a trade and the employers, and it was generally made clear that the work handed over to women would be relinquished by them at the end of the war. They also dealt as a rule with wages, laying down rates which equalled in some cases though not as a rule in industries where women were expected to be admitted to truly skilled work the whole man's rate. For instance, women on men's work on the railways or on process work in the seed-crushing mills, started at the man's minimum rate, but most of the agreements provided roughly for equivalent pay for equivalent work. Allusions were also made to the conditions under which the work was to be done and to measures designed to protect the women from injury to their health. These agreements were concluded without much friction and were carried out as a rule in a generous spirit.
Agricultural Work.-The other great industry where the in- troduction of women caused trouble was agriculture. In spite of the efforts and the efficient organization of the Women's Land Army, and in spite of the satisfactory work acknowledged to be done by the women, the increase in their numbers during the whole war was only 33,000 less than 50% on the 1914 figures of 80,000. To these must be added some of the women entered under the head of casual labour, but it is not a good turnover for a trade employing so large a number of men. The cause was partly the obstinate refusal of the farmers to employ women which in itself rose in part from their dislike of parting with labour often consisting of their relatives and always more closely tied to them than the town workman can be to his employer and partly to the fact that work on the land did not prove attractive to women. The country women were not of the temperament which embraces novelties, and the town women dis- liked being billeted among the hostile farmers, and also the discom- forts of a country winter. In the few districts where the custom survives of women working on the land, such as Eversham, a district of small-holdings, there was further discouragement from the country women, who disliked the introduction of " dressed-up " strangers into the fields where they were accustomed to work in their ordinary long clumsy skirts. It was finally found necessary for the land army to cover the country with an organization which would keep in touch with practically all its members, to provide boots and outfits for recruits, to arrange for camps where women could live together, and in short to abandon the view that women could be expected to go on the land as self-sufficing units. As an army an alien force imported into the countryside it was found possible to introduce them to all the lighter and much of the more skilled work of agriculture with excellent results, but it is probable that only after two generations of such employment would the industry be prepared to admit that the experiment had been made and had proved successful.
The Civil Service. In the army, navy and the air force the pro- longed resistance with which the idea of employing women was met for so long came entirely from the employing or official side. By their male colleagues they were received not only with acquiescence but with pleasure, and as they had obviously to live in segregated units they were not grudged their inevitable proportion of re- sponsible and well-paid posts. Into the Civil Service, on the other hand, they were early welcomed ; but, once there, only a very few individuals from among the 162,000 recruits, who included numbers of women with university degrees, were given any opportunity of earning any salary that any man might have envied, or of rising to any work superior to that of secretaries and clerks. Where they were found in such positions it was almost invariably either as super- visors of the women staffs or because the work of their branch re- lated to women and the appointment had been made as a concession to public opinion, as in the case of the women in the Ministry of National Service, and the Women's Wages Section, and the Welfare Section, and the Dilution Section of the Ministry of Munitions. The most liberal department in employing women on well-paid work which might have gone to men was the Ministry of Food.
