Economic Effects of the World War Upon Women and Children in Great Britain

CHAPTER I. Introductory Summary

Introductory Summary

Under the conditions of modern warfare the industrial army in factory, field and mine is as essential to national success as the soldiers in the trenches. It is estimated that from three to five workers are necessary to keep a single soldier at the front completely equipped. Accordingly, it is not surprising that Great Britain during four years of warfare saw what was little short of an industrial revolution in order to keep up the supply of labor, to heighten the workers’ efficiency, and to secure their cooperation. No changes were more interesting and important than those which concerned working women and children.

Increase in Numbers

Upon women and children fell much of the great burden of keeping trade and industry active and of supplying war demands when several millions of men were taken away for military service. “Without the work of the women the war could not have gone on,” said representatives of the British Ministry of Munitions while in New York in November, 1917. Before the increased demand was felt, however, the dislocation of industry during the first few months of war brought far more suffering to women workers than to men. In September, 1914, over 40 per cent of the women were out of work or on short time. The “luxury” trades, which employed a large proportion of women, were most severely affected, and the women could not relieve the situation by enlisting as the men did. The prewar level of employment was not reached until April, 1915. Between that date and July, 1918, the number of females gainfully occupied increased by 1,659,000 over the number at work in July, 1914.

It is more difficult to ascertain the exact increase in the number of working children and young persons under eighteen, but apparently more children left school for work directly at the end of the compulsory education period and more were illegally employed. Official reports show an increase from 1,936,000 in July, 1914, to 2,278,000 in January, 1918, or 17.6 per cent, in the number of boys and girls under eighteen who were gainfully employed. In addition, in August, 1917, Mr. Herbert Fisher, president of the Board of Education, admitted in the House of Commons that in the past three years some 600,000 children under fourteen had been “put prematurely to work” through the relaxation of child labor and compulsory school laws. But in October of the same year the Board of Trade stated that 90,000 boys had left school for work during the war. The earlier exemptions, statistics of which have been published, were almost entirely for agriculture, but judging from Mr. Fisher’s statement a considerable number of exemptions were made for mining and munitions work during the third year of the war.

One of the most notable effects of the war was the number of occupations which women entered for the first time, until, in the winter of 1916-17, it could be said that “there are practically no trades in which some process of substitution [of women for men] has not taken place.” According to official figures, 1,816,000 females were taking men’s places in April, 1918.

During the first year of the war, however, women took men’s places for the most part in transportation, in retail trade and in clerical work rather than in manufacturing. In factory work, while some women were found to be undertaking processes slightly above their former level of skill in establishments where they had long been employed, the most general change was a transfer from slack industries to fill the expanding demands of firms making war equipment. There women were employed in the same kinds of work they had carried on before the war. The rush into the munitions industry, where women engaged in both “men’s” and “women’s” work, was one of the most important features of the second year of war. While a few additional women had begun to be taken on very early in the war, the increases were not large until the autumn of 1915 and early winter of 1916. During 1915-1916 also a decline was first noticed in the number of women in domestic service, in the printing trades, and in such typical “women’s trades” as confectionery and laundry work.

In the third year of the war the substitution of women for men on a large scale was extended from munitions to numerous staple industries having a less direct connection with the war. In many cases, of course, the women did not do precisely the same work as their masculine predecessors. Especially in the engineering trades almost an industrial revolution occurred between 1914 and 1917. Skilled processes were subdivided, and automatic machinery was introduced, all the changes tending toward greater specialization and the elimination of the need of all round craft skill. Early in the war it was generally considered that women were not as efficient as men except on routine and repetition work. But as the women gained experience it was observed that more and more of them were undertaking the whole of a skilled man’s job, and the testimony as to relative efficiency, on work within a woman’s strength, became far more favorable. During the last year of the struggle, while a few new fields were invaded, the process of substitution had progressed nearly as far as possible, and the year witnessed mainly a settling down into the new lines of work previously entered.

Though the increase in women workers in agriculture was less marked than in industry, beginning with the summer of 1916, the numbers rose, being 113,000 in 1918, in contrast to 80,000 in 1914. The widening of professional opportunities and the opening of some executive positions in industry and commerce were other important features of the changes in women’s work.

Women even engaged in work ordinarily a part of soldiers’ duties. Besides thousands of military nurses, a special corps of women under semi-military discipline was recruited for work as clerks, cooks, cleaners, chauffeurs and mechanics behind the lines in France. These “Waacs,” as they were popularly called, numbered over 50,000 by the end of the war. The “Wrens” did similar shore duty for the Navy, and the “Wrafs,” woodcutting for the Board of Trade. The women were able to take up their new lines of work with surprisingly little formal training, the chief exceptions being short practical courses for farm workers and semi-skilled munition makers.

Changes in the work done by children were considerably different for girls and for boys. For girls the choice of occupations widened much as for adult women. But for boys, though a few received earlier promotion to skilled men’s work than would ordinarily have been the case, on the whole training for skilled trades declined. With the men drawn into the war and with the increasing cost of living, it was natural that an increase should take place in the number of child street traders, and in the number of children working outside school hours.

Wages

Under war conditions the wages of both women and children were raised, probably the largest gains being made by boy and girl munition makers. The smallest rise seems to have occurred in the unregulated, so-called “women’s trades,” like laundry work. The trade boards made a number of increases in the industries within their jurisdiction, but the changes were seldom proportionate to the increase in the cost of living. Instead, what it was believed the industry would be able to support after the war was usually the determining factor. The economic position of the women who took men’s places was undoubtedly improved, though, even taking into account differences in experience and efficiency and the numerous changes in industrial method, the plane of economic equality between the two sexes was rarely attained. The government had the power to fix women’s wages on munitions work and in so doing it seemed at first to go on record in favor of the equal pay principle. But, in practice, the principle was not applied to unskilled and semi-skilled time work and the women failed to receive the same cost of living bonuses as the men, though unquestionably the wages of women substitutes in munitions work was much higher than the prewar level of women’s wages. Where other industries were covered by trade union agreements, women in most instances received “equal pay,” but in the remaining cases of substitution, for instance in agriculture, though considerable increases were gained, the men’s rates were by no means reached.

Recruiting New Workers

It is of interest to learn how England secured women workers to meet the demands of war. For the most part they came from three different groups. First, workers changed from the low paid “women’s trades” and various slack lines of work to munitions and different kinds of “men’s work.” Second, the additional women workers were mainly the wives and other members of working men’s families, most of the married women having worked before marriage. Soldiers’ wives often found their separation allowances insufficient. In general both patriotic motives and the rising cost of living undoubtedly played a part in sending these women and many young boys and girls into industry. Finally, a comparatively small number of women of a higher social class entered clerical work, agriculture and the munitions factories, in many instances in response to patriotic appeals.

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