Numbers of delicate processes stand between the rough gla.s.s and the finished implement. The gla.s.s must be cut, ground, and curved exactly to the requisite design, which in itself takes many days of high mathematical computation; it must be smoothed and polished, cleaned with meticulous care, and adjusted to a nicety in the particular instrument for which it is fashioned. The difficulties and pitfalls are incalculable; from start to finish the gla.s.s obeys no fixed laws, but answers only to the skilled handling of the scientist and craftsman. 'Optical gla.s.s is the mule of materials', comments a recent writer with sincerity.

The absence of requisite labour for what was practically a new industry was a serious menace, and it is to the credit of Englishwomen that, as soon as the need for their services in this direction was made known, they stepped without hesitation into this unfamiliar and highly skilled industry. Their success therein is remarkable, and many, from such callings as high-cla.s.s domestic service, kindergarten instruction, music teaching, blouse and dressmaking, have achieved a wonderful record in the delicate and highly technical processes of lens-smoothing and polishing and in the production of prisms of faultless polish and cut.

There is, I take it, no more interesting munitions development than in factories where these lenses and prisms are produced. The work is so fine and so delicate that one feels it might be more suitably transferred for manipulation to elves, or fairy folk, who might undertake the various processes standing at a large-sized toad-stool. But with the stern reality of war upon us, willing feminine fingers have had to be trained to handle these lenses, the smallest of which, when ranged in trays, resemble a collection of dewdrops, and the largest of which would easily fill the port-hole of an ocean-liner.

Optical gla.s.s when it comes into the workshop has the appearance of small blocks of rough ice of a greyish hue. These blocks are roughly sliced and cut into shape by a rotating metal disk charged with diamond dust. The prisms and lenses in their initial stage are then handed on to women, who complete the work on their surfaces. Each process has its particular lure for the interested visitor. You may watch the slices of gla.s.s being shaped into prisms by handwork against the tool; you may follow these embryo prisms through the various processes of smoothing and polishing until a small magnifying prism is obtained for use in a magnetic compa.s.s, or until a large prism is completed suitable for a submarine periscope. You may follow the creation of a lens from the roughing and grinding of the gla.s.s slices with emery, or carborundum, until the approximate shape is given, or you may follow a later process of sticking the smaller lenses on to pitch, so that they may form a single surface for smoothing and polishing.

Again, you may watch the superlatively difficult operation of centring a lens. This task is necessary to ensure the polished surfaces of the lens running perfectly true and it requires a skilled touch and a trained eye to undertake it satisfactorily.

In a shop in a certain optical munitions factory I met the first woman who worked a centring machine in that area. She was formerly a housemaid, and told me that, at first, all the men had discouraged her from the job and had said it was 'impossible for a woman to do such work'. But she 'stuck it'--so she said--and in a few weeks, to her own surprise and the men's dismay, this peculiarly skilled job became familiar to her. 'Now I feel I am doing something,' she said in triumph. This sentiment was echoed by another worker in that factory who was accomplishing the surprising task of 'chamfering', or putting a tiny bevel onto the edge of a lens.

The large lenses measure only 2 inches in diameter; the smaller ones are about the size of a threepenny bit, and every operation, whether grinding, trueing, smoothing, polishing, or centring, must be accomplished with the utmost care. Even the final process in the manufacture of the lens or prism, 'wiping off', is fraught with responsibility to the operator.

'Wiping off,' or cleaning the lens, can only be done with a silken duster, for the finished gla.s.s, like a dainty lady, will tolerate the touch of nothing coa.r.s.e.

In cases where the gla.s.s is graticulated, or marked with fine lines for measurement purposes, the task of 'wiping off' is of extraordinary difficulty; in the opinion of at least one foreman with whom I have discussed this question, the operation is only perfectly successful when performed by a girl's fingers. It is of supreme importance that no speck of dirt or hint of grease from a finger-mark be left on the gla.s.s when finally adjusted, or the instrument would become a source of danger to the user. No wonder that the feeling of the optical instrument workshop expresses itself in the words: 'Cleanliness is more than G.o.dliness at this job.'

