MOBILIZING WOMAN-POWER

By HARRIOT STANTON BLATCH

1918

[Illustration: Jeanne d'Arc. --the spirit of the women of the Allies. ]

TO THE ABLE AND DEVOTED WOMEN OF GREAT BRITAIN AND FRANCE

Who have stood behind the armies of the Allies through the years of theGreat War as an unswerving second line of defense against an onslaughtupon the liberty and civilization of the world, I dedicate this volume. 

HARRIOT STANTON BLATCH

CONTENTS

FOREWORD BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT

 I. OUR FOE

 II. WINNING THE WAR

 III. MOBILIZING WOMEN IN GREAT BRITAIN

 IV. MOBILIZING WOMEN IN FRANCE

 V. MOBILIZING WOMEN IN GERMANY

 VI. WOMEN OVER THE TOP IN AMERICA

 VII. EVE'S PAY ENVELOPE

VIII. POOLING BRAINS

 IX. "BUSINESS AS USUAL"

 X. "AS MOTHER USED TO DO"

 XI. A LAND ARMY

 XII. WOMAN'S PART IN SAVING CIVILIZATION

ILLUSTRATIONS

Jeanne d'Arc--the spirit of the women of the Allies

They wear the uniforms of the Edinburgh trams and the New York Citysubway and trolley guards, with pride and purpose. 

Then--the offered service of the Women's Reserve Ambulance Corps inEngland was spurned. Now--they wear shrapnel helmets while workingduring the Zeppelin raids. 

The French poilu on furlough is put to work harrowing. 

Has there ever been anything impossible to French women since the timeof Jeanne d'Arc? The fields must be harrowed--they have no horses. 

The daily round in the Erie Railroad workshops. 

In the well-lighted factory of the Briggs and Stratton Company, Milwaukee, the girls are comfortably and becomingly garbed for work. 

The women of the Motor Corps of the National League for Woman's Servicerefuting the traditions that women have neither strength nor endurance. 

Down the street they come, beginning their pilgrimage of alleviation andsuccor on the battlefields of France. 

How can business be "as usual" when in Paris there are about 1800 ofthese small workshops where a woman dips Bengal Fire and grenades into abath of paraffin!

Countess de Berkaim and her canteen in the Gare de St. Lazarre, Paris. 

An agricultural unit in the uniform approved by the Woman's Land Army ofAmerica. 

A useful blending of Allied women. Miss Kathleen Burke (Scotch)exhibiting the X-ray ambulance equipped by Mrs. Ayrton (English) andMadame Curie (French). 

FOREWORD

It is a real pleasure to write this foreword to the book which Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch dedicates to the women of Great Britain andFrance; to the women who through the years of the great war have stoodas the second line of defense against the German horror which menacesthe liberty and civilization of the entire world. 

There could be no more timely book. Mrs. Blatch's aim is to stir thewomen of this country to the knowledge that this is their war, and alsoto make all our people feel that we, and especially our government, should welcome the service of women, and make use of it to the utmost. In other words, the appeal of Mrs. Blatch is essentially an appeal forservice. No one has more vividly realized that service benefits the onewho serves precisely as it benefits the one who is served. I join withher in the appeal that the women shall back the men with service, andthat the men in their turn shall frankly and eagerly welcome therendering of such service _on the basis of service by equals for acommon end_. 

Mrs. Blatch makes her appeal primarily because of the war needs of themoment. But she has in view no less the great tasks of the future. Iwelcome her book as an answer to the cry that the admission of women toan equal share in the right of self government will tend to soften thebody politic. Most certainly I will ever set my face like flint againstany unhealthy softening of our civilization, and as an answer in advanceto hyper-criticism I explain that I do not mean softness in the sense oftender-heartedness; I mean the softness which, extends to the head andto the moral fibre, I mean the softness which manifests itself either inunhealthy sentimentality or in a materialism which may be eitherthoughtless and pleasure-loving or sordid and money-getting. I believethat the best women, when thoroughly aroused, and when the right appealis made to them, will offer our surest means of resisting this unhealthysoftening. 

No man who is not blind can fail to see that we have entered a new dayin the great epic march of the ages. For good or for evil the old dayshave passed; and it rests with us, the men and women now alive, todecide whether in the new days the world is to be a better or a worseplace to live in, for our descendants. 

In this new world women are to stand on an equal footing with men, inways and to an extent never hitherto dreamed of. In this country theyare on the eve of securing, and in much of the country have alreadysecured, their full political rights. It is imperative that they shouldunderstand, exactly as it is imperative that men should understand, thatsuch rights are of worse than no avail, unless the will for theperformance of duty goes hand in hand with the acquirement of theprivilege. 

If the women in this country reinforce the elements that tend to asoftening of the moral fibre, to a weakening of the will, andunwillingness to look ahead or to face hardship and labor and danger fora high ideal--then all of us alike, men and women, will suffer. But ifthey show, under the new conditions, the will to develop strength, andthe high idealism and the iron resolution which under less favorablecircumstances were shown by the women of the Revolution and of the CivilWar, then our nation has before it a career of greatness never hithertoequaled. This book is fundamentally an appeal, not that woman shallenjoy any privilege unearned, but that hers shall be the right to domore than she has ever yet done, and to do it on terms ofself-respecting partnership with men. Equality of right does not meanidentity of function; but it does necessarily imply identity of purposein the performance of duty. 

Mrs. Blatch shows why every woman who inherits the womanly virtues ofthe past, and who has grasped the ideal of the added womanly virtues ofthe present and the future, should support this war with all herstrength and soul. She testifies from personal knowledge to the hideousbrutalities shown toward women and children by the Germany of to-day;and she adds the fine sentence: "Women fight for a place in the sun forthose who hold right above might. "

She shows why women must unstintedly give their labor in order to winthis war; and why the labor of the women must be used to back up boththe labor and the fighting work of the men, for the fighting men leavegaps in the labor world which must be filled by the work of women. Shesays in another sentence worth remembering, "The man behind the countershould of course be moved to a muscular employment; but we must notinterpret his dalliance with tapes and ribbons as a proof of asuperfluity of men. "

Particularly valuable is her description of the mobilization of women inGreat Britain and France. From these facts she draws the conclusion asto America's needs along this very line. She paints as vividly as I haveever known painted, the truth as to why it is a merit that women shouldbe forced to work, a merit that _every one_ should be forced to work! Itis just as good for women as for men that they should have to use bodyand mind, that they should not be idlers. As she puts it, "Activemothers insure a virile race. The peaceful nation, if its women fallvictims to the luxury which rapidly increasing wealth brings, willdecay. " "Man power must give itself unreservedly at the front. Womanpower must show not only eagerness but fitness to substitute forman power. "

I commend especially the chapter containing the sentence, "This war mayprove to us the wisdom and economy of devoting public funds to mothersrather than to crèches and juvenile asylums;" and also the chapter inwhich the author tells women that if they are merely looking for a softplace in life their collective demand for a fair field and no favor willbe wholly ineffective. The doors for service now stand open, and itrests with the women themselves to say whether they will enter in!

The last chapter is itself an unconscious justification of woman's rightto a share in the great governmental decisions which to-day are vital. No statesman or publicist could set forth more clearly than Mrs. Blatchthe need of winning this war, in order to prevent either endless andruinous wars in the future, or else a world despotism which would meanthe atrophy of everything that really tends to the elevation of mankind. 

Mrs. Blatch has herself rendered a very real service by this appeal thatwomen should serve, and that men should let them serve. 

Theodore Roosevelt

I

OUR FOE

The nations in which women have influenced national aims face the nationthat glorifies brute force. America opposes the exaltation of theglittering sword; opposes the determination of one nation to dominatethe world; opposes the claim that the head of one ruling family is thedirect and only representative of the Creator; and, above all, Americaopposes the idea that might makes right. 

Let us admit the full weight of the paradox that a people in the name ofpeace turns to force of arms. The tragedy for us lay in there being nochoice of ways, since pacific groups had failed to create machinery toadjust vital international differences, and since the Allies each inturn, we the last, had been struck by a foe determined to settledisagreements by force. 

Never did a nation make a crusade more just than this of ours. We werepatient, too long patient, perhaps, with challenges. We seek noconquest. We fight to protect the freedom of our citizens. On America'sstandard is written democracy, on that of Germany autocracy. Withoutreservation women can give their all to attain our end. 

There may be a cleavage between the German people and the ruling class. It may be that our foe is merely the military caste, though I aminclined to believe that we have the entire German nation on our hands. The supremacy of might may be a doctrine merely instilled in the mindsof the people by its rulers. Perhaps the weed is not indigenous, but itflourishes, nevertheless. Rabbits did not belong in Australia, norpondweed in England, but there they are, and dominating the situation. Arrogance of the strong towards the weak, of the better placed towardsthe less well placed, is part of the government teaching in Germany. Thepeasant woman harries the dog that strains at the market cart, herhusband harries her as she helps the cow drag the plough, the pettyofficer harries the peasant when he is a raw recruit, and the younglieutenant harries the petty officer, and so it goes up to thehighest, --a well-planned system on the part of the superior to bring theinferior to a high point of material efficiency. The propelling spiritis devotion to the Fatherland: each believes himself a cog in themachine chosen of God to achieve His purposes on earth. The world hearsof the Kaiser's "Ich und Gott, " of his mailed fist beating down hisenemies, but those who have lived in Germany know that exactly the samespirit reigns in every class. The strong in chastizing his inferior hasthe conviction that since might makes right he is the directrepresentative of Deity on the particular occasion. 

The overbearing spirit of the Prussian military caste has drilled a raceto worship might; men are overbearing towards women, women towardschildren, and the laws reflect the cruelties of the strong towardsthe weak. 

As the recent petition of German suffragists to the Reichstag states, their country stands "in the lowest rank of nations as regards women'srights. " It is a platitude just now worth repeating that thecivilization of a people is indicated by the position accorded to itswomen. On that head, then, the Teutonic Kultur stands challenged. 

An English friend of mine threw down the gauntlet thirty years ago. Shehad married a German officer. After living at army posts all over theEmpire, she declared, "What we foreigners take as simple childlikenessin the Germans is merely lack of civilization. " This keen analysis camefrom a woman trained as an investigator, and equipped with perfectcommand of the language of her adopted country. 

"Lack of civilization, "--perhaps that explains my having seen again andagain officers striking the soldiers they were drilling, and journeysmade torture through witnessing slapping and brow-beating of children bytheir parents. The memory of a father's conduct towards his little sonwill never be wiped out. He twisted the child's arm, struck him savagelyfrom time to time, and for no reason but that the child did not sit boltupright and keep absolutely motionless. The witnesses of the brutalitysmiled approvingly at the man, and scowled at the child. My own protestbeing met with amazed silence and in no way regarded, I left thecompartment. I was near Eisenach, and I wished some good fairy would putin my hand that inkpot which Luther threw at the devil. Severity towardschildren is the rule. The child for weal or woe is in the completecontrol of its parents, and corporal punishment is allowed in theschools. The grim saying, "Saure Wochen, frohe Feste, " seems to expressthe pedagogic philosophy. The only trouble is that nature does not givethis attitude her sanction, for Germany reveals to us that figure, themost pathetic in life, the child suicide. 

The man responding to his stern upbringing is in turn cruel to hisinferiors, and full of subterfuge in dealing with equals. He is at homein the intrigues which have startled the world. In such a society thefrank and gentle go to the wall, or--get into trouble and emigrate. Wehave profited--let us not forget it--by the plucky German immigrants whothrew off the yoke, and who now have the satisfaction of findingthemselves fighting shoulder to shoulder with the men of their adoptedcountry to free the Fatherland of the taskmaster. 

The philosophy of might quite naturally reflects itself in the educationof girls. Once when I visited a Höhere Töchter Schule, the principal hada class in geometry recite for my edification. I soon saw that the younggirl who had been chosen as the star pupil to wrestle with the ponsasinorum was giving an exhibition of memorizing and not of mathematicalreasoning. I asked the principal if my surmise were correct. He repliedwithout hesitation, "Yes, it was entirely a feat in memory. Females haveonly low reasoning power. " I urged that if this were so, it would bewell to train the faculty, but he countered with the assertion, "WeGermans do not think so. Women are happier and more usefulwithout logic. "

It would be difficult to surpass in its subtle cruelty the etiquette ata military function. The lieutenant and his wife come early, --this isexpected of them. For a few moments they play the role of honoredguests. The wife is shown by her hostess to the sofa and is seated thereas a mark of distinction. Then arrive the captain and his wife. They areimmediately the distinguished guests. The wife is shown to the sofa andthe lieutenant's little Frau must get herself out of the way as bestshe can. 

My speculation, often indulged in, as to what would happen if themajor's wife did not move from the sofa when the colonel's wifeappeared, ended in assurance that a severe punishment would be meted outto her, when I heard from an officer the story of the way his regimentdealt with a woman who ignored another bit of military etiquette. Adébutant, once honored by being asked to dance with an officer at aball, must never, it seems, demean herself by accepting a civilianpartner. But in a town where my friend's regiment was stationed a verypretty and popular young girl who had been taken, so to speak, to thebosom of the regiment, danced one night at the Kurhaus early in thesummer season with a civilian, distinguished, undeniably, butunmistakably civilian. The officers of the regiment met, weighed themighty question of the girl's offense, and solemnly resolved never againto ask the culprit for a dance. I protested at the cruelty of a body ofmen deliberately turning a pretty young thing into a wall-flower for anentire season. The officer took my protest as an added reason forcongratulation upon their conduct. They meant to be cruel. My wordsproved how well they had succeeded. 

Another little straw showing the set of the wind: we were sitting, fourAmericans, one lovely early summer day, in a restaurant at Swinemünde. We had the window open, looking out over the sea. At the next table weresome officers, one of whom with an "Es zieht, " but not with a "by yourleave, " came over to our table and shut the window with a bang. Thegentleman with us asked if we wanted the window closed, and on beingassured we did not, quietly rose and opened it again. No one who doesnot know Prussia can imagine the threatening atmosphere which filledthat café. 

We met the officers the same night at the Kurhaus dance. They wereintroduced, and almost immediately one of them brought up the windowincident and said most impressively that if ladies had not been at thetable, our escort would have been "called out. " We could see theyregarded us as unworthy of being even transient participants of Kulturwhen we opined that no American man would accept a challenge, and if sounwise as to do so, his womenfolk would lock him up until he reached asounder judgment! The swords rattled in their sabres when the frivolousmember of our party said with a tone of finality, "You see we wouldn'tlike our men's faces to look as if they had got into their mothers'chopping bowls!"

Although I had often lived months on end with all these petty tyranniesof the mailed fist, and although life had taught me later that peoplesgrow by what they feed upon, yet when I read the Bryce report, [1] Germanfrightfulness seemed too inhuman for belief. While still holding myjudgment in reserve, I met an intimate friend, a Prussian officer. Hehappened to mention letters he had received from his relatives in Berlinand at the front, and when I expressed a wish to hear them, kindly askedwhether he should translate them or read them in German as they stood. Laughingly I ventured on the German, saying I would at least find outhow much I had forgotten. So I sat and listened with ears pricked up. Some of the letters were from women folk and told of war conditions inthe capital. They were interesting at the time but not worth repeatingnow. Then came a letter from a nephew, a lieutenant. He gave hisexperience in crossing Belgium, told how in one village his men asked ayoung woman with her tiny baby on her arm for water, how she answeredresentfully, and then, how he shot her--and her baby. I exclaimed, thinking I had lost the thread of the letter, "Not the baby?" And theman I supposed I knew as civilized, replied with a cruel smile, "Yes--discipline!" That was frank, frank as a child would have been, with no realization of the self-revelation of it. The young officer didthe deed, wrote of it to his uncle, and the uncle, without vision andunderstanding, perverted by his training, did not feel shame and burythe secret in his own heart, but treasured the evidence against his ownnephew, and laid it open before an American woman. 

I believed the Bryce report--every word of it!

And I hate the system that has so bent and crippled a great race. Revenge we must not feel, that would be to innoculate ourselves with theenemy's virus. But let us be awake to the fact that might making rightcuts athwart our ideals. German Kultur, through worship of efficiency, cramps originality and initiative, while our aim--why not be frank aboutit!--is the protection of inefficiency, which means sympathy withchildhood, and opportunity for the spirit of art. German Kultur fixes aninflexible limit to the aspirations of women, while our goal is completefreedom for the mothers of men. 

The women of the Allies can fight for all that their men fight for--fornational self-respect, for protection of citizens, for the sacredness ofinternational agreements, for the rights of small nations, for thesecurity of democracy, and then our women can be inspired by one thingmore--the safety and development of all those things which they havewon for human welfare in a long and bloodless battle. 

Women fight for a place in the sun for those who hold right above might. 

[Footnote 1: Report of the Committee on Alleged German Outragesappointed by his Britannic Majesty's Government, 1915. MacmillanCompany, New York. 

Evidence and Documents laid before the Committee on Alleged GermanOutrages. Ballantyne, Hanson & Co. , London. 1915. ]

II

WINNING THE WAR

The group of nations that can make the greatest savings, will bevictorious, counsels one; the group that can produce the most food andnourish the populations best, will win the war, urges another; butwhatever the prophecy, whatever the advice, all paths to victory liethrough labor-power. 

Needs are not answered in our day by manna dropping from heaven. Whetherit is food or big guns that are wanted, ships or coal, we can only getour heart's desire by toil. Where are the workers who will win the war?

We are a bit spoiled in the United States. We have been accustomed torub our Aladdin's lamp of opportunity and the good genii have sent usworkers. But suddenly, no matter how great our efforts, no one answersour appeal. The reservoir of immigrant labor has run dry. We are insorry plight, for we have suffered from emigration, too. Thousands ofalien workers have been called back to serve in the armies of theAllies. In my own little village on Long Island the industrious Italiancolony was broken up by the call to return to the colors in Piedmont. 

Then, too, while Europe suffers loss of labor, as do we, when men aremobilized, our situation is peculiarly poignant, for when our armies aregone they are gone. At first this was true in Europe. Men entered thearmy and were employed as soldiers only. After a time it was realizedthat the war would not be short, that fields must not lie untilled foryears, nor men undergo the deteriorating effects of trench warfarecontinuously. The fallow field and the stale soldier werebrought together. 

We have all chanced on photographs of European soldiers helping thewomen plough in springtime, and reap the harvest in the autumn. Perhapswe have regarded the scene as a mere pastoral episode in a happy leavefrom the battle front, instead of realizing that it is a snapshotillustrating a well organized plan of securing labor. The soldiers aregiven a furlough and are sent where the agricultural need is pressing. But the American soldier will not be able to lend his skill in givingthe home fields a rich seed time and harvest. The two needs, the fieldfor the touch of the human hand, and the soldier for labor under calmskies, cannot in our case be coördinated. 

Scarcity of labor is not only certain to grow, but the demands upon theUnited States for service are increasing by leaps and bounds. Americamust throw man-power into the trenches, must feed herself, mustcontribute more and ever more food to the hungry populations of Europe, must meet the old industrial obligations, and respond to a whole rangeof new business requirements. And she is called upon for this effort ata time when national prosperity is already making full use of man-power. 

When Europe went to war, the world had been suffering from depression ayear and more. Immediately on the outbreak of hostilities whole lines ofbusiness shut down. Unemployment became serious. There were idle handseverywhere. Germany, of all the belligerents, rallied most quickly tomeet war conditions. Unemployment gave place to a shortage of laborsooner there than elsewhere. Great Britain did not begin to get the paceuntil the middle of 1915. 

The business situation in the United States upon its entrance into thewar was the antithesis of this. For over a year, depression had beensuperseded by increased industry, high wages, and greater demand forlabor. The country as measured by the ordinary financial signs, by itscommerce, by its labor market, was more prosperous than it had been foryears. Tremendous requisitions were being made upon us by Europe, and tothe limit of available labor we were answering them. Then into oureconomic life, with industrial forces already working at high pressure, were injected the new demands arising from changing the United Statesfrom a people as unprepared for effective hostilities as a baby in itscradle, into a nation equipped for war. There was no unemployment, buton the contrary, shortage of labor. 

The country calls for everything, and all at once, like the spoiledchild on suddenly waking. It must have, and without delay, ships, coal, cars, cantonments, uniforms, rules, and food, food, food. How can theneeds be supplied and with a million and a half of men dropping workbesides? By woman-power or coolie labor. Those are the horns of thedilemma presented to puzzled America. The Senate of the United Statesdirects its Committee of Agriculture to ponder well the coolie problem, for men hesitate to have women put their shoulder to the wheel. Tradeunionists are right in urging that a republic has no place for adisfranchised class of imported toilers. Equally true is it that as anation we have shown no gift for dealing with less developed races. Andyet labor we must have. Will American women supply it, will they, lovingease, favor contract labor from the outside, or will they accept theoptimistic view that lack of labor is not acute?

The procrastinator queries, "Cannot American man-power meet the demand?"It can, for a time perhaps, if the draft for the army goes as slowly inthe future as it has in the past. 

However, at any moment a full realization may come to us of thesignificance of the fact that while the United States is putting onlythree percent of its workers into the fighting forces, Great Britain hasput twenty-five percent, and is now combing its industrial army over tofind an additional five hundred thousand men to throw on the Frenchfront. It is probable that it will be felt by this country in the nearfuture that such a contrast of fulfillment of obligation cannot continuewithout serious reflection on our national honor. Roughly speaking, Great Britain has twenty million persons in gainful pursuits. Of these, five million have already been taken for the army. The contribution ofFrance is still greater. Her military force has reached the appallingproportion of one-fifth of her entire population. But we who havethirty-five million in gainful occupations are giving a paltry onemillion, five hundred thousand in service with our Allies. The situationis not creditable to us, and one of the things which stands in the wayof the United States reaching a more worthy position is reluctance tosee its women shouldering economic burdens. 

