Part 20

“England delayed the winning of the war two years by delaying the introduction of women one year.”

PARTIAL LIST OF VESTIBULE SCHOOLS OR TRAINING ROOMS IN FACTORIES

Recording and Computing Machines Co., C. U. Carpenter, C. P., Dayton, Ohio.

Curtiss Aeroplane Corporation, F. L. Glynn, Director of Training, Buffalo, N. Y.

Wright-Martin Aircraft Corporation, J. F. Johnson, Director of Training, New Brunswick, N. J., and Long Island City, N. Y.

Nordyke & Marmon Co., Indianapolis, Ind.

Packard Motor Car Company, Detroit, Mich.

Lincoln Motor Company, Detroit, Mich.

Norton Grinding Company, John C. Spence, Superintendent, Worcester, Mass.

NOTE.—The above training rooms are remarkably efficient and successful; they should be seen. By special arrangement the men above named are assisting in the development of training rooms in their vicinity. Write them when ready to act. Also O. D. Evans, very expert in training, Army Ordnance Department, Production Division, 1710 Market St., Philadelphia.

Gillette Safety Razor Company, Boston, Mass. Royal Typewriter Company, Hartford, Conn. Scovill Manufacturing Company, Waterbury, Conn. Remington Arms Company, Bridgeport, Conn. Bullard Engineering Company, Bridgeport, Conn. The H. E. Harris Engineering Company, Bridgeport, Conn. Trego Motor Company, New Haven, Conn. Winchester Repeating Arms Company, New Haven, Conn. Taft-Pierce Mfg. Co., Woonsocket, R. I. Brown & Sharpe Company, Providence, R. I. Crompton & Knowles Loom Works, Worcester, Mass. American Steel & Wire Company, Worcester, Mass. Norton Company, Worcester, Mass. John Bath & Company, Worcester, Mass. Graton & Knight Company, Worcester, Mass. Blanchard Machine Company, W. W. Blackman, Superintendent, Cambridge, Mass. E. W. Bliss Company (torpedo factory), Brooklyn, N. Y. Ford Instrument Company, New York City. Pierce-Arrow Company, Buffalo, N. Y. King Sewing Machine Company, Buffalo, N. Y. New York Airbrake Company, Watertown, N. Y. Seneca Falls Mfg. Company, Seneca Falls, N. Y. Savage Arms Company, Utica, N. Y. Henry Disston & Sons, Philadelphia, Pa. Fayette R. Plumb, Inc., Philadelphia, Pa. Hess Bright Manufacturing Company, Philadelphia, Pa. Roberts Filter Manufacturing Company, Philadelphia, Pa. Remington Arms Company, Eddystone Plant, Philadelphia, Pa. Naval Aircraft Factory, League Island, Philadelphia, Pa. American International Shipbuilding Company, Hog Island, Philadelphia, Pa. Newton Machine Tool Company, Philadelphia, Pa. Warren Webster Company, Philadelphia, Pa. L. H. Gilmer Company, Philadelphia, Pa. Burke Electric Company, Erie, Pa. Bethlehem Steel Company, Bethlehem, Pa. J. G. Brill Company, Philadelphia, Pa. Lanston Monotype Machine Company, Philadelphia, Pa. Leeds & Northrup Company, Philadelphia, Pa. David Lupton Sons Company, Philadelphia, Pa. North American Motors Company, Pottstown, Pa. Standard Aircraft Corporation, Elizabeth, N. J. Snead & Company Iron Works, Jersey City, N. J. Spicer Mfg. Company, Plainfield, N. J. International Motors Company, Plainfield, N. J. Woodbury Bag and Loading Company, Woodbury, N. J. American Shell Company, Paterson, N. J. Worthington Pump Company, Harrison, N. J. Neptune Meter Company, Hoboken, N. J. International Arms and Fuse Company, Bloomfield, N. J. Thomas A. Edison Corp., Orange, N. J. General Electric Company, Newark, N. J. Crocker-Wheeler Company, Ampere, N. J. Submarine Boat Corp., Newark, N. J. Barbour Flax Spinning Company, Paterson, N. J. American Tool Works Company, Cincinnati, Ohio. Lodge & Shipley Machine Tool Company, Cincinnati, Ohio. Cincinnati Milling Machine Company, Cincinnati, Ohio. Cincinnati Grinder Company, Cincinnati, Ohio. Cincinnati Planer Company, Cincinnati, Ohio. Cincinnati Bickford Tool Company, Cincinnati, Ohio. Oakley Machine Tool Company, Cincinnati, Ohio. Buckeye Twist Drill Company, Alliance, Ohio. Morgan Engineering Company, Alliance, Ohio. National Cash Register Company, Dayton, Ohio. Ohmer Fare Register Company, Dayton, Ohio. The Timken Roller Bearing Company, Canton, Ohio. Joseph & Feiss Company, May Thomsen, Employment Department, Cleveland, O. Mosler Safe Company, Hamilton, Ohio. Ford Motor Company, Detroit. Long Manufacturing Company, Detroit. Studebaker Corporation, Detroit. Solvay Process Company, Detroit. Morgan & Wright Company, Detroit. Detroit Steel Products Company, Detroit. Burroughs Adding Machine Company, Detroit. Dodge Brothers, Detroit. Detroit Lubricator Company, Detroit. Timken Detroit Axle Company, Detroit. Haskellite Mfg. Company, Grand Rapids, Mich. Republic Motor Truck Company, Alma, Mich. Sparks-Withington Company, Jackson, Mich. Illinois Tool Works, Chicago, Ill. Union Special Machines Company, Chicago, Ill. Western Cartridge Company, East Alton, Ill. Independent Pneumatic Tool Company, Aurora, Ill. Diamond Chain & Manufacturing Company, L. W. Wallace, Indianapolis, Ind. General Electric Company, E. H. Barnes, Superintendent, Fort Wayne, Ind. Pawling & Harnischfeger Company, Milwaukee, Wis.

