Recording and Computing Machines Co., C. U. Carpenter, C. P.,
Dayton, Ohio.
Curtiss Aeroplane Corporation, F. L. Glynn, Director of Training,
Buffalo, N. Y.
Wright-Martin Aircraft Corporation, J. F. Johnson, Director of
Training, New Brunswick, N. J., and Long Island City, N. Y.
Nordyke & Marmon Co., Indianapolis, Ind.
Packard Motor Car Company, Detroit, Mich.
Lincoln Motor Company, Detroit, Mich.
Norton Grinding Company, John C. Spence, Superintendent, Worcester,
Mass.
NOTE.—The above training rooms are remarkably efficient and
successful; they should be seen. By special arrangement the men
above named are assisting in the development of training rooms in
their vicinity. Write them when ready to act. Also O. D. Evans,
very expert in training, Army Ordnance Department, Production
Division, 1710 Market St., Philadelphia.
Gillette Safety Razor Company, Boston, Mass.
Royal Typewriter Company, Hartford, Conn.
Scovill Manufacturing Company, Waterbury, Conn.
Remington Arms Company, Bridgeport, Conn.
Bullard Engineering Company, Bridgeport, Conn.
The H. E. Harris Engineering Company, Bridgeport, Conn.
Trego Motor Company, New Haven, Conn.
Winchester Repeating Arms Company, New Haven, Conn.
Taft-Pierce Mfg. Co., Woonsocket, R. I.
Brown & Sharpe Company, Providence, R. I.
Crompton & Knowles Loom Works, Worcester, Mass.
American Steel & Wire Company, Worcester, Mass.
Norton Company, Worcester, Mass.
John Bath & Company, Worcester, Mass.
Graton & Knight Company, Worcester, Mass.
Blanchard Machine Company, W. W. Blackman, Superintendent,
Cambridge, Mass.
E. W. Bliss Company (torpedo factory), Brooklyn, N. Y.
Ford Instrument Company, New York City.
Pierce-Arrow Company, Buffalo, N. Y.
King Sewing Machine Company, Buffalo, N. Y.
New York Airbrake Company, Watertown, N. Y.
Seneca Falls Mfg. Company, Seneca Falls, N. Y.
Savage Arms Company, Utica, N. Y.
Henry Disston & Sons, Philadelphia, Pa.
Fayette R. Plumb, Inc., Philadelphia, Pa.
Hess Bright Manufacturing Company, Philadelphia, Pa.
Roberts Filter Manufacturing Company, Philadelphia, Pa.
Remington Arms Company, Eddystone Plant, Philadelphia, Pa.
Naval Aircraft Factory, League Island, Philadelphia, Pa.
American International Shipbuilding Company, Hog Island,
Philadelphia, Pa.
Newton Machine Tool Company, Philadelphia, Pa.
Warren Webster Company, Philadelphia, Pa.
L. H. Gilmer Company, Philadelphia, Pa.
Burke Electric Company, Erie, Pa.
Bethlehem Steel Company, Bethlehem, Pa.
J. G. Brill Company, Philadelphia, Pa.
Lanston Monotype Machine Company, Philadelphia, Pa.
Leeds & Northrup Company, Philadelphia, Pa.
David Lupton Sons Company, Philadelphia, Pa.
North American Motors Company, Pottstown, Pa.
Standard Aircraft Corporation, Elizabeth, N. J.
Snead & Company Iron Works, Jersey City, N. J.
Spicer Mfg. Company, Plainfield, N. J.
International Motors Company, Plainfield, N. J.
Woodbury Bag and Loading Company, Woodbury, N. J.
American Shell Company, Paterson, N. J.
Worthington Pump Company, Harrison, N. J.
Neptune Meter Company, Hoboken, N. J.
International Arms and Fuse Company, Bloomfield, N. J.
Thomas A. Edison Corp., Orange, N. J.
General Electric Company, Newark, N. J.
Crocker-Wheeler Company, Ampere, N. J.
Submarine Boat Corp., Newark, N. J.
Barbour Flax Spinning Company, Paterson, N. J.
American Tool Works Company, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Lodge & Shipley Machine Tool Company, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Cincinnati Milling Machine Company, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Cincinnati Grinder Company, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Cincinnati Planer Company, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Cincinnati Bickford Tool Company, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Oakley Machine Tool Company, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Buckeye Twist Drill Company, Alliance, Ohio.