[Illustration: They wear the uniforms of the Edinburgh trams and theNew York City subway and trolley guards, with pride and purpose. ]

While it is quite true that shifting of man-power is needed, mereshuffling of the cards, as labor leaders suggest, won't give a biggerpack. Fifty-two cards it remains, though the Jack may be put into a moresuitable position. The man behind the counter should of course be movedto a muscular employment, but we must not interpret his dalliance withtapes and ribbons as proof of a superfluity of men. 

The latest reports of the New York State Department of Labor reflect themeagerness of the supply. Here are some dull figures to proveit:--comparing the situation with a year ago, we find in a correspondingmonth, only one percent more employees this year, with a wage advance ofseventeen percent. Drawing the comparison between this year and twoyears ago, there is an advance of "fifteen percent in employees andfifty-one percent in wages;" and an increase of "thirty percent inemployees and eighty-seven percent in wages, " if this year is comparedwith the conditions when the world was suffering from industrialdepression. The State employment offices report eight thousand threehundred and seventy-six requests for workers against seven thousand, sixhundred and fifty applicants for employment, and of the latter onlyseventy-three percent were fitted for the grades of work open to them, and were placed in situations. 

The last records of conditions in the Wilkes-Barre coal regions confirmthe fact of labor scarcity. There are one hundred and fifty-two thousandmen and boys at work today in the anthracite fields, twenty-fivethousand less than the number employed in 1916. These miners, owing tothe prod of the highest wages ever received--the skilled man earningfrom forty dollars to seventy-five dollars a week--and to appeals totheir patriotism, are individually producing a larger output than everbefore. It is considered that production, with the present labor force, is at its maximum, and if a yield of coal commensurate with the world'sneed is to be attained, at least seventy percent more men mustbe supplied. 

This is a call for man-power in addition to that suggested by the FuelAdministrator to the effect that lack of coal is partly lack of cars andthat "back of the transportation shortage lies labor shortage. " An orderwas sent out by the Director General of Railways, soon after hisappointment, that mechanics from the repair shops of the west were to beshifted to the east to supply the call for help on the Atlantic border. 

Suggestive of the cause of all this shortage, float the service flags ofthe mining and railway companies, the hundreds of glowing stars tellingtheir tale of men gone to the front, and of just so many stars torn fromthe standards of the industrial army at home. 

The Shipping Board recently called for two hundred and fifty thousandmen to be gradually recruited as a skilled army for work in shipyards. At the same time the Congress passed an appropriation of fifty milliondollars for building houses to accommodate ship labor. Six months agoonly fifty thousand men were employed in ship-building, today there areone hundred and forty-five thousand. This rapid drawing of men to newcenters creates a housing problem so huge that it must he met by thegovernment; and it need hardly be pointed out, shelter can be built onlyby human hands. 

One state official, prompted no doubt by a wise hostility to coolielabor, and dread of woman labor, has gone so far as to declare publiclythat any employer who will pay "adequate wages can get all the labor herequires. " This view suggests that we may soon have to adopt the methodsof other belligerents and stop employers by law from stealing aneighbor's working force. I know of a shipyard with a normal pay-roll offive hundred hands, which in one year engaged and lost to nearbymunition factories thirteen thousand laborers. Such "shifting, " hidingas it does shortage of manpower, leads to serious loss in our productiveefficiency and should not be allowed to go unchecked. 

The manager of one of the New York City street railways met withcomplete denial the easy optimism that adequate remuneration willcommand a sufficient supply of men. He told me that he had introducedwomen at the same wage as male conductors, not because he wanted women, but because he now had only five applications by fit men to thirty orforty formerly. There were men to be had, he said, and at lower wagesthan his company was paying; but they were "not of the class capable offulfilling the requirements of the position. "

The Labor Administration announced on its creation that its "policywould be to prevent woman labor in positions for which men areavailable, " and one of the deputy commissioners of the IndustrialCommission of the State of New York declared quite frankly at a laborconference that "if he could, he would exclude women from industryaltogether. "

We may try to prevent the oncoming tide of the economic independence ofwomen, but it will not be possible to force the business world to acceptpermanently the service of the inefficient in place of that of the alertand intelligent. To carry on the economic life of a nation with itslabor flotsam and jetsam is loss at any time; in time of storm andstress it is suicide. 

Man-power is short, seriously so. The farm is always the best barometerto give warning of scarcity of labor. The land has been drained of itsworkers. A fair wage would keep them on the farm--this is the philosophyof laissez faire. Without stopping to inquire as to what the munitionworks would then do, we can still see that it is doubtful whether thefarm can act as magnet. Even men, let us venture the suggestion, likechange for the mere sake of change. A middle-aged man, who had taken upwork at Bridgeport, said to me, "I've mulled around on the farm all mydays. I grabbed the first chance to get away. " And then there's a finerspirit prompting the desertion of the hoe. A man of thirty-three gave methe point of view. "My brother is 'over there, ' and I feel as if I werebacking him up by making guns. "

The only thing that can change the idea that farming is "mullingaround, " and making a gun "backs up" the man at the front morethoroughly than raising turnips, is to bring to the farm new workers whorealize the vital part played by food in the winning of the war. As themodern industrial system has developed with its marvels of specializedmachinery, its army of employees gathered and dispersed on the stroke ofthe clock, and strong organizations created to protect the interests ofthe worker, the calm and quiet processes of agriculture have incomparison grown colorless. The average farmhand has never found pushand drive and group action on the farm, but only individualism to theextreme of isolation. And now in war time, when in addition to its usuallife of stirring contacts, the factory takes on an intimate and strikingrelation to the intense experience of the battle front, the work of thefarm seems as flat as it is likely to be unprofitable. The man in thefurrow has no idea that he is "backing up" the boy in the trench. 

The farmer in his turn does not find himself part of the wider relationsthat attract and support the manufacturer. Crops are not grown on order. The marketing is as uncertain as the weather. The farmer could by higherwages attract more labor, but as the selling of the harvest remains ahaphazard matter, the venture might mean ruin all the more certain andserious were wage outlay large. In response to a call for food and anappeal to his patriotism, the farmer has repeatedly made unusual effortsto bring his land to the maximum fertility, only to find his crops oftena dead loss, as he could not secure the labor to harvest them. I saw, one summer, acres of garden truck at its prime ploughed under inConnecticut because of a shortage of labor. I saw fruit left rotting bythe bushel in the orchards near Rochester because of scarcity of pickersand a doubt of the reliability of the market. The industry which meansmore than any other to the well-being of humanity at this crisis, is thesport of methods outgrown and of servants who lack understanding andinspiration. The war may furnish the spark for the needed revolution. Man-power is not available, woman-power is at hand. A new labor forcealways brings ideas and ideals peculiar to itself. May not women asfresh recruits in a land army stamp their likes and dislikes on farmlife? Their enthusiasm may put staleness to rout, and the group systemof women land workers, already tested in the crucible of experience, maybring to the farm the needed antidote to isolation. 

To win the war we must have man-power in the trenches sufficient to winit with. To win, every soldier, every sailor, must be well fed, wellclothed, well equipped. To win, behind the armed forces must standdetermined peoples. To win, the people of America and her Allies must beheartened by care and food. 

The sun shines on the fertile land, the earth teems with forests, withcoal, with every necessary mineral and food, but labor, labor alone cantransform all to meet our necessities. Man-power unaided cannot supplythe demand. Women in America must shoulder as nobly as have the women ofEurope, this duty. They must answer their country's call. Let them seeclearly that the desire of their men to shield them from possible injuryexposes the nation and the world to actual danger. 

Our winning of the war depends upon the full use of the energy of ourentire people. Every muscle, every brain, must be mobilized if thenational aim is to be achieved. 

III

MOBILIZING WOMEN IN GREAT BRITAIN [2]

In no country have women reached a mobilization so complete andsystematized as in Great Britain. This mobilization covers the wholefield of war service--in industry, business and professional life, andin government administration. Women serve on the Ministry of Food andare included in the membership of twenty-five of the importantgovernment committees, not auxiliary or advisory, but administrativecommittees, such as those on War Pensions, on Disabled Officers and Men, on Education after the War, and the Labor Commission to Deal withIndustrial Unrest. 

In short, the women of Great Britain are working side by side with menin the initiation and execution of plans to solve the problems whichconfront the nation. 

Four committees, as for instance those making investigations andrecommendations on Women's Wages and Drink Among Women, are entirelycomposed of women, and great departments, such as the Women's Land Army, the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, are officered throughout by them. Hospitals under the War Office have been placed in complete control ofmedical women; they take rank with medical men in the army and receivethe pay going with their commissions. 

When Great Britain recognized that the war could not be won by merelysending splendid fighters to the front and meeting the wastage by steadydrafts upon the manhood of the country, she began to build an efficientorganization of industry at home. 

To the call for labor-power British women gave instant response. Inmunitions a million are mobilized, in the Land Army there have beendrafted and actually placed on the farms over three hundred thousand, and in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps fourteen thousand women areworking in direct connection with the fighting force, and an additionalten thousand are being called out for service each month. In theclerical force of the government departments, some of which had neverseen women before in their sacred precincts, over one hundred andninety-eight thousand are now working. And the women civil servants arenot only engaged in indoor service, but outside too, most of thecarrying of mail being in their hands. 

Women are dock-laborers, some seven thousand strong. Four thousand actas patrols and police, forty thousand are in banks and various financialhouses. It is said that there are in Great Britain scarce a millionwomen--and they are mostly occupied as housewives--who could rendergreater service to their country than that which they are now giving. 

The wide inclusion of women in government administration is verystriking to us in America. But we must not forget that the contrastbetween the two countries in the participation of women in politicallife and public service has always been great. The women of the UnitedKingdom have enjoyed the municipal and county franchise for years. For along time large numbers of women have been called to administrativepositions. They have had thorough training in government as Poor LawGuardians, District and County Councilors, members of School Boards. Nowomen, the whole world over, are equipped as those of Great Britain forservice to the state. 

In the glamor of the extremely striking government service of Britishwomen, we must not overlook their non-official organizations. Perhapsthese offer the most valuable suggestions for America. They are nearenough to our experience to be quite understandable. 

The mother country is not under regimentation. Originality andinitiative have full play. Perhaps it was well that the governmentfailed to appreciate what women could do, and neglected them so long. Most of the effective work was started in volunteer societies and hadproved a success before there was an official laying on of hands. Anglo-Saxons--it is our strong point--always work from below, up. 

A glance at any account of the mobilization of woman-power in GreatBritain, Miss Fraser's admirable "Women and War Work, " for instance, will reveal the printed page dotted thick with the names of volunteerassociations. A woman with sympathy sees a need, she gets an idea andcalls others about her. Quickly, there being no red tape, the needbegins to be met. What more admirable service could have been performedthan that inaugurated in the early months of the war under the Queen'sWork for Women Fund, when work was secured for the women in luxurytrades which were collapsing under war pressure? A hundred and thirtyfirms employing women were kept running. 

What more thrilling example of courage and forethought has been shownthan by the Scottish Women's Hospitals in putting on the western frontthe first X-ray car to move from point to point near the lines? It butadds to the appeal of the work that those great scientists, Mrs. Ayrtonand Madame Curie, selected the equipment. 

It was a non-official body, the National Union of Women's SuffrageSocieties, which opened before the war was two weeks old the Women'sService Bureau, and soon placed forty thousand women as paid andvolunteer workers. It was this bureau that furnished the government withits supervisors for the arsenals. The Women's Farm and Garden Union wasthe fore-runner of the official Land Army, and to it still is left theimportant work of enrolling those women who, while willing to undertakeagricultural work, are disinclined to sign up for service "for theduration of the war. "

Not only have unnumbered voluntary associations achieved miracles innecessary work, but many of them have gained untold discipline in theridicule they have had to endure from a doubting public. I rememberhunting in vain all about Oxford Circus for the tucked-away office ofthe Women's Signalling Corps. My inquiries only made the London bobbiesgrin. Everyone laughed at the idea of women signalling, but to-day themembers are recognized officially, one holding an important appointmentin the college of wireless telegraphy. 

How Scotland Yard smiled, at first, at Miss Damer Dawson and her WomenPolice Service! But now the metropolitan police are calling for the helpof her splendidly trained and reliable force. 

And the Women's Reserve Ambulance Corps--I climbed and climbed to anattic to visit their headquarters! There was the commandant in herkhaki, very gracious, but very upstanding, and maintaining the strictestdiscipline. No member of the corps entered or left her office withoutclapping heels together and saluting. The ambulance about which thecorps revolved, I often met in the streets--empty. But those women hadvision. They saw that England would need them some day. They had faithin their ability to serve. So on and on they went, training themselvesto higher efficiency in body and mind. And to-day--well, theirs isalways the first ambulance on the spot to care for the injured in theair-raids. The scoffers have remained to pray. 

If Britain has a lesson for us it is an all-hail to non-officialsocieties, an encouragement to every idea, a blessing on every effortwhich has behind it honesty of purpose. Great Britain's activities areas refreshingly diversified as her talents. They are not all underone hat. 

In the training for new industrial openings this same spirit ofnon-official service showed itself. In munitions, for instance, privateemployers were the first to recognize that they had in women-workers alabor force worth the cost of training. The best of the skilled men inmany cases were told off to give the necessary instruction. The will todo was in the learner; she soon mastered even complex processes, and atthe end of a few weeks was doing even better than men in the light work, and achieving commendable output in the heavy. The suffrageorganizations, whenever a new line of skilled work was opened to women, established well-equipped centers to give the necessary teaching. Notuntil it became apparent that the new labor-power only needed trainingto reach a high grade of proficiency, did County Councils establish, atgovernment expense, technical classes for girls and women. 

[Illustration: Then--the offered service of the Women's ReserveAmbulance Corps in England was spurned. Now--they wear shrapnel helmetswhile working during the Zeppelin raids. ]

Equipment of the army was obviously the first and pressing obligation. Fields might lie fallow, for food in the early days could easily bebrought from abroad, but men had to be registered, soldiers clothed andequipped. It was natural, then, that the new workers were principallyused in registration work and in making military supplies. 

But in the second year of the war came the conviction that the contestwas not soon to be ended, and that the matter of raising food at homemust be met. Women were again appealed to. A Land Army mobilized bywomen was created. At first this work was carried on under a centralizeddivision of the National Service Department, but there has beendecentralization and the Land Army is now a department of the Board ofAgriculture. It is headed by Miss M. Talbot as director. Under thiscentral body are Women's Agricultural Committees in each county, with anorganizing secretary whose duty it is to secure full-time recruits. 

The part-time workers in a locality are obtained by the wife of thesquire or vicar acting as a volunteer registrar. Many of thesepart-time workers register to do the domestic work of the lusty youngvillage housewife or mother while she is absent from home performing herallotted task on a nearby farm. The full-time recruits are not onlysecured by the organizers, but through registrations at every postoffice. Any woman can ask for a registration card and fill it out, andthe postmaster then forwards the application to the committee. The nextstep is that likely applicants are called to the nearest center forexamination and presentation of credentials. When finally accepted theyare usually sent for six weeks' or three months' training to a farmbelonging to some large estate. The landlord contributes the training, and the government gives the recruit her uniform and fifteen shillings aweek to cover her board and lodging. At the end of her course shereceives an armlet signifying her rank in the Land Army and is ready togo wherever the authorities send her. 

The farmer in Great Britain no longer needs to be converted to the valueof the new workers. He knows they can do every kind of farm work as wellas men, and are more reliable and conscientious than boys, and he isready, therefore, to pay the required minimum wage of eighteenshillings a week, or above that amount if the rate ruling in thedistrict is higher. 

Equally well organized is the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, familiarlyknown as the Waacs. The director is Mrs. Chalmers Watson. A would-beWaac goes to the center in her county for examination, and then isassigned to work at home or "somewhere in France" according to trainingand capacity. She may be fitted as a cook, a storekeeper, a telephone ortelegraph operator, or for signalling or salvage work. Let us not sayshe will supplant a man, but rather set a man free for fuller service. 

My niece, a slip of a girl, felt the call of duty at the beginning ofthe war. Her brothers were early volunteers in Kitchener's Army. Theywere in the trenches and she longed for the sensation of bearing aburden of hard work. She went to Woolwich Arsenal and toiled twelvehours a day. She broke under the strain, recuperated, and took upmunition work again. She became expert, and was in time an overseer toldoff to train other women. But she was never satisfied, and alwaysanxious to be nearer the great struggle. She broke away one day and wentto Southampton for a Waac examination, and found herself one of a groupof a hundred and fifty gentlewomen all anxious to enter active serviceand all prepared for some definite work. They stood their tests, andDolly--that's the little niece's pet name, given to her because she isso tiny--is now working as an "engine fitter" just behind the fightinglines. Dainty Dolly, whom we have always treated as a fragile bit ofSèvres china, clad in breeches and puttees, under the booming of thegreat guns, is fitting patiently, part to part, the beating engine whichwill lift on wings some English boy in his flight through the blue skiesof France. 

But it must not be supposed that the magnificent service of Britishwomen, devoted, efficient and well-organized from top to bottom, realized itself without friction, any more than it will here. There werecertainly two wars going on in Great Britain for a long time, and theinternal strife was little less bitter than the international conflict. The most active center of this contest of which we have heard so littlewas in industry, and the combatants were the government, trade unionsand women. The unions were doing battle because of fear of unskilledworkers, especially when intelligent and easily trained; the government, in sore need of munition hands, was bargaining with the unskilled forlong hours and low pay. Finally the government and the unionsreluctantly agreed that women must be employed; both wanted them to beskillful, but not too skillful, and above all, to remain amenable. Ithas been made clear, too, that women enter their new positions "for thewar only. " At the end of hostilities--international hostilities--womenare to hand over their work and wages to men and go home and be content. Will the program be fulfilled?

The wishes of women themselves may play some part. How do they feel?Obviously, every day the war lasts they get wider experience of thesorrows and pleasures of financial independence. Women are called thepractical sex, and I certainly found them in England facing the factthat peace will mean an insufficient number of breadwinners to go aroundand that a maimed man may have low earning power. The women I met werenot dejected at the prospect; they showed, on the contrary, a spirit notfar removed from elation in finding new opportunities of service. AfterI had sat and listened to speech after speech at the annual conferenceof the National Union of Women Workers, with delegates from all parts ofthe country, presided over by Mrs. Creighton, widow of the late Bishopof London, there was no doubt in my mind that British women desired toenter paid fields of work, and regarded as permanent the great increasein their employment. No regrets or hesitations were expressed in asingle speech, and the solutions of the problems inherent in the newsituation all lay in the direction of equality of preparation andequality of pay with men. 

The strongest element in the women's trade unions takes the same stand. The great rise in the employment of women is not regarded as a "warmeasure, " and all the suggestions made to meet the hardships ofreadjustment, such as a "minimum wage for all unskilled workers, men aswell as women, " are based on the idea of the new workers being permanentfactors in the labor market. 

The same conclusion was reached in the report presented to the BritishAssociation by the committee appointed to investigate the "Replacementof Male by Female Labor. " The committee found itself in entiredisagreement with the opinion that the increased employment of women wasa passing phase, and made recommendations bearing on such measures asimproved technical training for girls as well as for boys, a minimumwage for unskilled men as well as women, equal pay for equal work, andthe abolition of "half-timers. " But while it was obvious that thegreatest asset of belligerent nations is the labor of women, whilelearned societies and organizations of women laid down rules for theirsafe and permanent employment, the British Government showed markedopposition to the new workers. If the Cabinet did not believe the warwould be brief, it certainly acted as if Great Britain alone among thebelligerents would have no shortage of male industrial hands. At a timewhen Germany had five hundred thousand women in munition factories, England had but ten thousand. 

There is no doubt that the country was at first organized merely for aspurt. Boys and girls were pressed into service, wages were cut down forwomen, hours lengthened for men. Government reports read like theShaftesbury attacks on the conditions of early factory days. We hearagain of beds that are never cold, the occupant of one shift succeedingthe occupant of the next, of the boy sleeping in the same bed with twomen, and three girls in a cot in the same room. Labor unrest was met atfirst by the Munitions War Act prohibiting strikes and lockouts, establishing compulsory arbitration and suspending all trade-union ruleswhich might "hamper production. " Under the law a "voluntary army ofworkers" signed up as ready to go anywhere their labor was needed, andlocal munition committees became labor courts endowed with power tochange wage rates, to inflict fines on slackers, and on those who brokethe agreements of the "voluntary army. "

To meet the threatening rebellion, a Health of Munition WorkersCommittee under the Ministry of Munitions was appointed to "consider andadvise on questions of industrial fatigue, hours of labor and othermatters affecting the physical health and physical efficiency of workersin munition factories and workshops. " On this committee there weredistinguished medical men, labor experts, members of parliament and twowomen, Miss R. E. Squire of the Factory Department and Mrs. H. J. Tennant. 

The committee was guided by a desire to have immense quantities ofmunitions turned out, and faced squarely the probability that the warwould be of long duration. Its findings, embodied in a series ofmemoranda, have lessons for us, not only for war times, but for peacetimes, for all time. 

On a seven day week the verdict was that "if the maximum output is to besecured and maintained for any length of time, a weekly period of restmust be allowed. " Overtime was advised against, a double or triple shiftbeing recommended. 

In July, 1916, the committee published a most interesting memorandum onexperiments in the relation of output to hours. In one case the outputwas increased eight percent by reducing the weekly hours fromsixty-eight to fifty-nine, and it was found that a decrease to fifty-sixhours per week gave the same output as fifty-nine. It need hardly besaid that there was no change in machinery, tools, raw material orworkers. All elements except hours of work were identical. Twenty-sevenworkers doing very heavy work increased their output ten percent bycutting weekly hours from sixty-one to fifty-five. In a munition plantemploying thirty-six thousand hands it was found that the sick rateranged from five to eight percent when the employees were workingovertime, and was only three percent when they were on a double shift. 

