The rapid growth in the number of women workers and their entrance into hundreds of occupations formerly carried on by men alone are two of the most striking industrial phenomena of the world war. The decrease in women’s employment which marked the beginning of the war disappeared month by month until the level of July, 1914, was passed in April, 1915. In the next month the Labour Gazette noted that the shortage of male labor was now extending to female and boy labor in many lines. Up to this time recruiting had been comparatively slow. Now came Lord Kitchener’s appeal for “men and still more men,” and as the army grew the women had to fill the depleted ranks of industry.

By August, 1915, the British Association for the Advancement of Science set the increase of employed women over July, 1914, at over 150,000 in industrial lines alone, besides considerable gains in certain nonindustrial occupations.[23] In November of that year the number of women registering at the employment exchanges for the first time exceeded that of men. In April, 1916, by which time the army had been much enlarged and the first conscription act was in effect, the increase had reached 583,000, according to official estimate, and the number of women workers was growing at least five times as fast as before the war. A year later the net gain in the number of women gainfully occupied was 963,000, and in July, 1918, 1,345,000 more women were at work than in July, 1914.[24] In short, in four years of war more than a million and a third additional women entered work outside their homes.

The increase in the number of working women and girls was greatest, perhaps, in the year from April, 1915, to April, 1916, during which period there was an increase of 657,000 in the occupations covered by the Board of Trades reports.[25] During the last year for which figures are available, July, 1917, to July, 1918, the increase was but 277,000. This check in the rate of increase was due probably to a decrease in the demand for the kinds of munitions on which women were most largely employed, an increase in the number of returned soldiers and apparently the depletion of the supply of women readily available for employment.

Among the various occupational groups factory work showed the largest increase, namely, 792,000 women, during the four years ending July, 1918, and agriculture the smallest, 38,000. Commerce was second to industry, with a gain of 429,000, and national and local government third with an increase of 198,000. The number of women workers decreased only in women’s traditional occupation of domestic service, where a decline of 400,000, or nearly 20 per cent, was registered in the four year period.

EXTENSION OF THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN
DURING FOUR YEARS OF WAR[26]

Turning aside from the increases in the total number of women workers to an analysis of changes in the various occupations, a picture is obtained not only of what the army of new workers did, but also of many of the alterations wrought by war on the fabric of British industry.

First Year of War

Within a few weeks after the beginning of the war the government “came into the market as chief buyer,”[27] with large rush orders for the equipment of troops. This involved an “enormously multiplied demand for women’s services” in certain lines, some time before the period of unemployment was over. Increases in the number of women in the leather, engineering and hosiery industries were noted by October, 1914. Before the end of 1914 there was said to be an increase of 100,000 women in the woolen and worsted industry (for khaki, flannel and blankets); in hosiery; in the clothing trade (for military tailoring, fur coat making, caps and shirts); in the boot and shoe trade; and in the making of ammunition, rations and jam, kit bags and haversacks, surgical dressings and bandages and tin boxes. Yet owing to lack of the necessary skill or because they could not be moved to the locality where their services were in demand, thousands of “capable though untrained young women lacked employment when other factories were overwhelmed with their contracts and girls and women strained nearly to the breaking point.”[28] “The relative immobility of labor was never more clearly shown,” says Miss B. L. Hutchins.[29]

An interesting account of the introduction of women into munitions work speaks of the rush of women to register for it in May, 1915, after the battle of Neuve Chapelle, when the public first became aware of the shortage of munitions.[30] But positions were then “exceedingly difficult to obtain” and the use of women became general only in September or later. An official report states that the employment of women on munitions work was considered “tentative and experimental” as late as November and December, 1915.[31] The success of a group of educated women placed as supervisors in an inspection factory, who were trained at Woolwich Arsenal in August, was said to have been the determining factor in leading to the introduction of female labor on a large scale at Woolwich and other government establishments.

During perhaps the first six or eight months of war, however, the additional women factory workers seldom took the places of men, but entered the same occupations in which women had long been employed. The “new demand was to a large extent for that class of goods in the production of which female labour normally predominates.”[32] Women had for many years operated power machines in the clothing trades and had been employed in the making of cartridges and tin boxes, in certain processes in woolen mills, in boot and shoe factories and in the food trades: The needs of the army so far merely provided more opportunities along the usual lines of women’s work.