Morgan Engineering Company, Alliance, Ohio.
National Cash Register Company, Dayton, Ohio.
Ohmer Fare Register Company, Dayton, Ohio.
The Timken Roller Bearing Company, Canton, Ohio.
Joseph & Feiss Company, May Thomsen, Employment Department,
Cleveland, O.
Mosler Safe Company, Hamilton, Ohio.
Ford Motor Company, Detroit.
Long Manufacturing Company, Detroit.
Studebaker Corporation, Detroit.
Solvay Process Company, Detroit.
Morgan & Wright Company, Detroit.
Detroit Steel Products Company, Detroit.
Burroughs Adding Machine Company, Detroit.
Dodge Brothers, Detroit.
Detroit Lubricator Company, Detroit.
Timken Detroit Axle Company, Detroit.
Haskellite Mfg. Company, Grand Rapids, Mich.
Republic Motor Truck Company, Alma, Mich.
Sparks-Withington Company, Jackson, Mich.
Illinois Tool Works, Chicago, Ill.
Union Special Machines Company, Chicago, Ill.
Western Cartridge Company, East Alton, Ill.
Independent Pneumatic Tool Company, Aurora, Ill.
Diamond Chain & Manufacturing Company, L. W. Wallace,
Indianapolis, Ind.
General Electric Company, E. H. Barnes, Superintendent,
Fort Wayne, Ind.
Pawling & Harnischfeger Company, Milwaukee, Wis.
EXTRACT PROM A REPORT BY MR. BEN H. MORGAN, EXPERT ADVISER TO THE
DILUTION SECTION OF THE BRITISH MINISTRY OF MUNITIONS
When war broke out in August, 1914, the Government of the day urged
employers to induce their skilled as well as unskilled men to join
the colors. No good purpose will be served in my characterizing in
suitable terms the unwisdom of such a step. Sufficient to say that
it was a long time later before the Government realized that this
was an Engineers’ war. The result was that the men with initiative,
education and skill were among the first to lay aside their tools
and join the colors. This was a stroke of such folly that it took
the country quite a long time to recover from it. Not only had we
lost men of brain and initiative but also a large proportion of the
skill for carrying on a war in which machinery and munitions were a
preponderating factor.
When the sudden call came for an enormous increase in guns and
ammunition the folly of the step that had been taken was realized and
arrangements were made to effect the return of a number of skilled
men from the colors. This, however, was difficult to carry out, and
on top of it came the realization that if every skilled man were
returned we had not sufficient to produce the munitions essential to
success.
It was in these circumstances that the present Prime Minister, Mr.
Lloyd George, then Minister of Munitions, laid down the principle
that no man must perform any work that could be efficiently performed
by women. He foresaw that every man would be required for essentially
man’s work. This involved the process which has become known as the
Dilution of Labor. This dilution implies that:
(1) The employment of skilled men should be confined to work which
cannot be efficiently performed by less skilled labor or by women.
(2) Semi-skilled and unskilled men should be employed on any work
which does not necessitate the employment of skilled men and for
which women are unsuitable.
(3) Women should be employed as far as practicable on all classes
of work for which they are suitable.
This, at first sight, seems a simple arrangement, but I need not
tell you that it is a complicated one and involves expenditure of
time, patience and money on the part of the employers and sympathetic
co-operation on the part of the skilled employees. Women have to
receive careful training, intervening hands in the processes of
production have to be upgraded and the skill in the factory has to
be spread over a large area, usually necessitating more supervision
and care if equal results are to be obtained. These are average
conditions, but in a large number of cases the changes due to the
introduction of women have resulted in considerably increased outputs
over men’s records, and this not only on light repetition work, but
on heavy turning and laboring work and skilled and semi-skilled
non-repetition work.
The patriotism shown by the employers in meeting the numerous
difficulties which confronted them in training women for every
conceivable kind of work, in reorganizing their factories for new
productions by new labor, adapting their machinery to the measure
of skill and strength available to work them has been one of the
most inspiriting experiences of the war. Women have been trained
in an incredibly short time, handling appliances of all kinds have
been installed, special tools and gauges have had to be made and
often when a work has been set fairly going and was reaching full
production, a change in the country’s needs for munitions compelled
the Ministry to alter a design or a size or to put a firm on to a
completely new product, and again the whole process of retaining
employees and adapting tools and plant had to be gone through.