The completed gla.s.s at length reaches the stage where it is set in its instrument, be it periscope, dial-sight, telescope, and so on. Although the most exact measurements have been observed both in the metal part and on the gla.s.s, small adjustments are necessary; for the fit must be so perfect that even if the metal case suffers sh.e.l.l-shock, the gla.s.s must still not rattle. But it is the metal alone which is submitted to alteration, and it is wonderful how women have been able to obtain sufficient dexterity to make these infinitesimal changes in the metal parts. One can see a mere girl undertaking such a task by giving the metal three or four delicate strokes from a file so fine that it would not hurt a baby's skin. Meantime, the lens or prism is finally examined (also by women) for size, scratches, and other imperfections, and is then re-cleaned. Girls and women take a full share in the production of the metal parts for the optical instruments and also a.s.semble, or collect the parts, for the adjustment of the gla.s.s, but so far they do not generally adjust or test the completed instrument.

The operations used in the production of optical instruments for war purposes are, of course, similar to those required in the manufacture of implements used in peace-time, such as opera-gla.s.ses, telescopes, microscopes, surveying instruments, photographic and cinematograph apparatus, &c., and it is expected that women who have entered the new war-time industry will happily find themselves, when peace dawns, in possession of a permanent means of livelihood in a skilled occupation.

_In the Shipyards_

'Ships, ships, and still ships': such is the main need of the Allies in this, the fourth year of the war. To answer this demand, every dockyard in the country is working at the highest pressure. Into this work, strange as it may seem to those familiar with the rough-and-tumble life of a shipyard, women have penetrated and have so far surmounted all obstacles in the tasks to which they have been allocated.

At first, dilution in shipyards was looked upon as a hazardous experiment.

The work is mostly heavy and clumsy, and the type of men undertaking it, splendid fellows enough in their physique and general outlook, are mainly accustomed to dealings with the boisterous elements and with men comrades of their own pattern. Their att.i.tude towards women, it was feared, would make for trouble immediately that the other s.e.x was introduced as fellow-workers. Even the most optimistic amongst shipbuilders were aghast at the idea of women working shoulder to shoulder with men on board ship.

Yet here and there a pioneer employer has arisen, and the experiment has been tried. It is succeeding unquestionably.

I have been into the shipyards and seen the amazing sight and am convinced of its expediency, at all events as a war-time measure. Special care must, of course, be taken in the planning and the supervision of women's work on board ship, but given the right type of inspectress, charge hand, and workers, there is no reason why women should not, in increasing numbers, fill the gaps in the shipyards, as in the factories. The women chosen to undertake such tasks are well aware of the service they are rendering to the nation at this juncture, and to the women workers the first day on board ship is one of supreme happiness. 'They are so excited when they actually get on board,' said a dockyard inspectress to me recently 'that they forget all about the difficulties and objections to the work.' It is well that this is so, for it is not too easy for the novice to move about below, even on a big battleship.

I was taken over one where the women were working. It was in a big yard crammed with shipping of every kind--so full that one could echo the words of the old Elizabethan, who said of a crowd: 'There was not room for a snail to put out its horns.' A stiff breeze was blowing, and the sea beyond ran full and blue. The great battleship along the dock lay serene and stately, bearing, as it were, with grim humour the meddlesome tappings and chippings of impertinent human beings, who presumed to furbish her up.

There were men on the conning-tower, busy with paint-pots, and there was a tangle of ropes and pots on the upper decks where the guns were biding their time. Men were calling l.u.s.tily to each other, and were darting here and there as brisk and wholesome as the breeze.

'We go down here,' said the inspectress, pointing to a ladder as steep as the side of a house. She bounded down with the ease of an antelope.

Another ladder, and yet another. The inspectress seemed to have forgotten their steep incline and I was left, a helpless landlubber, cautiously descending step by step. When I joined her in the engine-room she was already deep in conversation with one of her staff. And then I noticed the secret aid to her agility. All the women aboard ship were dressed in trouser suits. The suits, of blue drill for the supervisors, and of a similar material in brown for the labourers, were made with a short tunic, and the trousers were buckled securely at the ankle. A tight-fitting cap to match completed the smart workmanlike costume which permits of perfect freedom of movement in confined places. Without such a costume it would be hardly possible for women to work on board.