It was in the spring and early summer of 1915 that instances of the substitution of women for men first began to be noted in industrial employments. The Labour Gazette first mentioned the general subject in June, and in July stated that the movement was “growing.” In the boot and shoe trade in Northamptonshire efforts were being made in May to put women on “purely automatic machines hitherto worked by men.” About this time a violent controversy broke out in the cotton trade regarding the introduction of women as “piecers,” two of whom helped each male spinner. Boys had been used for this purpose, and the union rules forbade the employment of women. Union officials were strong in opposition, saying that the work was unsuitable for women, and that they would undercut the wage rates. An agreement permitting the use of the women was finally made with the union, but even before it was ratified women “piecers” had become increasingly common.

The frequent use of women on work formerly done by men in the munitions branch of the “engineering” (machinists’) trade also dates from about this time. On August 20, 1915, The Engineer, a British trade paper, stated that “during the past few months a great and far reaching change had been effected.... In a certain factory (making projectiles up to 4.5 inch gun size) a new department was started some time ago, the working people being women, with a few expert men as overseers and teachers.... By no means all of the work has been of the repetition type, demanding little or no manipulative ability, but much of it ... taxed the intelligence of the operatives to a high degree. Yet the work turned out has reached a high pitch of excellence.... It may safely be said that women can satisfactorily handle much heavier pieces of metal than had previously been dreamt of.”

Women are said to have been successful in “arduous” processes, such as forging, previously performed by men, and in managing machine tools not even semi-automatic. “It can be stated with absolute truth that with the possible exception of the heaviest tools—and their inability to work even these has yet to be established—women have shown themselves perfectly capable of performing operations which hitherto have been exclusively carried out by men.”

But for industry as a whole the judgment of the British Association for the Advancement of Science on the extent of substitution during the first year of war is probably accurate. “Broadly speaking,” it was said, “the movement [of women into trades and occupations hitherto reserved wholly or partially to men] has only just begun to assume any appreciable magnitude.... In few industries has the position yet shaped itself.”[33] But in a number of trades, noteworthy among which were leather, engineering, wool, cotton, pottery and printing, women, while not yet undertaking the most highly skilled work, were “undoubtedly slowly undertaking processes that were previously thought just above the line of their strength and skill.”[34]

Very soon after the outbreak of war there began to be an increase in the number of women in certain nonindustrial occupations, most important of which were clerical work, retail trade, and the railway service. Unfortunately no estimate is available of the actual numbers of women so employed in the first year of the war, but the increase must have been considerable. Banks and insurance offices for the first time hired women and girls in any great numbers, mostly for the more routine parts of the work. The civil service took on a good many women in the lower grades of its work, and already complaints were heard of the prejudice which confined trained women to routine work while the “upper division” struggled on understaffed. In the postoffice more women clerks and some postwomen were noted. There was a considerable increase in the number of women in retail trade in various capacities, including shop assistants in dry goods and provision stores, packers and delivery “girls.” In the railway service women were appearing as car cleaners, ticket collectors on the station platforms and in the railway offices. Some cities had hired women as street cleaners and tram car conductors. The exodus of foreign waiters left openings for more waitresses.

In these lines from the first the women took men’s places. And, as the public came into daily contact with women clerks in banks and business offices, postal employes, employes in shops and on delivery vans, tram conductors and ticket collectors, there probably arose an exaggerated idea of the extent to which women did “men’s work” during the first year of war.

The number of women in agriculture, in which the Labour Gazette first noted a shortage of skilled labor in the early months of 1915, is reported to have risen slightly in the spring and summer of 1915. The increases were reported in nearly all the principal branches of the season’s work, first in potato planting, then in turnip hoeing, next in haying and fruit picking and finally in the harvest. In almost every case the additional women were employed on work formerly done by men. But, according to a careful study covering this period:

Most of the press paragraphs referring to the replacement of men by women upon farms have been calculated to give an erroneous impression to the unknowing public. The demand for female labor in agriculture during 1915 was not very great and a large number of girls who offered to take up such work failed to find employment.[35]

Moreover, statistics show that, owing to the keen demand from higher paid and more attractive lines of work, the number of women permanently employed on the land in Great Britain actually decreased from 80,000 in July, 1914, to 62,200 in July, 1915.[36]

Second Year of War

The next convenient date at which to note the changes in the number of women employed and in their occupations is April, 1916, when nearly two years had passed under war conditions. A second investigation by the British Association for the Advancement of Science covers conditions at that period, and the first of the Labour Gazette’s quarterly summaries of “the extension of the employment of women” is of that date.