If the employer has done well for the country, so, on the other hand,
no finer example of patriotism has been shown by any class than
by the artisan as a whole. On an appeal being made to the Trades
Unions soon after the outbreak of the war these Unions without a
single exception agreed to do what the national interests required.
A network of Trades Union rules and regulations, usages and customs,
the result of many years of activity by organized labor, were freely
set aside to allow for the introduction of women in nearly every
class of work, subject to reasonable conditions.
Whatever some employers may think this was a gigantic sacrifice to
make. It involved wages, hours, overtime, night work, Sunday work,
meal times, holidays, shop regulations and demarcation arrangements,
restriction of output, preparations of apprentices and classes
of employees to be engaged, etc., etc. This structure of Trade
Unionism the workingman agreed should be swept away to allow of the
production of the maximum amount of munitions by the readiest methods
and by any character of labor that was available—male or female—on
the condition that the structure should be replaced at the close of
the war.
This is splendid patriotism and when you add to the sacrifice of
Trades Union Rules the burden, such as has fallen principally on
the Trades Union men, of training the hundreds of thousands of
women to do their work, this must increase our debt of appreciation
and gratitude. It is only by the loyal co-operation of employer
and employed that we are in the satisfactory position as regards
munitions that we are to-day.
By the process of dilution we have been able to place in munition
works about 950,000 women to do work from the heaviest laboring
unskilled operation to the highest grade of toolroom non-repetition
work. I do not hesitate to say that women have entirely destroyed
our pre-war ideas as to what constitutes “skilled” work. When in
the early days of the war women were trained to turn out 18 pdr. H.
E. shell and equal the production of male labor many thought that
such work, amounting as it does to little more than manipulative
dexterity, was about the limit of the capacity of women who had
not received a regular course of Engineering training. After a few
months’ workshop experience, however, women are to-day building the
greater part of one of the best High-Speed Engines in the country,
each woman setting her own tools and work, and able to machine any
piece of work that the tool she is on will take. Women are building
guns, including the fine fitting work on the breech mechanism, and
the cutting of large screw threads up to a shoulder. They are doing
most of the work in some shops on three and one-half ton Army Lorries
and will do practically the whole of it if the war lasts much longer,
including chassis erection and testing. They are doing important work
in marine engine building, turning connecting rods, propeller shaft
liners and doing practically all in some cases of the marked-off
drilling. The Aero Engine, as you well know, is a very fine piece
of mechanism and at the outset was considered a tool room job
throughout. In some shops women are to-day doing the greater part of
the work turning on Centre Lathes to half a thousandth, milling webs
of Clerget Cylinders on a booker Miller without stops and setting up
their own jobs and working again to half a thousandth limit, boring
cylinders on a No. 9 Herbert and similar work on a Gishlet, setting
up their own jobs, turning and finishing test pieces in various
metals to a 5,000th; making tools and gauges of all kinds to fine
limits; all varieties of bench fitting to drawings and marking-off
work of every description. Locomotive work, steel constructional
work, boilers, bending, drilling and riveting. Women are doing
magnificent work both in regard to accuracy and output.
On shells of all nature women should, of course, be principally
employed. Contracts for shell will only be renewed and continued
after March 31st next (1917) with those firms who employ 80 per cent.
of female labor on shell of sizes from 2.75” to 4.5” inclusive. On
larger sizes of shell, contracts will only be renewed if the Ministry
of Munitions’ instructions in regard to dilution have been carried
out, not only in regard to the proportion of women to be employed in
each factory but the proportions of semi-skilled men.
“The employer and employee have a mutual—not identical—interest in
procuring the largest possible production from a given amount of
labor.”—Hon. Wm. B. Wilson, Secretary of Labor. (Address before
Chamber of Commerce of U. S. A., September 20, 1917.)
“The factory, like the trench, is a post of combat. The duty is
not to abandon it before the enemy. My compliments to your Union
for having understood it so well.”—Marshal Foch. (Cablegram August
12th to the International Typographical Union, in convention at
Scranton, Pa.)