The women workers on this particular battleship were engaged in renewing electric wires and fittings, a job which requires a good deal of care and accuracy. On the lower deck, they were fitting up new cables and were perched in high places, here 'sweating in' a distribution box, there marking off the position for the wires. Others were drilling holes, others again were 'tapping', or making a thread in the holes. In the engine-room the women were busy stripping worn-out electric wiring and were working by the light of tall candles, as merry as a party preparing a Christmas tree.

Everywhere the women were working in pairs, an arrangement found especially advisable on board. Behind a small iron door we found one couple working on a fire-control in a nook where the entrance of a single visitor caused bad overcrowding. 'These are my mice', said the inspectress; 'they always get away into the cupboard-jobs, and very well they work there too. But we have to maintain a strict discipline on board, far stricter than anything known in the factories.'

No talking, I was informed, is allowed in that dockyard, during the working hours on board, between the sailors or men labourers and the women and there is constant supervision of the women employed. These work on board in parties of 20-22, each party being under the care of a charge hand. When the staff included three charge hands for supervision on board, an inspectress was appointed for this special branch of the work. The system seems to work well, and I noticed how the men and women had evidently accepted each other as comrades. Coming into a secluded gangway a man-labourer, who had finished his job, was unconcernedly shaving before a square of mirror, while two or three women just beyond went on, just as unconcernedly, tap, tapping at the electric fittings. There was no chaffing, no 'larking', between the men and women, but a sense of comradeship, such as one notices in a Co-education School.

The women on electric-wiring receive, in that dockyard, one month's instruction on dummy bulk-heads before going on board; their instructors--expert men--accompany them to the number of two to every party of twenty or so, and remain with them for ten to twelve months.

After that, the women are able to work without an instructor, and I was an eyewitness to this arrangement on a cargo vessel, where electric wiring was also being undertaken.

Besides the work on board, women in dockyards are employed in the various engineering shops where almost every description of construction and repair work for vessels is undertaken. I have seen numbers of women at work in such an electrical department, winding armatures, making parts for firing-gear, polishing, or buffing and repairing electrical apparatus, &c.

The work in such a repair section is full of interest and variety. From day to day the operators receive consignments of electrical apparatus damaged on board by the elements, or worse. Great dispatch is needed, and the women work with the utmost zeal and efficiency. I noticed them undertaking such varying operations as lackering guards for lamps and radiator fronts, repairing junction and section boxes, fire-control instruments, automatic searchlights, &c., and they were turning out their work, the foreman said, just like men. In the constructional department, women are now employed in making bulkhead pieces, or metal-work of various kinds, in oxy-acetylene welding, and occasionally in the foundry.

When it is recollected that before the war only elderly women--the grandmothers--were, generally speaking, employed in the dockyards, and those only on such ornamental tasks as flag-making or upholstery for yachts, it is hardly credible that the granddaughters are now working successfully on intricate processes and even at jobs where physical strength is a qualification. 'We can hardly believe our eyes,' said a foreman recently, 'when we see the heavy stuff brought to and from the shops in motor lorries driven by girls. Before the war it was all carted by horses and men. The girls do the job all right though, and the only thing they ever complain about is that their toes get cold.' 'They don't now', said a strapping young woman-driver, overhearing the conversation.

'We've got hot-water tins.' Then, in a low voice, for my ears alone, 'I love my work, it's ever so interesting.'

It is this note that one finds above all, amongst the women in the dockyards. The spirit of the sea, the almost forgotten heritage of an island population, has been stirred once more, and the sight of the good ships in harbour thrills the woman-worker, as the man, with a sense of independence, freedom, and love for 'this England, ... this precious stone set in the silver sea'.

No wonder that Englishwomen find their work in the dockyards 'ever so interesting'.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CUTTING FRAYED-EDGED TAPE]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BRAZING TURBINE ROTOR SEGMENT]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MOUNTING CARDS FOR DRY COMPa.s.sES]

[Ill.u.s.tration: TREADLE POLISHING-MACHINES, FOR SMOOTHING LENSES]

CHAPTER V: COMFORT AND SAFETY

WELFARE SUPERVISION--PROTECTIVE CLOTHING--REST-ROOMS AND FIRST AID--WOMEN POLICE

The problems arising from the sudden employment of thousands of women in the factories have obviously been connected not only with the technical training of the workers and with the adaptation of machinery to their physical strength. Something had to be done, and that without delay, to ensure the comfort and safety in the workshops of these new-comers to industrial life.

