THE LABOR MOVEMENT

Evening Star, Issue 16629, 11 January 1918, Page 1

THE LABOR MOVEMENT

[By Veteran.] Brief contributions on matters vntl reference to the Labor Movement art invited. WOMEN IN INDUSTRY. Looking over a file of the London * Times ’ for last year, I came across an account of an exhibition held in London in March last, at which there were 550 official photographs of women munition workers shown. The exhibition was opened by Mr Kellaway, M.P., Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Munitions. A large proportion of the photographs were of women. doing work which, before the war, was performed by highly-trained men. . Among the thousands of exhibits were samples of work connected with engines used in the tanks, internal combustion engines, aeroplane fittings, machine guns, belt-fitting machines, Lewis guns, optical work, aerial torpedoes, bombs, grenades, body armor, gun carriages, shells and fuses, service rifles, periscopes, magnetos and plugs, and various other things which are required to carry on the war. The exhibits, the work on which was wholly done by women, shows the skill that they have acquired in the engineering trades. In the course of his speech Mr Kellaway said that before the war there were only three national workshops. Now there were more than 100, and, in addition, 4,795 controlled establishments. Compared with May, 1915, the output to-day of 18-pounder guns had increased 28 times; 4.5 field howitzers, 52 times; medium guns and howitzers, 71 times; and heavy howitzers, above 6in, 423 times. In machine guns and high explosives the progress had been equally striking. At least 25 per cent, of the men who were engaged in the chemical and engineering trades at the outbreak of war had joined the Army, and the results he had indicated were to a great extent due to the women of the country, of whom 700,000 were now employed. That exhibition proved that there was hardly any limit which could be put to the possibilities of women in industry, for some of the most technical processes in engineering were the work of women who 18 mouths ago knew nothing of engineering. Working men. had done everything in their power to enable women to become efficient producers; and it was also right to recognise the patriotism and good sense with which the great majority of the employers had assisted the efforts of the Ministry to realise to the full the possibility of ■ woman-power. No praise could be too high for the patriotism and enthusiasm with which the great body of trade unionists had enabled them to train this vast army of women workers. He' was not going beyond the ascertained facts in saying that but for the work that women had done in the munition shops the Germans would by now have ,von the war. A prominent engineer had ;xpressed his firm conviction that, given two more years of war, he would undertake to bu ; 3d a battleship entirely by women’s labor. How many of the 700,000 women now employed on war work in England will continue in the same kind of employe ent after the war is over, and what effect they will have upon the Labor movement are problems for the future. There is no doubt that a good proportion of women who never thought of entering into the trades chiefly carried on by men before the war will want to remain at the class o’ work that has been torced on them ty I o And it is very likely that there

