making ammunition. Never before had any woman worked on more than 150 of
the 500 different processes that go to the making of munitions. They now
handled T. N. T., and fulminate of mercury, more deadly still; helped
build guns, gun carriages, and three-and-a-half ton army cannons; worked
overhead traveling cranes for moving the boilers of battleships: turned
lathes, made every part of an aeroplane. And who were these seven million
women? The eldest daughter of a duke and the daughter of a general won
distinction in advanced munition work. The only daughter of an old Army
family broke down after a year's work in a base hospital in France, was
ordered six months' rest at home, but after two months entered a munition
factory as an ordinary employee and after nine months' work had lost but
five minutes working time. The mother of seven enlisted sons went into
munitions not to be behind them in serving England, and one of them wrote
her she was probably killing more Germans than any of the family. The
stewardess of a torpedoed passenger ship was among the few survivors.
Reaching land, she got a job at a capstan lathe. Those were the seven
million women of England--daughters of dukes, torpedoed stewardesses,
and everything between.

Seven hundred thousand of these were engaged on munition work proper.
They did from 60 to 70 per cent of all the machine work on shells, fuses,
and trench warfare supplies, and 1450 of them were trained mechanics to
the Royal Flying Corps. They were employed upon practically every
operation in factory, in foundry, in laboratory, and chemical works, of
which they were physically capable; in making of gauges, forging billets,
making fuses, cartridges, bullets--"look what they can do," said a
foreman, "ladies from homes where they sat about and were waited upon."
They also made optical glass; drilled and tapped in the shipyards;
renewed electric wires and fittings, wound armatures; lacquered guards
for lamps and radiator fronts; repaired junction and section boxes, fire