The Project Gutenberg eBook, Women and War Work, by Helen Fraser

WOMEN AND WAR WORK

Women and War Work

HELEN FRASER

Rudyard Kipling in "For All We Have and Are."

G. Arnold Shaw
New York

CONTENTS

Chapter Page

1. THE SPIRIT OF WOMEN 19

2. ORGANIZATION AND ITS PITFALLS 35

3. HOSPITALS—RED CROSS—V.A.D. 53

4. BRINGING BLIGHTY TO THE SOLDIERS—HUTS, COMFORTS, ETC. 73

5. WOMAN-POWER FOR MAN-POWER 91

6. WOMEN AND MUNITIONS 109

7. THE PROTECTION OF WOMEN IN INDUSTRY 131

8. "THE WOMEN'S LAND ARMY" 155

9. WAR SAVINGS—THE MONEY BEHIND THE GUNS 171

10. FOOD PRODUCTION AND CONSERVATION 195

11. THE W.A.A.Cs 215

12. WAR AND MORALS 235

13. WHAT THE WAR HAS DONE FOR WOMEN 259

14. RECONSTRUCTION 287

ILLUSTRATIONS

A FEW SHELLS Frontispiece

MISS EDITH CAVELL 22

DR. ELSIE INGLIS 22

FIRST AMBULANCE ON DUTY IN THE FIRST ZEPPELIN RAID 56

"SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE" 64

CLEANING A LOCOMOTIVE 94

WOMEN AS CARRIAGE CLEANERS 94

WINDOW CLEANERS 102

STEAM ROLLER DRIVER 102

TRAINING WOMEN AS AEROPLANE BUILDERS 112

RIVETTING ON BOILERS 116

FACING BOILER BLUE FLANGES 116

ROUGH TURNING JACKET FORGING OF 6-POUNDER HOTCHKISS GUN 124

HOW TO DRESS FOR MUNITION MAKING 136

BACK TO THE LAND 162

WOMEN TACKLE A STRONG MAN'S PROBLEM 162

SIX REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD BUY WAR SAVINGS CERTIFICATES 175

"FOR YOUR CHILDREN" 184

BOOK MARKS ISSUED BY THE N.W.S.C. 192

W.A.A.Cs ON THE MARCH 216

WOMEN OF THE RESERVE AMBULANCE 216

POLICE WOMEN 246

FOREWORD

"Our War Loan from England"—That is the heading under which were grouped the nine lectures given by Miss Helen Fraser at Vassar College. England has borrowed a billion or so of dollars from us, but the obligation is not all her way. The moral strength of our cause is immeasurably increased by her alliance, and the spectacle of a great democracy organizing itself for complete unity in a world crisis is worth an incalculable amount to us. Such a vision Miss Fraser has brought to her wider public among the women of America in this notable book. Of her personal influence let me quote again from the Vassar students' newspaper:

"Miss Fraser, here's to you! We don't need to say that we liked Miss Fraser and everything she had to tell us. The way we followed her around, and packed every room in which she spoke, out to the doors and sometimes up to the ceiling, is proof enough of that. And even the fact that it was Sunday could not check our outburst of song in the Soap Palace as Miss Fraser departed. Her gracious speech of appreciation left with us the question not phrased by her before, but certainly in the minds of every one of us who had been hearing her: 'What are we going to do?'"

An unsolicited testimonial, this, of the most genuine kind. The College students of today are not easily coaxed into lecture rooms outside of their own classes.

I believe that Miss Fraser's book will be read with the same eager attention that followed her first speeches in this country as she began her work of educating American women to a sense of what the mobilization of the entire citizen army of a democracy must mean.

Nor will her influence cease there. Miss Fraser's book is a piece of history; and history is action. The wonderful work of the women of England is already emulated by the splendid efforts along many lines of the women in our country. The new lessons of co-operation and of selfless devotion, learned from this book will, I confidently predict, within a few months, be translated into action by the Women's War Service Committees in every state of our land.

