she
has a husband at the front! Near by, as part of the same works, which are
not specialised, but engaged in _general_ engineering, is a bomb shop
staffed by women, which is now sending 3,000 bombs a week to the trenches.
Women are also doing gun-breech work of the most delicate and responsible
kind under the guidance of a skilled overseer. One of the women at this
work was formerly a charwoman. She has never yet broken a tool. All over
the works, indeed, the labour of women and unskilled men is being utilised
in the same scientific way. Thus the area of the works has been doubled in
a few months, without the engagement of a single additional skilled man
from outside. "We have made the men take an interest in the women," say
the employers. "That is the secret of our success. We care nothing at all
about the money, we are all for the output. If the men think you are going
to exploit women and cheapen the work, the scheme is crabbed right away."

I myself came across the effect of this suspicion in the minds of the
workmen in the case of a large Yorkshire shell factory, where the
employers at once detected and slew it. This great workshop, formerly used
for railway work, now employs some 1,300 women, with a small staff of
skilled men. The women work forty-five hours a week in eight-hour
shifts--the men fifty-three hours on twelve-hour shifts. There is no
difficulty whatever in obtaining a full supply of women's labour--indeed,
the factory has now a waiting-list of 500. Nor has there been any
difficulty with the men in regard to the women's work. With the exception
of two operations, which are thought too heavy for them, all the machines
are run by women.

But when the factory began, the employers very soon detected that it was
running below its possible output. There was a curious lack of briskness
in the work--a curious constraint among the new workers. Yet the employers
were certain that the women were keen, and their labour potentially
efficient. They put their heads together, and posted up a notice in the
factory to the effect that whatever might be the increase in the output of
piece-work, the piece-work rate would not be altered. Instantly the
atmosphere began to clear, the pace of the machines began to mount.

It was a factory in which the work was new, the introduction of women was
new, and the workers strange to each other, and for the most part strange
to their employers. A small leaven of distrust on the part