The war has forced Great Britain to carry out the findings of thiscommittee and to consider more seriously than ever before, and for bothmen and women, the problem of industrial fatigue, the relation ofaccidents to hours of labor, industrial diseases, housing, transit, andindustrial canteens. The munition worker is as important as the soldierand must have the best of care. 

While the friction in the ranks of industrial women workers was stillfar from being adjusted, the government met its Waterloo in the contestwith medical women. The service which they freely offered their countrywas at first sternly refused. Undaunted, they sought recognition outsidethe mother country. They knew their skill and they knew the soldiers'need. They turned to hospitable France, and received officialrecognition. On December 14, 1914, the first hospital at the front underBritish medical women was opened in Abbaye Royaumont, near Creil. Itcarries the official designation, "Hôpital Auxiliaire 301. " The doctors, the nurses, the cooks, are all women. One of the capable chauffeurs Isaw running the ambulance when I was in Creil. She was getting thewounded as they came down from the front. The French Governmentappreciated what the women were doing and urged them to give more help. At Troyes another unit gave the French army its first experience ofnursing under canvas. 

After France had been profiting by the skill of British women formonths, Sir Alfred Keogh, Medical Director General, wisely insisted thatthe War Office yield and place a hospital in the hands of women. TheWar Hospital in Endell Street, London, is now under Dr. Flora Murray, and every office, except that of gateman, is filled by women. From thedoctors, who rank as majors, down to the cooks, who rank asnon-commissioned officers, every one connected with Endell Street hasmilitary standing. It indicated the long, hard road these women hadtraveled to secure official recognition that the doctor who showed meover the hospital told me, as a matter for congratulation, that at nightthe police brought in drunken soldiers to be sobered. "Every warhospital must receive them, " she explained, "and we are glad we are notpassed over, for that gives the stamp to our official standing. "

It was a beautiful autumn day when I visited Endell Street. The greatcourt was full of convalescents, and the orderlies in khaki, with veilsfloating back from their close-fitting toques, were carefully andskillfully lifting the wounded from an ambulance. I spoke to one of thesoldier boys about the absence of men doctors and orderlies, and hisquick query was, "And what should we want men for?" It seems that theyalways take that stand after a day or two. At first the patient ispuzzled; he calls the doctor "sister" and the orderly "nurse, " but endsby being an enthusiastic champion of the new order. Not a misogynist didI find. One poor fellow who had been wounded again and again and hadbeen in many hospitals, declared, "I don't mean no flattery, but thisplace leaves nothink wanting. "

The first woman I met on my last visit to England upset my expectationof finding that war pushed women back into primitive conditions of toil, crushed them under the idea that physical force rules the world, andmade them subservient. I chanced upon her as she was acting asticket-puncher at the Yarmouth station. She was well set-up, alert, efficient, helpful in giving information, and, above all, cheerful. There were two capable young women at the bookstall, too. One had lost abrother at the front, the other her lover. I felt that they regardedtheir loss as one item in the big national accounting. They wereheroically cheerful in "doing their bit. "

Throughout my stay in England I searched for, but could not find, theself-effacing spinster of former days. In her place was a capable woman, bright-eyed, happy. She was occupied and bustled at her work. She jumpedon and off moving vehicles with the alertness, if not theunconsciousness, of the expert male. She never let me stand in omnibusor subway, but quickly gave me her seat, as indeed she insisted upondoing for elderly gentlemen as well. The British woman had found herselfand her muscles. England was a world of women--women in uniforms; therewas the army of nurses, and then the messengers, porters, elevatorhands, tram conductors, bank clerks, bookkeepers, shop attendants. Theyeach seemed to challenge the humble stranger, "Superfluous? Not I, I'm arecruit for national service!" Even a woman doing time-honored womanlywork moved with an air of distinction; she dusted a room for the good ofher country. Just one glimpse was I given of the old-time daughter ofEve, when a ticket-collector at Reading said: "I can't punch yourticket. Don't you see I'm eating an apple!"

One of the reactions of the wider functioning of brain and muscle whichstruck me most forcibly was the increased joyfulness of women. They werehappy in their work, happy in the thought of rendering service, so happythat the poignancy of individual loss was carried more easily. 

This cheerfulness is somewhat gruesomely voiced in a cartoon in _Punch_touching on the allowance given to the soldier's wife. She remarks, "This war is 'eaven--twenty-five shillings a week and no 'usbandbothering about!" We have always credited _Punch_ with knowing England. Truth stands revealed by a thrust, however cynical, when softened bychallenging humor. 

There was no discipline in the pension system. No work was required. Thecase of a girl I met in a country town was common. She was working in afactory earning eleven shillings a week. A day or two later I saw her, and she told me she had stopped work, as she had "married a soldier, and'e's gone to France, and I get twelve and six separation allowance aweek. " Never did the strange English name, "separation allowance, " seemmore appropriate for the wife's pension than in this girl's story. Little wonder was it that in the early months of the war there was someriotous living among soldiers' wives!

And the comments of women of influence on the drunkenness and waste ofmoney on foolish finery were as striking to me as the sordid conditionitself. The woman chairman of a Board of Poor Law Guardians in the northof England told me that when her fellow-members suggested thatParliament ought to appoint committees to disburse the separationallowances, she opposed them with the heroic philosophy that women canbe trained in wisdom only by freedom to err, that a sense ofresponsibility had never been cultivated in them, and the country wouldhave to bear the consequences. In reply to my inquiry as to how theGuardians received these theories, I learned that "they knew she wasright and dropped their plan. "

The faith of leading women that experience would be the best teacher forthe soldier's wife has been justified. A labor leader in the Midlandstold me that an investigation by his trade union showed that only onehundred women in the ten thousand cases inquired into were mis-spendingtheir allowances. And when I was visiting a board school in a poordistrict of London, and remarked to the head teacher that the childrenlooked well cared for, she told me that never had they been so well fedand clothed. There seemed no doubt in her mind that it was best to havethe family budget in the hands of the mother. In the sordid surroundingsof the mean streets of great cities, there is developing in womenpractical wisdom and a fine sense of individual responsibility. 

Perhaps of greater significance than just how separation allowances arebeing spent is the fact that women have discovered that their work ashousewives and mothers has a value recognized by governments in hardcash. It makes one speculate as to whether wives in the warring nationswill step back without a murmur into the old-time dependence on one man, or whether these simple women may contribute valuable ideas towards theworking out of sound schemes of motherhood pensions. 

The women of Great Britain are experiencing economic independence, theyare living in an atmosphere of recognition of the value of their work ashousewives and mothers. Women leaders in all classes give no indicationof regarding pensions or remuneration in gainful pursuits as other thanpermanent factors in social development, and much of the best thought ofmen as well as women is centered on group experiments in domesticcoöperation, in factory canteens, in municipal kitchens, which are anatural concomitant to the wider functioning of women. 

Great Britain is not talking about feminism, it is living it. Perhapsnothing better illustrates the national acceptance of the fact than thewidespread amusement touched with derision caused by the story of thecholeric gentlemen who, on being asked at the time of one of thegovernment registrations whether his wife was dependent upon him or not, roared in rage, "Well, if my wife isn't dependent on me, I'd like toknow what man she is dependent on!"

Only second to Britain's lesson for us in the self-reliance of itswomen, and the thorough mobilization of their labor-power and executiveability, is its lesson in protection for all industrial workers. Itstands as one people against the present enemy, and in its effort doesnot fail to give thought to race conservation for the future. 

[Footnote 2: Through the courtesy of the Editors of _The Outlook_, I amat liberty to use in this and the following chapter, some of thematerial published in an article by me in _The Outlook_ of June28, 1916. ]

IV

MOBILIZING WOMEN IN FRANCE

Compared with the friction in the mobilization of woman-power in GreatBritain, the readjustment in the lives of women in France was like theopening out of some harmonious pageant in full accord with popularsympathy. But who has not said, "France is different!"

It is different, and in nothing more so than in its attitude toward itswomen. Without discussion with organizations of men, without hindrancefrom the government, women filled the gaps in the industrial army. Itwas obvious that the new workers, being unskilled, would need training;the government threw open the technical schools to them. A spirit ofhospitality, of helpfulness, of common sense, reigned. 

[Illustration: The French poilu on furlough is put to work harrowing. ]

And it was not only in industry that France showed herself wise. I foundthat the government had coöperated unreservedly with all thephilanthropic work of women and had given them a wide sphere in whichthey could rise above amateurish effort and carry out plans calling foradministrative ability. 

When the Conseil National des Femmes Françaises inaugurated its work tobring together the scattered families of Belgium and northern France, and when the Association pour l'Aide Fraternelle aux ÉvacuésAlsaciens-Lorrains began its work for the dispersed peoples of theprovinces, an order was issued by the government to every prefect tofurnish lists of all refugees in his district to the headquarters of thewomen's societies in Paris. It was through this good will on the part ofthe central government that these societies were able to bring togetherforty thousand Belgian families, and to clothe and place in school, orat work, the entire dispersed population of the reconquered districts ofAlsace-Lorraine. 

Nor did these societies cease work with the completion of their initialeffort. They turned themselves into employment bureaus and with the aidand sanction of the government found work for the thousands of women whowere thrown out of employment. They had the machinery to accomplishtheir object, the Council being an old established society organizedthroughout the country, and the Association to Aid the Refugees fromAlsace-Lorraine (a nonpartisan name adopted, by the way, at the requestof the Minister of the Interior to cover for the moment the patrioticwork of the leading suffrage society) had active units in everyprefecture. 

One of the admirable private philanthropies was the canteen at the St. Lazarre station in Paris. I am tempted to single it out because itsorganizer, Countess de Berkaim, told me that in all the months she hadbeen running it--and it was open twenty-four hours of the day--not asingle volunteer had been five minutes late. The canteen was opened inFebruary, 1915, with a reading and rest room. Six hundred soldiers a dayhave been fed. The two big rooms donated by the railway for the workwere charming with their blue and white checked curtains, dividingkitchen from restaurant and rest room from reading room. The work is nosmall monument to the reliability and organizing faculty ofFrench women. 

It was in France, too, that I found the group of women who realized thatthe permanent change which the war was making in the relation of womento society needed fundamental handling. Mlle. Valentine Thomson, founderof La Vie Féminine, held that not only was the war an economic struggleand not only must the financial power of the combatants rest on thelabor of women, but the future of the nations will largely depend uponthe attitude which women take toward their new obligations. Realizingthat business education would be a determining factor in that attitude, Mlle. Thomson persuaded her father, who was then Minister of Commerce, to send out an official recommendation to the Chambers of Commerce toopen the commercial schools to girls. The advice was very generallyfollowed, but as Paris refused, a group of women, backed by theMinistry, founded a school in which were given courses of instruction inthe usual business subjects, and lectures on finance, commercial law andinternational trade. 

Mlle. Thomson herself turned her business gifts to good use in asuccessful effort to build up for the immediate benefit of artists andworkers the doll trade of which France was once supreme mistress. Exhibitions of the art, old and new, were held in many cities in theUnited States, in South America and in England. The dolls went to thehearts of lovers of beauty, and what promised surer financial return, tothe hearts of the children. 

To do something for France--that stood first in the minds of theinitiators of this commercial project. They knew her people must beemployed. And next, the desire to bring back charm to an old artprompted their effort. Mlle. Thomson fully realizes just what "Made inGermany" signifies. The peoples of the world have had their tastecorrupted by floods of the cheap and tawdry. Germany has been steadilyeducating us to demand quantity, quantity mountains high. There ispromise that the doll at least will be rescued by France and made worththe child's devotion. 

In industry, as well as in all else, one feels that in France there hasnot been so much a revolution as an orderly development. Women were inmunition factories even before the war, the number has merely swelled. The women of the upper and lower bourgeois class always knew theirhusband's business, the one could manage the shop, the other couldbargain with the best of them as to contracts and output. Women weretrained as bookkeepers and clerks under Napoleon I; he wanted men assoldiers, and so decreed women should go into business. And the woman ofthe aristocratic class has merely slipped out of her seclusion as ifputting aside an old-fashioned garment, and now carries on herphilanthropies in more serious and coördinated manner. We know thepractical business experience possessed by French women, and so areprepared to learn that many a big commercial enterprise, the ownerhaving gone to the front, is now directed by his capable wife. That isbut a development, too, is it not? For we had all heard long ago of Mme. Duval, even if we had not eaten at her restaurants, and though we hadnever bought a ribbon or a carpet at the Bon Marché, we had heard of thewoman who helped break through old merchant habits and gave the worldthe department store. 

But nothing has been more significant in its growth during the war thanthe small enterprises in which the husband and wife in the domesticmunition shop, laboring side by side with a little group of assistants, have been turning out marvels of skill. The man is now in the trenchesfighting for France, and the woman takes command and leads theindustrial battalion to victory. She knows she fights for France. 

A word more about her business, for she is playing an economic part thatbrings us up at attention. She may be solving the problem of adjustmentof home and work so puzzling to women. There are just such domesticshops dotted all over the map of France; in the Paris district alonethere are over eighteen hundred of them. The conditions are soexcellent and the ruling wages so high, that the minimum wage law passedin 1915 applied only to the sweated home workers in the clothing trade, and not to the domestic munition shops. 

A commission which included in its membership a trade unionist, sent bythe British government in the darkest days to find why it was thatFrance could produce so much more ammunition than England, found thesetiny workshops, with their primitive equipment, performing miracles. Theoutput was huge and of the best. The woman, when at the head, seemed toturn out more than the man, she worked with such undying energy. Thecommission said it was the "spirit of France" that drove the workersforward and renewed the flagging energies. But even the trade unionistreferred to the absence of all opposition to women on the part oforganizations of men. Perhaps the spirit of France is undying because init is a spirit of unity and harmony. 

It seemed to me there was one very practical explanation of theunmistakable energy of the French worker, both man and woman. The wholenation has the wise custom of taking meal time with due seriousness. Thebreak at noon in the great manufactories, as well as in the familyworkshop, is long, averaging one hour and a half, and reaching often totwo hours. The French never gobble. Because food is necessary to animallife, they do not on that account take a puritanical view of it. Theydare enjoy it, in spite of its physiological bearing. They sit down toit, dwell upon it, get its flavor, and after the meal they sit still andas a nation permit themselves unabashed to enjoy the sensation of hungerappeased. That's the common sense spirit of France. 

Of course the worker is renewed, hurls herself on the work again withardor, and losing no time through fatigue, throws off anenormous output. 

Wages perform their material share in spurring the worker. Louis Barthousays that the woman's average is eight francs a day. Long ago--it seemslong ago--she could earn at best five francs in the Paris district. Sheworks on piece work now, getting the same rate as men. And think ofit!--this must indeed be because of the spirit of France--this womandoes better than men on the light munition work, and equals, yes, equalsher menfolk on the heavy shells. I do not say this, a commission of mensays it, a commission with a trade union member to boot. The coming ofthe woman-worker with the spirit of win-the-war in her heart is the samein France as elsewhere, only here her coming is more gracious. Twelvehundred easily take up work on the Paris subway. They are the wives ofmobilized employees. The offices of the Post, the Telegraph andTelephone bristle with women, of course, for eleven thousand have takenthe places of men. Some seven thousand fill up the empty positions onthe railways, serving even as conductors on through trains. Their numberhas swollen to a half million in munitions, and to over half that numberin powder mills and marine workshops; in civil establishments over threehundred thousand render service; and even the conservative banking worldwelcomes the help of some three thousand women. 

[Illustration: Has there ever been anything impossible to French womensince the time of Jeanne d'Arc? The fields must be harrowed--they haveno horses. ]

Out on the land the tally is greatest of all. Every woman from thevillage bends over the bosom of France, urging fertility. The governmentcalled them in the first hours of the conflict. Viviani spokethe word:--

"The departure for the army of all those who can carry arms, leaves thework in the fields undone; the harvest is not yet gathered in; thevintage season is near. In the name of the entire nation united behindit, I make an appeal to your courage, and to that of your children, whose age alone and not their valour, keeps them from the war. 

"I ask you to keep on the work in the fields, to finish gathering in theyear's harvest, to prepare that of the coming year. You cannot renderyour country a greater service. 

"It is not for you, but for her, that I appeal to your hearts. 

"You must safeguard your own living, the feeding of the urbanpopulations and especially the feeding of those who are defending thefrontier, as well as the independence of the country, civilizationand justice. 

"Up, then, French women, young children, daughters and sons of thecountry! Replace on the field of work those who are on the field ofbattle. Strive to show them to-morrow the cultivated soil, the harvestsall gathered in, the fields sown. 

"In hours of stress like the present, there is no ignoble work. Everything that helps the country is great. Up! Act! To work! To-morrowthere will be glory for everyone. 

"Long live the Republic! Long live France!"

Women instantly responded to the proclamation. Only the old men wereleft to help, only decrepit horses, rejected by the militaryrequisition. More than once I journeyed far into the country, but Inever saw an able-bodied man. What a gap to be filled!--but the Frenchpeasant woman filled it. She harvested that first year, she has sowedand garnered season by season ever since. Men, horses, machinery werelacking, the debit yawned, but she piled up a credit to meet it byunflagging toil. 

With equal devotion and with initiative and power of organization thewoman of leisure has "carried on. " The three great societiescorresponding with our Red Cross, the Société de Secours aux Blessés, the Union des Femmes de France, and the Association des DamesFrançaises, have established fifteen hundred hospitals with one hundredand fifteen thousand beds, and put forty-three thousand nurses in activeservice. Efficiency has kept pace with this superb effort, as istestified to by many a war cross, many a medal, and the cross of theLegion of Honor. 

Up to the level of her means France sets examples in works of humansalvage worthy the imitation of all nations. The mairie in eacharrondissement has become no less than a community center. The XIVarrondissement in Paris is but the pattern for many. Here the wife ofthe mayor, Mme. Brunot, has made the stiff old building a human place. The card catalogue carrying information about every soldier from thedistrict, gives its overwhelming news each day gently to wife or mother, through the lips of Mme. Brunot or her women assistants. The work of LesAmis des Orphelins de Guerre centers here, the "adopted" child receivingfrom the good maire the gifts in money and presents sent by theAmericans who are generously filling the role of parent. The widows ofthe soldiers gather here for comfort and advice. 

And the mairie holds a spirit of experiment. It houses not only courageand sympathy, but progress. The "XIV" has ventured on a CuisinePopulaire under Mme. Brunot's wholesome guidance. And so many otherarrondissements have followed suit that Paris may be regarded as makinga great experiment in the municipal feeding of her people. It is notcharity, the food is paid for. In the "XIV" fifteen hundred persons eata meal or two at the mairie each day. The charge is seventy-fivecentimes--fifteen cents, and one gets a soup, meat and a vegetable, and fruit. 

The world seems to be counselling us that if we wish to be well andcheaply fed we must go where there are experts to cook, where buying isdone in quantity, and where the manager knows about nutritive values. 

If a word of praise is extended to the maire of the XIV arrondissementfor his very splendid work, an example to all France, he quickly urges, "Ah, but Mme. Brunot!" And so it is always, if you exclaim, "Oh, thespirit of the men of France!" and a Frenchman's ears catch your words, he will correct, "Ah, but the women!"

And the women do stand above all other women, they have had suchopportunity for heroism. Whose heart does not beat the faster when thenames Soisson and Mme. Macherez are spoken! The mayor and the councilgone, she assumes the office and keeps order while German shells fallthick on the town. And then the enemy enters, and asks for the mayor, and she replies, "Le maire, c'est moi. " And then do we women not like tothink of Mlle. Deletete staying at her post in the telegraph office inHouplines in spite of German bombardments, and calmly facing tormentors, when they smashed her instruments and threatened her with death. One-tenth of France in the enemy's hands, and in each village and townsome woman staying behind to nurse the sick and wounded, to calm thepopulation when panic threatens, to stand invincible between the peopleand their conquerors!

It is very splendid!--the French man holding steady at the front, theFrench woman an unyielding second line of defense. But what of France?Words of praise must not swallow our sense of obligation. Let us withour hundred millions of people face the figures. The death rate inFrance, not counting the military loss, is twenty per thousand, with abirth rate of eight per thousand. In Paris for the year ending August, 1914, there were forty-eight thousand nine hundred and seventeen births;in the year ending in the same month, 1916, the births dropped totwenty-six thousand one hundred and seventy-nine. The total deaths forthat year in all France were one million, one hundred thousand, and thebirths three hundred and twelve thousand. 

France is profoundly, infinitely sad. She has cause. I shall neverforget looking into the very depths of her sorrow when I was at Creil. Agreat drive was in progress, the wounded were being brought down fromthe front, troops hurried forward. Four different regiments passed as Isat at déjeuner. The restaurant, full of its noonday patrons, was atypical French café giving on the street. We could have reached out andtouched the soldiers. They marched without music, without song or word, marched in silence. Some of the men were from this very town; theirlittle sons, with set faces, too, walked beside them and had broughtthem bunches of flowers. The people in the restaurant never spoke abovea whisper, and when the troops passed were as silent as death. There wasno cheer, but just a long, wistful gaze, the soldiers looking into theireyes, they into the soldiers'. 

But France can bear her burden, can solve her problem if we lift ourfull share from her bent shoulders. Her women can save the children ifthe older men, relieved by our young soldiers, come back from thetrenches, setting women free for the work of child saving. France canrebuild her villages if her supreme architects, her skilled workers arereplaced in the trenches by our armies. France can renew her spirit andsave her body if her experts in science, if her poets and artists aresent back to her, and our less great bare their breasts to the Huns. 

V

MOBILIZING WOMEN IN GERMANY

The military mobilization of Germany was no more immediate and effectivethan the call to arms for women. On August 1, 1914, the summons wentout, and German women were at once part of the smooth running machine ofefficiency. 

