strength lift up your hand."

--RUDYARD KIPLING.

CHAPTER VI

WOMEN IN MUNITIONS

"Hats off to the Women of Britain!"--Sir ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE in
_The Times_, November 28, 1916.

When war broke out the Government had three National workshops
producing munitions--today it has 100, and it controls over 5,000
establishments through the Ministry of Munitions, many of which are
continually growing in size.

The total output has increased over thirty-fold but in many cases
increase in production has been far greater. In guns, the production
of 4.5 field howitzers is over fifty times as large; of machine guns
and howitzers over seventy times and of heavy howitzers (over 6 inch)
over 420 times as large.

More small shell is now made in a fortnight than formerly in a year,
and the increase in output of heavy shell has been still larger.
Equally striking results have been attained in the production of
machine guns, aeroplanes motor bodies, and the other war supplies, for
which demand and replacement have necessarily grown with the demand
for guns and shells. To these have to be added the ships and the
anti-submarine and anti-aircraft machines and devices that have been
demanded by the enemy's method of warfare.

This work has only been possible in a country that has raised five
million men, 75 per cent from our own islands, because of what women
have done.

Today there are between 800,000 and 1,000,000 women in munitions works
in our country, and the history of their entry and work is a wonderful
one. Women themselves were quicker than the Government to realize how
much they would be needed in munitions, and started to train before
openings were ready.

Women realized vividly what Lloyd George's speech of June, 1915, made
clear, the urgent, terrible need of our men for more munitions--the
Germans could send over ten shells to our one--and women volunteered
in thousands for munition work.

The London Society for Women's Suffrage, which was running "Women's
Service," had women volunteers for munitions in enormous numbers and
tried to secure openings for them. It investigated and found that
acetylene welders were badly needed. There were very few in Britain,
and welding is essential for aircraft and other work, so they started
to find out if there were classes for training women, and found none
in Technical Schools were open to women. They found welders were
needed very