The question naturally arises, where did the increased number of women workers come from? Who were the thousands of munition workers, the girls undertaking men’s jobs, and all the army of a million and a third women who were at work in July, 1918, and not in July, 1914?

Transfers from Nonessential Industries

The increase during the first months of war in the industries equipping the troops was met for the most part by a transference of workers from slack to busy lines. “So great has been the passing from industry to industry,” said the factory inspectors,[84] “that at the beginning of the New Year it seemed almost as if women and girls had gone through a process of ‘General Post.’” For instance, makers of high class jewelry in Birmingham transferred to light metal work for the army. Silk and linen weavers went into woolen mills and dressmakers in the west Midlands were taken on in light leather work. In other cases slack industries took up government work. The activity of the Central Committee on Women’s Employment in securing contracts for uniforms for idle dressmaking establishments has already been mentioned. The Scottish fish workers were relieved by knitting orders. Certain carpet mills took up the weaving of army blankets, corset makers were set to making knapsacks, girl workers on fishing tackle were used in the manufacture of hosiery machine needles, previously imported from Germany, and an effort was made to provide the manufacture of tape and braid for uniforms for unemployed lace makers in the Midlands. Army shirts were made by many of the Irish collar factories. In retail trade also there was often a transfer from slack to busy shops, as from dressmaking and millinery to the grocery trade. Middle aged professional women whose ordinary occupations were unfavorably affected by the war frequently took the positions in banks, insurance offices and other business offices which had for the first time been opened to women. Yet in the two trades which suffered most severely from unemployment, namely, cotton textiles and dressmaking, there was a much “less general movement of the workers to find a livelihood in other directions.” This was considered due in the one case to “relatively high wages and specialized factory skill,” in the other to “deep-rooted social traditions and special craft skill.”

Very early in the war, also, married women who had worked before marriage returned to industry. A large proportion of the expanding needs of the woolen trades was filled in that way. In “drapery”—that is to say, “dry goods”—shops, and in cotton and shoe factories and potteries, many of these “dug-out” married women also appeared. Municipalities, when substituting women for men on tram cars and in other services, frequently gave preference to the wives of men who had enlisted. Many married women entered the food trades and they did not seem to object to dirty work in foundries and other places as did single women. In the professions, also, some women returned to teaching and clerical work. Soldiers’ wives likewise entered munitions work in large numbers. While the reason for their reentering work was probably largely economic—rising food prices and “separation allowances” insufficient to maintain a skilled worker’s standard of living, particularly if the family was large—yet their choice of occupations appears to have been at least partly dictated by patriotic motives.

As the war went on, the transfer of women from “normal” women’s occupations, such as domestic service, dressmaking, textiles, the clothing trades and laundry work to the more highly paid lines, especially munitions work, became more and more noticeable. The actual decline in numbers in these occupations has previously been described.[85] In addition to the decreases in these trades, a considerable change in personnel was observed, involving “the loss of skilled women and the consequent deterioration of the quality of labor.”[86] For example, skilled women left laundry work, and their places were filled by charwomen, or young girls fresh from school. Not infrequently the skilled women went to almost unskilled work, as from textiles to munitions.

On the other hand, war conditions occasionally kept women at home who were previously employed. In districts where large numbers of soldiers were billeted women were kept busy at home attending to their needs. Especially in colliery districts the rise in men’s wages caused married women who were thrown out of work at the beginning of the war to become indifferent to obtaining new positions. In some cases, notably in the Dundee jute mills, separation allowances placed the wives of casual workers who had enlisted in a state of comparative prosperity, and they ceased to go out to work. But on the whole the war doubtlessly increased the employment of married women.