EXTRACT PROM A REPORT BY MR. BEN H. MORGAN, EXPERT ADVISER TO THE DILUTION SECTION OF THE BRITISH MINISTRY OF MUNITIONS

When war broke out in August, 1914, the Government of the day urged employers to induce their skilled as well as unskilled men to join the colors. No good purpose will be served in my characterizing in suitable terms the unwisdom of such a step. Sufficient to say that it was a long time later before the Government realized that this was an Engineers’ war. The result was that the men with initiative, education and skill were among the first to lay aside their tools and join the colors. This was a stroke of such folly that it took the country quite a long time to recover from it. Not only had we lost men of brain and initiative but also a large proportion of the skill for carrying on a war in which machinery and munitions were a preponderating factor.

When the sudden call came for an enormous increase in guns and ammunition the folly of the step that had been taken was realized and arrangements were made to effect the return of a number of skilled men from the colors. This, however, was difficult to carry out, and on top of it came the realization that if every skilled man were returned we had not sufficient to produce the munitions essential to success.

It was in these circumstances that the present Prime Minister, Mr. Lloyd George, then Minister of Munitions, laid down the principle that no man must perform any work that could be efficiently performed by women. He foresaw that every man would be required for essentially man’s work. This involved the process which has become known as the Dilution of Labor. This dilution implies that:

(1) The employment of skilled men should be confined to work which cannot be efficiently performed by less skilled labor or by women.

(2) Semi-skilled and unskilled men should be employed on any work which does not necessitate the employment of skilled men and for which women are unsuitable.

(3) Women should be employed as far as practicable on all classes of work for which they are suitable.

This, at first sight, seems a simple arrangement, but I need not tell you that it is a complicated one and involves expenditure of time, patience and money on the part of the employers and sympathetic co-operation on the part of the skilled employees. Women have to receive careful training, intervening hands in the processes of production have to be upgraded and the skill in the factory has to be spread over a large area, usually necessitating more supervision and care if equal results are to be obtained. These are average conditions, but in a large number of cases the changes due to the introduction of women have resulted in considerably increased outputs over men’s records, and this not only on light repetition work, but on heavy turning and laboring work and skilled and semi-skilled non-repetition work.