And the greatest lesson of all is that women and men must work together in this new world. I count it an honour—being a man—to be asked to introduce Miss Fraser in this way to the American public. For my part I would have no separate women's division, except such as concerns the tasks exclusively for women. I would have women side by side with men in every division of labour, working out the task with equal fidelity, equal authority, and equal rewards. One of the results of this amazing age is going to be the new comprehension, understanding, and sympathy of the one sex for the other.

H.N. MacCRACKEN.

The women of all the allies are one in this great struggle. Our hopes and our fears, our anxieties and our prayers, our visions and our desolations, are the same.

Our work is the same task of supporting and sustaining the energies of our men in arms and of our nations at home. All the allied women know more of each other than they ever did before, and this is all to the good.

The task of women in this struggle and in the reconstruction to come after, are great tasks, and the world needs in every country not only the wisdom and knowledge of its own women but the strength in them that comes from being one of a great world-wide group and conscious of the unity of all women.

Anything that can help to that unity and understanding seems to me of great value, and this record is written for American women in the hope it may be of some small service.

H.F.

December 25, 1917.

THE SPIRIT OF WOMEN

"I have no fear nor shrinking. I have seen death so often that it is not strange or fearful to me.... I thank God for this ten weeks' quiet before the end. Life has always been hurried and full of difficulty. This time of rest has been a great mercy. They have all been very kind to me here. But this I would say, standing as I do in view of God and eternity, I realise that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone."

—EDITH CAVELL's last message.

CHAPTER I

THE SPIRIT OF WOMEN

TO WOMEN

From LAWRENCE BINYON's "For the Fallen."

The spirit of women in this greatest of world struggles cannot, in its essence, be differentiated from the spirit of men. They are one. The women of our countries in the mass feel about the issues of this struggle just as the men do; know, as they do, why we fight, and like them, are going on to the end. The declarations of our Government as to conditions for peace are ours, too, and when we vote, we shall show the spirit of women is clearly and definitely on the side of freedom, justice and democracy.

Our actions speak louder than any words can ever do, and the record of our women's sacrifices and work stand as great silent witnesses to our spirit. There is nothing we have been asked to do that we have not done and we have initiated great pieces of work ourselves. The hardest time was in the beginning when we waited for our tasks, feeling as if we beat stone walls, reading our casualty lists, receiving our wounded, caring for the refugees, doing everything we could for the sailor and soldier and his dependants, helping the women out of work, but feeling there was so much more to do behind the men—so very much more—for which we had to wait. We did all the other things faithfully and, so far as we could, prepared ourselves and when the tasks came, we volunteered in tens of thousands, every kind of woman, young, old, middle-aged, rich and poor, trained and untrained, and today we have 1,250,000 women in industry directly replacing men, 1,000,000 in munitions, 83,000 additional women in Government Departments, 258,300 whole and part-time women workers on the land. We are recruiting women for the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps at the rate of 10,000 a month and we have initiated a Women's Royal Naval Service. We have had the help of about 60,000 V.A.D.'s (Voluntary Aid Detachment of Red Cross) in Hospitals in England and France, and on our other fronts, in addition to our thousands of trained nurses.

The women in our homes carry on—no easy task in these days of shortages in food and coal and all the other difficulties, saving, conserving, working, caring for the children, with so many babies whose fathers have never seen them, though they are one to two years old, and so many babies who will never see their fathers.

Some of our women have died on active service, doctors, nurses and orderlies. Our most recent and greatest loss is in the death of Dr. Elsie Inglis, the initiator of the Scottish Women's Hospitals, who died on November 26th, three days after she had safely brought back her Unit from South Russia, which had been nursing the Serbians attached to the Russian army.

One who was with her at the end writes, "It was a great triumphant going forth." There was no hesitation, no fear. As soon as she knew she was going, that the call had come, with her wonted decision of character, she just readjusted her whole outlook. "For a long time I meant to live," she said, "but now I know I am going. It is so nice to think of beginning a new job over there! But I would have liked to have finished one or two jobs here first!"

