THE WOMEN'S SHARE.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 199, 11 August 1916, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE WOMEN'S SHARE.

WHAT THE FUTURE HAS IN STORE. By SIR LEO CHIOZZA MONEY, M.P in "The Daily Mail." These words are dedicate to Woman, but their argument is not, after the manner of Herrick or Suckling, concerned with her shoe-string or even with that petticoat which, after an unhappy interval, has of late again become tempestuous! I speak rather of the dear, brave heart of hur and oi what her courage and devotion mean to us in these direful days. I speak of Woman at the lathe, charming me more, I swear, in decent overall and cap than ever did Julia in her ribands. Of Woman in the powdershed, spoiling her pretty hair with deadly acvd .even wh : le men work softhanded in trumpery occupations declared, forsooth, to be indispensable. Ui Woman working twelve-hour shifts in the omnibus, of whom George Wither prophetically wrote somewhere about t\w year 1600: If she lie thus fair to mc, I care not what the fare may be or some such jingle. Of Woman, neatly moving us to admiration and the fifth floor ; n the lit where yesterday xc noted a most uncivil man. Of Woman carting, and driving, and distributing. Of Woman, in short, doing all that Man can do, and more than many men have ever attempted. . . ■ I do not pretend to know exactly how many .women are at this moment, to use the words of the blameless Censn--, " e!i«aged in occupations,' - which menus worßng for salary or wage as distinguished from that unpar.d work ct which we truly say that woman's work is never done. Certain it is that many

hundreds of thousands of women nn■ 1 girls have, stepped into places late'y occupied by their fathers or brother.or husbands or sweethearts who have gone to the war. If. deferring to mat public thirst for statutes with which ! have vanly sought to contend, 1 venture to give ail estimate, 1 should say that. tlje, number of women now wording in war and peace jobs probably exceeds seven millions, or n number nearly as great a« that of +'ie males working fur gain in England and unles m 1881; DOrX(i THE JOB BETTER. I am sure we do not yet fully reaiis.what wo owe to the pan women have played in the war. I/ttV of imagin ition we have showed, most d \i<, n respect of it. Great, wise, and eminent men, entrusted with Oovenimentnl powers, declared .early in the war, in private and in public, that the nation was marching to ruin because 't was b/ng denuded of workers. What wouM become of our trade? u > were asked. What of the means to finance our A'lies? Would we, to quote one pretlv phraso that sticks in e.iy memory, "burst up the whole show" by drafting into the Army and out of production, indispensable, irreplaceable, irretp ?■ able men Little they reeked, th. 'O pjssim/sts, of what Woman could do. And it is not merely that women nr ■ serv'ng as makeshifts or stopgaps. In the great majority of cases the ev : dcncc> shows they are doing the'r new iolw as w,oII as men.-or better. (Jet me give two very diverhe illustrations of i'ik imnortant fact. the first relates to the great he-.rt-duarters staff of the Nat : onal liisiiran.-e Coiiini'ssioners. As a meiub- - ol che Retrenchment Committee ! Lad th" pleasure of hearing evden v m lie. clfcet that i. Vi-ry large proportion of ''■•• male insurance clerks bad none ii th" war and had I Keen rcirac'd by women who found no difficulty in doiic.! all that had beei done by their predecessors. The second relates to a great engineering works, that cf Messrs. li-•;. i .1iii'ie. The head of this firm recent!/

stated in public, and his statement has not been contradicted, that on some iohs women wei*e not only dang the work lately done by two men but turning out twice as much product in the same fe-nw Tlr.s last anecdote brings me to'. no subject of wage, and to the effect of tinwar and tire work of women upon the earnings of both men and women. Tha eKiilnnation of why it is that women in Mime jobs are found to be doing more than men used to do is quite srniple The men were playing ca canny. Small blame to them, say those who understand. The low-wage fetish which it has taken Armageddon to get rid of was based upon the curious theory that Providence had orda'ned the existence of a class of creatures called working men who might never hope to earn more than about thirty-five shillings -t week at tho best. If a piece-rate wns arranged it was on such a basis. Let us suppose it is so arranged, and then let us imng'ne a workman rmld enough to do so many pieces ct so much a piece as to bring hm in throe pounds. Three whole pounds of twenty shillings each : think of it! No self-respecting employer could bring himself to tlrnk of it in those far-off legendary days before the war. Therefore, whenever a p'ece-rate vielded anything worth having : .t was instantly cut down, after the manner of the gentleman who put his foot on a meek reptile to "larn it to bo a toad." The workman tins "larned '"in bitter experience that more work did not mean more pay; hence the reduction of output commonly called ca' canny. For if you got no more for doing much, it was just ns well to do little. NEW IDEA OF WAGES. I In the new conditions of to-da\» workers in the State-controlled eng:neering shops do not have their piecerates "cut down because they work hard.