The total war increase in numbers in industrial occupations was put at 13.2 per cent of the estimated number employed in July, 1914, or 287,500, by April, 1916. In the metal trades, chemicals and woodworking, the increases were by far the largest, being 88 per cent or 126,900, 84 per cent or 33,600, and 33 per cent or 13,200 respectively. These figures show the rush of women into the engineering branch of munitions work, which began to be heavy in the fall of 1915, and into the manufacture of explosives. Both patriotism and the economic incentive of high wages helped to secure women to meet the rapid expansion in these trades. The increase in woodworking trades likewise had a direct connection with war orders, as it involved the work of women on aeroplanes and in making ammunition boxes. Other marked increases, though not proportionally as large, were found in the textile and food trades.

During the autumn of 1915 and the early months of 1916 the replacement of men by women in industry progressed much more rapidly than in the first year of war. During nearly every month of this period the Labour Gazette noted the increasing shortage of male help as men were called into the army, the growing substitution of women and the need for still further replacement. By the end of 1915, the “Principal Lady Inspector of Factories” stated in her report for that year that though the replacement of men of military age was still “probably very much less than is generally supposed” the employment of women on “men’s work” in the expanding munitions industry and in many staple trades had so “spread that an entirely new industrial position and outlook has opened for women.”[37]

In April, 1916, it was estimated by the British Association for the Advancement of Science that about one woman industrial worker out of every seven was replacing a man, the total number of substitutes in industry at this time being approximately 226,000. By far the largest number, 117,400, were found in the “metal trades” (munitions), and textiles, clothing, miscellaneous trades, food, paper and printing, and woodworking followed in the order named. Estimates by the Board of Trade were somewhat more conservative. A month or two later the Labour Gazette could state that there were few industries or occupations “in which some substitution of females for males had not taken place.”

By the spring and summer of 1916, also, the effect of extending the employment of women had begun to be felt by those lines which, before the war, had been considered pre-eminently “woman’s work.” The British Association for the Advancement of Science reported in April a decline of 100,000 in the number of domestic servants and a slight decrease in the number of women in the paper and printing trade. In July the Labour Gazette found decreases also in dressmaking, confectionery and the linen, lace and silk trades. By October, 1916, 40 per cent of the firms in the textile trades, 21 per cent in clothing and 19 per cent in paper and printing were unable to fill their demands for female help, as contrasted with 5 per cent in the metal trades, 3 per cent in chemicals and 8 per cent in woodworking. “It is clear therefore ...” states the Gazette, “that the process of transference from these trades (which are ordinarily women’s occupations) to munition work or other better paid occupations still continues.”[38]

The largest increases in the employment of women, however, both absolutely and proportionally, were to be found in April, 1916, in the nonindustrial group. The total increase in this group over prewar numbers was 310,000. In “commercial” work alone the number of women had risen by 181,000. The gain in “banking and finance,” i. e., women clerks in banks and financial offices, was 242 per cent or 23,000, and in “transport,” that is to say railway work was 16,000, or 168 per cent.[39]

In agriculture during 1916 the increase in employment of women was much more rapid, both among regular workers and among such temporary workers as fruit pickers and harvest hands. An increase of 18,700 or 23 per cent in the number of regular women workers in Great Britain alone was reported in July. In the autumn the numbers fell off, however, on account of the physical strength required for the ploughing and other work carried on at that season.

Third Year of War

The next group of figures carries forward the story of the increase in women workers more than a year further, to July, 1917. This third year of war was a period of striking developments, both in growth in the number of women workers and in the extent to which they filled men’s jobs.

