510 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F, 



(3) Replacement. 



From the fact that fetver men and many more women are now in industry, 

 there is a priiTia-fac'e case for supposing that women have replaced men in the 

 sense that they are now doing 2}rocesses which before the War were done by 

 men. Our information, however, shmvs that this is not the case, save in special 

 instances and to a limited degree. 



The one important factor upon which the prosperity of industry depends 

 to-day is the virtual monopolising of the market by our own and the Allied 

 Governments. It will be interesting to consider whether the War demand is not 

 on the whole a demand for a class of goods in the production of which a greater 

 proportion of women rather than men can be more usefully and economically 

 employed than under normal peace conditions. The nature of the demands 

 arising out of the War must have an important bearing upon the kind of labour 

 required. A large part of the Government demand for goods is in these 

 branches of trades in which a larger proportion of women are employed than in 

 the trade as a whole. A good example of this is the tailoring trade, which 

 normally employs something like 130,000 women, together with a large casual 

 fringe of women who come into the trade in times of seasonal pressure. This 

 trade illustrates the point at issue, though it will not, of course, be taken as 

 typical of all industry. The retail bespoke branch, in which high-class tailor- 

 ing work is done, employs men almost entirely, and since the War it has been 

 very depressed, for the demand for 'high-class ' work has been much reduced. 

 The clothing of a soldier is good but not ' high class ' in the sense in which 

 a Bond Street retail bespoke tailor might use that term. ; it is tailoring done 

 in the medium branches of the trade in which female labour normally pre- 

 dominates. This part of the trade has drawn women and girls from its other 

 branches and from its fringe of casual labour as well as from other trades in 

 which there was a surplus of female labour. It thus shows a great increase 

 of female labour since the War which has been drawn in, not to undertake 

 work previously done by men, but merely to cope with a huge increase of 

 orders in that branch of the trade in which a larger proportion of women 

 than men is normally employed. Again, the cloth from which the uniform 

 is made is not the very finest suiting, and the huge demands upon the wool 

 and worsted trade fnr it have resulted, as in the tailoring trade, in a larger 

 demand for female labour compared with the demand for male labour than the 

 trade as a whole would normally employ. The great increase of women's employ- 

 ment since the War in the leather trade has to a certain extent been in the 

 lighter accoutrement branches on processes normally done by women, while in 

 the boot and shoe branch there has actually been a replacement of women by 

 men owing to the heavier nature of the work required in the military than in 

 the civilian boot. 



A considerable part of the Government demand is also in trades, e.g. the 

 munition branches of the engineering and metal trades, in which a large pro- 

 portion of semi-skilled or unskilled female labour can be absorbed especially in 

 such exceptional processes as the filling of shells, and in which after the War 

 the demand will decline. 



From the above considerations it will be seen that much of the extension 

 of women's employment during the War in industry proper is in work which is 

 normally done by women and in which the necessities of war have created an 

 unprecedented demand. Other work, now done hy women is exceptional work 

 which will decline with the advent of peace. But a survey of the whole field 

 suggests that, owing to the in-tallation of special plant, the proportion of woman 

 labour may be affected. 



But though women are not as yet to any considerable extent doing the 

 work of men or undertaking highly skilled jobs, they are undoubtedly slowly 

 undertaking processes in many trades which were previously thought just above 

 the line of their strength and skill. This is seen particularly in leather, 

 engineering, and the wool and worsted trade, and also in trades which, though 

 depressed since the War, have yet experienced a shortage of certain forms of 

 labour, e.g., pottery, cotton, and the printing trade. This shifting of the 

 line of demarcation between men's and wonien's jobs has in many cases received 