The world says the Kaiser has been preparing for war for forty years. The world means that he has been preparing the fighting force. The swordand guns were to be ready. But the military arm of the nation, theGerman government believes, is but the first line of attack; the peopleare the second line, and so they, too, in all their life activities, were not forgotten. The military aristocracy has never neglected thefunction of women in the state. The definition of their function maydiffer from ours, but that there is a function is recognized, and it isrelated to the other vital social organs. 

Slowly, through the last half of the nineteenth century, there had grownup clubs among German women focusing on a definite bit of work, orcrystallizing about an idea. Germany even had suffrage societies. Politics, however, were forbidden by the government; women were notallowed to hang on the fringe of a meeting held to discuss men'spolitics. But the women of the Fatherland were free to pool their ideasin philanthropic and hygienic corners, and venture out at times oneducational highways. The Froebel societies had many a contest with thegovernment, for to the military mind, the gentle pedagogue's theoriesseemed subversive of discipline as enforced by spurs and bayonets. 

These clubs, covering every trade and profession, every duty and everyaspiration of women, were dotted over the German Empire. At last theydrew together in a federation. The government looked on. It saw amachine created, and believing in thorough organization, no doubt gavethought to the possibilities of the Bund deutscher, Frauenvereine. Atthe outbreak of war, Dr. Gertrud Baumer was president of the Bund. Shewas a leader of great ability, marshalling half a million of women. Noother organization was so widespread and well-knit, except perhaps DerVaterlandische Frauenverein with its two thousand one hundred and fiftybranches. It was evangelical and military. The Empress was its patron. Its popular name is the "Armée der Kaiserin. "

There the two great national societies stood--one aristocratic, theother democratic, one appealing to the ruling class, the other holdingin bonds of fellowship the rich and the poor, the urban and the rural, the professional and the industrial woman. 

Every belligerent president or premier has faced exactly the sameperplexity. What woman, what society, is to be recognized as leader? Thequestion has brought beads of perspiration to the foreheads ofstatesmen. 

France solved the difficulty urbanely. It said "yes" to each and all. Itpromised coöperation and kept the promise. By affably--always affablyand hospitably--accepting this service from one society, and suggestinganother pressing need to its competitor, it sorted out capabilities, andwarded off duplication. Perhaps this did not bring the fullestefficiency, but the loss was more than made up, no doubt, by a freefield for initiative. Britain ignored all existing organizations ofwomen, and after a year and a half of puzzlement created a separategovernment department for their mobilization. America struck out stillanother course. It took the heads of several national societies, boundthem in one committee, to which it gave, perhaps with the idea ofavoiding any danger of friction, neither power nor funds. 

Germany faced the same critical moment for decision. The governmentwanted efficient use of woman-power on the land, in the factory, in thehome, and that quickly. It made use of the best existing machinery. Dr. Gertrud Baumer visited the Ministerium des Innern, and on August 1 sheissued a call for the mobilization of women for service to theFatherland in the Nationale Frauendienst. Under the aegis of thegovernment, with the national treasury behind her, Dr. Baumer summonedthe women of the Empire. By order, every woman and every organization ofwomen was to fall in line under the Frauendienst in each village andcity for "the duration of the war. " [3]

In each army district, the government appointed a woman as directress, and by order to town and provincial authorities made the Frauendienstpart of local executive affairs. 

Among the immediate duties laid upon the Frauendienst by the authoritieswas the task of registering all needy persons, of providing cheap eatingplaces, opening workrooms, and setting up nurseries for children, especially for those who were motherless and those whose fathers hadfallen at the front and whose mothers were in some gainful pursuit. Withthese duties went the administrative service of coöperating with thegovernment in "keeping up an even supply of foodstuffs, and controllingthe buying and selling of food. "

Germany anticipated as did no other belligerent the unemployment whichwould follow a declaration of war, and prepared to meet the condition. Agreat deal of army work, such as tent sewing, belts for cartridges, bread sacks, and sheets for hospitals, was made immediately availablefor the women thrown out of luxury trades. In the first month of the warthe Frauendienst opened work-rooms in all great centers; machinery wasinstalled by magic and through the six work-rooms in Berlin alonetwenty-three thousand women were given paid employment in one week. 

Such efforts could not, of course, absorb the surplus labor, forunemployment was very great. Eighty percent of the women's hat-makersand milliners were out of work, seventy-two percent of the workers inglass and fifty-eight percent in china. The Frauendienst investigatedtwo hundred and fifty-five thousand needy cases, and in Berlin alonefound sixty thousand women who had lost their employment. Charity had torender help. Here, again, it is an example of the alertness of theorganization and its close connection with the government that theBerlin magistracy deputed to twenty-three Hilfscommissionen from theFrauendienst the work of giving advice and charity relief to theunemployed. Knitting rooms were opened, clothing depots, mending rooms, where donated clothing was repaired, and in one month fifty-six thousandorders for milk, five hundred thousand for bread, and three hundredthousand for meals were distributed for the city authorities. 

The adjustment to war requirements went on more quickly in Germany thanin any other country. Before a year had passed the surplus hands hadbeen absorbed, and a shortage of labor power was beginning to be felt. 

And now opens the war drama set with the same scene everywhere. Womenhurry forward to take up the burden laid down by men, and to assume thenew occupations made necessary by the organization of the world formilitary conflict. To tell of Germany is merely to speak in biggernumbers. Women in munitions? Of course, well over the million mark. Trolley conductors? Of course, six hundred in Berlin alone before thefirst Christmas. Women are making the fuses, fashioning the big shells, and at the same heavy machines used by the men. That speaks volumes--thesame heavy machines. Great Britain and France have in every caseintroduced lighter machinery for their women. But, whatever theconditions, in Germany the women are handling high explosives, sewingheavy saddlery, operating the heaviest drill machines. Women have beenput on the "hardest jobs hitherto filled by men. " In theGerman-Luxemburg Mining and Furnace Company at Differdingen, they arefound doing work at the slag and blast furnaces which had alwaysrequired men of great endurance. They work on the same shifts as themen, receive the same pay, but are not worked overtime "because theymust go home and perform their domestic duties. "

One feels the weight of the German system. Patient women shoulder doubleburdens. They always did. 

In the Post and Telegraph department there is an army of fifty thousandwomen. The telephone service is entirely in their hands, and runningmore smoothly than formerly. Dr. Käthe Schirmacher declares comfortinglyin the _Kriegsfrau_ that "one must not forget that these women know manyimportant bits of information--and keep silent. " Women have learned tokeep a secret!

One hundred and eighty nurses, experts with the X-ray, were in the frontline dressing stations in the early days of the war, and before a weekof conflict had passed women were in the Field Post, and Frau Reimer, organizer of official chauffeurs, was on the western line of attack. 

Agriculture claims more women than any occupation in Germany. They werealways on the farm, perhaps they are happier there now since theythemselves are in command. It is said that "the peasants work in theboots and trousers of their husbands and ride in the saddle. " War hasliberated German women from the collar and put them on horseback!

But strangest and most unexpected of all is the professional andadministrative use of women. The government has sent women architectsand interior decorators to East Prussia to plan and carry throughreconstruction work. Over a hundred--to be exact, one hundred andsixteen at last accounts--have taken the places of men inadministrative departments connected with the railways. Many widows whohave shown capacity have been put in government positions of importanceformerly held by their husbands. Women have become farm managers, superintendents of dairy industries, and representatives of landedproprietors. 

The disseminating of all instruction and information for women on wareconomies was delegated to the League of Women's Domestic Science Clubs. The Berlin course was held in no less a place than the Abgeordnetenhaus, and the Herrenhaus opened its doors wide on Rural Women's Day whenAgricultural Week was held at the capital. 

When the full history of the war comes to be written, no doubt onereason for Germany's marvelous power to stand so long against the worldwill be found in her use of every brain and muscle of the nation. Thishas been for her no exclusive war. Her entire people to their last ounceof energy have been engaged. 

And this supreme service on the part of German women seeks democraticexpression. From them comes the clearest, bravest word that has reachedus across the border. The most hopeful sign is this manifesto from thesuffrage organizations to the government: "Up to the present Germanyhas stood in the lowest rank of nations as regards women's rights. Inmost civilized lands women already have been given a large share inpublic affairs. German women have been granted nothing except within themost insignificant limits. In New Zealand, Australia and most AmericanStates, and even before the war in Finland and Norway, they had beengiven political rights; to-day, Sweden, Russia and many other countriesgive them a full or limited franchise. The war has brought a fullvictory to the women of England, Canada, Russia and Denmark, and largeconcessions are within sight in France, Holland and Hungary. 

"Among us Germans not only the national but even the commercialfranchise is denied, and even a share in the industrial and commercialcourts. In the demand for the democratization of German public life ourlegislators do not seem even to admit the existence of women. 

"But during the war the cooperation of women in public life hasunostentatiously grown from year to year until to-day the number ofwomen engaged in various callings in Germany exceeds the number of men. 

"The work they are doing includes all spheres of male activity; withoutthem it would no longer be possible to support the economic life of thepeople. Women have done their full share in the work of the community. 

"Does not this performance of duty involve the right to share in thebuilding up and extension of the social order?

"The women protest against this lack of political rights, in virtue bothof their work for the community and of their work as human beings. Theydemand political equality with men. They demand the direct, equal andsecret franchise for all legislative bodies, full equality in thecommunes and in legal representation of their interests. 

"This first joint pronouncement on women's demands will be followed byothers until the victory of our cause is won. "

[Footnote 3: "Die Frauenvereine jeder Stadt verbinden sich für die Dauerdes Krieges zur Organization Nationaler Frauendienst die zu Berlin am1ten August begründet wurde. "]

VI

WOMEN OVER THE TOP IN AMERICA

American women have begun to go over the top. They are going up thescaling-ladder and out into All Man's Land. Perhaps love of adventuretempts them, perhaps love of money, or a fine spirit of service, butwhatever the propelling motive, we are seeing them make the venture. 

There is nothing new in our day in a woman's being paid for herwork--some of it. But she has never before been seen in Americaemployed, for instance, as a section hand on a railway. The gangs arefew and small as yet, but there the women are big and strong specimensof foreign birth. They "trim" the ballast and wield the heavy "tamping"tool with zest. They certainly have muscles, and are tempted to use themvigorously at three dollars a day. 

In the machine shops where more skill than strength is called for, theAmerican element with its quick wits and deft fingers predominates. Young women are working at the lathe with so much precision and accuracythat solicitude as to what would become of the world if all its menmarched off to war is in a measure assuaged. In the push and drive ofthe industrial world, women are handling dangerous chemicals in makingflash lights, and T. N. T. For high explosive shells. The American collegegirl is not as yet transmuting her prowess of the athletic field intowork on the anvil, as is the university woman in England, but she hasdemonstrated her manual strength and skill on the farm with ploughand harrow. 

Women and girls answer our call for messenger service, and theirintelligence and courtesy are an improvement upon the manners of theyoung barbarians of the race. Women operate elevators, lifting us withsafety to the seventh heaven, or plunging us with precision to thedepths. There were those at first who refused to entrust their lives tosuch frail hands, and there are still some who look concerned when theysee a woman at the lever; but on the whole the elevator "girl" hasgained the confidence of her public, and has gained it by skill, not byfeminine wiles, for even men won't shoot into space with a woman at thehelm whose sole equipment is charm. With need of less skill than theelevator operator, but more patience and tact in managing human nature, the woman conductor is getting her patrons into line. We are still alittle embarrassed in her presence. We try not to stare at thewell-set-up woman in her sensible uniform, while she on her part triesto look unconscious, and with much dignity accomplishes the common aimmuch more successfully than do we. She is so attentive to her duties, socourteous, and, withal, so calm and serious that I hope she will abidewith us longer than the "duration of the war. "

In short, America is witnessing the beginning of a great industrial andsocial change, and even those who regard the situation as temporarycannot doubt that the experience will have important reactions. Thedevelopment is more advanced than it was in Great Britain at acorresponding time, for even before the United States entered theconflict women were being recruited in war industries. They have openedup every line of service. There is not an occupation in which a woman isnot found. 

When men go a-warring, women go to work. 

A distinguished general at the end of the Cuban War, enlarging upon thepoet's idea of woman's weeping rôle in wartime, said in a public speech:"When the country called, women put guns in the hands of their soldierboys and bravely sent them away. After the good-byes were said there wasnothing for these women to do but to go back and wait, wait, wait. Theexcitement of battle was not for them. It was simply a season of anxietyand heartrending inactivity. " Now the fact is, when a great call to armsis sounded for the men of a nation, women enlist in the industrial army. If women did indeed sit at home and weep, the enemy would soon conquer. 

The dull census tells the thrilling story. Before our Civil War womenwere found in less than a hundred trades, at its close in over fourhundred. The census of 1860 gives two hundred and eighty-five thousandwomen in gainful pursuits; that of 1870, one million, eight hundred andthirty-six thousand. Of the Transvaal at war, this story was told to meby an English officer. He led a small band of soldiers down into theBoer country, on the north from Rhodesia, as far as he dared. He "didnot see a man, " even boys as young as fifteen had joined the army. Butat the post of economic duty stood the Boer woman; she was tending theherds and carrying on all the work of the farm. She was the base ofsupplies. That was why the British finally put her in a concentrationcamp. Her man could not be beaten with her at his back. 

War compels women to work. That is one of its merits. Women are forcedto use body and mind, they are not, cannot be idlers. Perhaps that isthe reason military nations hold sway so long; their reign continues, not because they draw strength from the conquered nation, but becausetheir women are roused to exertion. Active mothers ensure a virile race. 

The peaceful nation, if its women fall victims to the luxury whichrapidly increasing wealth brings, will decay. If there come no spiritualawakening, no sense of responsibility of service, then perhaps war alonecan save it. The routing of idleness and ease by compulsory labor is thegood counterbalancing some of the evil. 

The rapidly increasing employment of women to-day, then, is the usual, and happy, accompaniment of war. But the development has its opponents, and that is nothing new, either. Let us look them over one by one. Themost mischievous objector is the person, oftenest a woman, who says thewar will be short, and fundamental changes, therefore, should not bemade. This agreeable prophecy does not spring from a heartening beliefin victory, but only from the procrastinating attitude, "Why get ready?"To prepare for anything less certain than death seems folly to many ofthe sex, over-trained in patient waiting. 

Then there is the official who constantly sees the seamy side ofindustrial life and who concludes--we can scarcely blame him--that "itwould be well if women were excluded entirely from factory life. " Thebad condition of industrial surroundings bulks large in his mind, andthe value of organized work to us mortals bulks small. We are all tooinclined to forget that the need for work cannot be eliminated, but theunhealthy process in a dangerous trade can. Clean up the factory, ratherthan clean out the women, is a sound slogan. 

And then comes the objector who is exercised as to the effect of paidwork upon woman's charm. Solicitude on this score is often buried in awoman's heart. It was a woman, the owner of a large estate, who whenproposing to employ women asked how many men she would have to hire inaddition, "to dig, plough and do all the hard work. " On learning thatthe college units do everything on a farm, she queried anxiously, "Buthow about their corsets?" To the explanation, "They don't wear any, "came the regret, "What a pity to make themselves so unattractive!"

I have heard fear expressed, too, lest sex attraction be lost throughwork on army hats, the machinery being noisy and the operative, if shetalk, running the danger of acquiring a sharp, high voice. One could butwonder if most American women work on army hats. 

Among the women actually employed, I have found without exception a finespirit of service. So many of them have a friend or brother "overthere, " that backing up the boys makes a strong personal appeal. Butsome of the women who have left factory life behind are adopting anattitude towards the present industrial situation as lacking in visionas in patriotism. Throughout a long discussion in which some of thesewomen participated I was able to follow and get their point of view. Tothem a woman acting as a messenger, an elevator operator, or a trolleyconductor, was anathema, and the tempting of women into theseemployments seemed but the latest vicious trick of the capitalist. Theconductor in her becoming uniform was most reprehensible, and herevident satisfaction in her job suggested to her critics that she merelywas trying to play a melodramatic part "as a war hero. " In any case, theconductor's occupation was one no woman should be in, "crowded andpushed about as she is. " It was puzzling to know why it was regarded asright for a woman to pay five cents and be pushed, and unbecoming foranother woman to be paid eighteen dollars and ninety cents a week andrun the risk of a jolt when stepping outside her barrier. 

But the ideals of yesterday fail to make their appeal. It is not thepsychological moment to urge, on the ground of comfort, the woman'sright to protection. The contrast between the trenches and the streetcar or factory is too striking. But it is, however, the exact moment toplead for better care of workers, both women and men, because theirhealth and skill are as necessary in attaining the national aim as thesoldiers' prowess and well-being. It is the time to advocate theprotection of the worker from long hours, because the experience ofEurope has proved that a greater and better output is achieved when ashort day is strictly adhered to, when the weekly half-holiday isenjoyed, and Sunday rest respected. The United States is behind othergreat industrial countries in legal protection for the workers. Warrequirements may force us to see in the health of the worker thegreatest of national assets. Meantime, whether approved or not, theAmerican woman is going over the top. Four hundred and more are busy onaeroplanes at the Curtiss works. The manager of a munition shop whereto-day but fifty women are employed, is putting up a dormitory toaccommodate five hundred. An index of expectation! Five thousand areemployed by the Remington Arms Company at Bridgeport. At theInternational Arms and Fuse Company at Bloomfield, New Jersey, twothousand, eight hundred are employed. The day I visited the place, inone of the largest shops women had only just been put on the work, butit was expected that in less than a month they would be found handlingall of the twelve hundred machines under that one roof alone. 

The skill of the women staggers one. After a week or two they master theoperations on the "turret, " gauging and routing machines. The bestworker on the "facing" machine is a woman. She is a piece worker, asmany of the women are, and is paid at the same rate as men. This womanearned, the day I saw her, five dollars and forty cents. She tossedabout the fuse parts, and played with that machine, as I would with ababy. Perhaps it was in somewhat the same spirit--she seemed tolove her toy. 

Most of the testers and inspectors are women. They measure the partsstep by step, and weigh the completed fuse, carrying off the palm forreliability. The manager put it, "for inspection the women are moreconscientious than men. They don't measure or weigh just one piece, shoving along a half-dozen untouched and let it go at that. They testeach. " That did not surprise me, but I was not prepared to hear that thewomen do not have so many accidents as men, or break the machines sooften. In explanation, the manager threw over an imaginary lever withvigor sufficient to shake the factory, "Men put their whole strength on, women are more gentle and patient. "

Nor are the railways neglecting to fill up gaps in their working forcewith women. The Pennsylvania road, it is said, has recruited some sevenhundred of them. In the Erie Railroad women are not only engaged as"work classifiers" in the locomotive clerical department, but hardyPolish women are employed in the car repair shops. They move greatwheels as if possessed of the strength of Hercules. And in thelocomotive shops I found women working on drill-press machines withease and skill. Just as I came up to one operator, she lifted an enginetruck-box to the table and started drilling out the studs. She had beenat the work only a month, and explained her skill by the informationthat she was Swedish, and had always worked with her husband in theirauto-repair shop. All the other drill-press hands and the "shapers, "too, were Americans whose husbands, old employees, were now "overthere. " Not one seemed to have any sense of the unusual; even the littleblond check-clerk seated in her booth at the gates of the works with herbrass discs about her had in a few months' time changed a revolutioninto an established custom. She and the discs seemed old friends. Womenare adaptable. 

[Illustration: _Copyright by Underwood and Underwood_The daily round in the Erie Railroad workshops. ]

But everywhere I gathered the impression that the men are a bit uneasy. A foreman in one factory pointed out a man who "would not have voted forsuffrage" had he guessed that women were "to rush in and gobbleeverything up. " I tried to make him see that it wasn't the vote thatgave the voracious appetite, but necessity or desire to serve. And inany case, women do not push men out, they push them up. In not a singleinstance did I hear of a man being turned off to make a place for awoman. He had left his job to go into the army, or was advanced toheavier or more skilled work. 

As to how many women have supplanted men, or poured into the new warindustries, no figures are available. One guess has put it at a million. But that is merely a guess. I have seen them by the tens, the hundreds, the thousands. The number is large and rapidly increasing. We may knowthat something important is happening when even the government takesnote. The United States Labor Department has recognized the new-comersby establishing a Division of Women's Work with branches in every State. It looks as if these bureaus of employment would not be idle, with ashowing of one thousand, five hundred applicants the first week the NewYork office was opened. It is to be hoped that this government effortwill save the round pegs from getting into the square holes. 

But even the round peg in the round hole brings difficulties. When AdamSmith asserted that of all sorts of luggage man was the most difficultto move, he forgot woman! The instant women are carried into a newindustry, they bring with them puzzling problems. Where shall we puttheir coats and picture hats, how shall we cover up their hair, whatshall we feed them with? They must have lockers and rest rooms, capsand overalls, and above all, canteens. The munition workers, theconductors, in fact, all women in active work, get prodigiously hungry. They have made a regiment of dietitians think about calories. Here iswhat one of the street railways in New York City offered them on agiven day:--

Tomato soup 10c. Or with an order 5c. Roast leg of veal 16c. Beef 16c. Lamb fricassee 16c. Ham steak 16c. Liver and onions 16c. Sirloin steak 30c. Small steak 20c. Ham and eggs 20c. Ham omelet 20c. _Regular dinner_ Soup, meat, Vegetable, Dessert, coffee 25c. Rice pudding 5c. Pie 5c. Cake 5c. Banana or orange 5c. 

The canteen is open every hour of the twenty-four, and the womenconductors at the end of each run usually take a bite, and then have asubstantial meal during the long break of an hour and a half in themiddle of the ten-hour day. 