In spite of impressions to the contrary, the proportion of previously unoccupied upper and middle class women entering “war work” was by no means large. Some young girls from school who would not normally have gone to work and some older women who had never worked before entered clerical employment, especially in government offices, and often obtained promotion to supervisory positions. A limited number of well-to-do women took up such temporary farm work as fruit picking from patriotic motives. Many of the women working behind the lines in France and as military nurses were from the “upper classes.” And an appreciable number of munition workers were drawn from the ranks of educated women. One such worker estimated that in the large establishment where she was employed, about nine out of 100 women belonged to that class.[87] Educated women were particularly likely to take up such skilled occupations as oxy-acetylene welding, tool-setting, and draughting, where their trained minds proved advantageous. Daughters of small tradesmen and farmers, who had not worked before except in their own homes, were likely to become forewomen and supervisors, positions for which their reliability and common sense well fitted them.[88] The “week end munition relief workers,” or “W. M. R. W.,” who worked Sundays in order to give the regular staff a rest day, were rumored to include among their members “dukes’ daughters and generals’ ladies, artists and authors, students and teachers, ministers’ and lawyers’ wives,”[89] but this class of workers was, after all, small and was not increasing.

Mainly, however, the new needs of industry have been filled by working women or the wives of working men. Former factory hands, charwomen and domestic servants are found on the heavier work, and shopgirls, dressmakers and milliners on the lighter lines.

A fairly large proportion of the increase may, moreover, be accounted for without the recruiting of new workers. Numbers of home workers, of half employed charwomen and of small shopkeepers and other employers have voluntarily become regular employes. During the war fewer women married and of those who did marry a large proportion seem to have remained in industry. A writer in The New Statesman noted of certain women munition workers that “a large majority of them—even girls who look scarcely more than sixteen—wear wedding rings.”[90]

A general idea of the sources from which the new workers came into industry may be obtained from an analysis made in January, 1917, of the prewar occupations of nearly half a million women and girls who were insured against unemployment, covering nearly all the munition trades. Seventy per cent of the 444,000 workers considered had changed their occupation during the war. Twenty-three per cent had changed from one kind of factory work to another, 22 per cent had not been employed except with housework in their own homes, 16 per cent had been in domestic service, and 7 per cent had been at work in other nonindustrial employments. Assuming that the same proportions held for the 778,000 additional women found in private factories and government establishments in July, 1918, 178,000 of them would have come from other kinds of factory work, 171,000 from the home, 125,000 from domestic service, and 54,000 from nonindustrial occupations.

PREWAR OCCUPATIONS OF 444,137 FEMALES
INSURED AGAINST UNEMPLOYMENT
IN JANUARY, 1917[91]

Transfers between Districts

In connection for the most part with the expanding munitions industry there has developed a phenomenon rare on any large scale in the history of women in industry, namely, the transfer of women workers from their homes to other parts of the country. Especially in England such transfer was carried on during the war on a fairly large scale. The British Government has naturally not encouraged detailed statements of the building of new munition plants and the extension of old ones, but occasional glimpses reveal revolutionary changes. In a speech to the House of Commons in June, 1917, the British Minister of Munitions said:

But the demands of the artillery programme, as it was formulated in the latter half of 1915, were such that it was necessary to plan for the erection of large additional factories.... They were erected at such a pace that what were untouched green fields one year were the sites a year later of great establishments capable of dealing with the raw materials of minerals or cotton, and of working them into finished explosives in great quantities every week.

Moreover, firms in operation before the war frequently doubled and quadrupled their capacity. In Barrow, for instance, a somewhat isolated town in the northwest of England, the population grew from 75,000 in 1914 to 85,000 in 1916 on account of the enlargement of a munitions plant. To meet the needs of such centers it was necessary to secure workers from many other localities.

Effort was made to center any transfer of women workers in the employment exchanges. The Ministry of Munitions’ handbook of “Instructions to Controlled Establishments” recommended application to the employment exchanges for all female labor instead of engaging it “at the factory gate” in order that the supply might be organized to the best advantage and “any unnecessary disturbance” of the labor market avoided. But the recommendation was not universally adopted. An undated circular of the Ministry complained that in cases where the exchanges were not used, skilled women, such as power machine operators and stenographers, for whom there was an “unsatisfied demand” on government work, had been hired for unskilled munitions work where unskilled women were available. Women had been brought into towns where lodgings were almost impossible to obtain while suitable local women were unemployed. Such occurrences and the “stealing” of skilled men by one employer from another caused an order to be made under the Defence of the Realm Act on February 2, 1917, which forbade the owner of an arms, ammunition, explosives, engineering or shipbuilding establishment to procure workers from more than ten miles away except through an employment exchange.

