BRITISH WOMEN COULD BUILD A BATTLESHIP.

Taranaki Daily News, 30 January 1917, Page 7

BRITISH WOMEN COULD BUILD A BATTLESHIP.

The scope for female labor lias became so wide in England that a well-known engineer recently stated as his firm conviction that, given iwo more years of war, he could buildVa battleship from keel to aerial, in all its complex detail and ready for trial; entirely by women workers. This statement the London Daily Telegraph believes is not exaggerated, in vtew of the skill, energy, and persistence that the women sho>r iu their engineering occupations. Nearly three-qiiarte v s of a million of women have taken the places of men in the industries of Groat Britain, and the substitution is proceeding at such a rapid rate that, if the war continues a few months longer, the figure is almost certain to reach the million mark. The Telegraph states: "The greater portion of this female labor is absorbed by our munition factories—One of which, producing 9.2 in shellsi, is entirely staffed by women labor—but there, are 40,000 on transport work and 71,000 in arsenals and dockyards. Even in mining, quarrying, and building woman are engaged, and they are rapidly replacing men in the metal it dustries. Women engine-cleaners and workshop laborers are essentially a wartime product. It is in the Machine shop that women ore especially valuable, and they are excellent at boring, shaping, drilling, slotting, key-seating, milling, surface grinding, universal grinding, fitting, skilled assembling and erecting and even tool setting. They have also successfully taken up aeroplane building, instrument making, motor testing, boiler making, and such novel work as driving overhead travelling cranes, shipyard and buildjng cranes, also the inspecting iT.ri testing of materials of all km,!s involving the ose of micrometers, verniers, surface gAuges, and other measuring instruments. But just what is to become of all this skilled female labor tt'tcr the war is one of the greatest nroblcms' that will have eventually to be faced. Whether the retention of women workers in the mechanical trades Mill continue ti a modified extent when peace is restored will depend upon the l attitude then taken by the trade nnier.s en the matter of the dilution of labor. At present, of course, the unions do not raise any objections, and do not carry cut their old tactics of limiting output and regulating hours. Now it is only the human factor that counts, each individual being free to secure th« maximum output in a given time."

Reductions, however, have recently been made in (the hours of labor, with what are said to be eminently satisfoctoly results. Sunday labor lias been c'.one away witli in many munition factories, nnd, as a result, the'week's output has actually increased.

"The reason simply is that since fho lite of pay for Sunday work is' really twice that for weekdays, certain hands prefer to work on Sunday, so that they can be away from the factory, during the week."