TRANSACTIONS OP SECTION P. 



549 



he has made certain promises after stating the necessary conditions to be 

 considered in equating men's and women's wages. He insists first of all upon 

 the need for instruction and training. He draws the necessary distinction 

 between piece work and time work rates, though he agrees that during training 

 the women in munition factories under Government control should be guaranteed 

 a living minimum wage. He also states that it has been agreed that as far as 

 the work is concerned women shall be paid exactly the same price as a man 

 for any piece of work she turns out. ' The Government will see that there is 

 no sweated labour.' ' We cannot give the same time rate, but the piece rate 

 we can give as well as a fixed minimum which will guarantee that we shall not 

 utilise the services of women merely to get cheap labour.' 



The permanent effects of the War on the main metal trades will not, it 

 may be feared, be beneficial. Till recent years the development of machinery 

 and the subdivision of processes which accompanied it have led to the employ- 

 ment of an increasingly large proportion of unskilled and semi-skilled labour. 

 Just before the War, however, there were signs that this process was being 

 reversed, new developments in automatic machinery leading to the unskilled 

 worker being displaced, while the skilled toolsetter was retained. That is to 

 say, subdivision was still going on, but it was beginning to be subdivision 

 between machines, not between human agents. This recent tendency towards 

 the supervision by one worker of several automatic machines has been checked 

 by shortage of skilled labour since the War. In some of the newly built 

 departments, therefore, instead of the most modern automatic machinery, plant 

 of a type requiring only an inferior degree of skill has been installed. 



Appended is a separate Report on the maniifacture of electrical apparatus 

 and other§ on certain metal trades less immediately affected by the demand for 

 munitions. 



Electrical Apparatus. 

 (Investigated by Miss M. E. Bulkeley, Miss M. Cross, and Miss Moses.) 



(The men's figures for 1901 include also electricians (undefined) who in 

 1911 = 27,905.) 



Women are to some slight extent doing work which before the War* was 

 done by men, in certain departments such as : — 



Small lathe work. 



Screw machine. 



Gable making. 



Winching of transformers for armatures. 



This last may be regarded as an extension of work previously done by women 

 rather than as an entirely new process ; for example, where they now wind two 

 coils on to a transformer they previously only did one. 



Before the War, women were employed in all branches of light work 

 in electrical apparatus work, but not at all in the electrical supply trade. 

 Although the above displacement is classed as owing to the War, there is 

 evidence that before August 1914 the policy of many firms had been to extend 

 the employment of women into new branches. That women have to some 

 extent been replacing men, or at any rate entering new branches, may also be 

 inferred from the fact that, though the electric lamp branch of the trade has 

 been depressed owing to the War, there has been a total increase in the 