The employment exchange figures of the number of women obtaining employment in other districts, which therefore probably cover an increasing proportion of the movement, are for 1914, 32,988, for 1915, 53,096, and for 1916, 160,003.[92] In March, 1917, the number of women workers being moved to a distance through the exchanges was between 4,000 and 5,000 a month. In February, 1917, 5,118 women from some 200 different exchange areas were brought into eight large munition centers alone. In this one month, 1,641 women were brought from sixty-three different districts to a single munitions factory in the south of Scotland, and to another in the West Midlands. 772 women “were imported from centers as far apart as Aberdeen and Penzance.” From Ireland, where the conscription acts were not in force, and where women did not replace men in industry to any large extent, many girls crossed over to work in British munition factories. Official judgment ascribed the increased mobility of women labor to the rise in wages and the appeal of patriotism, which together supplied an incentive previously lacking.

Besides the munition workers, the transfer is noted during 1914 of silk and cotton operatives to woolen mills and of tailoresses from the east coast to Leeds uniform factories, and in 1915 of fisherwomen and others from the east coast resorts to the Dundee jute mills to replace the married women who left to live on their separation allowances. Some women substitutes for men in clerical and commercial work and in the staple industries, and agricultural workers, especially for temporary work, were transferred in 1916 as well as the munitions workers.

Care of Transferred Workers

The work of the “local committees on women’s war employment” in recruiting women from nonindustrial areas, meeting strangers, arranging for their lodging, and promoting “welfare” schemes, has previously been outlined. For the women transferred under their auspices the employment exchanges were able to guarantee that such arrangements had been made. All women applicants for work in national factories were required to pass a medical examination before being allowed to leave home.[93] In all cases the working conditions and living expenses to be expected were fully explained and the exchange had the power to advance railway fare.

But even with such precautions serious problems arose in transferring large numbers of women and girls long distances from home. Additional strain was involved in working among strangers. In one case where women munition workers were thrown out of work by a strike of the men, their plight was the more serious because many of them were miles from home and had not the money to return. For young girls the absence from home restraints and supervision was often harmful. One of the later reports of the Health of Munition Workers Committee of the Ministry of Munitions suggested a still more difficult situation in the following:[94]

The arrival of mothers in a town accompanied by quite young infants, or three or four young children, having travelled long distances, is becoming more and more common—the mother is attracted, in the absence of the father on active service, by the prospect of high wages in munition works, and brings her baby or children with her.

So pressing had the problems become that the committee, while recognizing the valuable work done by the local volunteer committees, felt that the time had arrived when the state should appoint officials to “supplement, complete or coordinate their work.” In accordance with this recommendation a number of “outside welfare officers” were appointed in 1917 by the Ministry of Munitions, who aided the local committees and were held responsible for completeness in their arrangements.[95]

Could more women have been obtained to meet the industrial needs of the nation, or did the expansion in the number of workers come near to exhausting the supply? The question is one to which it is hard to give an accurate answer. It has been pointed out that the number of women at work increased over every three months’ period up to July, 1918, though the rate of increase diminished during the fourth year of the war. It was estimated that 12,496,000 females ten years old and over were not “gainfully occupied” in July, 1918. Still later, just before the armistice, in the week ending November 8, 1918, there were 36,999 women on the “live registers” of the employment exchanges.

But on the other hand, as far back as January, 1916, officials of the exchanges stated that a third of the unfilled applications were those of women not previously employed, and another third those of women in situations who wished to change. The 12,496,000 females not at work included school girls, the old and incapacitated and housewives with small children, fully occupied by home duties. The measures taken to curtail industries not essential to the war and to conserve labor power, and the general complaints of a scarcity of labor, indicate that few additional reserves either of men or of women were available in the last months of the conflict.