But the most difficult problems created by the steam engine in the incalculable change which it has brought over the world, yet remain for solution. Take three instances only out of many possible. The steam engine and its successors have enabled us to move more rapidly and in greater numbers from place to place. The world is contracted to a tripper's sphere, and movement, before the war, had become so easy that youth had lost the joy of exploration, the sense of mystery in distance, and, what was worse, the minute and affectionate intimacy with home. The steam engine produces large numbers of articles, especially of clothing and iron work, with great regularity. In this regularity, artists tell us, there is loss of beauty, and, what is far worse, the regularity involves such a monotony in work that the worker loses heart and personality;

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he welcomes even the horrors of war as a change from the unvarying labor. The steam engine has created for its service miles upon miles thousands of miles in Yorkshire and Lancashire alone of mean and and monotonous streets and houses from which every trace of natural beauty has vanished, and where it is absurd to suppose an occasional picture gallery can serve as a substitute.

Faced with these three problems, among so many others, we have to discover how, despite the rule of the steam engine, to diffuse the dignity, grandeur, and beauty possible for men and women; how to extend to every living soul the chance of that happiness which, according to the ancient definition, definition, consists in the highest possible development of vital powers, along the lines of excellence, and in a complete life.

ENGINEERING AS A PROFESSION FOR WOMEN

BY RACHEL M. PARSONS

WHEN the student of labor conditions in years to come studies the records of the national work accomplished during the Great War, there is little doubt that he will accord a just measure of recognition to the work done by women amid the noise and grime of our great engineering works. At present there is a danger that justice may not be accorded to those who through lack of organization may not be able to make their claims heard.

Even before the war a few women had taken up this profession: some had attended engineering courses at Cambridge University and elsewhere, others were employed by firms, but usually on fairly simple work. Prejudice, however, was strong, and although it was possible to study the subject at colleges, few were willing to do this on account of the difficulty of obtaining the practical experience which is essential for an engineer.

But early in 1915, when the need for an enormously increased production of shells was realized, women were called upon to help. New workshops sprang up all over the country: Woolwich, Vickers, Armstrong, to mention only a few of the largest, grew beyond recognition; the huge Gretna Green filling factory was determined on, and many new national factories were started.

In studying this question from the point of view of engineering as a profession for women, some of the questions that occur at once to any fair

minded inquirer are: Is the work that women have been doing skilled or unskilled? Is it the same type of work that men do, and can they do it anything like as well, or are they capable only of performing quite easy jobs, work of a simple repetition character requiring little skill or training?

The writer had the great privilege of studying engineering before the war, and subsequently of seeing a good deal of this work, watching personally the progress made by women who were for the first time employed in engineering works. At first they attempted only fairly simple operations and were chiefly employed on shells, in filling factories, cartridge factories, and other work for which only a short training is required, while all the setting up was done by the mechanics. Gradually, however, as the need for still greater supplies of munitions, and at the same time the necessity for continually increasing our army, became insistent, the women were employed on work of a more skilled type. They were taught to operate more complicated machines, they did fitting work on aeroplanes, they were taught to set up some of the machines — till, little by little, many of the shops were staffed almost entirely by women.

to eight inches; over eight inches, 70 per cent. For gauging and viewing, 80 per cent; and for marking off, fitting, and assembling, 40 to 50 per cent. Sometimes this standard was exceeded, and a higher percentage of women employed. They could mill all the parts of the breech mechanism of howitzers, screwing the internal thread for the breechblock; milling firing pins and all the parts of gunsights, in each case setting up their own work. The girls employed by one firm could design repairs to small guns and mechanism. They learned to perform the necessary calculations for determining the factor of safety of a damaged gun, making use, of course, of log tables and the slide rule. I have with me, as I write, some sheets of calculations done by girls in a turbinedesign office, and also an example of a deflection diagram set out by å girl, from which she calculated the critical speed of a revolving shaft.

In many firms girls did tracing work before the war; but a few were now admitted into the drawing office, and though at first their lack of shop experience was a great handicap, they learned quickly, and soon were able to do such work as a drawing I have, showing an arrangement of turbine and alternator which had been assembled from detail drawings.

In various parts of the country quite different standards of women's work prevailed, and this accounts in some degree for the curious lack of knowledge on the part of many people of what has actually been accomplished. The old traditions of secrecy are difficult to overcome, and though one firm might be employing women on work of an advanced type with great success, another firm on very similar work would often have failed to realize that women could do more han the simpler types of repetition

work. The writer came across many instances of this; and finally an attempt was made by the Ministry of Munitions to persuade doubting managers of what could be done, by publishing photographs and descriptions of the work women were doing, and also by sending out women demonstrators, who would travel to any firm who asked for them, and show that they could do the type of work in question. Often these demonstrators would remain and instruct other girls. In addition, training schools were started, where both men and women were taught, and altogether 45,000 women passed through these schools. Many of these training schools were well equipped with the latest types of machines, and at first the women were given only a short course of about three weeks, and went into the works as operators. It was then found that there was a great shortage of men in aeroplane work, and classes in sheetmetal work, woodwork, and acetylene welding were inaugurated. Then, as the shortage of skilled men became acute and the demand for women who could do skilled work became greater, the more intelligent girls, usually those with a better education, were given a longer course of training, and some went out as setters on capstan lathes, tool setters, etc. No attempt was made to give women the training obtained by a man before the war who served his time in the usual way as an apprentice that is, an all-round training on different operations; there was no time for this. Instead, the work of the skilled men was split up, and women usually specialized on one or two operations. In certain cases, usually perhaps in small works, women have obtained a considerable variety of experience, and as their education was often good, they began, as it were, half trained, and were able to

learn the new work very quickly; but as a general rule women, though doing skilled men's work, and doing it very well, had not the all-round training of a skilled man. This point is rather an important one in understanding the difficulties of the question of pay.

