THE QUINTESSENCE OF THE WORK--THE INSTRUCTIONAL FACTORY--FIRST STEPS IN
INDUSTRIAL LIFE
When, in answer to the demand for shells and more shells, factories were
built, or adapted to the requirements of war, it was soon found that a
supply of suitable labour must be ensured, if the maximum output was to be
maintained. The existing practice of the engineering shops, by which a boy
arrived by gradual steps, counted in years, from apprenticeship to the
work of a skilled operator, was obviously impossible where an immediate
demand for thousands of employees of varying efficiency had to be
fulfilled. The needs of the Navy and Army further complicated the problem
by the withdrawal of men of all degrees of skill from factory to
battlefield.
The discovery of an untapped reservoir of labour in women's work, and the
adaptation of a larger proportion of machines to a 'fool-proof' standard,
certainly eased the situation, yet the problem remained of the immediate
provision of workers able to undertake 'advanced', as well as simple work,
in the engineering shops. Factory employers were from the outset alive to
the situation, and at once adopted measures for the training of new-comers
within their shops, but harassed as the managers were by the supreme need
for output, it was hardly possible to develop extensive schemes for
training within the factory gates. Hence, arose a movement throughout the
United Kingdom among the governing bodies of many institutions of
University rank, among Local Education Authorities, and among various
feminist groups, to make use of existing Technical Schools and
Institutions for the training of recruits in engineering work.
The effort was at first mainly confined to the instruction of men in
elementary machine work, and the London County Council may fairly claim to
have acted as pioneer in this connexion. Yet, as early as August 1915, a
group of women connected with the National Union of Women's Suffrage
Societies (of which Mrs. Fawcett, widow of a former Postmaster-General, is
the president) decided to finance a scheme for the training of women
oxy-acetylene welders, converting for this purpose a small workshop run by
a woman silversmith.
It was soon observed by the Ministry of Munitions that these sporadic
efforts--sometimes successful beyond expectation, and sometimes failing
for want of funds, or for lack of intimacy between training-ground and
factory employer--must be co-ordinated, if they were to tackle
successfully the growing task imposed by war conditions. The conception of
a Training Section for factory workers within the Ministry of Munitions
arose, took root. The section was established in the early autumn of 1915.
In the October of that year, authority to finance approved training
schemes throughout the country was given to the new department. Some fifty
colleges and schools, undertaking independent schemes, were then brought
into touch with the Ministry, and steps were taken to develop the existing
systems. Equipment was thereby improved, recruiting of students
stimulated, and a scheme for the payment of maintenance during
training--such as the Manhattan Schools in New York had previously
introduced to social investigators in this country--was established. The
extension of the courses of training from instruction in simple processes
to such advanced engineering work as lead-burning, tool-setting, and
gauge-making soon followed, and was accompanied by necessary theoretical
instruction in the methods of calculation of fine measurements.
_The Quintessence of the Work_
For these advanced classes, men alone were at first eligible as students,
women being only instructed at the outset in elementary parts of the work.
In the early days, the women were invited 'to do their bit', by learning
how to bore, how to drill, how to plane, how to shape, and above all, how
to work to size. The chief battle of the Training Centre with regard to
the instruction of women was then, and still remains, the implanting of a
feeling for exactitude in persons accustomed to measure ribbons or lace
within a margin of a quarter of a yard or so, or to prepare food by a
guess-work mixture of ingredients. I remember, at the beginning of a
course of training for women, how an instructor at a large metropolitan
Centre remarked that 'ninety-nine per cent. of the new students do not
know what accuracy means', and he detailed how difficult it was to instil
into their mind 'that quintessence of their work'.
Scientific methods of tuition, helped no doubt by women's proverbial
patience, have, however, enabled the lesson to be learned after a few
weeks' intensive training. The courses last but six to eight weeks and, at
the conclusion of the carefully graduated tasks, it is not too much to
say that the success of the women has been, in an overwhelming number of
cases, surprising both to teachers and pupils.
I have before me a batch of letters from factory employers, written in the
early period of the training schemes. They all bear testimony to the value
of the outside instruction. One manager notes how the trained women from
the Schools were able 'to become producers almost at once'; another states
that the drafting of the women students from School to factory has enabled
the work of munitions to be carried on 'with greater expedition than would
otherwise have been the case', and yet another, with a scarcely concealed
note of astonishment, relates that his students were able to be engaged at
once on 'all kinds of machinery, capstan lathes, turning lathes, milling
and wheel cutting machinery'.
