into an established custom. She and the discs seemed old friends. Women
are adaptable.

[Illustration: _Copyright by Underwood and Underwood_
The daily round in the Erie Railroad workshops.]

But everywhere I gathered the impression that the men are a bit uneasy.
A foreman in one factory pointed out a man who "would not have voted for
suffrage" had he guessed that women were "to rush in and gobble
everything up." I tried to make him see that it wasn't the vote that
gave the voracious appetite, but necessity or desire to serve. And in
any case, women do not push men out, they push them up. In not a single
instance did I hear of a man being turned off to make a place for a
woman. He had left his job to go into the army, or was advanced to
heavier or more skilled work.

As to how many women have supplanted men, or poured into the new war
industries, no figures are available. One guess has put it at a million.
But that is merely a guess. I have seen them by the tens, the hundreds,
the thousands. The number is large and rapidly increasing. We may know
that something important is happening when even the government takes
note. The United States Labor Department has recognized the new-comers
by establishing a Division of Women's Work with branches in every State.
It looks as if these bureaus of employment would not be idle, with a
showing of one thousand, five hundred applicants the first week the New
York office was opened. It is to be hoped that this government effort
will save the round pegs from getting into the square holes.

But even the round peg in the round hole brings difficulties. When Adam
Smith asserted that of all sorts of luggage man was the most difficult