TRANSACTIONS OP SECTION F. 527 



carriers, and as milk-vendors. Girls and young women have been employed in 

 hundreds in place of boys for newspaper delivery and at railway bookstalls. 

 In those branches of these trades in which the work is rough, such as dairy 

 work and heavy van driving, the extra women who have been drawn in since 

 the War have come from factories, domestic service, laundries, and other occu- 

 pations where the work is heavy or unpopular or wages comparatively low. For 

 thie lighter work the women who have come in have either been in business 

 before, generally in occupations in which there has been a contraction in employ- 

 ment owing to the War, e.g., dressmakers and milliners and light luxury trades 

 generally ; or are women from comparatively well-to-do families hit by the War ; 

 or girls of fifteen to eighteen years of age mostly from secondary schools. In 

 comparatively few cases are married women quoted as returning. 



Various estimates ranging from 50 to 100 per cent, are given as to the amount 

 of increase of women's labour in these trades. The Trade Unions concerned 

 anticipate a continued increase in women's employment, and point to the grocery 

 trade, where already the numbers have doubled. It has been found impossible 

 to obtain sufficient information in statistical form to be able to quote figures. 



Amongst a number of employers there is still a considerable reluctance to 

 engage women on work previously done by men. Some of them prefer to run 

 their businesses with insufficient staff rather than take on women. The reasons 

 stated for this reluctance are : 



(a) Women are untrained. The male employees lost were to a large extent 



skilled men, and their places cannot be taken by men or women without 

 the necessary technical experience. This was stated to be the case by 

 certain firms dealing in jewellery, ironmongery, furniture, books, and 

 drugs. The normal recruiting to the trade in the case of male labour is 

 by boys and youths who are promoted as they prove efficient. 



(b) It is not worth training women as many of them are not likely to remain 



in the trade. It is stated that the possibility of marriage causes her 

 attitude to her work to be less stable than that of men. Uncertainty as 

 to the duration of the War also influences employers in this respect. 



(c) The work is too heavy or dirty, e.g., in furniture and piano shops and the 



meat and fishmongery departments of general stores. In the heavy 

 departments of drapery firms employers are apportioning the heavier work 

 to the men and the lighter to the women. A firm employing women in its 

 despatch and packing departments has arranged that men only shall 

 transfer cases to the warehouse. Some dairies with many branches have 

 had to reduce the number of calls for women on milk rounds, giving a 

 few extra to each man. A firm employing women at the fish and meat 

 counters does not ask them to prepare and clean the fish. 

 {d) As staying power is essential even when actual physical strength is not, 

 women are not found capable of so large an output as men. This was 

 the view expressed by 85 per cent, of the employers visited, some quoting 

 comparative figures. Thus, a large provision merchant uses three women 

 for two men's work, a dairy has had to put in two women where one man 

 sufficed, and has had to reduce the number of calls in the women's 

 rounds; a general store and a hardware firm put the value of a trained 

 woman at 75 per cent, of that of a man. Many employers allow that 

 output is, to a large extent, a matter of training and practice, but in spite 

 of this they consider women of less efficiency than men when tested 

 by output or staying power, the cause being partly physical and partly 

 psychological. Men generally enter these trades as boys, and the trades 

 are 'picked up.' Definite schemes of training are a'lmost non-existent 

 save in very large stores, where lectures are sometimes given. The London 

 County Council Higher Education Committee has started a scheme for 

 training women in the grocery trade, but it is premature to attempt an 

 analysis of the results. Employers prefer ' experience ' to ' lectures.' 

 Men acquire experience and knowledge over a period of years, and it is 

 obvious that adult men or women from other trades find it extremely 

 difficult to compete with, or to do the work of, those having years' experi- 

 ence of the trade. Men enter the grocery trade as boys of fourteen, in 



