid down by the Committees of the National Relief Fund and the Queen's Work for Women Fund were sound, and had valuable educational influence on private work of the same kind. The National Relief Fund made grants solely through the Local Representative Committees; the Central Committee on Women's Employment adopted the rule that the organisation and management of special relief workrooms must be vested in a special sub-committee known as the Women's Employment Sub-committee of the Local Representative Committee.'† It is not surprising that this rule caused some disappointment to the promoters of many private charities who hoped to receive grants. But some rule of this kind was necessary in order to prevent the absorption of the fund by schemes which would have had the effect of retarding rather than promoting the adaptation of the industrial population to the new industrial conditions. It was not desirable to keep masses of working women engaged in relief workrooms on bare subsistence wages and very often under amateur, and consequently wasteful, management, when there was a large new demand growing up, capable of absorbing all the labour displaced by the war. As temporary expedients, these privately managed workrooms fulfilled a useful purpose; and the devotion and personal services offered by their organisers were often beyond all praise. Those which were best managed were

*Board of Trade and Labour Gazette,' July to November, 1915.

† P. 9, par. 19, Interim Report of the Central Committee on Women's Employment, 1915.'

able in many instances to adapt themselves to the lines prescribed by the Central Committee.

In deciding what types of employment should be permitted in relief workrooms, the Central Committee were guided by two main principles. First, the product of the employment must not compete with ordinary industry; and secondly, the work had to be of a character to maintain and if possible to improve the efficiency of the women employed. The second of these principles was readily understood and cheerfully accepted by the organisers of private relief workrooms, but the first called forth a storm of hostile criticism. It was, however, manifestly sound. When employment is scarce, what is wanted to relieve the situation is more employment, and not a mere transfer of the demand for articles of general consumption from the shops which ordinarily produce them to relief workrooms. When this happens there is no increase in the general volume of employment, but a transfer of employment from the (generally speaking) more efficient productive agencies to the less efficient.

The result of the enforcement of the rule that privately managed relief workrooms must not compete with ordinary industry, but must satisfy some new demand or replace a supply which had been closed by the war, presented great difficulties; but in not a few instances they were successfully grappled with. One highly satisfactory experiment, initiated in a privately managed workroom, was the production of first-rate artificial flowers. The ordinary shops, cut off from their usual sources of supply, became large buyers. Other successful experiments were made, notably by the Women's Emergency Corps and the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, in the production of toys. Many artists thrown out of work by the war turned their dainty fancy to account in this field of industry; and the children of this country were probably never so well supplied with charming and original toys as in the winter of 1914. Manufacturers were stimulated to take up the production of toys; and it is hoped that a permanent business has been set up. The cleaning, cutting-up and conversion of old clothes into serviceable and pretty garments for children afforded a great field for taste and ingenuity. Really charming little children's overalls, for

instance, were made from legs of stockings which as usual had survived the wearing out of the feet. Another war-time industry converted the best parts of old kid gloves into soldiers' waistcoats.

These devices killed several birds with one stone. They provided employment for a number of women who would otherwise have been destitute; they produced articles of real utility which could not have been produced on ordinary commercial principles; they gave a great impulse to the movement for national thrift, so important in war time; they taught many who had never thought of it before the delight of making something out of nothing, and incidentally some of the main principles of political economy. A large amount of the credit for this is due to the rules laid down by the committee of the National Relief Fund, which refused grants to privately managed relief workrooms unless they conformed to the regulations laid down as a protection against competing with ordinary trade or pandering to private cupidity as to wages and hours of work. In the first instance the rate of wages to be paid was fixed at 3d. an hour for women over 18. The hours of work per week were limited to a maximum of 40; and thus 108. a week was fixed as the maximum. It was recognised that this was a bare subsistence allowance; and, when the cost of living increased, this maximum was raised to 118. 6d. a week. The women employed were compelled to register their names at a Labour Exchange so as to ensure their being drafted off to ordinary employment as soon as might be. The bare subsistence allowance paid to them as wages was fixed, so far as the 3d. an hour was concerned, with the desire of not further depressing the already very low rate of women's wages; and the maximum of 108. (afterwards 11s. 6d.) a week, as a preventive to their settling down to employment in a relief workroom as a normal way of earning their living. On the whole these arrangements worked satisfactorily. The workrooms came into existence, and passed out of it again when the need for them came to an end, with less disturbance of ordinary employment than has attended any previous effort on a similar scale.

In the workrooms directly administered by the Central

Committee or by the Local Representative Committees none of the articles produced were allowed to be sold. They were all distributed gratuitously. Maternity outfits were made for maternity centres; large numbers of children's garments were put at the disposal of care committees; the needs of many thousands of destitute Belgian refugees in England, France and Holland were met or partly met; parcels of clothing were sent to relieve the distress of peasant families who had been ruined in the war area of France; all kinds of hospital requisites and comforts were also provided for our own wounded soldiers.

Out of the sum of over 2,500,000l. which had been spent by the National Relief Committee by November 1915, a very large proportion, probably three-fourths, was absorbed in the first few months of the war in paying the allowances due by the Government to soldiers' and sailors' dependents. The difficulties of the situation at the beginning of the war were enormous. Before war was declared, only 1500 soldiers' wives were in receipt of separation allowances, and these were paid monthly; marriages off the strength' were unrecognised; no relatives other than the wives who had married on the strength' were entitled to allowances. A series of changes took place with almost bewildering rapidity. First, it was quickly seen that payments should be made weekly instead of monthly; then wives not on the strength were recognised as existing; then unmarried wives' were also recognised. Next, parents, if dependent on sons who had joined the army, were added to the list of recipients; and lastly it was agreed that there was no reason why sailors' wives and dependents should be left out. In addition to all these changes, the scale of the allowances was rapidly augmented. The number of wives in receipt of allowances at the outbreak of war leapt up in a fortnight from 1500 to 250,000. In July 1914, in the London area alone, the number of persons receiving allowances through the agency of the Soldiers' and Sailors' Families Association was only 353, of whom 243 were children; by Christmas, 1914, the number of families similarly helped had risen to 75,000. The administration of this work could only be carried through by the aid of the immense number of willing helpers who