This discovery of the employer, of the potentialities of women's work in
the engineering trades, soon led to a development of the instruction of
female students in the Training Centres; more advanced machine work was
added to the curriculum, as well as tuition in aeroplane woodwork and
construction, in core-making and moulding, in draughtsmanship and
electrical work, in optical-instrument making, including the delicate and
highly-skilled work of lens and prism making.
New Training Centres are constantly being opened in provincial areas, the
instruction being adapted to the needs of local factories. There are now
(December, 1917) over forty training schools for engineering work in Great
Britain, as well as nine instructional factories and workshops, and the
proportion of women to men trained in all the processes may be reckoned
roughly as two to one.
The system of instruction is based, in some of the Centres, on the general
principle that the School undertakes the preliminary work of tuition in
the simpler engineering processes; the Instructional Factory, or workshop,
specializing in the more skilled processes, acts as a clearing-house for
promising students from the schools. The urgency of warfare does not,
however, permit the application of any hard-and-fast rules. I have seen
specimens of some of the most 'advanced' work produced in a School;
indeed, the delicate work of lens polishing and centring, the intricacies
of engineering draughtsmanship, the precise art of tool-setting and
gauge-making have become specialisms of the Schools in certain localities.
[Illustration: TURNING THE COPPER BAND OF A 9.2-INCH HIGH-EXPLOSIVE SHELL]
[Illustration: DRILLING SAFETY-PIN HOLE IN FUSE]
[Illustration: INSPECTING AND GAUGING FUSES]
[Illustration: TURNING THE OUTSIDE AND FORMING THE NOSE-END OF A 9.2-INCH
HIGH-EXPLOSIVE SHELL]
As I write, the face of an eager girl of 21 years recurs to memory. She
was showing me, the other day, a master gauge produced at a School in the
Eastern counties. 'I made it all myself,' she said joyfully, 'dead exact,
and all the other gauges of this size in the School are made from it. I
have just been appointed assistant instructor in gauge-making.' When it is
recalled that the deviation in the measurements of a gauge is only
tolerated within such limits as a 3/10000 part of an inch, the production
in a School of a master gauge, 'dead exact' in all its dimensions, is a
proof that the student has already gone some way in the mastery of the
craft of the engineer.
_The Instructional Factory_
On the other hand, the Instructional Factory is often forced by war
conditions to enrol raw recruits who seem likely material for the urgent
needs of surrounding factories. In such cases, the candidate is placed on
trial for a week or two in the Instructional Workshop, as in the School.
If, at the close of the period of probation, she is deemed unsuitable, she
is advised at that preliminary stage to return to her former occupation.
Speaking generally, the rejects are extraordinarily few, and although it
would be premature to draw definite conclusions, the experience of the
Training Section suggests that there is considerable latent capacity for
engineering work in a large number of women. A tour of the Instructional
Workshops emphasizes the point; everywhere, women may be seen mastering in
the short intensive course the one advanced job for which each is being
trained. In the Instructional Workshop, the atmosphere of a School is
exchanged for that of a factory, the conditions of a modern engineering
shop being reflected within its precincts. Thus the students 'clock on and
off' on arrival and on departure, observe factory shifts, work on actual
commercial jobs, obtain their tools from an attached store, and so on. The
work varies in these Instructional Factories as in the engineering shop of
the commercial world.
In one section of such a hall of tuition you may see the women intent on
the production of screws, or bolts, or nuts; in another part, such objects
as fuse needles may be in the course of manufacture. You stop to see the
magic which is answerable for the birth of the tiny factor which shall
detonate the explosive, and you are amazed to find that a fuse needle
requires six tools for its production and eight to nine gauges for testing
the accuracy of its measurements. Or, you may perhaps pause before a
machine which is turning out tiny grub screws. To see a rod of steel offer
itself, as it were, to the rightful instruments on a complicated machine
to impress the thread and slit, to watch it proceeding on its way until a
tiny section is divided and a complete screw is handed over to a tray
outside the machine, is, to the uninitiated, a miracle in itself.
To see the whole of these complicated processes guided and operated by a
smiling girl makes one hopeful for the national industries of the future.
Setters-up of tools are at work in another section of the same
Instructional Factory and at other machines are students grinding,
milling, or profiling.