JJCi.t I;C_ a goo.'] ':{ ihet: without inconveniencing the men w!il'sg places they have taken. Many of the men who come back from tho war will have no desire to go back to their old occupations, and a good many will have suffered injuries that will debar them from going back to their trades. A few days after tho exhibition referred to above ‘ .the Times ’ gave another side of the women’s labor question. They say : “ We have received from the Women’s Defence Relief Corps (10 Abbey road, N.W.) the correspondence which follows! and which is an instructive example of how not to do it.’ The Women’s Defence Relief Corps are engaged, with the approval of the Board of Agriculture, in putting women laborers on the land. The lirst letter is self-explanatory : “ Madam, —Replying to your paragraph in the ‘ Stockbreeder ’ re lady workers. Do you think you could fit me up with some that have been Hunting Ladies? My Farm is very heavy and sticky, therefore two or three sisters that would be patriotic enough to help a working farmer, but they would have to see the place before anything could be done. Someone that can break young horses and ride well is what I want, and plough, etc. Your name is not familiar to me, as, I know most horse ladies. Your help will be deemed a great favor.—\ours obediently, . i In reply the corps told the farmer of a woman who had been sent to them to place by tile Board of Agriculture. She had been brought up on a ranch in the Argentine, and could break horses. She asked 25s a week. His answer was as follows : “Dear madam,—Thank you for vour last letter. If the lady cared to write to mo curect and toll me full particulars well and good. A near neighbor had lour ladies give their services, and found themselves and furnished their own apartments. Do you know any of those sort? That is what I call real patriotism. I have plenty of work if they are any use.—Yours faithfully,——, “The Women’s Defence Relief Corps while justly characterising this as an attempt at exploitation, add that they do not suggest that the majority of farmers are acting in this way.” It is not only in England that women are entering into the work previously carried on by men. In America thousands ot women are taking the places of their men lodes to allow them to go to the war and there also they will have labor problems to face when the war comes to an end and the men are coming back again. BRITISH,'WORKERS AND THE WAR. ihe first annual conference of the liiilioli Workers’ National Leoguo wa-s held m London on March, 28, 1917, when there some speeches made and seine resolutions carried that show the attitude of the vorkors in regard to tho carrying on of the war, and also their views on after-the-war problems. The President of tlio league, Mr Hodge, Minister of Labor, was absent, and the chair was taken by Mr J. F. Green, vice-chairman of the Executive Committee, who said that Mr Hodge had telephoned, t’.at he was unable to be present. “ Probablycontinued Mr Green, “you all know the cause, I think I shall be representing your views, as well as my own, when I say we profoundly regret the reason, not only because it keeps oust president from being with us, but, speaking for myself at any rate, because 1 ashamed that, at the present ino meat in the critical history of the nation, there should be labor disputes which, should require the attention of the Minister of Labor. I' should have thought that at such a moment as this .everv patriotic citizen would have felt that In no circumstances whatever should there be disputes involving anything in the way of tho stoppage of work which provides those things necessary for tihe vigorous prosecution of the war. That is the reason why Mr Hodge is not here.” Continuing, Mr Green that some of them were dissatisfied with the advanced party in this country, and they held that something

should be_ done to show that the working classes although they might be internationalists, felt that it was their duty as pariotic Englishmen to come forward at a time when the existence of the country was at stake.

J- A. Seddon {St. Helens) moved a resolution pledging all sections of patriotic workers to support the Gopernment in the efforts they were making to prosecute the war to an early and victorious termination. He remarked that at the start of the war there was a semblance of unity but, as the months went by, some of those who had been silent began to raise .their heads, not allways in an honorable manner. The resolution was seconded and. carried unanimously. Mr M. 1. Smrrn proposed a motion endorsing the desire that the comradeship displayed between different classes during wie war should be perpetuated and utilised for the effective reconstruction of national industries.

_ _ r Lh°, motion was carried unanimously. - Mr Victor Fisher (hon. secretary) moved a. resolution pledging support to the project recently placed before the public for the exploitation of the natural resources of the Empire by public ownership and control under boards of experts chosen, from the administrative and manual workers. It was vitally important, he', said, that the organised workers should ' endeavor to co-operate in carrying out the scheme. The resolution was passed tmanim Grisly, On the motion of the Rev. J. A. Shaw (Wolverhampton) the. conference endorsed the resolution of the last Trade Union Congress in favor of the adoption of methods to restrict or prevent the importation of cheap manufactured goods which had been produced at lower rates of wages or under worse labor conditions than those in this country. He also proposed a motion eipressing tlie opinion that “ the recommendations ot the Economic Conference of the Allies held in Paris in June, 1916. form an equitable and satisfactory basis of national economic defence, Empire soh’darity, and the protection of the interests of Great Britain and her Allies, provided always that in the industries thus protected a standard living.wage shall be set up by common agreement between employers and employed as an integral condition of such a revision; of our economic system.” Mr J. J. Terrett, seconded the motion, and E. Hallas (Birmingham), in supporting it, said ho was anxious that it should not go forth from the conference that the delegates were either protectionists or freetraders. The motion was agreed to. A resolution calling on the Government to limit the hours of work for all women in every controlled industry to eight hours per day, at a standard- living wage, was passed on the motion of Mr C. EL Sitch, seconded by Lady Lyell (Dundee). At the afternoon session, the chair whs taken by Mr Stephen Walsh, M.P., who spoke on the objects for which the league had been founded. He said they would not make war upon the richer classes because they were richer; their duty was to do all that lay in their power to transform the conditions of life, so that there should come happiness and hope to every human being, who had not obtained it oh the past. That was. a tremendous task. They knew how magnificently the working classes hod come to the rescue of liberty and freedom. . Other classes had done likewise.