Another problem brought to us by women in industry is, how can we housethem? The war industries have drawn large numbers to new centers. Thehaphazard accommodation which men win put up with, won't satisfy women. They demand more, and get more. To attract the best type of women themunition plants are putting up dormitories to accommodate hundreds ofworkers, and are making their plants more attractive, with rest roomsand hospital accommodation. Take, for instance, the Briggs and StrattonCompany, which in order to draw high grade workers built its new factoryin one of the best sections of Milwaukee. The workrooms are as clean asthe proverbial Dutch woman's doorstep. From the top of the benches tothe ceiling the walls are glass to ensure daylight in every corner, andby night the system of indirect lighting gives such perfectly diffusedlight that not a heavy shadow falls anywhere. And the hospital room andnurse--well, one would rejoice to have an accident daily!

The factory may become the exemplar for the home. The professionalwoman is going over the top, and with a good opinion of herself. "I cando this work better than any man, " was the announcement made by a youngwoman from the Pacific Coast as she descended upon the city hall in aneastern town, credentials in her hand, and asked for the position ofcity chemist. There was not a microbe she did not know to its undoing, or a deadly poison she could not bring from its hiding place. The townhad suffered from graft, and the mayor, thinking a woman might scare thethieves as well as the bacteria, appointed the chemist who believed inherself. And she is just one of many who have been taking up such work. 

Formerly two-thirds of the positions filled by the New YorkIntercollegiate Bureau of Occupations were secretarial or teachingpositions; now three-fourths of its applicants have been placed asphysicists, chemists, office managers, sanitary experts, exhibitsecretaries, and the like. The temporary positions used to outnumber thepermanent placements; at present the reverse is true. Of the womenplaced, four times as many as formerly get salaries ranging aboveeighteen hundred dollars a year. 

The story told at the employment bureaus in connection with professionalsocieties and clubs such as the Chemists' Club is the same. Women arebeing placed not merely as teachers of chemistry or as routinelaboratory workers in hospitals, but also as experimental and controlchemists in industrial plants. In the great rolling mills they aretesting steel, at the copper smelters they are found in thelaboratories. The government has thrown doors wide open tocollege-trained women. They are physicists and chemists in the UnitedStates Bureaus of Standards, Mines, and Soils, sanitary experts inmilitary camps, research chemists in animal nutrition and fertilizers atstate experiment stations. 

But the industrial barrier is the one most recently scaled. Women arenow found as analytical, research or control chemists in the canneries, in dye and electrical works, in flour and paper mills, in insecticidecompanies, and cement works. They test the steel that will carry ussafely on our journeys, they pass upon the chemical composition of theflavor in our cake, as heads of departments in metal refining companiesthey determine the kind of copper battery we shall use, and they have afinger in our liquid glues, household oils and polishes. 

And the awakened spirit of social responsibility has opened newcallings. The college woman not only is beginning to fill welfarepositions inside the factory, but is acting as protective officer intowns near military camps. Perhaps one of the newest and mostinteresting positions is that of "employment secretary. " The losing ofemployees has become so serious and general that big industries haveengaged women who devote their time to looking up absentees and findingout why each worker left. 

And so we see on all hands women breaking through the old accustomedbounds. 

Not only as workers but as voters, the war has called women over thetop. Since that fateful August, 1914, four provinces of Canada and theDominion itself have raised the banner of votes for women. Nevada andMontana declared for suffrage before the war was four months old, andDenmark enfranchised its women before the year was out. And when Americawent forth to fight for democracy abroad, Arkansas, Michigan, Vermont, Nebraska, North Dakota, Rhode Island, began to lay the foundations offreedom at home, and New York in no faltering voice proclaimed fullliberty for all its people. Lastly Great Britain has enfranchised itswomen, and surely the Congress of the United States will not lag behindthe Mother of Parliaments!

The world is facing changes as great as the breaking up of the feudalsystem. Causes as fundamental, more wide-spread, and more cataclysmicare at work than at the end of the Middle Ages. Among the changes noneis more marked than the intensified development in what one may call, for lack of a better term, the woman movement. The advance in politicalfreedom has moved steadily forward during the past quarter of a century, but in the last three years progress has been intense and striking. 

The peculiarity in attainment of political democracy for women has lainin the fact that while for men economic freedom invariably precededpolitical enfranchisement, in the case of women the conferring of thevote in no single case was related to the stage which the enfranchisedgroup had attained in the matter of economic independence. Nowhere wereeven those women who were entirely lacking in economic freedom, excludedon that account from any extension of suffrage. Even in discussions ofthe right of suffrage no reference has ever been made, in dealing withwomen's claim, to the relation, universally recognized in the case ofmen, of political enfranchisement to economic status. Serfdom gave wayto the wage system before democracy developed for men, and the coloredman was emancipated before he was enfranchised. For this reason thecoming of women as paid workers over the top may be regarded asepoch-making. 

In any case, self-determination is certainly a strong element inattaining any real political freedom. 

Complete service to their country in this crisis may lead women to thateconomic freedom which will change a political possession into apolitical power. But the requirement is readiness to do, and to do well, the task which offers. Man-power must give itself unreservedly at thefront. Women must show not only eagerness but fitness to substitute forman-power. It will hearten the nation, help to make the path clear, ifindividual women declare that though the call to them has not yet comefor a definite service, the time of waiting will not be spent incomplaint, nor yet in foolish busy-ness, but in careful andconscientious training for useful work. 

Each woman must prepare so that when the nation's need arises, she canstand at salute and say, "Here is your servant, trained and ready. "Women are not driven over the top. Through self-discipline, they go overit of their own accord. 

VII

EVE'S PAY ENVELOPE

No woman is a cross between an angel and a goose. She is a very humancreature. She has many of man's sins and some virtues of her own. 

Moving up from slavery through all the various forms ofserfdom--attachment to the soil, confinement to a given trade, exclusionfrom citizenship, payment in kind, on to full economic freedom, men haveshown definite reactions at each step. Women respond to thesame stimuli. 

The free man is a better worker than slave or serf. So is the freewoman. All the old gibes at her ineptitudes have broken their pointsagainst the actualities of her ability as a wage worker. The free man ismore alert to obligation, more conscientious in performance, than thebond servant. So is the free woman. With pay envelope, or pension, Eveis a better helpmate and mother than ever before. 

The free man carries a lighter heart than the villain. So does the freewoman. Men have always borne personal grief more easily than women;observers remarked the fact. The reason is the same. An absorbingoccupation, ordered and regarded as important, which brings a returnallowing the recipient to patronize what he or she thinks wise, thatbrings happiness, not boisterous, but dignified. It may be a holocaustthrough which Eve gains that pay envelope, but the material possessionbrings gratification nevertheless. It is a tiny straw showing the set ofthe wind that leisure class British women, however large their unearnedbank account, show no reluctance to accept pay for their work, and fullresponsibility in their new position of employee. 

Women are supposed to have liked to serve for mere love of service, forlove of child, love of husband. There is, of course, many a subtlerelation which can't be weighed and paid for; but toil, even for one'svery own hearthstone, can be valued in hard cash. The daughters of Eve, no less than the sons of Adam, react happily to a recognition thatexpresses itself in a fair wage. 

The verdict comes from all sides that women were never more content. Ofcourse they are content. The weight of suppression is being lifted. Formany their drudgery is for the first time paid for. Is not thatinvigorating? The pay envelope is equal to that of men. Is not that anew experience giving self-respect? Eve often finds her pay envelopeheavier than that of the man working at her side. Right there in herhand, then, she holds proof that the old prejudice against her as aninferior worker is ill-founded. 

Women are finding themselves. Even America's Eve discovers that painsand aches are not "woman's lot. " She is under no curse in the twentiethcentury. With eighteen dollars a week for ringing up fares, and apossible thirty-five for "facing" fuse-parts, nothing can persuade herto be poor-spirited. She radiates the atmosphere, "I am needed!" Doorsfly open to her. She is welcome everywhere. No one seems to be able toget too many of her kind. Politicians compete for her favor, employersquarrel over her. It makes her breathe deep to have the Secretary of theNavy summon her to the United States arsenals, pay her for her work, andcall her a patriot. 

[Illustration: In the well-lighted factory of the Briggs and StrattonCompany, Milwaukee, the girls are comfortably and becomingly garbedfor work. ]

And with the pay envelope women remain clearly human. Their purchasesoften reflect past denials, rather than present needs or even tastes. When set free one always buys what the days of dependence deprived oneof. One of Boston's leading merchants told me that Selfridge in Londonwas selling more jaunty ready-to-wear dresses than ever before. It waspart of John Bull's discipline in ante-bellum dependent days to keep hiswomen folk dowdy. The Lancashire lass with head shawl and pattens, thewearer of the universal sailor hat, in these days of independence andpounds, shillings and pence, are taking note of the shop windows. AndJohn is not turning his eyes away from his women folk in their day ofself-determination. 

But it is not to be concluded that it is all beer and skittles for Eve. With a pay envelope and a vote come responsibilities. Public sympathyhas backed up laws cutting down long hours of work for women. The tradeunions, with a thought to possible competitors, have favored protectingthem from night work. Has Eve been a bit spoiled? Has she let herselftoo easily be classed with children and allowed a line to be drawnbetween men and women in industry? Is it a bit of woman's proverbiallogic to demand special protection, and at the same time insist upon"equal pay for equal work"?

The hopelessness of attaining the promise of the slogan is wellillustrated in the case of a gray haired woman I once met in a Londonprinting shop. In her early days she had been one of the women taken onby the famous printing firm of McCorquodale. That was before protectivelegislation applied to women. She became a highly skilled printer, earning more than any man in the shop. When there was pressure of workshe was always one of the group of experts chosen to carry through therush order. That meant on occasion overtime or night work. Then she wenton to tell me how her skill was checked in her very prime. Regulationsas to women's labor were gradually fixed in the law. All the printers inthe shop, she said, favored the laws limiting her freedom but nottheirs. Soon her wages reflected the contrast. Her employer called herto his office one day and explained, "I cannot afford to pay you as muchas the men any longer. You are not worth as much to me, not being ableto work Saturday afternoon, at night, or overtime. " She was put on lowergrade work and her pay envelope grew slight. 

This woman was not discussing the value of shorter working hours, shewas pointing out that "equal pay" cannot rule for an entire group ofworkers when restrictions apply to part of the group and not to thewhole body. We meet here, not a theory, but an incontrovertible fact. Pay is not equal, and cannot be, where conditions are wholly unequal. Protection for the woman worker means exactly what it would mean for thealien man if by law he were forbidden to work Saturday afternoon, overtime or at night, while the citizen worker was without restriction. The alien would be cut off from advancement in every trade in which hedid not by overwhelming numbers dominate the situation, he would be keptto lower grade processes, he would receive much lower pay than theunprotected worker. 

What common sense would lead us to expect in the hypothetical case of analien man, has happened for the woman worker. Oddly enough she has notherself asked for this protection, but it has been urged very largely bywomen not of the industrial class. Women teachers, doctors, lawyers, women of leisure are the advocates of special legislation for industrialwomen. And yet in their own case they are entirely reasonable, and askno favors. The woman teacher, and quite truly, insists that she works ashard and as long hours as the man in her grade of service, and on thatsound foundation she builds her just demand for equal pay. Women doctorsand lawyers have never asked for other than a square deal in theirprofessions. 

It would be well, perhaps, if industrial women were permitted to guidetheir own ship. They have knowledge enough to reach a safe harbor. Therewas a hint that they were about to assume the helm when the rank andfile of union workers voted down at the conference of the Women's TradeUnion League the resolution proposing a law to forbid women acting asconductors. It was also suggestive when a woman rose and asked of thespeaker on dangerous trades, whether "men did not suffer from exposureto fumes, acids and dust. "

Women have so long been urging that they are people, that they haveforgotten, perchance, that men are people also. Men respond to rest andrecreation as do human beings of the opposite sex. All workers need, andboth sexes should have, protection. But if only one sex in industriallife can have bulwarks thrown up about it, men should be the favoredones just now. They are few, they are precious, they should be wrappedin cotton wool. 

The industrial woman should stand unqualifiedly for the exclusion ofchildren from gainful pursuits. Many years ago the British governmenthad Miss Collett, one of the Labor Correspondents of the Board ofTrade, make a special study of the influence of the employment ofmarried women on infant mortality. The object was to prove that therewas direct cause and effect. The investigator, after an exhaustive studycovering many industrial centers, brought back the report, "Not proven. "But the statistics showed one most interesting relation. In districtswhere the prevailing custom permitted the employment of children asearly as the law allowed, infant mortality was high, and in districtswhere few children were employed, infant mortality was low. Noexplanation of this striking revelation was made in the report, but manywho commented on the tables, pointed out that the wide-spread employmentof the population in its early years sapped the vitality of thecommunity to such an extent that its offspring were weakened. In otherwords, the employment of the immature child, more than the employment ofthat child when grown and married, works harm to the race. 

The woman with a pay envelope must not, then, be willing to swell thefamily budget by turning her children into the wage market. For if shedoes, she creates a dangerous competitor for herself, and puts incertain jeopardy the virility of her nation. But in this war time womenhave secured more than new and larger pay envelopes, for eachbelligerent has reckoned up the woman's worth as mother in coin of therealm. It is enough to turn Eve's head--pay and pensions accorded herall at once. 

Allowances to dependents are more, however, than financial expedients. They are part of the psychological stage-setting of the Great War. Thefighting man must be more than well-fed, well-clothed, well-equipped, more than assured of care if ill or wounded; he must have his mindundisturbed by conditions at home. Governments now know that there mustbe no just cause for complaint in the family at the rear, if the man atthe front is to be fully effective. In the interest of the fightingline, governments dare not leave the home to the haphazard careof charity. 

And so the great belligerents have adopted systems for an uninterruptedflow of money aid to the hearthstone. The wife feels dependence on thenation for which she and her man are making sacrifices, the soldier hasa sense of closer relationship with the country's cause for which hefights. Content at home and sense of gratitude in the trenches build uployalty everywhere. The state allowance answers an economic want and apsychological necessity. 

It is part of our national lack of technique that we were slow to makeprovision for the dependents of enlisted men, and even then were notwhole hearted. It may have been our inherited distrust of the conscriptthat led us to feel that only by his volunteering something will aprecious antidote be administered to the spirit of the drafted man. Toprotect his individualism from taint, the United States soldier mustbear part of the financial burden. Europe, on the other hand, is workingon a basis of reciprocity. The nation exacts service from the man andgives complete service to his dependents. In America the man is bound toserve the community, but the community is not bound to serve him. Andyet in our case there is peculiar need of this even exchange ofobligations. The care of parents in the United States falls directlyupon their children, while some of our allies had, even before the war, carefully devised laws regulating pensions to the aged. 

But first let us get the simple skeleton of the various allowance lawsin mind. The scale of the allowance in different countries adapts itselfto national standards and varying cost of living. The Canadian allowanceseems the most generous. At least one-half of the soldier's pay isgiven directly to his dependents. The government gives an additionaltwenty dollars and the donations of the Patriotic Fund bring up themonthly allowance of a wife with three children to sixty dollars. Theallowance, as might be expected, is low in Italy. The soldier's wifegets eight-tenths of a lira a day, each child four-tenths lira, andeither a father or mother alone eight-tenths lira, or if both areliving, one and three-tenths lire together. The British allowance ismuch higher, the wife getting twelve shillings and sixpence a week. Ifshe has one child, the weekly allowance rises to nineteen and sixpence;if two children, to twenty-four and sixpence; if three, to twenty-eightshillings; and if there are four or more children, the mother receivesthree shillings a week for each extra child. 

Between the extremes of Italy and England stands France, the wifereceiving one franc twenty-five centimes a day, each child under sixteenyears of age twenty-five centimes, and a dependent parent seventy-fivecentimes. Japan grants no government allowance. A Japanese official, inresponse to my inquiry, wrote, "Relations the first and friends the nexttry to help the dependents as far as possible, but if they have neitherrelatives nor friends who have sufficient means to help them, then theassociation consisting of ladies or the municipal officials affordsubvention to them. "

Under the law passed by Congress in October, 1917, an American privatereceiving thirty-three dollars a month when on service abroad must allotfifteen dollars a month to his wife, and the government adds to thistwenty-five dollars, and if there is one child, an additional tendollars, with five dollars for each additional child. A man can securean allowance from the government of ten dollars a month to a dependentparent, if he allots five dollars a month. Such are the bare bones ofthe allowance schemes of the Allies on the western front. 

In the United States the general policy of exemption boards, assuggested by the central authorities, is most disciplinary as regardswomen. Their capacity for self-support is rigidly inquired into. Our menare definitely urging women to a position of economic independence. Theaim is, while securing soldiers for the army, to relieve the governmentof the expense of dependency on the part of women. There is no doubtthat our men at least are faced toward the future. No less indicativeis it of a new world that the allowance laws of all the westernbelligerents recognize common-law marriages. In our own law, marriage is"presumed if the man and woman have lived together in the openlyacknowledged relation of husband and wife during two years immediatelypreceding the date of the declaration of war. " And the illegitimatechild stands equal with the legitimate provided the father acknowledgesthe child or has been "judicially ordered or decreed to contribute" tothe child's support. 

Men are feminists. Their hearts have softened even towards the wife'srelatives, for the word "parent" is not only broad enough to cover thefather, mother, grandparents or stepfather and mother of the man, but"of the spouse" also. Thus passeth the curse of the mother-in-law. 

One need not be endowed with the spirit of prophecy to foretell that"allowances" in war time will broaden out into motherhood pensions inpeace times. It would be an ordinary human reaction should the womanenjoying a pension refuse to give up, on the day peace is declared, herquickly acquired habit of holding the purse strings. That would beaccepting international calm at the expense of domestic differences. The social value of encouraging the mother's natural feeling ofresponsibility toward her child by putting into her hands a statepension is being, let us note, widely tested, and may demonstrate thewisdom and economy of devoting public funds to mothers rather than tocrêches and juvenile asylums. 

The allowance laws may prove the charter of woman's liberties;her pay envelope may become her contract securing the right ofself-determination. 

VIII

POOLING BRAINS

"Employ them. " This was the advice given to a large conference of womenmet to discuss business opportunities for their sex. The advice wasvouchsafed by a young lawyer after the problem of opening wider fieldsto women in the legal profession had been looked at from every angle, only to end in the question, "What can we do to increase theirpractice?" She spoke with animation, as if she had found the key to thesituation, "Employ them. " Perhaps more self-accusation thandetermination to mend their ways was roused by the short andpointed remark. 

The advice has wider application. Taking thirty names of women atrandom, I learned in response to an inquiry that only four had womenphysicians, two had women lawyers, and only one, a woman dentist. Twenty-five women of large real estate holdings had never even for themost unimportant work secured the services of an architect of their ownsex. Further inquiry brought out the fact that of a long list ofwomen's clubs and associations which have built or altered property fortheir purposes, only one had engaged a woman architect. 

Perhaps it is indicative of a lack of nothing more serious than a senseof humor, that we women unite and, apparently without embarrassment, demand that masculine presidents, governors, mayors and legislaturesshall appoint women to office. This unabashed faith in the good will ofmen seems not misplaced, for not only do public men show some confidencein the official capacity of women, but to my inquiry as to whom was duetheir opportunities to "get on, " business women invariably replied, "To men. "

However, the loyalty of women to women is increasing, and theirsolidarity on sound lines of service is a thing of steady growth. Thoughtful women, for instance, do not wish a woman put in a position ofresponsibility simply because she is a woman, but they are even moreopposed to having a candidate of peculiar fitness overlooked merelybecause she is not a man. While the conscientious and poised women arenot willing to urge any and every woman for a given office, they dotenaciously hold that there are positions which cry aloud for women andfor which the right women should he found. In conquering a fair field, women will have to pool their brains even more effectively than theyhave in the past. 

Our efforts at combination are a mere mushroom growth compared with thegenerations of training our big brothers have had in pooling brains. Warand the chase gave them their first lessons in cooperation, nor has warbeen a bad teacher for women. 

Just as the Crimean War and our Civil War put Florence Nightingale andClara Barton and the trained nurse on the map, this war is bringing themedical woman to the fore. Women surgeons and doctors, unlike many othergroups, offer themselves fully trained for service. They know they havesomething to give, and they know the soldiers' need. 

According to an official statement, the emergency call of the army formen physicians and surgeons fell two thousand short of being answered. The necessity of the soldier and the skill of the women will no doubt inthe end be brought effectively together; for although the government ofthe United States, like Great Britain in the early days of the war, hasleft to ever farseeing France the honor of extending hospitality toAmerican women doctors, their strong national organization, with amembership of four thousand, will in time, no doubt, persuade Uncle Samto take his plucky women doctors over the top under the Stars andStripes! Organization crystallized about an unselfish desire and skilledability to serve is irresistible. 

The pooling of the brains of women that has been going on on acountry-wide scale for more than a half-century bears analyzing. Theseassociations have almost invariably centered about a service to berendered. Even the first petition for political enfranchisement urged itas the "duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves theelective franchise. " Unselfishness draws numbers as a magnet draws steelfilings. The spirit of service lying at the heart of the great nationalorganizations made possible quick response to new duties immediatelyupon our entrance into the war. The suffragists said, We wish to serveand we are ready for service. The government used their wide-spread netof local centers for purposes of registrations and war appeals. 

Naturally there were many efforts more foolish than effective in theuniversal rush to help. America was not peculiar in this, nor for thematter of that, were women. War!--it does make the blood course throughthe veins. Every generous citizen cries aloud, "What can I do?" Perhapsmen are a little more voluble than women, their emotions not findingsuch immediate and approved vent along clicking needles and tangledskeins of wool. On the whole, the initiative and organizing ability ofwomen has stood out supremely. 

Of the two departments of the Red Cross which are still left in thecommand of women, the Bureau of Nursing, with Miss Delano at its head, mobilized immediately three thousand of the fourteen thousand nursesenrolled. The first Red Cross Medical Unit with its full quota ofsixty-five nurses completely equipped stood on European soil before anAmerican soldier was there. Of the forty-nine units ready for service, twelve, with from sixty-five to one hundred nurses each, are now inFrance. Two of the five units organized for the navy, each with itsforty active nurses and twenty reserves, are established abroad, and twohundred and thirty nurses are already in active naval service here. MissDelano holds constantly in reserve fifteen hundred nurses as emergencydetachments, a reservoir from which some eight hundred have been drawnfor cantonment hospitals. An inflow of nearly one thousand nurses eachmonth keeps the reservoir ready to meet the drain. 

