of two operations, which are thought too heavy for them, all the machines
are run by women.

But when the factory began, the employers very soon detected that it was
running below its possible output. There was a curious lack of briskness
in the work--a curious constraint among the new workers. Yet the employers
were certain that the women were keen, and their labour potentially
efficient. They put their heads together, and posted up a notice in the
factory to the effect that whatever might be the increase in the output of
piece-work, the piece-work rate would not be altered. Instantly the
atmosphere began to clear, the pace of the machines began to mount.

It was a factory in which the work was new, the introduction of women was
new, and the workers strange to each other, and for the most part strange
to their employers. A small leaven of distrust on the part of the men
workers was enough, and the women were soon influenced. Luckily, the
mischief was as quickly scotched. Men and women began to do their best,
the output of the factory--which had been planned for 14,000 shells a
week--ran up to 20,000, and everything has gone smoothly since.

Let me now, however, describe another effect of Dilution--the employment
of unskilled _men_ on operations hitherto included in skilled engineering.

On the day after the factory I have just described, my journey took me to
another town close by, where my guide--a Director of one of the largest
and best-known steel and engineering works in the kingdom--showed me a new
shell factory filled with 800 to 900 men, all "medically unfit" for the
Army, and almost all drawn from the small trades and professions of the
town, especially from those which had been hard hit by the war. Among
those I talked to I found a keeper of bathing-machines, a publican's