She told us the story of the breaking of their moorings as they lay in the river in a great storm of wind and of how that breaking had saved them from colliding with another ship. "I asked," she said, "what had happened." Someone said "Our moorings broke." I said, "No, a hand cut them!" Then, after a moment's silence, with an expression in face and voice which it is utterly impossible to convey, she added, "That same Hand is cutting my moorings now, and I am going forth!" The picture rose before you of an unfettered ship going out to the wide sea and of the great untrammelled, unhindered soul moving majestically onwards.

There was no fear, no death! How could there be. She never thought of her own work—she knew unity. "You did magnificently," was said to her within an hour of her going. With all her wonted assurance and with a touch of pride she answered, "My Unit did magnificently."

Her loss is irreparable to us, but there is no room for sorrow. She leaves us triumph, victory, and peace.

Edith Cavell's name is another that shines upon our roll of honour—the same serene great spirit—no thought of self, but only a great love and desire to serve—and a great fearlessness. Her message, before she went out alone at dawn to her death, which added another stain to the enemy's pages dark with blood, was the message of one who saw the eternal verities, the things worth living and dying for.

Our men's Roll of Honor is a heavy Roll. We have lost in killed and permanently out of the army, a million men and over 75 per cent of our casualties are our own Island losses. Our women in every village and in every city street have lost husbands, fathers, brothers, lovers and friends. From every rank of life our men have died, the agricultural labourer, the city clerk, the railway man, the miner, the engineer, the business man, the poet, the journalist, the author, the artist, the scientist, the heirs of great names, many of the most brilliant of our young men. We comb out our mines and shipyards, and factories, ceaselessly for more men. Our boys at eighteen go into the army. From eighteen to forty-one every man is liable for service. Our Universities have only a handful of men in them and these are the disabled, the unfit, and men from other countries. Oxford and Cambridge Colleges are full of Officers' Training Corps men. The Examination Schools and the Town Hall at Oxford are Hospitals, and Oxford and Cambridge streets are full of the blue-clad wounded, as are so many of our cities. We are a nation at war, and at war for over three years and everywhere and in everything we are changed.

In these years we women have lived always with the shadow of the war over us—it never leaves us, night or day. We do not live completely where we are in these days. A bit of us is always with our men on our many fields of war. We live partly in France and Flanders, in Italy, in the Balkans, in Egypt and Palestine and Mesopotamia, in Africa, with the lonely white crosses in Gallipoli, with our men who guard us sleeping and waking, going down to the sea in ships and under the sea, fighting death in submarines and mines, and with those who in the air are the eyes and the winged cavalry of our forces.

We mourn our dead, not sadly and hopelessly, though life for many of us is emptier forever, and for many so much harder, and we wear very little mourning. We mourn silently, and with a sure faith that our men's supreme sacrifice is not in vain. "Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend." The little white crosses of our graves symbolize the faith for which they die.

The message of our soldier poets who have been created by this war and have written immortal verse, and many of whom have died, is the message of men who have seen through the veils of time into eternity, who are free of life and death, whom nothing can hurt, "if it be not the Destined Will."

The veils of time grow thin in these days to those of us who take Death into our reckoning all the time. We think of our men gone on ahead as eternally young.

We know, too, though we do not often define it, that the forces we women fight in the enemy are the forces that have left women out in world affairs.

Germany is the Fatherland, never, it is significant, the Motherland as our little Islands are, and its mad dream of militarism and Weltmacht is the dream of men who deny any constructive part to women in the great affairs of life. The hopes of all the democracies are bound up in this struggle and its issue, and there is no real place in the world for the true service and genius and work of women, any more than for that of the mass of men, save in democracy. We mean so much in these days by democracy. It seems to be indefinable in its larger meanings. It is not a system of government, but, on the other hand, no country can be called democratic that has not established political freedom, and no country is truly democratic in which such freedom is only in name, and its women are not included or a group rule or the demagogue and the worst kind of politician hold sway.