Best known of these changes to American readers is the constant expansion in the number of women munition makers. The number of government munition factories had risen from four at the beginning of the war to 103 in January, 1917, and the number of women employed in them and in docks and arsenals increased by 202,000, or 9,596 per cent, between July, 1914, and July, 1917. At Woolwich Arsenal there were 125 women in 1914 and 25,000 in 1917. The number of women in 3,900 of the 4,200 “controlled” establishments doing munitions work was reported to be 369,000 in February, 1917.[40] In July, 1917, the increase in the number of women in the trades which covered most of the munition work outside national factories, namely, metals, chemicals and woodwork, was 358,000, 52,000 and 26,000, respectively. In June, 1917, Dr. Christopher Addison, then Minister of Munitions, told the House of Commons that from 60 to 80 per cent of all the machine work on “shells, fuses and trench warfare supplies” was performed by women. One shrapnel bullet factory was said to be run entirely by women.

Part of the total gain of 518,000 in the number of women in industrial occupations under private ownership in July, 1917, was likewise found outside munitions work in a great variety of staple trades less directly connected with war orders, many of which were far removed from the scope of women’s work previous to the war. For instance, the number of women in grain milling rose from 2,000 to 6,000, in sugar refining from 1,000 to 2,000 and in brewing from 8,000 to 18,000 by July, 1916.[41] Women became bakers and butchers and even stokers.[42] The employment of women increased in the building trades, in surface work in mining, in quarrying, brick making and cement work, in furniture manufacture and in the making of glass, china and earthenware. Women were reported to be building good-sized electric motors, working in shipbuilding yards, testing dynamos, working electric overhead traveling cranes, gauging tools to a thousandth of an inch and less and performing the most highly skilled work on optical instruments.[43] The British mission from the Ministry of Munitions described a former kitchen maid who was running a 900-horsepower steam engine without assistance.

A committee of industrial women’s organizations stated, in the winter of 1916-17 that, except for underground mining, some processes in dock labor and steel smelting, and iron founding, “the introduction of women in varying numbers is practically universal.” And even in steel works women were sometimes employed in breaking limestone and loading bricks, though not on the actual smelting of the metal, while in iron foundries negotiations were going on to see where women could be used.

Meanwhile, the decrease in women workers in what, before the war, were distinctively “women’s trades,” became more marked. For instance, in April, 1917, the number of women was falling off in textiles and the food trades, though these were still above prewar levels, in dressmaking and domestic service, where the decline was put at 300,000, and in laundry work, for which exact figures were not obtainable.

The following table brings out the changes in the employment of women in several of the more important industrial occupations between July, 1914, and January and April, 1917:

INCREASE OR DECREASE IN THE NUMBER
OF WOMEN EMPLOYED SINCE JULY, 1914[44]

It had become so difficult for the London high class dressmaking and millinery shops to secure employes that in the fall of 1916 some of the employers met with representatives of the London County Council and the employment exchanges and planned considerable improvements in working conditions. The changes included a reduction of the seasonality of the trade and a shortening of the working hours. But in July, 1917, their supply of labor was still “insufficient.”[45]

In nonindustrial occupations also during the period from April, 1916, to July, 1917, there was a continued increase in the number of women employed and the kinds of work they were doing. Next to “government establishments” the largest percentage of increase (though the absolute numbers are comparatively small) were found in some of these groups. In “banking and finance” the gain over July, 1914, was 570 per cent, in “transport” 422 per cent and in civil service 150 per cent. The gain in numbers in the whole group, exclusive of agriculture, was 639,000, of which 324,000 were found in “commercial occupations.”[46]

Along with the growth in numbers the kinds of work done by women in these lines continued to extend. On the railroads, to the women clerks, car cleaners and ticket collectors of the first months of war were added shop laborers, engine cleaners and porters. In several Scottish and a few English and Welsh cities, women became tram drivers as well as conductors. Cities employed not only women street cleaners and a larger number of women clerks and teachers but women in various capacities in power stations, sewage farms, gas works and parks, and as scavengers. A few official “policewomen” were appointed, and there were numerous women “patrols” or voluntary police. There were women lamp-lighters and women window cleaners, and the errand girl had practically replaced the errand boy.