You may then visit another Instructional Factory to find that aircraft is
the specialty. I recall one such training-ground in a bay of an aeroplane
factory. There the girls learn almost every part of aircraft production,
from the handling of the tiny hammers used on the woodwork for the body
and wings, to the assembling, or putting together the tested parts. In
this training factory, a system prevails of lectures by the practical
instructors on the use of necessary tools; questions from the students are
encouraged at the close of the lecture, and, I was informed, when on one
occasion I was one of the audience, that the saving of the instructor's
time by the adoption of this method was beyond expected results.
Again, you may visit an Instructional Factory where foundry work is
included in the curriculum, or where advanced machine work is a feature. I
have stood in one Instructional Workshop where some 600 machines were
whirring simultaneously, and where the spirit of energy and goodwill of
both students and instructors seemed as tangible as the metal objects
produced. In this institution all the accomplished work is for production;
night as well as day shifts are worked, and the needs of our armies, or
those of our Allies, are frankly discussed with the operators. There is no
occasion for other incentive: raw recruits, students from the Schools,
discharged soldiers from the Front, men unfit for active service, all
these denizens of the training-shop vie with each other to produce a
maximum output.
It speaks volumes for this workshop that in spite of the continual changes
of operators--each set of students remaining only for a course of six to
eight weeks--it is entirely maintained on a commercial basis. To reach
such a standard in these circumstances is to imply that the heroism of the
workshop has become an ingrained habit in operators and staff.
_First Steps in Industrial Life_
I remember watching in this training-ground the manufacture of small
aero-engine parts, exact in dimensions to within the smallest limits of
tolerance. I put a query as to the wastage of material in such an
operation, when handled by comparative new-comers. 'Scrapping from this
process', replied the production manager with pride, 'does not exceed a
total average of one per cent.' The women at work at the time had come
from the most varied occupations. A large proportion had never worked
outside their own home, others were domestic servants, cooks, housemaids,
and so on, others were dressmakers from small towns, and one, I recall,
was an assistant from a spa, where she had been engaged handing out
'waters' to invalids. 'It is not the rank of society from which the
student is drawn that matters,' remarked an instructor; 'it is the
personality of the individual that counts.'
Every care has been taken by the Ministry of Munitions to make it easy for
women of all classes to participate in their schemes of instruction. The
middle class girl who has never undertaken independent work, the woman who
has always lived and worked within the shelter of her own home,
undoubtedly felt in many cases debarred from entering industrial life. The
necessity of living away from her family, in order to enter a
Training-School, the absence of home conditions in school or factory, the
dread of an entirely masculine superintendence, all helped to strengthen
artificial barriers between potential students and the needed engineering
work. The Training Section, watching the development of its schemes,
became aware of the necessity of making arrangements for students from the
Welfare point of view, and an organization has thus developed by which the
first steps in industrial life are made easy for the most apprehensive of
new-comers.
Girl students by rail are met by a responsible woman official and are
accompanied to suitable lodgings, or to hostels. In the event of pressure
in accommodation, the new student is introduced to temporary apartments,
or to a 'Clearing Hostel', where she awaits in comfort a vacancy. In the
large Training Centres, a woman supervisor is in charge. She makes all
arrangements as to the provision of meals, rest-rooms, cloak-rooms,
First-Aid centres, and so on, and is ready to advise the women students on
all points relating to their personal interests.
Women students are also enabled to wear a khaki uniform, as members of the
Mechanical Unit of the Women's Legion, a privilege found to be of distinct
value to girls unaccustomed to steering an independent course in the more
boisterous streams of life. The appreciation of the students of the
safe-guarding of their individual desires crops out in unexpected places.
In a handful of correspondence from students, one gleans such remarks as
the following:
'Mrs. H. never spares herself any trouble as long as she can make
things pleasant for me, she considers it her "war work" to make
munition workers happy, and it is very nice to meet people that
appreciate what we are doing for our country.'...
'We were met at the station by the works motor. All at once we turned
up an avenue of lime-trees and drew up at the door of our country
estate. It is a real lovely house and we revel in the glories of fresh
air, lawns and gardens, good beds and well-spread tables. We cross a
field to the works. Dinner and tea await us when we get here, and
there is a well-stocked vegetable garden to give us fresh vegetables,
so we all feel indeed that our lines are fallen in pleasant places,
and we are very grateful.'
In these ways a bridge has been built by the Ministry of Munitions between
the normal life of the women in this country and the work in the munitions
factory.