Home Office and Board of Trade pamphlets on the substitution of women in industry for enlisted men.
Women’s Work in War-time
[Labor]. Home Office and Board of Trade. PAMPHLETS: On the Substitution of Women in Industry for Enlisted Men. London : D & S., June, 1916.
13 vols., 8vo.; each 4 pages; each with a circular stamp, “Board of Education library.”
Rarely, if ever, found as a group, these pamphlets show the degree to which women could to take on “men’s work” during the Great War.
With the relentless recruitment of men for the First World War the Board of Trade issued a proclamation asking every woman, who was able and willing to take employment, to register at the Labour Exchange. This hasty and ill-considered action threatened to flood the labour market with volunteers willing to take employment on any terms, regardless of the consequences to the normal wage-earner. These pamphlets – a more considered approach to the government’s problem – were issued to selected trades, in order to direct and mitigate any serious employment problems.
Each is divided into sections on I) Processes in which Women can be substituted for Men II) Supply of Women Workers, III) Relaxation of the requirements of Factory Acts, and IV) Arrangements in Factories. Among the processes selected quite a proportion included manual labour, exceptions were made for the highest class of work although “not infrequently it has been found that processes which some manufacturers have considered to be quite beyond a woman’s power were being carried on with complete success by women in the work of other firms.”
With upwards of a million more women employed at the close of war, some serious problems in the social and industrial relations helped precipitate woman suffrage in 1918.
The following trades are covered by the series: ‘China and Earthenware Trade’, ‘Pottery (Coarse Ware) and Brick Trade; ‘India Rubber Trades’, ‘Colour, Paint and Varnish Trade’, ‘Wool Industry’, , ‘Paper Making’, ‘Cotton Trade’, ‘Hosiery Trade’, ‘Wood-Working Trades’, ‘Leather Tanning and Currying Trades’, ‘Soap and Candle Trades’, ‘Glove Trade’, and ‘Heavy Clothing Trade’.
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