XII
LADY MARY HAMILTON, MISS STELLA DRUMMOND, AND THE SKILLED WOMEN MUNITION WORKERS
Itis admitted on all sides that the output of munitions achieved by Great Britain since the spring of 1915 has been little less than miraculous, and this result is all the more astonishing when it is recalled that at least 25 per cent. of the men who were engaged in the chemical and engineering trades at the outbreak of hostilities have joined the Army. It was thus essential not only to fill the gaps, but also to augment the supply of available labour, in answer to the increased demand. The women of the Empire at once responded to the appeal for their help. A new and unsuspected reservoir of labour was thus discovered, without which, in the words of Mr. F. G. Kellaway, M.P. (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Munitions), “the Germans would by now have won the war.” The extent of the help rendered by women may perhaps be best realised by the fact that there are over 700,000 women engaged in munition work, employed on processes which cover practically the whole engineering and chemical trades. Under the general term “munition work” are included varied forms of work, both skilled and unskilled, undertaken by women, from the heavy manuallabour of loading and unloading trucks of ammunition, to the most intricate and delicate of engineering and electrical operations. To mention only a few of these highly skilled operations, women are building a great part of one of the best high-speed engines in the country, each woman setting her own tools, work which requires considerable technical skill. In the construction of chassis for heavy army lorries and in marine-engine building women are undertaking more and more responsible work. In the delicate work of constructing aero-engines they are turning on centre lathes to a half of a thousandth of an inch. Women are boring and rifling the barrel of the service rifle: they undertake the hydraulic riveting of boilers: they work the electric overhead travelling cranes for moving the enormous boilers of our men-of-war: they are employed extensively on turbine work. “So wide is the scope of women’s capabilities,” Mr. Kellaway stated recently, “that a prominent engineer has expressed his conviction that, given two more years of war, he would undertake to build a battleship from keel to aerial in all its complex detail, entirely by women’s labour.” And again: “To watch young girls hard at work for twelve hours a day, working on shells, lubricating bullets, handling cordite, making, inspecting, and gauging fuses, examining work where the thousandth part of an inch is a vital matter running their machines deftly and easily, and spending their days in the danger buildings among explosives with as little fuss as if they were knitting socks, brings a realisation of that which lies behind the list of operations on which women are engaged to-day.”
Women’s skill on complicated processes has beenacquired with a rapidity which has caused astonishment to experts. Before the war an apprenticeship of five or six years was considered necessary amongst Trades Unions for gaining mastery of some of the processes which women have learnt in a few months or even weeks. In measuring their achievement, however, it must never be forgotten what a debt is owed to British organised labour, which surrendered up in the hour of national crisis many of the legal rights and privileges established only after years of effort and controversy.
The women munition workers of to-day have come from all ranks of society, from every corner of the Empire, many of them entirely unaccustomed to industrial life or manual work, and many unacquainted even with life in England. An incident in one munitions works may be recalled as typical of the rest. Working side by side recently on the machines in a certain factory were a soldier’s wife from a city tenement, a vigorous daughter of the Empire from a lonely Rhodesian farm, a graduate from Girton, and a scion of one of the old aristocratic families of England. War has indeed proved a powerful solvent of social barriers, and one of the distinctive features of factory life in munition areas is the excellent leadership of the educated women who have entered the works. Typical of this class of munition workers are Lady Mary Hamilton, daughter of the Duke of Abercorn, and Miss Stella Drummond, daughter of General Drummond. These two friends, girls in years but soldiers in spirit, determined in the early stages of the war to serve their country by making munitions. Accordingly they applied for work as ordinary “hands” in a munition factory, and for some sixmonths were employed on repetition work in a shell factory. Lady Mary Hamilton has stated that she and Miss Drummond mastered the processes on which they were engaged in a few weeks, but admitted that a victory over the prejudices of the factory employees, inclined to resent the introduction of “swells,” was a lengthier task. Soon the skill of the two friends attracted the attention of those in authority, and they were selected for training in more advanced work. They were admitted into the factory school for skilled work, and after five weeks of this training they proceeded to the Government school at Brixton, London. There they followed a nine weeks’ course in such advanced work as tool-making and tool-setting—tasks which would not have been considered possible for women workers in pre-war days.
After successfully completing their training, Lady Mary Hamilton and Miss Drummond were allocated to a factory, where they were eventually placed in charge of eight machines each—Wells Turret Capstan lathes. They were then entirely responsible for the output of their machines, which involved responsibility for the workers employed on them. In this “shop” both boys and girls were employed, and the new charge-hands or tool-setters had to “make good” with the mixed staff. They were entirely successful, not only in the setting of the five or six requisite tools in each machine and in the making and grinding of their own tools, but in producing an output which was accurate to within a 200th part of a millimetre. So popular were they as leaders of their staff, that when Lady Mary Hamilton recently resigned her post before her marriage, and Miss Drummond’sservices were transferred to welfare supervision under the Ministry of Munitions, the regret expressed by the employees showed that they were losing comrades as well as officers.
There are also countless instances of uneducated women who have found themselves equal to technical work of considerable responsibility. For example, in one factory a woman driver works a 900-h.p. Willans plant. She starts the engine herself if required, watches the voltmeter and regulates the governor accordingly, wipes the commutators and regulates the brushes. This woman was formerly a kitchen-maid, and had no technical experience whatever. Another working woman recently lost the first finger and thumb of her left hand, owing to a loaded gaigne jamming in the press. After an absence of six weeks she returned to work, and is to-day back on the same work and getting an even greater output than before. Public recognition is due to the great army of women munition workers for their courage and endurance, both in the way in which they are facing the dangers incidental to some of their occupations and the monotony entailed in the regular performance of others.
LADY PERROTTSwaineTo face page67
LADY PERROTT
Swaine
To face page67