The patriotism shown by the employers in meeting the numerous difficulties which confronted them in training women for every conceivable kind of work, in reorganizing their factories for new productions by new labor, adapting their machinery to the measure of skill and strength available to work them has been one of the most inspiriting experiences of the war. Women have been trained in an incredibly short time, handling appliances of all kinds have been installed, special tools and gauges have had to be made and often when a work has been set fairly going and was reaching full production, a change in the country’s needs for munitions compelled the Ministry to alter a design or a size or to put a firm on to a completely new product, and again the whole process of retaining employees and adapting tools and plant had to be gone through.

If the employer has done well for the country, so, on the other hand, no finer example of patriotism has been shown by any class than by the artisan as a whole. On an appeal being made to the Trades Unions soon after the outbreak of the war these Unions without a single exception agreed to do what the national interests required. A network of Trades Union rules and regulations, usages and customs, the result of many years of activity by organized labor, were freely set aside to allow for the introduction of women in nearly every class of work, subject to reasonable conditions.

Whatever some employers may think this was a gigantic sacrifice to make. It involved wages, hours, overtime, night work, Sunday work, meal times, holidays, shop regulations and demarcation arrangements, restriction of output, preparations of apprentices and classes of employees to be engaged, etc., etc. This structure of Trade Unionism the workingman agreed should be swept away to allow of the production of the maximum amount of munitions by the readiest methods and by any character of labor that was available—male or female—on the condition that the structure should be replaced at the close of the war.

This is splendid patriotism and when you add to the sacrifice of Trades Union Rules the burden, such as has fallen principally on the Trades Union men, of training the hundreds of thousands of women to do their work, this must increase our debt of appreciation and gratitude. It is only by the loyal co-operation of employer and employed that we are in the satisfactory position as regards munitions that we are to-day.

By the process of dilution we have been able to place in munition works about 950,000 women to do work from the heaviest laboring unskilled operation to the highest grade of toolroom non-repetition work. I do not hesitate to say that women have entirely destroyed our pre-war ideas as to what constitutes “skilled” work. When in the early days of the war women were trained to turn out 18 pdr. H. E. shell and equal the production of male labor many thought that such work, amounting as it does to little more than manipulative dexterity, was about the limit of the capacity of women who had not received a regular course of Engineering training. After a few months’ workshop experience, however, women are to-day building the greater part of one of the best High-Speed Engines in the country, each woman setting her own tools and work, and able to machine any piece of work that the tool she is on will take. Women are building guns, including the fine fitting work on the breech mechanism, and the cutting of large screw threads up to a shoulder. They are doing most of the work in some shops on three and one-half ton Army Lorries and will do practically the whole of it if the war lasts much longer, including chassis erection and testing. They are doing important work in marine engine building, turning connecting rods, propeller shaft liners and doing practically all in some cases of the marked-off drilling. The Aero Engine, as you well know, is a very fine piece of mechanism and at the outset was considered a tool room job throughout. In some shops women are to-day doing the greater part of the work turning on Centre Lathes to half a thousandth, milling webs of Clerget Cylinders on a booker Miller without stops and setting up their own jobs and working again to half a thousandth limit, boring cylinders on a No. 9 Herbert and similar work on a Gishlet, setting up their own jobs, turning and finishing test pieces in various metals to a 5,000th; making tools and gauges of all kinds to fine limits; all varieties of bench fitting to drawings and marking-off work of every description. Locomotive work, steel constructional work, boilers, bending, drilling and riveting. Women are doing magnificent work both in regard to accuracy and output.

On shells of all nature women should, of course, be principally employed. Contracts for shell will only be renewed and continued after March 31st next (1917) with those firms who employ 80 per cent. of female labor on shell of sizes from 2.75” to 4.5” inclusive. On larger sizes of shell, contracts will only be renewed if the Ministry of Munitions’ instructions in regard to dilution have been carried out, not only in regard to the proportion of women to be employed in each factory but the proportions of semi-skilled men.

“The employer and employee have a mutual—not identical—interest in procuring the largest possible production from a given amount of labor.”—Hon. Wm. B. Wilson, Secretary of Labor. (Address before Chamber of Commerce of U. S. A., September 20, 1917.)

“The factory, like the trench, is a post of combat. The duty is not to abandon it before the enemy. My compliments to your Union for having understood it so well.”—Marshal Foch. (Cablegram August 12th to the International Typographical Union, in convention at Scranton, Pa.)

Transcriber’s Notes