It may be said that, even in the establishment divisions, their appointment represented a victory, for so late as the autumn of 1915 one Service department, employing thousands of women and girls, was refusing to pay any of its women university graduates more than 403. a week, or to provide the staffs with a single woman in authority to whom they could go if in difficulties. Hardly at all, and only by the new type of minister, was the policy pursued of bringing in distinguished women to deal with special women's problems, although men with special experience were brought in by the dozen. Such an experiment would have been of very great value. The demobilization of these enormous bodies of women took longer than had been expected ; in fact, it had hardly begun when the passing of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act made it necessary for the Civil Service commissioners to consider the terms on which they should be admitted to the higher grades of the permanent service. The task of framing the general principles under which they might enter was entrusted by them to the newly formed National Whitley Council for the clerical and legal departments of the Civil Service, which, as it happened, was preparing to bring forward a scheme of reorganization for the entire service. This scheme, since agreed to by Parliament, provided that, with certain exceptions, women were to be admitted to the general work of the Civil Service with the same status as men. They were not, however, for an experimental period not exceeding three years, to receive the same pay for their
work ; and they were not to compete for posts with men but were to be appointed to a special proportion of posts which each department was to reserve for them; nor were they to enter by competitive examination but were to be chosen by a selection board. These conditions, especially that dealing with pay, were accepted by the women's representatives under protest, as they considered that the Civil Service together with the teaching profession were fields in which equal pay was not only eminently just but peculiarly desirable, and its opposite calculated not merely to injure the prospects of the women directly affected but to diminish their opportunities of doing valuable work. It was necessary, however, to accept such terms as part of the temporary bargain, and the Treasury proceeded to appoint a Director of Women's Establishments and to persuade, or endeavour to persuade, those branches of the service such as the National Physical and Chemical Laboratories where women scientists selected solely for their ability had been receiving the same salaries as men, to reduce the scales of the women on their staffs in accordance with the new arrangements for the clerical class. They took no steps, however, to admit women to the higher grades of the service, preferring to suggest that the Government should remove from the purview of the Whitley Council the question of the em- ployment of ex-service men in the Civil Service one of the matters definitely referred to it under its constitution and hand it over to a committee largely composed of members of Parliament. Under shelter of the recommendations of this committee, which were at once adopted by the Treasury, even though they conflicted with the agreement signed by the same officials, the principle of admitting women to the general work of the service was abandoned, and ex- service men were appointed to all posts of which it could not definite- ly be said that it was impossible to employ anybody but a woman, including a number which had always been filled by women because they were concerned with the health, welfare, wages, or conditions of women. The appointments were made possible by a process of combing-out which took no account of qualifications, knowledge, or experience, and concerned itself solely with financial considerations.
On Aug. 5 1921 a debate took place in the House of Commons on the regulations framed by the Civil Service commissioners for carry- ing out the Whitley scheme. It was pointed out on behalf of the women that the regulations ran counter to two separate votes of the House in favour of equality of treatment, and a motion was brought forward designed to secure for women the same pay and the same conditions of service as are enjoyed by men doing the same work. Under pressure from the Chancellor of the Exchequer a compromise was finally accepted under which the regulations were confirmed for three years; a promise was given that after that time women should be admitted in the same way as men except that the Civil Service commissioners should have power not to appoint a woman to any post for which they considered a woman unsuitable and work under the same conditions as men, except that they might not marry; and that the question of equal pay was for further consideration. It was also promised that women establishment officers should be appointed in departments employing considerable numbers of women, but a motion to the effect that some women should be ad- mitted to every grade was not accepted.
Industries Chiefly Affected. The most striking transfers of work from men to women naturally took place in the aircraft and metal munitions trades, because it was they which expanded most during the war, and they also were the objects of special pressure from the dilution authorities. What that pressure amounted to may be shown by the fact that in Jan. 1918 firms working for the Admiralty, which controlled its own dilution, employed 458,000 males and 52,000 females, while firms working for the War Office, Ministry of Muni- tions and Air Force employed 476,000 males and 235,000 females. In Nov. of the same year the Royal Naval Torpedo Factory, Greenock, employed 2,706 males and 372 females 13.7 %; while Woolwich Ar- senal employed 40,000 males and 24,000 females, or 60 % of females.
Next perhaps comes Jransport, with its uniformed women driving cars, collecting tickets and acting as conductors, guards, goods porters and signal-women. After these and the land, the change was most easily seen in the brewing industry, and in hotels and public- houses, both of which successfully employed large numbers of women on men's work during the war. Possibly 25,000 women came on to aircraft wood-work during the war.
Inaircraft work, women in one Government factory by the end of the war were making the entire fuselage, including the really skilled work of propeller-shaping, and all over the country they were mak- ing, covering, and doping the wings, and doing all but the heaviest erecting. This is essentially mass-production work, as every smallest stick is cut to its size before the women touch it, and,- as such, it is women's and not men's work, and peculiarly suited to them.
Women's Work Characterized. It may be said that now for the first time the industrial capacity of women has been minutely con- sidered by critics both hostile, impartial, and biased in their favour. The results of this scrutiny, from whatever source, are favourable, and fairly uniform. The women were more adaptable than the mass of observers had supposed them, they possessed more latent intelligence and greater physical strength, and they withstood far better the effects of monotony. On the other hand, as compared with men, they possess certain general defects which may be summed up as follows: insufficient strength; lack of initiative; lack