In the first great rush for an increased munitions supply, war emergency dictated the temporary suppression of the Factory Acts. There was no demur within the factory gates. Women worked without hesitation from twelve to fourteen hours a day, or a night, for seven days a week, and with the voluntary sacrifice of public holidays. Their home conditions in a vast number of cases offered no drop of consolation. Many of these women were immigrants from remote corners of the Empire, or from faraway towns and villages of the United Kingdom. Housing accommodation in crowded industrial areas, or in a thinly populated countryside, was strained to breaking-point. Undaunted, these workers--many of whom had previously led an entirely sheltered life--rose before dawn to travel long distances to the factory, and returned to take alternative possession with a night-shift worker of a part share of a bedroom. The shameful conditions to which the factory children were subjected at the period of the Industrial Revolution seemed about to return.

_Welfare Supervision_

Such a state of things could not be tolerated, and Mr. Lloyd George, then Minister of Munitions, grasped the situation. 'The workers of to-day', he said, 'are the mothers of to-morrow. In a war of workshops the women of Britain were needed to save Britain; it was for Britain to protect them.'

Measures were immediately adopted to improve the conditions of the workers in the factory. A Departmental Committee was appointed to consider all questions relating to the health of munition workers, and at the Ministry of Munitions, on their recommendation, a Welfare and Health Department was established, charged with 'securing a high standard of conditions for all workers in munitions factories and more especially for the women and juvenile employees'. Since then, step by step the machinery is being set in motion for improving the conditions of life of munition workers.

Yet Welfare work in the factory is no new thing in England. In pre-war days it had not, it is true, reached as widespread a development as in the United States, but as long ago as 1792 it was in practice in this country under another name. It is recorded of that period of one David Dale, whose factory was a model to his contemporaries, that he 'gave his money by shovelfuls to his employees' to find that 'G.o.d shovelled it back again.'

From the early part of the nineteenth century, sporadic attempts were successfully made to improve the conditions of the factory workers over and above the requirements of legislation, and before 1914 a number of enlightened factory owners had won renown by the practice of Welfare work within their precincts. The seal of official sanction has, however, only been gained since the war, through the influx of women into munitions trades.[1]

The Health of Munitions Workers Committee has, since its inception, investigated at factory after factory such questions as the employment of women, hours of labour, Sunday labour, juvenile employment, industrial fatigue, canteen equipment, the dietary of workers. It has published its conclusions in memoranda, stripped bare of officialism, so as to reveal with frankness facts acquired by scientists in touch with reality.

Working in connexion with this Committee is the Welfare and Health Department of the Ministry of Munitions. It follows closely the suggestions of the experts, its Welfare officers moving up and down the country, now offering a suggestion to the management of a factory, and again, a.s.similating some practical experiment in Welfare work, originated by a progressive factory-directorate. Thus, a pooling of ideas is being effected, and isolated experiments of value are now being propagated throughout the country.

But possibly one of the most valuable tasks of the Welfare and Health Department is the selection and training of candidates for the work of Welfare Supervision in the factories. A panel of approved candidates is kept in readiness, so that a busy factory-manager may have at hand a choice of Welfare workers who will, if necessary, undertake the entire supervision of the personal interests of his female, or juvenile staff.

These officers, after engagement by the factory management, are responsible solely to the firms that employ them and not to the Ministry of Munitions. In establishments where T.N.T. (Tri-nitro-toluene) is handled, the presence of a lady Welfare Supervisor is compulsory; in all National factories such an officer is recognized as a necessary part of the staff; and in Controlled Establishments, where a number of female operators are employed, the management is officially encouraged to make such an appointment.

In many cases, engineering shops are for the first time employing female operators, and the management depute with relief all questions as to the personal requirements of the 'new labour' to the lady superintendent; in other instances, such matters as the engagement of the employees, canteen arrangements, and so on, are placed in the hands of other officials.

Hence, the duties of the lady Welfare Supervisor differ from factory to factory. Generally speaking, the supervisor, or lady superintendent within the factory is made responsible for some, or all, of the following matters:

1. She aids, or is entirely responsible for, the selection of women, girls, and boys for employment.

2. The general behaviour of the women and girls inside the factory falls under her purview.