The strongest element in the women's trade unions takes the same stand.
The great rise in the employment of women is not regarded as a "war
measure," and all the suggestions made to meet the hardships of
readjustment, such as a "minimum wage for all unskilled workers, men as
well as women," are based on the idea of the new workers being permanent
factors in the labor market.

The same conclusion was reached in the report presented to the British
Association by the committee appointed to investigate the "Replacement
of Male by Female Labor." The committee found itself in entire
disagreement with the opinion that the increased employment of women was
a passing phase, and made recommendations bearing on such measures as
improved technical training for girls as well as for boys, a minimum
wage for unskilled men as well as women, equal pay for equal work, and
the abolition of "half-timers." But while it was obvious that the
greatest asset of belligerent nations is the labor of women, while
learned societies and organizations of women laid down rules for their
safe and permanent employment, the British Government showed marked
opposition to the new workers. If the Cabinet did not believe the war
would be brief, it certainly acted as if Great Britain alone among the
belligerents would have no shortage of male industrial hands. At a time
when Germany had five hundred thousand women in munition factories,
England had but ten thousand.

There is no doubt that the country was at first organized merely for a
spurt. Boys and girls were pressed into service, wages were cut down for
women, hours lengthened for men. Government reports read like the
Shaftesbury attacks on the conditions of early factory days. We hear
again of beds that are never cold, the occupant of one shift succeeding
the occupant of the next, of the boy sleeping in the same bed with two