Only this morning I have been reading the newly issued _Report of the
War Cabinet Committee on Women in Industry_, a large book of 340 pages,
packed with information, in particular as to "the increased employment
of women owing to the development of automatic machinery." What I read
fills me with dismay and indignation. I was not prepared--and I thought
I was prepared for anything--for such blindness of outlook.
To prove this, let me quote directly from the Report. The Committee
urges rightly the importance to the health of the workers of good food,
clothing and domestic comfort, and the necessity of good wages to
maintain this standard. But _why are these improved conditions
recommended_? Listen to what is said:
_Properly nourished women have a much greater reserve of
energy than they have usually been credited with, and under
suitable conditions they can properly and advantageously be
employed upon more arduous occupation than has been considered
desirable in the past, even when these involve considerable
activity and physical strain...._
And a little further:
_It is desirable that women's wide employment should be made
permanent._
In another passage the Committee report _that on piece work a woman will
always beat a man_. And again further on: _On mass production she will
come first every time.... Men will never stand the monotony of a fast
repetition job like women; they will not stand by a machine pressing all
their lives, but a woman will._[27:1]
Nothing that I can say, or any writer could say, could be more vividly
condemning than are these passages. They have filled me with so deep a
protest that really I can hardly trust myself to write any comment. This
is the ideal now set before us for the industrial woman "to stand by a
machine pressing all her life." I ask, Is it for this that the sons of
these women have died? Marriage is spoken of as "one of women's
industrial drawbacks," "it makes her less ambitious and enterprising."
Now, I do not wish to be unfair. The questions involved are, I know,
immense and many-sided. There can be no easy dismissal of this valuable
Report in condemnation. Mrs. Sidney Webb's minority Report[28:1] in
particular is valuable; and in many ways the findings of the Committee
are excellent. Everyone must agree with the wise recommendations as to
the reduction of the hours of work and better conditions of labor. They
are in advance of anything hitherto proposed. The popular formula of
"equal pay for equal work" or more correctly "equal value," is accepted.
If women are to do men's work, obviously they ought to be paid men's
wages. Other very commendable recommendations concern pensions for
widowed, deserted or necessitous mothers (I should add unmarried
mothers). State payment is advised for the entire cost of the
lying-in-period as the only way to ensure births under satisfactory
conditions to the child and the mother. All this is just and good. If
the state desires women to remain in industrial occupations, it is some
gain that help should be given them, when for a few weeks they go from
the factory to do their own work and bear children. Yet, after all, is
there not something ridiculous, yes, and also disgraceful, in such a
compromise. We leave a woman "to stand by a machine pressing all her
life" (a work of monotony, so nerve-exhausting and soul-deadening that
no man will do it), and then we pay her a small sum to enable her to
bear an enfeebled child. Afterwards we send her back to the factory and
open State crêches and nursery-schools to rid her of the
responsibilities and joys of bringing up her child. Such miserable
makeshifts for fitting motherhood could be acceptable only in an
industrially ruled society, where the simple belief would seem to be
that _a woman can do everything that men won't do--and their own work as
well_.