The Chapter work-rooms sprang up at a call in the night. No one can helpadmiring their well-ordered functioning. There may be criticism, grumbling, but the work-room is moving irresistibly, like a well-oiledmachine. And women are the motive power from start to finish. TheChapters, with their five million members joined in three thousand unitsover the United States, are so many monuments to the ability of womenfor detail. Once mobilized, the women have thus far been able to servetwo thousand war hospitals with surgical dressings, and to send abroadthirteen million separate articles packed carefully, boxed, labelled andaccounted for on their books. 

Not only does this directing of manual work stand to the credit of theChapters, but they have given courses of lectures in home nursing anddietetics to thirty-four thousand women, and in first aid; ten thousandclasses have been held and seventy-five thousand certificates issued tothe proficient. Certainly one object of the Red Cross, "to stimulate thevolunteer work of women, " has been accomplished. 

It is difficult to understand why, with such examples of women'sefficiency before it, the Red Cross, founded by Clara Barton, placesmerely two bureaus in the hands of a woman, has chosen no woman as anofficer, has put but one woman on its central and executive committee, and not a single woman on its present controlling body, the War Council. It may be that the protest against the centralization of all volunteereffort in the Red Cross, in spite of President Wilson's appeal, was dueto the fact that women feared that their energies, running to otherlines than nursing and surgical dressings, would be entirelysidetracked. 

The honor of the splendid war work of the Young Women's ChristianAssociation belongs to women. The War Work Council of the National Boardof Young Women's Christian Associations shows an example of howimmediately efficient an established organization can be in anemergency. As one sees its great War Fund roll up, one exclaims, "Whatmoney raisers women are!" The immediate demands upon the fund are forHostess Houses at cantonments where soldiers can meet their womenvisitors, dormitories providing emergency housing for women employees atcertain army centers, the strengthening of club work among the youngergirls of the nation, profoundly affected by war conditions, and thesending of experienced organizers to coöperate with the women leadersof France and Russia and to install nurses' huts at the base hospitalsof France. It makes one's heart beat high to think of women spendingmillions splendidly, they who have always been told to save penniesfrugally! Well, those hard days were times of training; women learnednot to waste. 

A very worthy pooling of brains, because springing up with no traditionbehind it, was the National League for Woman's Service. In six months itdrew to itself two hundred thousand members and built organizations inthirty-nine States, established classes to train women for the new workopening to them, opened recreation centers and canteens at which wereentertained on a single Sunday, at one center, eighteen hundred soldiersand sailors. So excellent was its Bureau of Registration and Informationfor women workers that the United States Department of Labor took overnot only the files and methods of the Woman's League for Service, butthe entire staff with Miss Obenauer at its head. If imitation is thesincerest flattery, what shall we say of complete adoption of work andworkers, with an honorable "by your leave" and outspoken praise! Andnothing could show a finer spirit of service than this yielding up ofwork initiated by a civil society and the willing passing of it intogovernment hands. 

Not only the Labor Department has established a special women's divisionwith a woman at its head, but the Ordnance Office of the War Departmenthas opened in its Industrial Service Section a woman's division, puttingMiss Mary Van Kleeck in charge. 

But still our government lags behind our Allies in mobilizing woman'spower of initiative and her organizing faculty. The Woman's Committeeof the Council of National Defense, appointed soon after the outbreak ofwar, still has no administrative power. As one member of the Committeesays, "We are not allowed to do anything without the consent of theCouncil of National Defense. There is no appropriation for the Woman'sCommittee. We are furnished with headquarters, stationery, some printingand two stenographers, but nothing more. It is essential that we raisemoney to carry on the other expenses. The great trouble is that now, asalways, men want women to do the work while they do the overseeing. "

[Illustration: The women of the Motor Corps of the National League forWoman's Service refuting the traditions that women have neither strengthnor endurance. ]

Perhaps holding the helm has become second nature to men simply becausethey have held the helm so long, but I am inclined to think they have avery definite desire to have women help steer the ship. Surely thereadiness with which they are sharing their political power with women, would seem to indicate their wish for cooperation on a plan ofperfect equality. 

In any case, it is not necessary to hang on the skirts of government. America has always shown evidence of greater gift in private enterprisethan state action. Perhaps women will demonstrate the nationalcharacteristic. It was farsightedness and enterprise that led theIntercollegiate Bureaus of Occupations, societies run for women bywomen, to strike out in this crisis and open up new callings for theirclients, and still better, to persuade colleges and schools to modifycurricula to meet the changed demands. 

Women are often passed over because they are not prepared. 

The Bureaus have found the demand for women in industrial chemistry andphysics, for instance, to be greater than the supply because thegraduates of women's colleges have not been carried far enough inmathematics, and in chemistry have been kept too much to theoreticaltext-book work. For example, the head of a certain industry was willingto give the position of chemist at his works to a woman. He needed someone to suggest changes in process from time to time, and to watch waste. He set down eight simple problems such as might arise any day in hisfactory for the candidates to answer. Some of the women, all collegegraduates, who had specialized in chemistry, could not answer a singleproblem, and none showed that grip of the science which would enablethem to give other than rule of thumb solutions. He engaged a man. 

In answering the questionnaire which the New York Bureau of Occupationssent to one hundred and twenty-five industrial plants, the manager inalmost every case replied, in regard to the possibility of employingwomen in such positions as research or control chemists, that applicantswere "badly prepared. " As hand workers, too, women are handicapped bylack of knowledge of machinery. In this tool age, high school girls arecut off from technical education, although they are destined to carry onin large measure our skilled trades. I am told that in Germany manyfactories had to close because only women were available as managers, and they had not been fitted by business and technical schools forthe task. 

If women individually are looking for a soft place, if they are afraid, as one manager expressed it, "to put on overalls and go into a vat, "even when their country is so in need of their service, it is futile forthem to ask collectively for equal opportunity and equal pay; if theyindividually fail to prepare as for a life work, regarding themselves asbut temporarily in business or a profession, their collective demandupon the world for a fair field and no favor will be as ineffective asillogical. 

The doors stand wide open. It rests with women themselves as to whetherthey shall enter in. 

To the steady appeals of the employment bureaus, backed by the sternfacts of life, the colleges are yielding. On examination I found thatcurricula are already being modified. None but the sorriest pessimistcould doubt the nature of the final outcome, on realizing the pooling ofbrains which is going on in such associations as the IntercollegiateBureau of Occupations and the League for Business Opportunities. Theywork to the end of having young women not only soundly prepared for thenew openings, but sensitive to the demands of a world set towardsstern duty. 

Not only is there call for a pooling of brains to look after the timidand unready, but there is need of combination to open the gates for theprepared and brave. Few who cheered the Red Cross nurses as they madetheir stirring march on Fifth Avenue, knew that those devoted womenwould, on entering the Military Nurse Corps, find themselves the onlynurses among the Allies without a position of honor. The humiliation toour nurses in placing them below the orderlies in the hospitals is notonly a blow to their esprit de corps, but a definite handicap to theirefficiency. A nurse who was at the head of the nursing staff in a statehospital wrote from the front: "There is one thing the Nursing Committeeneeds to work for, and work hard, too, and that is, to make for nursesthe rank of lieutenant. The Canadians have it, why not the Americans?You will find that it will make a tremendous difference. You see, thereare no officers in our nursing personnel. One of our staff says we arethe hired extras! It is really a great mistake. " Uncle Sam may merely bewaiting for a concentrated drive of public opinion against his tardyrepresentatives. 

[Illustration: Down the street they come, beginning their pilgrimage ofalleviation and succor on the battlefields of France. ]

And why should it be necessary to urge that while scores of young menare dashing to death in endeavors to learn to fly, there are womenunmobilized who know how to soar aloft in safety? They have never, it istrue, been submitted to laboratory tests in twirlings and twistings, butthey reach the zenith. Two carried off the records in long distanceflights, but both have been refused admission to the Flying Corps. Willit need a campaign to secure for our army this efficient service? Mustwomen pool their brains to have Ruth Law spread her protecting wingsover our boys in France?

To any one who realizes the significance of the military situation as itstands, and who is cognizant of the contrast between Germany's use ofher entire people in her national effort, and the slow mobilization ofwoman-power among the Allies and entire lack of anything worthy the nameof mobilization of the labor-power of women in the United States, therewill come a determination to bury every jealousy between woman andwoman, all prejudice in men, to cut red tape in government, with the oneobject of combining all resources. 

The full power of our men must be thrown into military effort. And, then, if as a nation we have brains to pool, we will not stand niggling, but will throw women doctors in to render their service, grant to thenurse corps what it needs to ensure efficiency, throw open the technicalschools to girls as well as to boys, modify the college course to meetthe facts of life. Each woman unprepared is a national handicap, eachprejudice blocking the use of woman-power is treachery to our cause. 

As to the final outcome of united thought and group action among women, no one can doubt. Contacts will rub off angles, capable service willbreak down sex prejudice and overcome government opposition. But thereis not time to wait for the slow development of "final outcomes. "

Women must pool their brains against their own shortcomings, and infavor of their own ability to back up their country now and here. 

IX

"BUSINESS AS USUAL"

It is a platitude to say that America is the most extravagant nation onearth. The whole world tells us so, and we do not deny it, being, indeed, a bit proud of the fact. Who is there among us who does notrespond with sympathetic understanding to the defense of the bridereprimanded for extravagance by her mother-in-law (women havemothers-in-law), "John and I find we can do without the necessities oflife. It's the luxuries we must have. " One of the obstacles to completemobilization of our country is extravagance. And at the center of thisnational failing sits the American woman enthroned. 

Europe found it could not allow old-time luxury trades to go on, if thewar was to be won. "Business as usual" is not in harmony with victory. 

I remember the first time I heard the slogan, and how it carried me andeveryone else away. The Zeppelins had visited London the night before. A house in Red Lion Mews was crushed down into its cellar, a heap ofruins. Every pane of glass was shattered in the hospitals surroundingQueen's Square, and ploughed deep, making a great basin in the center ofthe grass, lay the remnants of the bomb that had buried itself in theheart of England. The shops along Theobald's Road were wrecked, but inthe heaps of broken glass in each show window were improvised signs suchas, "Don't sympathize with us, buy something. " The sign which wasdisplayed oftenest read, "Business as usual. "

The first I noticed was in the window of a print shop, the owner awoman. I talked to her through the frame of the shattered glass. Shelooked very pale and her face was cut, but she and everyone else wascalm. And no one was doing business as usual more composedly than a weetot trudging along to school with a nasty scratch from a glass splinteron her chubby cheek. 

"Business as usual" expressed the fine spirit, the courage, thedetermination of a people. As the sporting motto of an indomitable race, it was very splendid. But war is not a sport, it is a cold, hardscience, demanding every energy of the nation for its successfulpursuit. In proportion as our indulgence in luxury has been greaterthan that of any European nation, our challenge to every business mustbe the more insistent. There must be a straight answer to two questions:Does this enterprise render direct war service, or, if not, is itessential to the well-being of our citizens?

But the discipline will not come from the gods. Nor will our governmentreadily turn taskmaster. The effort must come largely asself-discipline, growing into group determination to win the war and theconviction that it is impossible to achieve victory and conserve thevirility of our people, if any considerable part of the communitydevotes its time, energy and money to creating useless things. A nationcan make good in this cataclysm only if it centers its whole power onthe two objects in view: military victory, and husbanding of life andresources at home. 

Let me hasten to add that the act of creating a thing does not includeonly the processes of industry. The act of buying is creative. The riotof luxury trades in the United States will not end so long as theAmerican woman remains a steady buyer of luxuries. The mobilization ofwomen as workers is no more essential to the triumph of our cause, thanthe mobilization of women for thrift. The beginning and end of savingin America rests almost entirely in the hands of women. They are thebuyers in the working class and in the professional class. Among thewealthy they set the standard of living. 

Practically every appeal for thrift has been addressed to the rich. I amnot referring to the supply of channels into which to pour savings, butto appeals to make the economies which will furnish the means to buystamps or bonds. Those appeals are addressed almost wholly to thewell-to-do, as for example, suggestions as to reducing courses at dinneror cutting out "that fourth meal. "

Self-denial, no doubt, is supposed to be good for the millionaire soul, but to such it is chiefly recommended, I think, as an example sure ofimitation. What the rich do, other women will follow, is the idea. Butthe steady insistence that we fight in this war for democracy has putinto the minds of the people very definite demands for independence andfor freedom. 

In such a democratic world the newly adopted habits of the wealthy willnot prove widely convincing. Economy needs other than anaristocratic stimulus. 

[Illustration: How can business be "as usual" when in Paris there areabout 1800 of these small workshops where a woman dips Bengal Fire andgrenades into a bath of paraffin!]

I do not mean to under-estimate the value of economy in the well-to-doclass. There is no doubt that shop windows on Fifth Avenue are a severecommentary upon our present intelligence and earnestness of purpose. Noone, I think, would deny that it would be a service if the woman offashion ceased to drape fur here, there and everywhere on her gownsexcept where she might really need the thick pelt to keep her warm, andinstead saved the price of the garment which serves no purpose but thatof display, and gave the money in Liberty Bonds to buy a fur-lined coatfor some soldier, or food for a starving baby abroad. And overburdenedas the railways are with freight and ordinary passenger traffic, I amsure the general public will not fail to appreciate to the full aself-denial which leads patrons of private cars, Pullman and diningcoaches to abandon their self-indulgence. 

Undoubtedly economy among the rich is of value. I presume few wouldgainsay that it would have been well for America if the use of privateautomobiles had long since ceased, and the labor and plants used intheir making turned to manufacturing much-needed trucks and ambulances. But while not inclined to belittle the work of any possible saving andself-sacrifice on the part of those of wealth, it seems to me that themost fruitful field for war economy lies among simple people. Thriftwaits for democratization. 

We of limited means hug some of the most extravagant of habits. Theaverage working-class family enjoys none of the fruits of coöperation Wekeep each to our isolated family group, while the richer a person is themore does she gather under her roof representatives of other families. Her cook may come from the Berri family, the waitress may be anAndersen, the nurse an O'Hara. 

The poor might well practice the economy of fellowship. 

The better-off live in apartment houses where the economy of centralheating is practised, while the majority of the poor occupy tenementswhere the extravagance of the individual stove is indulged in. Thesaving of coal is urged, but the authorities do not seek to secure forthe poor the comfort of the true method of fuel saving. 

The richer a family is, the more it saves by the use of skilled service. The poor, clinging to their prejudices and refusing to trust oneanother, do not profit by coöperative buying, or by central kitchens runby experts. Money is wasted by amateurish selection of food andclothing, and nutritive values are squandered by poor cooking. 

Unfortunately Uncle Sam does not suggest how many War Saving Stampscould be bought as a result of economy along these lines. 

The woman with the pay envelope may democratize thrift. She knows howhard it is to earn money, and has learned to make her wages reach a longway. Then, too, she has it brought home to her each pay day that healthis capital. She finds that it is economy to keep well, for lost timebrings a light pay envelope. Every woman who keeps herself in conditionis making a war saving. There has been no propaganda as yet appealing towomen to value dress according to durability and comfort rather thanaccording to its prettiness, to bow to no fashion which means thelessening of power. To corset herself as fashion dictates, to propherself on high heels, means to a woman just so much lost efficiency, and even the most thoughtless, if appealed to for national saving, mightlearn to turn by preference in dress, in habits, in recreation, to thesimple things. 

The Japanese, I am told, make a ceremony of going out from the city toenjoy the beauties of a moonlight night. We go to a stuffy theatre andapplaud a night "set. " Nature gives her children the one, and theproducer charges his patrons for the other. A propaganda of democraticwar economy would teach us to delight in the beauties of nature. 

In making the change from business as usual to economy, Europe sufferedhardship, because although the retrenchments suggested were fairlydemocratic it had not created channels into which savings might bethrown with certainty of their flowing on to safe expenditures. Europewas not ready with its great thrift schemes, nor had the adjustmentsbeen made which would enable a shop to turn out a needed uniform, let ussay, in place of a useless dress. 

Definite use of savings has been provided for in the United States. Thegovernment needs goods of every kind to make our military effortsuccessful. Camps must be built for training the soldiers, uniforms, guns and ammunition supplied. Transportation on land and sea is calledfor. The government needs money to carry on the industries essential towinning the war. 

If a plucky girl who works in a button factory refuses to buy anornament which she at first thought of getting to decorate her belt, andputs that twenty-five cents into a War Saving Stamp, all in the spiritof backing up her man at the front, she will not find herself thrownout of employment; instead, while demands for unnecessary ornamentalfastenings will gradually cease, she will be kept busy ongovernment orders. 

Profiting by the errors of those nations who had to blaze out new paths, the United States knit into law, a few months after the declaration ofwar, not only the quick drafting of its man-power for military service, but methods of absorbing the people's savings. If we neither waste norhoard, we will not suffer as did Europe from wide-spread unemployment. There is more work to be done than our available labor-power can meet. 

There is nothing to fear from the curtailment of luxury; our danger liesin lack of a sound definition of extravagance. Uncle Sam could get moreby appeals to simple folk than by homilies preached to the rich. TheGreat War is a conflict between the ideals of the peoples. 'Tis apeople's war, and with women as half the people. The savings made tosupport the war must needs, then, be made by the people, for the people. 

There has been no compelling propaganda to that end. The suggestion ofmere "cutting down" may be a valuable goal to set for the well-to-do, but it is not a mark to be hit by those already down to bed rock. Theonly saving possible to those living on narrow margins is bycoöperation, civil or state. 

It is a mad extravagance, for instance, to kill with autos children atplay in the streets. A saving of life could easily be achieved throughgroup action, by securing children's attendants, by opening play-groundson the roofs of churches and public buildings, by shutting off streetsdedicated to the sacred right of children to play. This would be a warsaving touching the heart and the enthusiasm of the people. 

Central municipal heating is not a wild dream, but a recognized economyin many places. Municipal kitchens are not vague surmisings, but factsachieved in the towns of Europe. They are forms of war thrift. InAmerica no such converting examples of economy are as yet given, and notan appeal has been made to women to save through solidarity. 

Uncle Sam has been commendably quick and wise in offering a reservoir tohold the tiny savings, but slow in starting a democratic propagandasuggesting ways of saving the pennies. 

If business as usual is a poor motto, so is life as usual, habits asusual. 

X

"AS MOTHER USED TO DO"

Man's admiration for things as mother used to do them is as great anobstacle as business as usual in the path of winning the war andhusbanding the race. The glamour surrounding the economic feats ofmother in the past hides the shortcomings of today. 

I once saw one of her old fortresses, a manor home where in bygone daysshe had reigned supreme. In the court yard was the smoke house where shecured meat and fish. In the cellar were the caldrons and vats where longago she tried tallow and brewed beer. And there were all the utensilsfor dealing with flax. In the garret I saw the spindles for spinningcotton and wool, and the hand looms for weaving the homespun. In herday, mother was a great creator of wealth. 

But then an economic earthquake came. Foundations were shaken, the roofwas torn off her domestic workshop. Steam and machinery, like cyclones, carried away her industries, and nothing was left to her but odds andends of occupations. 

Toiling in the family circle from the days of the cave dwellers, motherhad become so intimately associated in the tribal mind with thehearthstone that the home was called her sphere. Around this segregationaccumulated accretions of opinion, layer on layer emanating from themind of her mate. Let us call the accretions the Adamistic Theory. Itsauthors happened to be the government and could use the public treasuryin furtherance of publicity for their ideas set forth in hieroglyphicscut in stone, or written in plain English and printed on the front pageof an American daily. 

One of the few occupations left to mother after the disruption of hersphere at the end of the eighteenth century was the preparation of food. In the minds of men, food, from its seed sowing up to its mastication, has always been associated with woman. Mention food and the average manthinks of mother. That is the Adam in him. And so, quite naturally, onemust first consider this relation of women to food in theAdamistic Theory. 

[Illustration: Countess de Berkaim and her canteen in the Gare de St. Lazarre, Paris. ]

When the world under war conditions asked to be fed, Adam, running trueto his theory, pointed to mother as the source of supply, and declaredwith an emphasis that came of implicit faith, that the universe needwant for nothing, if each woman would eliminate waste in her kitchen andbecome a voluntary and obedient reflector of the decisions of state andnational food authorities. This solution presupposed a highly developedsense of community devotion in women running hand in hand with entirelack of gift for community action. Woman, it was expected, would displaymore than her proverbial lack of logic by embracing with enthusiasmstate direction and at the same time remain an exemplar ofindividualistic performance. The Adamistic scheme seems still further todemand for its smooth working that the feminine group showself-abnegation and agree that it is not itself suited to reason outgeneral plans. 

It is within the range of possibility, however, that no comprehensivescheme of food conservation or effective saving in any line can beimposed on women without consulting them. The negro who agreed "dat decolored folk should keep in dar places, " touched a fundamental note inhuman nature, over-running sex as well as racial boundaries, when headded, "and de colored folk must do de placin'. " It might seem to runcounter to this bit of wisdom for women to be told that the welfare ofthe world depends upon them, and then for no woman to be givenadministrative power to mobilize the group. 

But the contest between man's devotion to the habits of his ancestry inthe female line, and the ideas of his very living women folk, is astrying to him as it is interesting to the outside observer. Theconflicting forces illustrate a universal fact. It is always true thatthe ruling class, when a discipline and a sacrifice are recognized asnecessary, endeavors to make it appear that the new obligation should beshouldered by the less powerful. For instance, to take an illustrationquite outside the domestic circle, when America first became convincedthat military preparation was incumbent upon us, the ruling class wouldscarcely discuss conscription, much less adopt universal service. Thatis, it vetoed self-discipline. In many States, laws were passed puttingoff upon children in the schools the training which the voting adultsknew the nation needed. 