Democracy is not here till all serve and all are given opportunities so that they have something of value to give to their country and to the world. Democracy is the ever changing, ever developing, ever creative spirit of man expressing itself in his institutions and systems of government and relationships.

Its quarrel with our enemies, who would impose on the mass of men cast-iron systems, and would set up state idols to be worshipped as higher than the Conscience and spirit of man, is so profound and goes so deeply into knowledge and feelings that are too big for words, that the soldier who never tries to express it but goes out and drills and works and disciplines himself that he may present his body as a living shield for the faith that is within him, and the woman who works with him and behind him, healing and giving, silently, are perhaps wisest of all.

It is no time for words only, though right words are mighty powers, but for living faith in deeds and the spirit of the women of all our allied countries is swift to answer the challenge—by their works shall ye know them.

The spirit of our women shows, like that of the French women who tend their farms, keep their shops, work ceaselessly everywhere, most clearly and wonderfully in their work. In our hundreds of hospitals night and day, they care for the wounded and the sick and the dying, bringing consolation, love, skill, heroism, patience and all fine things as their gift. From myriads of homes they pour forth to their daily toil, carrying on the work of the country, educating the children, taking the place of their men on the railways, the factory, the workshop, the banks and offices. In the munition works, in the shipyards, in the engineering shops, in the aeroplane sheds, they work in tens of thousands—risking life and health in some cases, but thinking little of it, compared with what their men are doing, knee-deep in snow and mud and water in the trenches. "Is the work heavy?" you ask. "Not so heavy as the soldiers'." "Are the hours long?" "Six days and nights in the trenches are longer." "We are going to win and you are going to help us"—and the munition girl and the land girl and the workers answer not only with cheers and words but answer with shells and ships and aeroplanes and submarines and food produced and conserved, and in industrial tasks done by men and women together.

The enemy airships and aeroplanes bomb our cities but our girls "carry on"—no telephone girl has left her post—there have been no panics in our workshops.

And the spirit of the Waac—the khaki girl—is the spirit of her brother.

On one occasion in France in an air raid, enemy bombs came very near some girl signallers. They behaved splendidly and someone suggested it should be mentioned in the Orders of the Day. "No," said the Commanding Officer, "we don't mention soldiers in orders for doing their duty,"—and that tribute to their attitude is deserved and the right one.

And, like our men, we carry on cheerfully, knowing there is only one possible end, victory. We fight for the sanctity of the given word, for honour, for the rights of individuals and nations, for the ideals that have preserved humanity from barbarism, for the right of service, for the salvation of common humanity.

More, we women work with a feeling in our hearts that we, who bear and cherish life, and to whom its destruction is most terrible, have a great work to do and a great part to play in the settlement of the problem of war in the future.

The transmutation of the struggles of mankind from the physical to the spiritual, the solution of national and international problems, the solution of all the riddles of life that demand an answer or man's conquest, cannot be done by man alone. It is our task also and to the great work of building up a new world after we emerge from this crucible of fire in which the souls of the nations are being tested, the spirit of women has much to bring.

CHAPTER II

ORGANIZATION AND ITS PITFALLS

There are people who declare that the winning of this war depends on organization alone. That is palpably untrue. Good organization can do much. The greatest thing in all organizations is the living flame that makes grouping real—the selfless spirit of service that the fighting man possesses and that is beyond all words of praise.

Talk to a soldier or a sailor, realize how he thinks and feels about his ship, his battalion, his aircorps. He is subordinated—selfless—disciplined. The secret of the good soldiers' achievements and his greatness is selfless service and in our national organizations behind him that same spirit is the one great thing that counts.

If you have that as a foundation among your workers, organization is easy.