While in July, 1917, according to the Labour Gazette, the number of women employed permanently on the land in Great Britain had increased by 26,000 or 32 per cent since July, 1914, the number of casual workers had increased 39,000 or 77 per cent during the same period. The total number of women employed in farm work in July, 1917, may therefore be estimated as 192,000, in addition to women relatives of farmers, who are seldom counted in the returns.

As indicated by the variety of occupations, both industrial and nonindustrial, in which their employment increased, the substitution of women for men went forward rapidly during the third year of war. The total number of “females substituted for male workers” amounted in July, 1917, to 1,354,000, exclusive of casual farm laborers, or to 1,392,000 if such laborers be included. In “government establishments” the number of women on men’s work was 9,120 times as great as the whole number of women employed in July, 1914; in “banking and finance” the number was 555 times as great; in “transport,” 437 times, and in “civil service” 152 times as great. About one working woman out of every three was replacing a man in July, 1917, in the occupations covered by the tables of the Labour Gazette.

The report of the “Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops” for 1916 gives an interesting description of the progress of substitution and of the work of women in heavy occupations formerly carried on exclusively by men. The Principal Lady Inspector, Miss Anderson, says, in part:

It appears that the one absolute limit to the replacement of men by women lies in those heavy occupations and processes where adaptation of plant or appliances can not be effected so as to bring them within the compass even of selected women, of physical capacity above the normal. Very surprising, however, is the outcome of careful selection, even in fairly heavy work, in rubber manufacture, paper mills, oil cake and seed crushing mills, shale oil works, shipyards, iron and tube works, chemical works, gas works and stacking of coal, tan yards, coarse ware and brick making, flour milling and other trades. “If they stick this, they will stick anything,” a manager is reported as saying of the grit and pluck of the women in a gas works in the recent severe weather.[47]

She adds, however, what may occur to many students of women’s work, that “it is permissible to wonder whether some of the surprise and admiration freely expressed in many quarters over new proofs of women’s physical capacity and endurance is not in part attributable to lack of knowledge or appreciation of the very heavy and strenuous nature of much of normal prewar work for women, domestic and industrial.”

Nevertheless, despite these increases, the amount of substitution varied widely between different trades and even between different firms in the same trade, and opportunities for replacement still existed. Often women had been more widely introduced into occupations like railway trucking, for which they did not appear well fitted, than into such work as electroplating, which seemed in every way suitable.

Women’s lack of trade training, their inferior strength, the special restrictions of the factory acts, moral objections to having men and women in the same workshop, and the need of increasing sanitary accommodations and providing women supervisors had been from the first alleged as objections to putting women in men’s places.[48] But the strongest obstacles were apparently trade union opposition, frequently expressed in restrictions in trade agreements, and the prejudice of employers. “The progress of substitution probably depends in many cases on the pressure exercised by military tribunals,” said the “Principal Lady Inspector of Factories,” early in 1917. “Employers will not experiment with women as long as they can get men, though once they do so they are pleased with the result.”[49]

Fourth Year of the War

In the words of the Chief Woman Factory Inspector, 1917-1918, the fourth year of the war, was as far as woman’s work was concerned “one mainly of settling down into the new fields of work which were so rapidly marked out in the three previous years.” Yet she enumerates several lines of work employing women for the first time during this year, among which were ship and marine engineering, blast furnaces and forge works, copper and spelter works, concrete and other construction work for factories and aerodromes, electric power stations and retorts of gas works. The entrance of women as unskilled laborers in iron and steel plants and chemical works was proceeding steadily in November, 1918.

Another interesting indication of the extent and variety of women’s work in the latter months of the war is a list of placements made by an employment exchange. The list includes learners in sheet metal working, engine cleaners for a railway company; machinists in a torpedo factory; drivers for a tramway company; gas meter inspectors; crane drivers; insurance agents; sawmill laborers; cemetery laborers; railway porters; painters of motor car bodies; machinists for engineering firms; plumbers in a shipyard; bill posters; electric welders; foundry workers; armature winders; postwomen; lorry drivers; wood cutting machinists for shipbuilding; moulders at a grinding mill; chauffeurs; lift attendants; tinsmiths; solderers in gas meter works; telephone repairers; hay balers; laboratory assistants for wholesale chemists; tailors’ pressers; cinema operators; bank clerks; glass blowers; pipe plasterers; bake house assistants; cork cutters; gardeners; core makers in an iron foundry, and mechanics of many kinds.[50]