In the same way, when food falls short and the victualing of the worldbecomes a pressing duty, the governing class adopts a thesis that apolitically less-favored group can, by saving in small and painful ways, accumulate the extra food necessary to keep the world from starving. The ruling class seeks cover in primitive ideas, accuses Eve ofintroducing sin into the world, and calls upon her to mend herwasteful ways. 

Men, of course, know intellectually that much food is a factory productin these days, but emotionally they have a picture of mother, stillsupplying the family in a complete, secret, and silent manner. 

This Adamistic emotion takes command at the crisis, for when humanbeings are suddenly faced with a new and agitating situation, primitiveideas seize them. Mother, it is true, did create the goods for immediateconsumption, and so the sons of Adam, in a spirit of admiration, doffingtheir helmets, so to speak, to the primitive woman, turn in this time ofstress and call confidently upon Eve's daughters to create and save. Theconfidence is touching, but perhaps the feminine reaction will not be, and perchance ought not to be just such as Adam expects. 

Women have passed in aspiration, and to some extent in action, out ofthe ultra-individualistic stage of civilization. 

The food propaganda reflects the hiatus in Adam's thought. I have lookedover hundreds of publications issued by the agricultural departmentsand colleges of the various States. They tell housewives what to "putinto the garbage pail, " what to "keep out of the garbage pail, " what tosubstitute for wheat, how to make soap, but, with a single exception, not a word issued suggests to women any saving through group action. 

This exception, which stood out as a beacon light in an ocean ofliterature worthy of the Stone Age, was a small pamphlet issued by theMichigan Agricultural College on luncheons in rural schools. Sounddoctrine was preached on the need of the children for substantial andwarm noon meals, and the comparative ease and economy with which suchluncheons could be provided at the school house. Children can of coursebe better and more cheaply fed as a group than as isolated unitssupplied with a cold home-prepared lunch box. And yet with the wholemachinery of the state in his hands, Adam's commissions, backed by thepeople's money, goad mother on to isolated endeavor. She plants andweeds and harvests. She dries and cans, preserves and pickles. Then shecalculates and perchance finds that her finished product is not alwaysof the best and has often cost more than if purchased in theopen market. 

It may be the truest devotion to our Allies to challenge theindividualistic rôle recommended by Adam to mother, for it will hinder, not help, the feeding of the world to put women back under eighteenthcentury conditions. Food is short and expensive because labor is short. And even when the harvest is ripe, the saving of food cannot be set as aseparate and commendable goal, and the choice as to where labor shall beexpended as negligible. It is a prejudiced devotion to mother and herways which leads Adam in his food pamphlets to advise that a woman shallsit in her chimney corner and spend time peeling a peach "very thin, "when hundreds of bushels of peaches rot in the orchards for lack ofhands to pick them. 

Just how wide Adam's Eve has opened the gate of Eden and looked out intothe big world is not entirely clear, but probably wide enough to glimpsethe fact that all the advice Adam has recently given to her runs counterto man's method of achievement. Men have preached to one another for ahundred years and more and practiced so successfully the concentrationin industry of unlimited machinery with a few hands, that even motherknows some of the truths in regard to the creation of wealth in thebusiness world, and she is probably not incapable of drawing aconclusion from her own experience in the transfer of work from thehome to the factory. 

If they are city dwellers, women have seen bread and preservestransferred; if farm dwellers, they have seen the curing of meat andfish transferred, the making of butter and cheese. They know thatbecause of this transfer the home is cleaner and quieter, more peoplebetter fed and clothed, and the hours of the factory worker made shorterthan those "mother used to work. " With half an eye women cannot fail tonote that the labor which used to be occupied in the home ininterminable hours of spinning, baking and preserving, has come tooccupy itself for regulated periods in the school, in business, infactory or cannery. And lo, Eve finds herself with a pay envelope ableto help support the quieter, cleaner home!

All this is a commonplace to the business man, who knows that theevolution has gone so far that ten percent of the married women ofAmerica are in gainful pursuits, and that capital ventured on apartmenthotels brings a tempting return. 

But the Adamistic theory is based on the dream that women arecontentedly and efficiently conducting in their flats many occupations, and longing to receive back into the life around the gas-log all thoseindustries which in years gone by were drawn from the fireside andestablished as money making projects in mill or work-shop. And so Adamaddresses an exhortation to his Eve: "Don't buy bread, bake it; don'tbuy flour, grind your own; don't buy soap, make it; don't buy canned, preserved, or dried food, carry on the processes yourself; don't buyfruits and vegetables, raise them. "

Not a doubt seems to exist in Adam's mind as to the efficiency offunctioning woman-power in this way. According to the Adamistic theory, work as mother used to do it is unqualifiedly perfect. This flatteringfaith is naturally balm to women's hearts, and yet there are skepticsamong them. When quite by themselves women speculate as to how much ofthe fruit and vegetables now put up in the home will "work. "

They smile when the hope is expressed that the quality will rise abovethe old-time domestic standard. The home of the past was a beehive inwhich women drudged, and little children were weary toilers, and theresult was not of a high grade. Statistics have shown that seventy-fivepercent of the home-made bread of America was a poor product. I lived asa child in the days of home-made bread. Once in so often the batch ofbread "went sour, " and there seemed to be an unfailing supply of stalebread which "must be eaten first. " Those who cry out against a city ofbakers' bread, have never lived in a country of the home-made loaf. Itis the Adamistic philosophy, so complimentary to Eve, that leads us toexpect that all housewives can turn out a product as good as that of anexpert who has specialized to the one end of making bread, and who issupplied with expensive equipment beyond the reach of the individual topossess. But there are rebellious consumers who point out that the bakeris under the law, while the housewife is a law unto herself. Against thebaker's shortcomings such brave doubters assure us we have redress, wecan refuse to patronize him; against the housewife there is no appeal, her family must swallow her product to the detriment of digestion. 

It may be the brutal truth, taking bread as the index, that only aquarter of the processes carried on in the home turn out satisfactorily, while of the other three-quarters, a just verdict may show that mothergets a "little too much lye" in the soap, cooks the preserves a "littletoo hard, " "candies the fruit just a little bit, " and grinds the flourin the mill "not quite fine enough. "

But perhaps even more than the quality of the product does the questionof the economical disposition of labor-power agitate some women. Theyare asking, since labor is very scarce, whether the extremeindividualistic direction of their labor-power is permissible. The vastmajority of American homes are without servants. In those homes are thewomen working such short hours that they can, without dropping importantobligations, take over preserving, canning, dehydrating, the making ofbread, soap, and butter substitute? Has the tenement-house dwelleraccommodation suitable for introducing these industrial processes intoher home? Would the woman in the small ménage in the country be wise incutting down time given, for instance, to the care of her baby and toreading to the older children, and using the precious momentslaboriously to grind wheat to flour? My observation convinces me thatconscientious housewives in servantless or one-servant households, withwork adjusted to a given end, with relative values already determinedupon, are not prepared by acceptance of the Adamistic theory to returnto primitive occupations. 

But even if business and home life could respond to the change withoutstrain, even if both could easily turn back on the road they have comeduring the last hundred years, commerce yielding up and the homere-adopting certain occupations, we should carefully weigh the economicvalue of a reversion to primitive methods. 

The Adamistic attitude is influenced, perhaps unconsciously but no lesscertainly, by the fact that the housewife is an unpaid worker. If anunpaid person volunteers to do a thing, it is readily assumed that theparticular effort is worth while. "We get the labor for nothing" puts torout all thought of valuation. No doubt Adam will have to give overthinking in this loose way. Labor-power, whether it is paid for or not, must be used wisely or we shall not be able to maintain the structure ofour civilization. 

Then, too, the Adamistic theory weighs and values the housewife's timeas little as it questions the quality of the home product. Any carefulreader of the various "Hints to Housewives" which have appeared, willnote that the "simplifying of meals" recommended would require nearlydouble the time to prepare. The simplification takes into considerationonly the question of food substitutions, price and waste. Mother issupposed to be wholly or largely unemployed and longing for unpaidtoil. Should any housewife conscientiously follow the advice given herby state and municipal authorities she would be the drudge at the centerof a home quite medieval in development. 

Let us take a concrete example:--In a recently published and widelyapplauded cookbook put out by a whole committee of Adamisticphilosophers, it is stated that the object of the book is to givepractical hints as to the various ways in which "economies can beeffected and waste saved;" and yet no saving of the woman's time, nervesand muscles is referred to from cover to cover. The housewife is told, for instance, to "insist upon getting the meat trimmings. " The fat "canbe rendered. " And then follows the process in soap-making. Mother is toplace the scraps of fat on the back of the stove. If she "watches itcarefully" and does not allow it to get hot enough to smoke there willbe no odor. No doubt if she removes her watchful eye and turns to batheher baby, her tenement will reek with smoking fat. She is to pursue thistrying of fat and nerves day by day until she has six pounds of grease. Next, she is to "stir it well, " cool it, melt it again; she is then topour in the lye, "slowly stirring all the time. " Add ammonia. Then"stir the mixture constantly for twenty minutes or half an hour. "

In contrast to all this primeval elaboration is the simple, common-senserule: Do not buy the trimmings, make the butcher trim meat beforeweighing, insist that soap-making shall not be brought back to defilethe home, but remain where it belongs, a trade in which the workers canbe protected by law, and its malodorousness brought under regulation. 

In the same spirit the Adamistic suggestion to Eve to save coal by a"heatless day" is met by the cold challenge of the riotous extravaganceof cooking in twelve separate tenements, twelve separate potatoes, ontwelve separate fires. 

The Adamistic theory, through its emphasis on the relation of food toEve, and the almost religious necessity of its manipulation at the altarof the home cook-stove, has drawn thought away from the nutritive sideof what we eat. While the child in the streets is tossing about suchwords as calories and carbohydrates with a glibness that comes of muchhearing, physiology and food values are destined to remain as far awayas ever from the average family breakfast table. Segregating a sex inthe home, it is true, centralizes it in a given place, but it does notnecessarily train the individual to function efficiently. Mother, as she"used to do, " cooks by rule of thumb; in fact, how could she dootherwise, since she must keep one eye on her approving Adam while theother eye glances at the oven. The Adamistic theory requiresindividualistic action, and disapproves specialization in Eve. 

The theory also demands economic dependence in the home builder. Mother's labor is not her own, she lives under the truck system, so tospeak. She is paid in kind for her work. Influenced by the Adamistictheory, the human animal is the only species in which sex and economicrelations are closely linked, the only one in which the female dependsupon the male for sustenance. Mother must give personal service to thoseabout her, and in return the law ensures her keep according to thestation of her husband, that is, not according to her ability orusefulness, but according to the man's earning capacity. 

The close association of mother with home in the philosophy of her mate, has circumscribed her most natural and modest attempts at relaxation. Mother's holiday is a thing to draw tears from those who contemplate it. The summer outing means carrying the family from one spot to another, and making the best of new surroundings for the old group. The "day off"means a concentration of the usual toil into a few hours, followed by ahazy passing show that she is too weary to enjoy. The kindly farmertakes his wife this year to the county fair. She's up at four to "geton" with the work. She serves breakfast, gives the children an extrapolish in honor of the day, puts on the clean frocks and suits with anadmonition "not to get all mussed up" before the start. The farmercheerily counsels haste in order that "we may have a good long day ofit. " He does not say what "it" is, but the wife knows. At last the houseis ready to be left, and the wife and her brood are ready to settle downin the farm wagon. 

The fair grounds are reached. Adam has prepared the setting. It has norelation to mother's needs. It was a most thrilling innovation when inthe summer of 1914 the Women's Political Union first set up big tents atcounty fairs, fitted with comfortable chairs for mother, and cots andtoys, nurses and companions for the children. The farmer's wife for thefirst time was relieved of care, and could go off to see the sights withher mind at rest, if she desired anything more active than rockinglazily with the delicious sensation of having nothing to do. 

Women must not blame Adam for lack of thoughtfulness. He cannot puthimself in mother's place. She must do her own thinking or let women whoare capable of thought do it for her. 

Men are relieved when mother is independent and happy. The farmerapproved the crèche tent at the county fairs. It convinced him thatwomen have ideas to contribute to the well-being of the community. Theventure proved the greatest of vote getters for the suffrage referendum. 

In fact, men themselves are the chief opponents of the Adamistic theoryto-day. The majority want women to organize the home and it is only asmall minority who place obstacles in the way of the wider functioningof women. It is Eve herself who likes to exaggerate the necessity of herpersonal service. I have seen many a primitive housewife grow hot at thesuggestion that her methods need modifying. It seemed like severing thesilken cords by which she held her mate, to challenge her pumpkin pie. 

But women are slowly overcoming Eve. Take the item of the care ofchildren in city parks. The old way is for fifty women to look afterfifty separate children, and thus waste the time of some thirty of themin keeping fifty miserable children in segregation. The new way, nowsuccessfully initiated, is to form play groups of happy children underthe leadership of capable young women trained for such work. 

Salvaging New York City's food waste was a very splendid bit ofcoöperative action on the part of women. Mrs. William H. Lough of theWomen's University Club found on investigation that thousands of tons ofgood food are lost by a condemnation, necessarily rough and ready, bythe Board of Health. She secured permission to have the sound andunsound fruits and vegetables separated and with a large committee ofwomen saved the food for consumption by the community by dehydrating andother preserving processes. 

This was not as mother used to do. 

Mother's ways are being investigated and discarded the whole worldround. At last accounts half the population of Hamburg was being fedthrough municipal kitchens and in Great Britain an order has been issuedby Lord Rhondda, the Food Controller, authorizing local authorities toopen kitchens as food distributing centers. The central government is tobear twenty-five percent of the cost of equipment and lend anothertwenty-five percent to start the enterprise. 

Mother's cook stove cannot bear the strain of war economies. 

Dropping their old segregation, women are going forth in fellowship withmen to meet in new ways the pressing problems of a new world. 

XI

A LAND ARMY

Great Britain, France and Germany have mobilized a land army of women;will the United States do less? Not if the farmer can be brought to haveas much faith in American women as the women have in themselves. And whyshould they not have faith; the farm has already tested them out, andthey have not been found wanting. In face of this fine accomplishmentthe minds of some men still entertain doubt, or worse, obliviousness, tothe possible contribution of women to land service. 

The farmer knows his need and has made clear statement of the nationaldilemma in the form of a memorial to the President of the United States. In part, it is as follows:

"If food is to win the war, as we are assured on every side, the farmersof America must produce more food in 1918 than they did in 1917. Underexisting conditions we cannot equal the production of 1917, much lesssurpass it, and this for reasons over which the farmers have no control. 

"The chief causes which will inevitably bring about a smaller crop nextyear, unless promptly removed by national action, are six in number, ofwhich the first is the shortage of farm labor. 

"Since the war began in 1914 and before the first draft was made thereis reason to believe that more farm workers had left farms than thereare men in our army and navy together. Those men were drawn away by thehigh wages paid in munition plants and other war industries, and theirplaces remain unfilled. In spite of the new classification, futuredrafts will still further reduce the farm labor supply. "

With a million and a half men drawn out of the country and ten billiondollars to be expended on war material, making every ammunition factorya labor magnet, it seems like the smooth deceptions of prestidigitationto answer the cry of the farmer with suggestion that men rejected by thedraft or high school boys be paroled to meet the exigency. The farmcan't be run with decrepit men or larking boys, nor the war won withless than its full quota of soldiers. Legislators, government officialsand farm associations by sudden shifting of labor battalions cannotcamouflage the fact that the front line trenches of the fighting armyand labor force are undermanned. 

Women can and will be the substitutes if the experiments already madeare signs of the times. 

Groups of women from colleges and seasonal trades have ploughed andharrowed, sowed and planted, weeded and cultivated, mowed and harvested, milked and churned, at Vassar, Bryn Mawr and Mount Holyoke, at Newburgand Milton, at Bedford Hills and Mahwah. It has been demonstrated thatour girls from college and city trade can do farm work, and do it with awill. And still better, at the end of the season their health wins highapproval from the doctors and their work golden opinions fromthe farmers. 

Twelve crusaders were chosen from the thirty-three students whovolunteered for dangerous service during a summer vacation on the VassarCollege farm. The twelve ventured out on a new enterprise that meantaching muscles, sunburn and blisters, but not one of the twelve "everlost a day" in their eight hours at hard labor, beginning at four-thirtyeach morning for eight weeks during one of our hottest summers. Theyploughed with horses, they ploughed with tractors, they sowed the seed, they thinned and weeded the plants, they reaped, they raked, theypitched the hay, they did fencing and milking. The Vassar farm hadbumper crops on its seven hundred and forty acres, and itssuperintendent, Mr. Louis P. Gillespie, said, "A very great amount ofthe work necessary for the large production was done by our students. They hoed and cultivated sixteen acres of field corn, ten acres ofensilage corn, five acres of beans, five acres of potatoes; carriedsheaves of rye and wheat to the shocks and shocked them; and two of thestudents milked seven cows at each milking time. In the garden they laidout a strawberry bed of two thousand plants, helped to plant corn andbeans, picked beans and other vegetables. They took great interest inthe work and did the work just as well as the average man and made goodfar beyond the most sanguine expectations. "

At first the students were paid twenty-five cents an hour, the same rateas the male farm hands. The men objected, saying that the young womenwere beginners, but by the end of the summer the critics realized that"brains tell" and said the girls were worth the higher wage, though theyhad only been getting, in order to appease the masculine prejudice, seventeen and a half cents an hour. There is no pleasing some people! Ifwomen are paid less, they are unfair competitors, if they are paidequally they are being petted--in short, fair competitors. 

Mt. Holyoke and Bryn Mawr have made experiments, and, like Vassar, demonstrated not only that women can, and that satisfactorily, work onthe land, but that they will, and that cheerfully. The groups were happyand they comprehended that they were doing transcendently importantwork, were rendering a patriotic service by filling up the places leftvacant by the drafted men. 

The Women's Agricultural Camp, known popularly as the "Bedford Unit, "proved an experiment rich in practical suggestion. Barnard students, graduates of the Manhattan Trade School, and girls from seasonal tradesformed the backbone of the group. They were housed in an old farmhouse, chaperoned by one of the Barnard professors, fed by student dietitiansfrom the Household Arts Department of Teachers College, transported fromfarm to farm by seven chauffeurs, and coached in the arts of Ceres by anagricultural expert. The "day laborers" as well as the experts wereall women. 

[Illustration: An agricultural unit, in the uniform approved by the Woman'sLand Army of America. ]

In founding the camp Mrs. Charles W. Short, Jr. , had three definiteideas in mind. First, she was convinced that young women could withoutill-effect on their health, and should as a patriotic service, do allsorts of agricultural work. Second, that in the present crisis theopening up of new land with women as farm managers is not called for, but rather the supply of the labor-power on farms already undercultivation is the need. Third, that the women laborers must, in groups, have comfortable living conditions without being a burden on thefarmer's wife, must have adequate pay, and must have regulated hoursof work. 

With these sound ideas as its foundation the camp opened at Mt. Kisco, backed by the Committee on Agriculture of the Mayor's Committee of Womenon National Defense of New York City, under the chairmanship of VirginiaGildersleeve, Dean of Barnard College. 

At its greatest enrolment the unit had seventy-three members. When theprejudice of the fanners was overcome, the demand for workers wasgreater than the camp could supply. Practically the same processes werecarried through as at Vassar, and the verdict of the farmer on his newhelpers was that "while less strong than men, they more than made up forthis by superior conscientiousness and quickness. " Proof of thegenuineness of his estimate was shown in his willingness to pay themanagement of the camp the regulation two dollars for an eight hourworking day. And it indicated entire satisfaction with the experiment, rather than abstract faith in woman, that each farmer anxiously urgedthe captain of the group at the end of his first trial to "please bringthe same young ladies tomorrow. " He was sure no others so good existed. 

The unit plan seems a heaven-born solution of many of the knottyproblems of the farm. In the first place, the farmer gets cheerful andhandy helpers, and his over-worked wife does not find her domestic caresadded to in the hot summer season. The new hands house and feedthemselves. From the point of view of the worker, the advantage is thather food at the camp is prepared by trained hands and the proverbialfarm isolation gives way to congenial companionship. 

These separate experiments growing out of the need of food productionand the shortage of labor have brought new blood to the farm, haveturned the college girl on vacation and, what is more important, being asolution of an industrial problem, the unemployed in seasonal trades, into recruits for an agricultural army. And by concentrating workers inwell-run camps there has been attracted to the land a higher orderof helper. 

One obstacle in the way of the immediate success of putting such womenon the land is a wholly mistaken idea in the minds of many persons ofinfluence in agricultural matters that the new labor can be diverted todomestic work in the farm house. This view is urged in the followingletter to me from the head of one of our best agricultural colleges:"The farm labor shortage is much more acute than is generally understoodand I have much confidence in the possibility of a great amount ofuseful work in food production being done by women who are physicallystrong enough and who can secure sufficient preliminary training to dothis with some degree of efficiency. Probably the larger measure ofservice could be done by relieving women now on the farms of this Statefrom the double burden of indoor work and the attempt to assist in farmoperations and chores. If farm women would get satisfactory domesticassistance within the house they could add much to the success of fieldhusbandry. Women who know farm conditions and who could largely take theplace of men in the management of outdoor affairs can accomplish muchmore than will ever be possible by drafting city-bred women directlyinto garden or other forms of field work. "

The opinions expressed in this letter are as generally held as they aremistaken. In the first place, the theory that the country-bred woman inAmerica is stronger and healthier than the city-bred has long since beenexploded. The assumption cannot stand up under the facts. Statisticsshow that the death rate in the United States is lower in city than infarm communities, and if any added proof were needed to indicate thatthe stamina of city populations overbalances the country it wasfurnished by the draft records. Any group of college and Manhattan TradeSchool girls could be pitted against a group of women from the farms andwin the laurels in staying powers. Nor must it be overlooked that we arenot dealing here with uncertainties; the mettle of the girls hasbeen proved. 