We found, at the beginning of the war, a great tendency among women to rush into direct war work. Masses of women wanted to leave work they knew everything about to go and do work they knew nothing about. One thing we have realized, that the trained and educated woman is invaluable, that the best service you can render your country is to do the work you know best and are trained for, if it is, as it frequently is, important civic work. Another point, no younger woman should stop her education or training—it is the greatest mistake possible. The war is not over and even when it is, the great task of reconstruction lies ahead and we want every trained woman we can get for that. Our women are in Universities and Colleges in greater numbers than ever, and more opportunities for education, in Medicine in particular have been opened to them.

The trained woman makes the best worker in practically every department and is particularly useful in organizing. A scheme that is only indifferently good but, so far as it goes, is on right lines, well organized and directed, will be more valuable and get far better results than a perfect scheme badly organized and run. An organization or a committee that has a woman as Chairman, President or Secretary, who insists on running everything and deciding everything for herself, is bound for disaster.

I should certainly place the will and ability to delegate authority high up in the qualifications a good organizer must possess.

We cannot afford to have little petty jealousies, social, local, and individual, on war committees or any other for that matter, but in this big struggle, they are particularly petty and unworthy.

We have all met frequently the kind of person who tells you, "This village will never work with that village," or "Mrs. This will never work with Mrs. That. They never do"; and I always answer, "Isn't it time they learned to, when their boys die in the trenches together, why shouldn't they work together," and they always do when it is put to them.

There is no difficulty in getting women to work together in our country. We have a link in our Roll of Honor that is more unifying than any words or arguments or appeals can be. Our women of every rank of life are closely drawn together.

The appeal to women is to organize for National Service and to realize that work of national importance is likely not to be at all important work.

The women in important places in all our countries will be few in proportion, but the struggle will be won in the Nation, as in the Army, by the army of the myriads of faithful workers faithfully performing tasks of drudgery and quiet service—and a realization of this is the greatest need.

Sticking to the work is of supreme importance. We do not want people who take up something with great enthusiasm and drop it in a few months. Nothing is achieved by that.

The good organizer sees her workers do not "grow weary in well doing."

Another important work in organization is to prevent waste of material, effort and money, by co-ordination whenever possible, though I should say, as a broad principle, co-ordination should not be carried to the point of merging together kinds of work that make a different appeal for work and money and require different treatment and knowledge and powers. The best results are reached by securing concentration of appeal and organization on one big issue and getting the work done by a group directly and keenly interested in the one big thing and with enthusiasm for it and knowledge of it.

In the personnel of committees and their composition our women have made it a definite policy to secure the appointment of women to all Government and National Committees on which our presence would be useful and on which we ought to be represented and we always prefer committees of men and women together, unless it be for anything that is distinctly better served by women's committees.

There is one pitfall in organization into which women fall more readily than men in my experience. Our instinct as women is to want to make everything perfect. We instinctively run to detail and to a desire for absolute accuracy and perfection.

This is invaluable in many ways, but in organizing on a big scale may be a serious fault. There must, of course, be method, order and accuracy, but the great essential to secure in big things is harmonious working—not to insist on a rigid sameness but to allow for widely divergent views and attitudes and ways of doing things so long as the essential rules are observed. We should not insist too much on identity in the way of work of different places and districts. In essentials—unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity—that might well be the wise organizer's motto.

The supplementing of governmental organization by national voluntary organization is a great piece of work and in the beginning of the war, and still, many of our organizations, voluntary or semi-official in character, were of great service. The work of the Soldiers and Sailors Families' Association is an example. The S. and S.F.A. had been created in the South African War and in peace time and war time looked after the dependants of the soldier and sailor. Its committees were composed of men and women—and it administered voluntary funds and later grants from the National Relief Fund, raised at the outbreak of war.