A Home Office report on the “Substitution of Women in Nonmunition Factories” adds to the above classifications employment in scientific work and in management and supervision, which a number of women entered during the latter months of the war, though a lack of suitable candidates retarded the movement. Educated women found places in factory laboratories where, also, intelligent working women took up the more routine processes. Most of the women engaged in managerial work were found in the prewar “women’s industries” like laundries and clothing factories, while the opening of new trades provided opportunities for many forewomen.

In July, 1914, the total number of women at work for pay was officially estimated as 5,966,000. Four years later this total had risen to 7,311,000 which, as has been noted, was a net increase of over a million and a third. An increase was found in all the major industrial groups except domestic service, in which the numbers decreased by 400,000, or about 20 per cent, during the war period. In private industrial establishments the number of women workers rose in four years from 2,176,000 to 2,745,000, an increase of 569 000, or 26.1 per cent, while in government industrial establishments, only 2,000 women were employed in July, 1914, and 225,000 in July, 1918, or over a hundred times as many.

By far the greater part of the increase in the number of women factory workers was to be found in the munition trades. Indeed, in the three trades of paper and printing, textiles and clothing, the last two of which had been “women’s trades” even before the war, there was an actual decrease of 86,000 in the number of women workers during the four year period under discussion. Out of the total increase of 792,000 in this group of occupations, 746,000 were to be found in the metal, chemical and wood trades, which cover most of the munition work done by private firms and in government establishments, which were mainly munition factories.

Another interesting sidelight on the contribution of English working women to the needs of the war is brought out by the numbers employed in the manufacture of all kinds of military supplies, including such things as uniforms, shoes and food, as well as munitions. In April, 1918, a total of 1,265,000 women were employed by private concerns on war orders, while government work brought the total up to 1,425,000, about equally divided between munitions and shipbuilding.

EXTENSION OF THE EMPLOYMENT OF FEMALES
IN INDUSTRY DURING FOUR YEARS OF WAR[51]

• (A) = Estimated Number of Females Employed July, 1914
• (B) = Estimated Number of Females Employed July, 1918
• (C) = Increase (+) or Decrease (-) July, 1914-July, 1918
• (D) = Per Cent of Females to Total Number of Work People Employed

The addition of orders for the Allies brought the total number of women on war orders up to 1,750,000.

The following table gives comparisons for April, 1917, and April, 1918, for the various classes of industry:

NUMBER OF WOMEN ENGAGED ON GOVERNMENT
ORDERS IN PRIVATE CONCERNS,
APRIL, 1917, AND APRIL, 1918[52]

In nonindustrial employments, including commerce, banking, work for the central and local government, transportation, hotels and theaters, agriculture and the professions, the increase over the prewar level of July, 1914, was 871,000 in July, 1918, a rise from 1,098,000 to 1,969,000 women workers. The increase in these occupations for the fourth year of war alone was much greater than the increase in factory workers during the same period, being 209,000 in contrast to 68,000.

The latest figures available for commerce are for April instead of July, 1918, and show that 850,000 women were then employed in wholesale and retail trade, about a 70 per cent increase since the beginning of the war. The new workers were employed principally by wholesale establishments and by grocery, fish, provision and hardware stores. In the latter months of the war a number of women were promoted to managerial and other positions of responsibility in stores. But in spite of all the extension of their employment, a considerable number of establishments reported a shortage of workers in April, 1918.

INCREASE IN EMPLOYMENT OF FEMALES IN
COMMERCE, JULY, 1914-APRIL, 1918, AND
PERCENTAGE OF FIRMS REPORTING A
SHORTAGE OF FEMALE LABOR
IN APRIL, 1918.[53]

• (A) = Estimated No. Employed July, 1914
• (B) = Estimated No. Employed April, 1918
• (C) = Percentage of Firms Reportinga Shortage of Female Lsbor April, 1918

The term “transportation” in the statistics applies chiefly to steam railroads, as the employes of the many municipally owned tramways are classed under “local government.” The number of women in the transportation group was four times as great in April, 1918, as in July, 1914, or 68,000 instead of 17,000. A list covering the principal lines of work in July, 1918, shows that the largest number of women were employed as telegraph and telephone operators, porters and carriage cleaners.[54]

NUMBER OF FEMALES EMPLOYED
BY STEAM RAILWAYS.