In any case the fact must be faced that these agricultural units willnot do domestic work. Nine-tenths of the farm houses in America arewithout modern conveniences. The well-appointed barn may have runningwater, but the house has not. To undertake work as a domestic helper onthe average farm is to step back into quite primitive conditions. Thefarmer's wife can attract no one from city life, where so muchcooperation is enjoyed, to her extreme individualistic surroundings. 

A second obstacle to the employment of this new labor-force is due tothe government's failure to see the possibility of saving most valuablelabor-power and achieving an economic gain by dovetailing the idlemonths of young women in industrial life into the rush time ofagriculture. 

One department suggests excusing farm labor from the draft, as if we hadalready fulfilled our obligation in man-power to the battlefront of ourAllies. The United States Senate discusses bringing in coolie andcontract labor, as if we had not demonstrated our unfitness to deal withless advanced peoples, and as if a republic could live comfortably witha class of disfranchised workers. The Labor Department declares it willmobilize for the farm an army of a million boys, as if the wise saw, "boys will be boys, " did not apply with peculiar sharpness of flavor tothe American vintage, God bless them, and as if it were not our plainduty at this world crisis to spur up rather than check civilizingagencies and keep our boys in school for the full term. 

Refusing to be in the least crushed by government neglect, far-seeingwomen determined to organize widely and carefully their solution of thefarm-labor problem. To this end the Women's National Farm and GardenAssociation, the Garden Clubs of America, the Young Women's ChristianAssociation, the Woman's Suffrage Party, the New York Women's UniversityClub, and the Committee of the Women's Agricultural Camp, met withrepresentatives of the Grange, of the Cornell Agricultural College, andof the Farmingdale State School of Agriculture, and formed an advisorycouncil, the object of which is to "stimulate the formation of a LandArmy of Women to take the places on the farms of the men who are beingdrafted for active service. " This is to be on a nationwide scale. 

The Council has put lecturers in the Granges to bring to the farmer bythe spoken word and lantern slides the value of the labor of women, andis appealing to colleges, seasonal trades and village communities toform units for the Land Army. It is asking the coöperation of the laborbureaus to act as media through which units may be placed where labor ismost needed. 

This mobilization of woman-power is not yet large or striking. Theeffort is entirely civil. But all the more is it praiseworthy. It showson the part of women, clear-eyed recognition of facts as they exist andvision as to the future. 

The mobilization of this fresh labor-power should of course be taken inhand by the government. Not only that, it should be led by women as inGreat Britain and Germany. But the spirit in America today is the sameas in England the first year of the war, --a disposition to exclude womenfrom full service. 

But facts remain facts in spite of prejudice, and the Woman's Land Army, with faith and enthusiasm in lieu of a national treasury, areendeavoring to bring woman-power and the untilled fields together. Theproved achievement of the individual worker will win the employer, theunit plan with its solution of housing conditions and dreary isolationwill overcome not only the opposition of the farmer's wife, but that ofthe intelligent worker. When the seed time of the movement has beenlived through by anxious and inspired women, the government may step into reap the harvest of a nation's gratitude. 

The mobilization of woman-power on the farm is the need of the hour, andthe wise and devoted women who are trying to answer the need, deserve anall-hail from the people of the United States and her Allies. 

XII

WOMAN'S PART IN SAVING CIVILIZATION

Men have played--all honor to them--the major part in the actualconflict of the war. Women will mobilize for the major part of bindingup the wounds and conserving civilization. 

The spirit of the world might almost be supposed to have been lookingforward to this day and clearly seeing its needs, so well are womenbeing prepared to receive and carry steadily the burden which will belaid on their shoulders. For three-quarters of a century schools andcolleges have given to women what they had to confer in the way ofdiscipline. Gainful pursuits were opened up to them, adding training inordered occupation and self-support. Lastly has come the Great War, withits drill in sacrifice and economy, its larger opportunities to functionand achieve, its ideals of democracy which have directly and quickly ledto the political enfranchisement of women in countries widely separated. 

Fate has prepared women to share fully in the saving of civilization. 

Whether victory be ours in the immediate future, or whether the dangersrising so clearly on the horizon develop into fresh alignments leadingto years of war, civilization stands in jeopardy. Political ideals andultimate social aims may remain intact, but the immediate, practicalmaintenance of those standards of life which are necessary to ensurestrong and fruitful reactions are in danger of being swept away. 

We have been destroying the life, the wealth and beauty of the world. The nobility of our aim in the war must not blind us to the awfulnessand the magnitude of the destruction. In the fighting forces there areat least thirty-eight million men involved in international or civilconflict. Over four million men have fallen, and three million have beenmaimed for life. Disease has taken its toll of fighting strength andeconomic power. In addition to all this human depletion, we have theloss of life and the destruction of health and initiative in harriedpeoples madly flying across their borders from invading armies. 

Starvation has swept across wide areas, and steady underfeeding rules inevery country in Europe and in the cities of America, letting loosemalnutrition, that hidden enemy whose ambushes are more serious than theattacks of an open foe. The world is sick. 

And the world is poor. The nations have spent over a hundred billions onthe war, and that is but part of the wealth which has gone down in thecatastrophe. Thousands of square miles are plowed so deep with shot andshell and trench that the fertile soil lies buried beneath unyieldingclay. Orchards and forests are gone. Villages are wiped out, cities arebut skeletons of themselves. In the face of all the need ofreconstruction we must admit, however much we would wish to cover thefact, --the world is poor. 

[Illustration: A useful blending of Allied women. Miss Kathleen Burke(Scotch) exhibiting the X-ray ambulance equipped by Mrs. Ayrlon(English) and Madame Curie (French). ]

And still, as in no other war, the will to guard human welfare hasremained dominant. The country rose to a woman in most spirited fashionto combat the plan to lower the standards of labor conditions in thesupposed interest of war needs. With but few exceptions the States havestrengthened their labor laws. In its summary the American Associationfor Labor Legislation says:

"Eleven States strengthened their child labor laws, by raising agelimits, extending restrictions to new employments, or shortening hours. Texas passed a new general statute setting a fifteen-year minimum agefor factories and Vermont provided for regulations in conformity withthose of the Federal Child Labor Act. Kansas and New Hampshirelegislated on factory safeguards, Texas on fire escapes, New Jersey onscaffolds, Montana on electrical apparatus, Delaware on sanitaryequipment, and West Virginia on mines. New Jersey forbade themanufacture of articles of food or children's wear in tenements. 

"Workmen's compensation laws were enacted in Delaware, Idaho, NewMexico, South Dakota, and Utah, making forty States and Territorieswhich now have such laws, in addition to the Federal Government'scompensation law, for its own half-million civilian employees. In morethan twenty additional States existing acts were amended, the changesbeing marked by a tendency to extend the scope, shorten the workingperiod, and increase provision for medical care. "

The Great War, far from checking the movement for social welfare, hasquickened the public sense of responsibility. That fact opens the widestfield to women for work in which they are best prepared by natureand training. 

Many keen thinkers are concerned over the question of population. One ofour most distinguished professors has thrown out a hint of a possibilitythat considering the greater proportion of women to men some form ofplurality of wives may become necessary. The disturbed balance of thesexes is a thing that will right itself in one generation. Need ofpopulation will be best answered by efforts to salvage the race. TheUnited States loses each year five hundred thousand babies under twelvemonths of age from preventable causes. An effort to save them would seemmore reasonable than a demand for more children to neglect. Life will beso full of drive and interest, that the woman who has given no hostagesto fortune will find ample scope for her powers outside of motherhood. The "old maid" of tomorrow will have a mission more honored andimportant than was hers in the past. 

But whatever the conclusions as to the wisest method of building uppopulation, there is no doubt that government and individuals will makestrict valuation of the essentials and non-essentials in national life. In our poverty we will test all things in the light of their benefit tothe race and hold fast that which is good. 

The opinions of women will weigh in this national accounting. There willbe no money to squander, and women to a unit will stand behind those menwho think a recreation field is of more value than a race track. It willbe the woman's view, there being but one choice, that it is better toencourage fleetness and skill in boys and girls than in horses. If wehave just so much money to spend and the question arises as to whetherthere shall be corner saloons or municipal kitchens, public sentiment, made in good measure by women, will eschew the saloon. 

The things that lend themselves to the husbanding of the race will drawas a magnet those who have borne the race. The tired world will need forits rejuvenation a broadened and deepened medical science. Women are toowise to permit sanitation and research to fall to a low level. On thecontrary, they will wish them to be more thorough. There will be economyalong the less essential lines to meet the cost. 

The flagging spirit needs the inspiration of art and music. To securethem in the future, state and municipal effort will be demanded. Womenare born economizers. They have been trained to pinch each penny. Withtheir advent into political life, roads and public buildings will costless. Through careful saving, funds will be made available for thethings of the spirit. 

One of the men conductors on the New York street railways somewhatreproachfully remarked to me, "No one ever came to look at therecreation room and restaurant at the car barns until women were takenon. Men don't seem to count. " Is the reproach deserved? Have women beennarrow in sympathy? Perhaps we have assumed that men can look out forthemselves. They could, but in private life they never do. Women have todo the mothering. A trade-unionist is ready enough to regulate wages andhours, but he gives not a thought to surroundings in factoryand workshop. 

An act of protection generally starts with solicitude about a woman orchild. Factory legislation took root in their needs. There was no mercyfor the man worker. His only chance of getting better conditions waswhen women entered his occupation, and the regulation meant for herbenefit indirectly served his interest. 

"Men suffer more than women in certain dangerous trades, but I did notsuppose you were generous enough to care anything about them, " came inanswer to an inquiry at a labor conference at the end of a mostadmirable paper on women in dangerous trades, given by one of thedoctors in the New York City Department of Health. He was speaking to anaudience of working women. I doubt if his hearers had given a thought tomen workers. 

Perhaps this is natural, since there has been going on at the same timewith the development of factory legislation in America a strongpropaganda directed especially at political freedom for women. We havebeen laying stress on the wrongs of woman and demanding verypersistently and convincingly her rights. The industrial needs andrights of the man have been overlooked. 

With increasing numbers of women entering the industrial world, withever widening extension of the vote to women, and the consequentquickening of public responsibility, together with the recent experienceof Europe demonstrating the importance of care for all workers, both menand women, there is ground for hope that even the United States, whereprotective legislation is so retarded in development, will enter uponwide and fundamental plans for conservation of all our human resources. 

Protection of the worker, housing conditions, the feeding of factoryemployees and school children, play grounds and recreation centers, willchallenge the world for first consideration. These are the socialprocesses which command most surely the hearts and minds of women. Thechurning which the war has given humanity has roused in women arealization that upon them rests at least half the burden of savingcivilization from wreck. Here is the world, with such and such needsfor food, clothing, shelter, with such and such needs for sanitation, hospitals, and above all, for education, for science, for the arts, ifit is not to fall back into the conditions of the Middle Ages. How canwomen aid in making secure the national position? Certainly not byidleness, inefficiency, an easy policy of laissez faire. They mustlabor, economize, and pool their brains. 

Women can save civilization only by the broadest coöperative action, bydaring to think, by daring to be themselves. The world is entering anheroic age calling for heroic women. 

APPENDIX

DOCUMENTS USED IN WOMEN'S WAR-WORK INENGLAND AND FRANCE

WAAC

WOMEN'S ARMYAUXILIARYCORPS

CONFIDENTIAL. Reference No: J. W. 21 [o. ]

Joint Woman's V. A. D. Department. 

DEVONSHIRE HOUSE. PICCADILLY, LONDON. W. I. 

_Return to Secretary, V. A. D Department. Devonshire House, Piccadilly, S. W. I. _

Territorial Force Associations, British Red Cross Society. Order of St. John of Jerusalem. 

Telegrams [unreadable]Telephone Mayfair 4707

_B. R. C. S. Or Order of St. John . .. _

Sir, Will you kindly fill up the following form of Medical Certificate, returning it to the address given above. 

Your communication will be received as strictly confidential. 

It is urgently requested that Members'names and detachment numbers shouldbe filled in legibly. 

Yours faithfully, MARGARET HEMPHILL

MEDICAL CERTIFICATE

 1. Name

 2. County No. Of Detachment

 3. How long have you been acquainted with her?

 4. Have you attended her professionally?

 5. For what complaint?

 6. Is she intelligent and of active habits?

 7. General health?

 8. Has she flat feet, hammer-toe, or any other defect?

 9. Is her vision good in each eye?

10. Is her hearing perfect?

11. Has she sound teeth, and if not, have they been properly attended to by a Dentist lately?

12. Has she shown any tendency to Rheumatism, Anaemia, Tuberculosis, or other illness?

13. When?

14. What?

15. Has she ever had influenza?

16. Does she suffer from headaches?

17. Any form of fits?

18. Heart disease or varicose veins?

19. Is she subject to any functional disturbance?

 * * * * *

I have on the day of 191 seen andexamined andhereby certify that she is apparently in good health, that sheis not labouring under any deformity, and is, in my opinion, both physically and mentally competent to undertake duty ina Military Hospital, and is [*]A. Fit for General Service. B. Fit for Home Service only. C. Unfit. 

_Date (Signed) Address_

[Footnote *: Kindly delete categories which do not apply. ]

 * * * * *

Reference No. : J. W. 19c. 

JOINT WOMEN'S V. A. D. DEPARTMENT. Territorial Forces Association. British Red Cross Society. Order of St. John of Jerusalem. DEVONSHIRE HOUSE, PICCADILLY, LONDON. W1. 

 * * * * *

QUALIFICATIONSof Members of Women's Voluntary Aid Detachments for Nursing Service orGeneral Service. 

 * * * * *

1. (a) Name in full (_Mrs. Or Miss_). (b) If Married state Maiden Name. 

2. Permanent Postal Address. Present Postal Address. 

3. Telephone No. 

4. Telegraphic Address. 

5. Detachment County and No. B. R. C. S. St. John Brigade. St. John Association. 

6. Name and Address of Commandant of Detachment. 

7. Rank in Detachment. 

8. Time of Service in Detachment. 

9. Age and Date of Birth. 

10. Place and Country of Birth. 

11. Nationality at Birth. 

12. Present Nationality. 

13. Height. 

14. Weight. 

15. Where Educated. 

16. At what age did you leave school?

17. Whether Single, Married, or Widow. 

18. If not Single, state Nationality of Husband. 

19. Name and Address of Next-of-Kin or Nearest Relation residing in the British Isles. 

20. Father's Nationality at Birth. 

21. Mother's Nationality at Birth. 

22. Father's Profession. 

23. Religion. 

24. (a) If you volunteer for nursing duties state what experience you have had in wards. 

 (b) Name and address of hospital. 

 (c) Date. 

25. Certificates held. 

26. (a) Nursing. (f) Motor Driver. (b) Kitchen. (g) Laboratory Attendant. (c) Clerical. (h) X-Ray Attendant. (d) Storekeeping. (i) House Work. (e) Dispenser. (j) Pantry Work. 

27. State what experience and qualifications you have had for Categories in No. 26. 

28. Have you been inoculated against Enteric Fever? If so, what date? If not, are you willing to be?

 Have you been vaccinated? It so, what date? If not, are you willing to be?

29. Your usual Occupation or Profession? Your present Occupation or Profession?

30. Give the Names and Addresses of two British Householders with permanent addresses in the British Isles who have known applicant for two or more years, but are not related to applicant, to act as References, having previously obtained their permission to use their names. 

 (a) (Mayor, Magistrate, Justice of the Peace, Minister of Religion, Barrister, Physician, Solicitor or Notary Public). Acquaintance dating from year ________ (b) Lady. Acquaintance dating from year _______

31. Name and Address of Head of College or School, recent Business Employer, Head of Government Department, Secretary of Society or some other person who can be referred to for a report on your qualifications for the work selected. (The Quartermaster of your V. A. D. Could be given if you have worked in her department. )

 In what capacity employed?

 How long employed? Year?

32. Are you willing to serve at home or abroad?

33. Are you willing to serve in Civil Hospitals from which personnel have been withdrawn for War Service?

34. Are you willing to serve:--

 (a) With pay, (b) For expenses only, on the terms of service laid down in our terms of service?

 N. B. --Members who can afford to work for their expenses only are urgently needed. 

35. Date after which you will be available for duty. 

36. (a) Are you pledged to serve in any other organisation? (b) If so, what?

37. (a) Have you served with the Women's Legion or any similar organisation? (b) If so, what?

I hereby declare that the above statements are complete and correct tothe best of my knowledge and belief. 

Date . .. .. .. .. . Usual Signature . .. .. .. .. . 

_For Office Purposes_, please add your full Christian Names and Surnamelegibly written. 

I certify that the above declaration is, to the best of my knowledge andbelief, true; and that M . .. .. .. .. .. . Is a fit and proper person to beemployed by the Joint V. A. D. Committee. 

REMARKS:--

Date . .. .. .. .. . Signed . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. . _Commandant_. 

Date . .. .. .. .. . Countersigned . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. . _County Director_. 

NOTE. --Commandants are held responsible for all statements on this formbeing accurate so far as it is possible for them to find out, also forthe fact that the member who signs it is a British subject, and in everyway suitable for appointment by the Joint V. A. D. Committee. 

This form must be signed by the Commandant, who should then send it tothe County Director for counter signature and forwarding toHeadquarters. 

_Application No. _

_For Official use only_. 

CONFIDENTIAL. 

WOMEN'S ARMY AUXILIARY CORPSFORM OF APPLICATION

N. B. --No woman need apply who is not prepared to offer her services forthe duration of the war and to take up work wherever she is required. 

1. Name in Full (Mrs. Or Miss). 

2. Permanent Postal Address. 

2a. State nearest Railway Station. 

3. Surname at birth, if different. 

4. For what work do you offer your services? State your qualifications for this work. (The occupations for which women are required are set out in the accompanying leaflet. )

5. Are you willing to serve:-- (a) At Home and Abroad as may be required. (b) At Home only. 

6. If selected and enrolled how many days' notice will you require before your services are available?

7. Age and date of birth. 

8. Place and Country of Birth. 

9. Nationality at Birth. 

10. Present Nationality (if naturalised give date). 

11. Whether single, married or widow. If married state number of children, (a) under 12 years old. (b) " 5 " "

12. If not single state Nationality of Husband. (a) Is your husband serving with the Forces? (b) If so, where?

13. Father's Nationality at Birth. 

14. Mother's Nationality at Birth. 

15. Father's Occupation. 

16. State school or college where educated. At what age did you leave School?

17. Particulars of any other Training, stating Certificates held. 

18. (a) Name and Address of your present employer (_see Note on other side_). 

 N. B. --(The employer will not be referred to unless he is given as a reference under paragraph 20 below. )

 (b) Nature of his business. 

 (c) Capacity in which you are employed. 

 (d) Length of your service with him. 

 (e) Salary which you are now receiving. 

19. Previous business experience (if any) giving dates, salaries received, and names of Employers. 

20. Give below for purposes of reference the names of two or more British householders with their permanent addresses, one of whom should be, if possible, your present or previous Employer, a Teacher, a Town Councillor, Mayor or Provost, Justice of Peace, Minister of Religion, Doctor or Solicitor, who has known you for two or more years, but is not related to you. One of the references must be a woman. 

 (a) Name. Profession or Occupation. Address. 

 (b) Name. Profession or Occupation. Address. 

 (c) Name. Profession or Occupation. Address. 

An offer of Service can in no way be regarded as a final enrolment. 

_I hereby declare that the above statements are complete and correct tothe best of my knowledge and belief_. 

_Date_ ___________ _Usual Signature_ ____________

This Form should be filled in by the Applicant and returnedto:--Employment Exchange _________________________

 * * * * *

NOTE. 

Women who are already engaged in any of the following occupations willnot be accepted unless they bring with them a letter from their Employeror Head of Department stating that they have permission to volunteer:--

(i) Government Service. 

(ii) Munition work. 

(iii) Work in a Controlled Establishment. 

(iv) Full-time work in an establishment engaged on contract work for a Government Department. 

(v) V. A. D. Military Hospitals and Red Cross Hospitals. 

(vi) School Teaching. 

(vii) Local Government Service. 

No woman who is a National Service Volunteer or is employed inAgriculture will be accepted. 

N. B. --Applicants are urged not to give up any present employment untilthey are called upon to do so. 

(Part of the application form used in England by theWomen's Land Army. )

 * * * * *

WOMEN'S LAND ARMY

 * * * * *

CONDITIONS AND TERMS. 

There are three Sections of the Women's Land Army. 

(1). AGRICULTURE. 

(2). TIMBER CUTTING. 

(3). FORAGE. 

If you sign on for A YEAR and are prepared to go wherever you are sent, you can join which Section you like. 

YOU PROMISE:--

1. To sign on in the Land Army for ONE YEAR. 

2. To come to a Selection Board when summoned. 

3. To be medically examined, free of cost. 

4. To be prepared if PASSED by the Selection Board to take up work after due notice. 

5. TO BE WILLING TO GO TO WHATEVER PART OF THE COUNTRY YOU ARE SENT. 

THE GOVERNMENT PROMISES:--

1. A MINIMUM WAGE to workers of 18/- a week. After they have passed an efficiency test the wages given are £1 a week and upwards. 

2. A short course of FREE INSTRUCTION if necessary. 

3. FREE UNIFORM. 

4. FREE MAINTENANCE in a Depôt for a term not exceeding 4 weeks if the worker is OUT OF EMPLOYMENT through no fault of her own. 

5. FREE RAILWAY travelling, when taking up or changing Employment.