When war broke out, all the Reservists were called up and our men volunteered in tens of thousands. The pay offices of the army, being small like everything else in our army, could not cope quickly with the numbers of claims for allowances pouring in, but the S. and S.F.A. stepped into the breach and looked after the dependants. It secured vast numbers more of women in every town and village who visited every dependant and looked after them. They advanced the allowances which were paid back to them later—and this started in the first week of the war. They gave additional grants in certain hard cases for rent, sickness or in event of deaths in family at home. Every home was visited and no dependant needed to be in distress or want—S. and S.F.A. offices existed in every town and representatives in every village and any difficulty or trouble could be brought to them. The whole of this work is done voluntarily. In some cases workrooms were started from which sewing and knitting for soldiers and sailors were given to the dependents and paid for. It was not only the money and practical help that was of great service—the S. and S.F.A. visitor to the soldier's wife and mother brought sympathy and help and interest.

Another movement for soldiers and sailors dependents was the founding of clubs for them in many towns. One hundred and thirty-five of these clubs are linked up now in the United Services Clubs League. They are bright, cheery rooms in which the women can find newspapers, books, music, amusement, and opportunity to sew or knit comforts, can meet their friends and talk.

The Royal Patriotic Fund was another semi-official organization which was run voluntarily, gave grants at death of soldier or sailor and administered pensions. It is now entirely merged in the Naval and Military War Pensions Statutory Committee and local committees set up in January, 1916, which administer all grants, pensions, wound gratuities, etc., and looks after dependants.

Women sit on the Statutory Committee and there must be women members on every County, Borough and City War Pensions Committee in our country.

The organization of war charities is now in England controlled by the War Charities Committee appointed by the Government in April, 1916. The committee controls not only what could be strictly termed War Charities, but all war agencies of any kind for which appeals for funds are made to the public. These organizations must be registered and approved by the committee, and their accounts must be open to inspection and audit. This was a wise and necessary step, not so much because of actual fraudulent appeals—there has been practically none of that, but there was a certain amount of overlapping and of waste of money, material and energy, and some very few organizations in which an undue proportion of funds raised was absorbed in expenses. Comforts for soldiers and prisoners of war parcels are also now co-ordinated under two national committees.

The first work of registering Belgian refugees and of providing French and Flemish interpreters was done by a voluntary organization—the London Society for Women's Suffrage (a branch of N.U.W.S.S.), which has always been notable for its admirable organization. It provided 150 interpreters for this work in a few days, and work was carried on at all the London Centres from early morning till midnight. When the Government took over the charge of Belgian refugees, the system of registration used by the London Society was adopted without change by them and the organizer in charge was taken over also and put in a very responsible position at the War Refugees Committee's Headquarters.

The work of our Government Employment Exchanges (which were established before the War by the Board of Trade) and are now under the Ministry of Labour—has been supplemented by various Professional Women's Bureaus, by the compiling of a Professional Women's Register, secured through Universities, Colleges, Headmistresses' Association, etc., and by the setting up of the Women's Service Bureau by the London Society for Women Suffrage (N.U.W.S.S.). Various women's organizations have established most valuable clearing houses for voluntary workers in Scotland and England and Wales. The Women's Service Bureau has dealt with 40,000 applications for voluntary and paid work—mostly paid. Its interviewers take the greatest trouble to place these applicants suitably, and to find out just what they can do or would be good at doing.

Our biggest Government arsenal secured their first munition supervisors through it—and the Government Departments, big firms, factories, organizations, banks, workshops, institutions of any kind, send to it for workers.

It not only finds these posts without charge—it is supported entirely by voluntary contribution—but it has a loan and grant fund to enable women and girls without money to pay for training and maintenance.

Its records and the letters in its flies provide reading that is as absorbing as any novel, and it was one of the wise agencies that realized the older woman had a place and could help as well as the younger ones.

To find the person and the post and to put them together is its fascinating and admirably done task.

The organization done by women in Britain has been notable and admirable.

I can only touch on some of it and must leave out much, but it is worth while noting that there has been very little overlapping in the work. The total percentage of overlapping was estimated by the War Charities Committee on their investigation at 10 per cent and of that only a very small amount was due to women.