The writer does not wish to give any exaggerated idea of the capabilities of women in engineering; the greater part of their work was unskilled or semiskilled; in some cases the output and quality of the work equaled that of the men, in other cases it was inferior. Detailed reports have been published and can be studied. The comparison of men and women's work and pay is far too intricate a subject to be dealt with in this short article. The most convincing proof, however, of the value of the women workers is that employers wished to continue to employ them after the war. Since far Since far less has been written about those women who have attained greater proficiency, the writer has for the most part selected instances of this work, being of interest to the reader. But these instances are not intended to represent in any way the general level attained.

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The development of the aeroplane industry was very rapid, and the shortage of skilled men was acute; thus women learned to work to very fine limits: they were taught, for example, to set up Herbert capstan lathes on aeroplane work, to set up and operate milling machines, gauging, inspecting, acetylene welding, and so on. In acetylene welding they achieved marked success, and took the greatest interest in their work, studying different processes in their leisure hours, discussing their work with the greatest interest, and taking every opportunity to become really expert in their craft. In visiting different firms the writer has frequently found a small group of

perhaps three or four girls, acetylene welders, often girls with a university education, living in what were usually very uncomfortable lodgings close to the works, far from their former interests and friends, and desperately enthusiastic about their work.

In research work, girls with university training have proved a great success; they have become members of such technical societies as the Iron and Steel Institute, the Institute of Naval Architects, sometimes reading, and more often helping to write, papers. Some of the experiments in connection with seaplanes during the war were carried out by a girl in an experimental tank, while others did very good work in metallurgy and optics. They are carrying out tests on the problems of optical glass, and they are quite equal to grappling with the rather complicated mathematical calculations involved; and in the actual manufacture of lenses for binoculars they grind the lenses for telescopes, work requiring great care and entailing three or four months' training; they carry out some of the light tests, and the lenses they make can compete, one is assured, with those formerly imported from Germany.

There is a small engineering shop far away in a remote corner of Scotland, where a number of girls are at the moment steadily at work, turning out engines for motor tractors, setting up the machines for their work, and sometimes designing the tools needed. They are studying the subject, too, in their spare time, reading scientific works, and the writer was assured that many of them read Engineering each week from cover to cover!

This, then, was the situation in the summer of 1916, when 1,000,000 women in all were employed in the engineering trades. Now there are hardly any left. The educated women and

those doing the most responsible work in factories were generally the first to go, while on every hand we have the call for increased production as the only real antidote for the present high prices and inflated currency.

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When the manufacture of shells ceased and the workshops closed, the women, of course, had to be dismissed; but numbers of firms employed on work which is needed in peace time deavored to keep the women who had proved so satisfactory, who had been working for years and had proved themselves efficient. Soldiers who had given up their jobs and were now demobilized must, of course, have their places given back to them, and the women were the first to admit this. But in many cases the firm had grown, taken up new work perhaps, and there seemed no logical reason for displacing the women. The factor though, that determined the fate of the women the potentate at whose word the women were dismissed to their ill-paid trades, their poverty, their long hours of badly paid work in some factory where the pay and the comfort ex-perienced in engineering works are unknown-was the power of organized labor.

Last July a bill known as the Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act, which vitally affected the lives of thousands of women, was rushed through Parliament, the Committee stage in the House of Commons taking only two hours, and became law a few weeks ago. By the terms of this bill it is now illegal for a woman to be employed in any engineering trade where women were not so employed before the war. Yet for nearly four years women have been employed in the engineering trades, gaining skill and experience, and turning out valuable work. It was, in fact, an interesting feature of the debate on this bill that

no attempt was made to show that these women were unsatisfactory or inefficient in any way. The arguments advanced in favor of their exclusion, arguments reminiscent rather of the cherished privileges of some autocratic institution than of the exponents of a free people, were based on quite different reasons. Practically the only argument was the "Treasury Agreement' drawn up in March, 1915, at a conference called by Mr. Lloyd George with the thirty-three principal trade unions. This agreement contains a clause providing that 'Any departure during the war from the practice ruling in our workshops, shipyards, and other industries prior to the war, shall only be for the period of the war.' It is, of course, impossible to restore a great many trade-union practices. New machinery has been introduced, conditions have changed, the rates of pay have undoubtedly changed. But one custom that has been firmly adhered to by the unions is that women shall again be excluded.

It was stated in the House that this bill was an agreed bill, and it is generally understood that it was the result of about six months' negotiations between the government and the trade unions. Yet, although the fate of such an army of women was to be decided by it, the women's organizations were not represented either at the original conference at which the Treasury Agreement was drawn up, or to any effective extent at the discussions when the clauses of the Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act were framed. The government, of course, must fulfill its pledges; but were the trade unions justified in exacting the literal fulfillment of an undertaking given by the government in those tragic days of 1915 when the fate of the country was at stake, and now that a world war has changed conditions almost beyond