Page:Women Wanted.djvu/205

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THE NEW WAGE ENVELOPE
189

After the men that are dead, there are millions more, the maimed, the halt and the blind, for whom women must work for at least a generation after the fight is finished.

And her employer is going to need her! See all the rows and rows of little capstan lathes made smaller for a woman's hand? See the slender, supple fingers so well adapted to, we will say, gauging. See Henrietta Boardman with her finer colour sense for tool tempering than any man in C-F-5. See, oh, see the girl who drills 1000 holes an hour, where the man drilled 500!

Listen to Sir William Beardmore, owner of a projectile factory at Glasgow, in an address before the Iron and Steel Institute: "In the turning of the shell body, the actual output by girls with the same machines and working under exactly the same conditions, and for an equal number of hours, is quite double that of trained mechanics. In the boring of shells the output is also quite double, and in the curving, waving and finishing of shell bases, quite 120 per cent. more than that of experienced mechanics."

Again, in the workshops of Europe, above the rattle and the roar of crashing machinery in shop after shop, I hear the echo of some foreman's voice: "Here and here and here we shall never again employ men because we cannot afford to." In one great factory on the banks of the Seine where I inquired, "Are you going to keep women after the war?" an