In agriculture the increase was less than in most other kinds of work, the number of permanent women workers rising only from 80,000 to 113,000 in the four years. For the fourth year of war alone the number of permanent women workers in Scotland showed a rise for the first time, and there was a slight increase in England and Wales, the total gain over July, 1917, being 7,000. The number of casual workers dropped from 88,000 in 1917 to 65,000, however. This fact is ascribed to two causes. A larger number of male workers were available, including soldiers on furlough, war prisoners, enemy aliens and school boys. Also there was a much lessened demand for women in the two lines in which casual workers were most extensively employed—hops, in which the acreage was reduced by government order, and fruit, in which the crop was a failure in several localities.

The increase of opportunities for women in the professions was one of the most significant of the war time changes. The number of professional women more than doubled during four years of war, rising from 50,500 in July, 1914, to 107,500 in April, 1918. There was, of course, a much enlarged demand for nurses, and the number of women in Red Cross and military hospitals rose from 10,000 in July, 1914, to 38,000 in January, 1918. While the number of men teachers fell off by 22,000, the number of women teachers increased by 13,000, and they secured a larger proportion of appointments to the higher and better paid posts. In January, 1918, the Society of Incorporated Accountants and Auditors obtained permission to change their articles of incorporation so as to admit women, and a few weeks later reported that very desirable women candidates were applying for examination.

By the fourth year of the war women were also largely employed in the various government departments. In August, 1914, there were 36,000 women and 191,000 men in government work, but in January, 1918, the balance of the sexes had been reversed and the number of women had risen to 143,000, an increase of 296 per cent, while the number of men had been reduced to 135,000, a decrease of 29 per cent.

NUMBER OF FEMALES EMPLOYED BY
GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS

Perhaps the most direct help given by women to the progress of the war was their employment in work for the army behind the lines in France. In July, 1915, a member of the government, in answering an inquiry in the House of Commons as to the number of soldiers detailed for clerical work, remarked that on the continent “obviously neither old civilian clerks nor women clerks would be suitable.” But two years later thousands of English women were at work there not only as clerks, stenographers, telegraphers and postal employes, but also as army cooks and cleaners and in the handling of supplies and various sorts of repair work. The majority were clerical or domestic workers, however. The women employed in this way were carefully selected and organized under semi-military discipline, as the “Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps” (popularly known as the “Waacs”), and numbered over 50,000 before the end of the war. They wore uniforms of different colors, according to the branch of work which they undertook. They lived in small huts, often unheated, not far behind the battle lines, and were constantly exposed to danger. “Waacs” were at times killed in air raids, and a considerable number suffered from shell shock. Other smaller bodies of women organized on similar semi-military lines were the “Wrens,” who were employed in certain shore duties for the navy, and the “Wrafs” who did woodcutting under the Board of Trade.

The number of women replacing men, as well as the total number of women employed, reached its highest level during the fourth year of the war. In April, 1918, the latest date for which these figures were available at the date of writing, there were 531,000 substitutes in industry, 187,000 in government establishments, and 1,098,000 in nonindustrial occupations, or a total of 1,816,000 women who were carrying on work formerly done by men.[55] Ninety per cent of the women munition makers were said to be employed on men’s jobs.[56] An index of the distribution of substitutes among different types of factory work may be gained from the results of a special questionnaire sent to manufacturers employing 277,000 women.[57] Fifteen per cent were doing clerical work, 7 per cent warehouse work and packing, and 5 per cent other nonmanufacturing work, such as sack mending in flour mills and meter inspecting and show room work in the gas industry. Of the remaining 73 per cent, 9 per cent were engaged in “general laboring work,” and many others in work requiring similar strength. “It is clear, therefore,” says the report, “that the employment of women on heavy work has become an important factor in the situation. Though many of the processes mentioned were unskilled, it was noticeable how many of the women were engaged on skilled or semi-skilled processes.”