A GIRL ENGINEER.

Taranaki Daily News, 12 January 1918, Page 6

A GIRL ENGINEER.

WHO CONTROLS fi,ooo WOMEN WORKERS. Oiip.of our {jrpnt. engineers of the war, a man who makes everything from a battleship to an aeroplane engine, showed mo tlie other day his latest creation, an engineering univeivily for women (states a corrcsnoudent of the Daily Mail). Away in the .hills by the side of a f iimliliii.'i', foi-.innir salmon rver a model factory has been built with its four tiers of fprro-concrete floors and great glasssided walls. Comparatively small as factories go nowadays, it is built with the idea of taking 300 girl students. "W« opened eight months ago," i;ae engineer foun4§C i?l4 we* "fust

pupils to-day number (10. It is a factory entirely for women, run by and to a large extent managed by women. With the 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 produc- i tion of parts of high-power aeroplane engines, the last word in modern "shops" ami tin' ( leanest and brightest I have i \cr been in. Here the girls were work. I ing under their works' superintendent, ' a tall and essentially feminine woman, who took her mathematical tripos from I Newnham College, was lecturer at one I of our great girls' public schools, and I as had much engineering experience in j , Canada and England since the war. | "We have just the right class of girl," | sli? told me, "all well educated, and most of them university girls. With the exception of four or Ave officers' wives a all »re intent

j upon taking up engineering as a profession. We have proved that women can set up the most complicated maI chinos." The workers rank as women I engineer apprentices. The hours are I ;44 per week. The first six months are | probationary, with remuneration at 20» n week. An agreement for three years is then entered upon, and the wages beI Sin at 25s a week, and afterwards 5s a I tveek increase as the result of evamina- ! tion. > "This college is' the result of the enthusiasm of a young girl for her father's profession," the founder told me. Latei in the day I saw this girl in her parent's i jhome in the Scottish hills, having her (first week-end home for many months. •Now only 23, she is controlling women at a certain place in England far from here. Her %'omen are workng on iubmarmes, guns, aircraft, and all m«u»- , nera of muiutlona of wm. The daughter

of English and French parents, brought up in the environment of engineering works of France aid Scotland, she made up her mind when she left school that she would be an engineer, and begged her father, the managing director of a large works, to let her go into his.shop. "I just flatly refused," said her father. I told her that she had better learn shorthand. Well, she did that to, please me and—well, I had to let her go into the works to please her. That was two years before the war.'! " *~