546 



TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION V. 



Engineering and the Metal Trades. 



The metal trades apart from engineering do not appear in Table III. owing 

 to the lack of available statistics. The following show, however, the state of 

 employment in this group in February 1915 compared with July 1914 



* The 1911 census shows only 300 women in this trade, but employers' returns 

 showed 1,200 occupied in July 1914. 



The most sweeping changes caused by the War demand have taken place in 

 the various metal industries. It is these trades which have been able to adapt 

 both their plant and their labour to the production of munitions of war. As 

 this adaptation has been going on in very many firms, whose normal products 

 are of the most varied nature, it is difficult to deal with industries in' this 

 group. Those firms which quickly adapted their products to the needs of 

 the time soon employed largely increased numbers both of men and women, 

 paying them abnormally high wages, both in the form of increased piece-rates 

 and as payment for overtime. Any metal firms, therefore, which were slow in 

 adapting their output to the needs of the country began in the winter and the 

 early spring to find themselves short of labour, female as well as male. The 

 position, then, is that a single group of industries, the manufacture of guns 

 and ammunition of various types, has monopolised to an ever-increasing extent 

 the premises, plant, and workpeople previously devoted to all the many metal 

 trades. 



Since a large proportion of the munitions now being made does not involve 

 such heavy work as the products of the same factories in time of peace, the 

 proportion of women employed has almost inevitably greatly increased. Many 

 of the processes are such as women have commonly performed in recent years. 

 In some works, moreover, such new plant as has been installed has been con- 

 sciously chosen with a view to the employment of women on account of the 

 scarcity of male labour. Most of the newly employed women, therefore, are 

 not engaged upon processes previously performed only by men. The line of 

 division, however, between male and female labour is always variable; and in 

 many works it is moved so as to allow the employment of women on work 

 previously thought to be just beyond their strength or skill. Instances of 

 women being employed in work widely different from any undertaken by them 

 in time of peace are comparatively rare, though they seem likely to multiply 

 rapidly. 



It is possible to group the metal trades roughly according to the proportion 

 of female labour employed in time of peace, and to differentiate between the 

 recent developments in each group. 



1. Trades which deal with Metal in itx Rough and Heavier Stages, viz., Iron 

 Casting, Metal Rolling, Sheet-iron Work, etc. — In these trades women are not 

 employed, and the War has not altered the position. The processes in many 

 cases are identical with those in time of peace, since the product is turned out 



