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Show WOMEN IN INDUSTRY. A phrase which bids fair to take rank with the famous sayings of modern mod-ern times is found in a preliminary report re-port of a survey of wartime work done by women in tho industries. The utterance ut-terance is attributed to a, southern lumber lum-ber merchant, who found that "the women carry two boards if they can, whereas no man who ever worked in the yard would carry more than one, regardless of size and weight." The remark has already gained considerable circulation, and several newspapers of the country have commented upon its words and significance. Tho survey is to be one of the final contributions of the war work council of the Young Women's Christian association asso-ciation to women industrial workers. It embraces reports from somo 15,000 firms employing approximately 2,500,-000 2,500,-000 persons, one-fifth of them women, and all engaged in what are described as "industries essential to war, varying vary-ing from soda fountain apparatus and chicken feed to the making of guns and munitions." The objects of the survey are fivefold: five-fold: "First It aims to determine how far women served in the so-called war industries. in-dustries. , Second It will show tho relative efficiency ef-ficiency of women in new occupations such as those into which they were called for the first time as a war emergency. emer-gency. "Third It will make clear the extent to which women have -gained a foothold foot-hold in the industries in which they wero not represented formerly. Fourth The attitudo of organized labor toward the admission of women to membership in unions controlling the occupations into which women were introduced as a war emergency will be disclosed. Fifth It will show the extent of the courses of training for women in industry in-dustry and the direction in which those courses must be guided if such industries indus-tries are to accord with the changes wrought by the war. In all, twenty-nine groups of industries, indus-tries, each group made up of as many as twenty-two branches, wero investigated investi-gated in tho compiling of this report. Theso twenty-nine groups of industries iucludo such divisions as tho iron and.1 steel industries, having twenty-two branches, one of them firearms and ammunitions, chemical and allied products; prod-ucts; ono of the nineteen branches of this industry being explosives; metals other than iron and steel (fifteen branches); lumber and timber products (fiiteen branches); electrical machinery, machin-ery, apparatus and supplies; aeroplanes and seaplanes; automobiles and parts; rubber goods; sporting goods, men's .furnishings, including branches for tho manufacturing of such necessary things as belts and buttons; textiles, including everything from balloon and parachuto silk to shoe and clothing industries of all kinds; in mattresses and spring beds; soda fountain apparatus, chicken feed and a long list of products necessary neces-sary to tho furnishing, equipping and maintenance of an army. - Statistics wero compiled from government gov-ernment records and by direct question- j naire to l.j,ni)Q firms. The results of tho questionnaire seem to show that women wo-men are much better fitted for work in many of the industries into which they were inducted by war emergency than thpy aro for work -in branches of the garment industries, in which division of activity practically all women workers wero concentrated before the war. According to the report, manufacturers manufactur-ers on the whnlo view this scattering of women in industry favorably and for various reasons. For example, a prominent furniture manufacturer, who was filling- government contracts, wrote: "We feel that women 'saved tho day' for us, as they must also have done in hundreds of other industries; you can understand that we have every reason to feel most grateful to them." The president of a large recording and computing machines company, manufacturers of cameras, projectors, films, magnetos and such tilings, says: "There is no department in which light machinery is used where women cannot can-not be trained to do the same work that men havo been doing, and to do the work better and get out greater production. Success depends, upon how women are trained, just as with men. Half of our employees aro women, wo-men, all of whom havo been carefully selected for their work." The head of ono of the big electrical companies wrote that women were "very adaptable and satisfactory" as workers, and wherever the work is suitable suit-able their output is greater. One-fourth One-fourth of the workers in one of the largest plants of that company are women wo-men who receive the sanio pay as men for equivalent work, and who, "in practically all cases, earn more than men on piece work." This company employed women in 300 new operations during the war period. "Wo nrc frank to say," writes another an-other manufacturer, "that had we not been able to secure the services of the women employed by us during the war we should have been unable to operate at all, or our operations would have been seriously curtailed." Testimony of similar import was given by employers in practically all of the twenty-nine groups. The conclusion con-clusion is that, since they met the requirements re-quirements so satisfactorily, women will continue in a large and varied list of industries, instead of being restricted restrict-ed to ono or two, as they were' in prewar pre-war davs. |