and as a consequence they earn a lot of money. That :s why women coming newly into these jobs have been found to do more than the men who worked under en' canny conditions in peace. lu my view, the new conception ;.f earnings which iias a:l'.-en through the war is a blessing to the nation. Wages can never return to the old despicable scale aga. nst winch I fought for so many years before the war. As a consequence, the power of eonMimptiou will increase, trade will increase, output will mciva.se, and we shall arrivat new and larger dmrens'ons for industry. Production will no longer be curtailed and frustrated through the nation chiefly cons'sing of people with little or no power to buy goods when they ago made. Tie tonic of war lr. this as in other tilings will strengthen and simulate our activities. We shall have be.cn taught the economy of high wages, .as successfully practised n AnuT'ca, Cajiadn, and Australia, and the value of the doctrine of equal pav for equal work for men and women. I pass from wage- to consider a tear, which I iind commonly entertained tiiat after the war men will be d,'sp!aecd by the women who hev.e taken up men's work. This is bn-rd upon the faisv idea that wo ace dissiparng all our capifcil in the war. ,ind that a period of pove, ■ ty and destitution must succeed it. Our capital is increasng and not decreasing during the war. We rr,f gaining nio>t valuable ivw industrvs during the war end enlarging many old ones. for example, we are new dealing with the al 'acinous produce of the Rr'tisii Einp : re n the United Kingdom whereas I. for.' the wrr we re- ; «ned l! to Gorman/. In i few years this conn. try will pos c e<« the leuge-! margarne industry in th,. world, tiipplving tlv who'." o! the hon.e mnrkot end exporting, whereas before the wrr we had enormous imports of th;s commodity.

Tur.iimr to •> w'delv different industry, whereas in 1910 we hnrl a y.-vral- 1 .- and stagnant steel production ef only s : x minimi tons, by the.-nil of the war we shall have nearly doubl 'd this output. Does anyone suppose that aft: l : - tho war we cannot market twelve mil-

r *••[, Hon tons of steel or even more? Of course we can. The Br tl.sli Empire alone —one-fifth of the world's land and one-fourth of its people—could easily absorb far more than that. The general truth is that, owing to the fact that we have been awakened out of slumber, we shall tackle industry on a new scale and with a new purpose. No man. therefore, need entertain the craven ieai that th« brave women who have entered industry in this war will have done so to his hurt. Atter the during the war, unless we are blind indeed, the difficulty should be not to find jobs for men and women, but to find men and women for jobs. Nor does this depend upon things yet to be a-eompl shed. As I have indicated, things are already accomplished which will ensure a much bigger and better Birtish industry after the war.

But even al»ov,c the material ait 1 . which woman has given us in this war I place the lasting social effects or woman's invasion of work. Before the war the Feminist movement was, to be frank, very largely a class movement. How often I seem to have met the dear lad 1 / who thought it a shame, that she a woman of means, had no vote, while her footman or gardener had one. The womvHl who crowded into big halls and put up large sums of money for the Canse were not. it may be well believed, working women or the wives of working men. Woman's emancipation meant the emancipation of the well dressed. The well-worn phrase the "economic independence of woman" is a fraud and a sham as long as it is related solely to tne class of women that one meets in the too familiar problem play in which soulful daughters 01 wiell-to-do parents hunger for expression and independence. These aspiring creatures are not the women who arc making munitions for us at this moment. The r,eal emancipation of woman will come not from the intellectual revolt of the few but from the common-clear-seeing of the many. Tho door is now widely open, and t cannot again be closed. The war has done more for the economic independence of women than twenty years of ' pwe. I rejoice, that it is so, for the woman's cause is man's also. If I mav slightly vary the Prime Minister's favourite quotation from Shakespeare: "In the reproof of chance stands the true test of—women."