A GIRL ENGINEER

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 84, 2 January 1918, Page 3

A GIRL ENGINEER

WHO CONTROLS 6000 WOMEN WAR WORKERS. One of our great engineers of the war, a man who makes everything from a battleship to an aeroplane engine, showed mo the other day his latest creation, an engineering university for women (states a correspondent of "the "Daily Mail"). Away in the hills by tho side of a tumbling, foaming salmon river ii model factory has been built with its four tiers of ferro-concrete floors and great glass-sided walls. Comparatively small as factories go nowadays, it is yet built with the idea of taking 300 'girl students. "We only opened eight months ago," tho engineer founder told mo, "and our pupils today number 60. It is a factory, entirely for women, run by and to a largo extent managed by women. With tho exception of two men instructors the women do every bit of the work." I found the entire ground floor of the factory, which is given up to the production of parts of high-power aeroplane engines, tho last word in modern "shops" and the cleanest and brightest I have ever been in. Here the girls were working under their works' superintendent, a tall and essentially feminine woman, who took her mathematical tripos from Newnham College, was lecturer at one of our great girls' public schools, aud has had much engineering experience in Canada and England since the war.

"We have just the right class of girl," she told me, "all well educated, and most of them university girls. With the exception of four or five officers' wives who are here for war work, all are intent upon taking up engineering as a professioiu We have proved that women can set up the most complicated machines." The workers rank as women epgineer apprentices. The hours are 44 per week. Thn first six months aro probationary,. with remuneration at iOs. a week. An agreement, for three years is then entered upon, and the wages begin at 255. a week, and afterwards ss. a week increase as the result of examination.

"This college is the result of tho enthusiasm of a young girl for her father's profession," the founder told me. Later in the day I saw this daughter in her parent's home in the Scottish hills, having her first week-, end home for many months. Now only 23, she is controlling 6000 women at a certain place in England far from hero. Her women' are working on submarines, guns, aircraft, and all manners of munitions of war. The daughter of English and French parents, brought up in the environment of engineering works of France and Scotland, she made up her mind when she left school that she would bo an engineer, and begged her father, tho managing director of a large works, to let her go into his shop. "I just flatly refused," said her father. "I told her that no woman could be an engineer, and that sho had better learn shorthand. Well, sho did that to please me—and—well, I had to let her go into tho works to please Her. That was two years before the war."