article there were still 28,000 more women and girls in industry than there were in 1914, and 824,000 more women and girls in industry, commerce, the Civil Service, transport, hotels, theatres, taken together. These figures amount to a loss of women for industry of 512,000, between the Armistice and July 1920, as compared with the 800,000 who entered during the war, and for the larger group of occupations already referred to a corre- sponding loss of 824,000 as against their gain of 1,648,000. On the other hand the 80,000 women in the women's services had all been demobilized, and so had most of the 60,000 women V.A.D.'s, who, however, being voluntary workers, have not been taken account of in these figures. In July 1918 1,458,000 women were stated to be directly replacing men and 1,874,000 were on Government work, including the Civil Service, the women's services and the land army, but not workers in hospitals. The last figure, however, must be accepted with caution, as many of the contracting firms were not in a position to make accurate returns, and others varied in their views of the basis on which their figures should be compiled. Firms accepting contracts to be filled from stock already in their warehouses could not tell, while the goods were in process of manufacture, which part would be bought by the Government and which by private firms, nor which of their private customers were purchasing the articles against Government orders. In addition to this, many work- people were engaged for part of a day or week on Government contracts, and for the rest of their time on the firm's normal work. Some firms returned all their munitions work a far wider and vaguer term, and one made continually more wide and vague by various decisions of the Courts as Government work, and generally there was a tendency, in view of the privileges it conferred, to bring as much under this head as possible, even when the figures were supplied for statistical use.
These incfeases in the numbers of women employed in 1920 as compared with 1914 are interesting because they seemed to show that the war might result in a permanent growth in the industrial use of women. The natural growth of the population explains a certain part of them, but it should be noted that whereas the number of males employed had grown during the same period by only 177,000 on a 1914 figure of nearly 10,000,000, women had increased by between four and five times that num- ber on a pre-war figure of 3,250,000. This discrepancy cannot nearly be explained by the casualties. Moreover in commerce and finance, where the rise for women is 344,000, there is an actual decrease for men of 155,000. These figures may alter again to the detriment of women; but, except in so far as bad trade causes general unemployment, there is no obvious reason why they should alter much. The replacement of the temporary women workers has not been left to economic factors which might be thought not yet to have operated to their full extent. On the contrary, non-economic pressure has in many cases pre- vented employers from keeping women they would have wished to keep. Under the Munitions of War Acts certain trades have been compelled to discharge all women and girls brought in to do work formerly done by men or boys. Trade agreements have had the same wholesale effects in other cases, though in both groups of occupations the natural tendency may be deduced from the fact that new firms, not within the scope of the pledges, are making a large use of women. And in addition to this practi- cally every employer of women has been confronted by a cam- paign, both sentimental and practical and in some cases bitter, against their continued employment. It has been carried on partly by, or on behalf of, the returning troops, and partly by the men in the industries in which women had been working, and has certainly resulted in the dismissal of large numbers of them who were performing their work to their employer's satisfaction. These causes, though effective, are for the most part temporary in their effect, but those that tend to the increased employment of women are more lasting in character. The war advertised the fact that women are suited for a wider range of occupations than most employers who as a class tend to be ignorant of what is going on in industry outside their own affairs and those of their immediate friends had realized. They are also on much work
very much cheaper than men. Before the war their average wages were about half those received by men for the same work. In many trades during the war this proportion rose to two- thirds. But even in 1921 in the work which women do well, this dis- crepancy was a good deal greater than the difference which would be warranted by the difference in their value to their employer; and wherever this is so the employment of men on that work, if women are available, must be regarded as a luxury. It is one of which many employers, for good and bad reasons, are most un- willing to deprive themselves, but falling prices and restricted demand will operate to increase the desirability of the women. Further, they themselves had learned to prefer a life outside the home, to employment within it, while the losses of the war and the diminished prosperity of the nation turned for many of them a matter of choice into one of necessity. It might therefore be thought probable that though the bulk of the work to which women were introduced during the war had by 1921 disappeared or been taken from them, their share of paid work outside private houses would remain considerably larger than it was before the war and also more varied, and it was likely that these new oppor- tunities of employment would be large enough not only to absorb the new workers but also to draw upon the supply of those who would formerly have undertaken domestic service or employ- ment in small workshops.
Number Employed. The table on next page gives the figures of British women's employment for July 1914, Nov. 1918, and Nov. 1920; the numbers employed on Government work; and the num- bers stated to be directly replacing men. It should be noticed that they do not include outworkers, or persons employed on their own account, or employers.
Workers Classified. The first winter of the war did little more than absorb the workers who had been thrown out of employment during its opening months. They moved from one part of the clothing trades to another, from cottons on to woollens, and from cotton, too, on to metals, from little brass rings and tips and handles and discs and plates on to fuzes, from lace on to leather, and from the food trades into the filling factories. The conditions were more or less familiar, and as far as they could they chose work that was similar to their own, for at this stage no arrangements had been made for train- ing any abnormal proportion of new workers. The supply lasted until the beginning of the next year, as is shown by the fact that of the 79,000 women who enrolled in March 1915 for the Women's War Register under 2,000 had been placed by June, as all vacancies were first offered to suitable applicants on the ordinary register of unemployed persons. When these came to an end industry could still be fed from the immense reserve of fit and experienced workers created by marriage. Former employees in the printing and paper trades, textile trades and boot and shoe trades, returned to the work- shops in very large numbers, a few going straight on to munitions in the narrower sense, but most preferring to take up their former employment in order to replace men who had entered the army, or the younger women who were beginning to drift away to more en- ticing work. It was for the sake of the Lancastrian cotton weavers that the policy was adopted of scattering the new National Factories through the chief provincial towns of the north instead of erecting them in the old armament centres under the eyes of the great arma- ment firms, and it was on their skill and experience that the Ministry of Munitions was able to base its new programme.
These married women perceptibly altered the type of woman munition worker. They increased the average age, and, being tied to their homes and so restricted in their field of possible employment, they reduced the amount of wastage. On the other hand they were in certain respects undisciplined it was never found possible to apply to them, for instance, the provisions of the Munitions of War Act with regard to Leaving Certificates and their bad time-keep- ing, due to the pressure of domestic duties, detracted from the value of their work.
Their movement into industry continued roughly all through the autumn and winter of 1915. They came partly as a result of the feelings that were aroused by their husbands attesting or entering the army, and partly as a result of the appeals that the Government were now making to them. By the spring of 1916, however, thesupply was falling short. Congestion was increasing in the munitions areas, and many married women, instead of themselves earning wages in the factories, were taking toll of the wages of others, by letting rooms for sums which were sometimes increased concurrently with every increase in wage rates. Demand for women's labour was rapidly growing, and in March 1916 the Central Committee on Women's War Employment (Industrial) was set up by the Home Office and the Ministry of Labour, and established local committees to superintend on the one hand the recruitment of suitable women and on the other their housing, reception and general well-being outside the factory.
