men's work. I had seen this sort of thing before in peace ironworks,
but I saw it again with the same astonishment, the absolute precision
of movement on the part of the half-naked sweating men, the calculated
efficiency of each worker, the apparent heedlessness, the real
certitude, with which the blazing hot cylinder is put here, dropped
there, rolls to its next appointed spot, is chopped up and handed on,
the swift passage to the cooling crude, pinkish-purple shell shape. Down
a long line one sees in perspective a practical symmetry, of furnace
and machine group and the shells marching on from this first series
of phases to undergo the long succession of operations, machine after
machine, across the great width of the shed in which eighty per cent
of the workers are women. There is a thick dust of sounds in the air, a
rumble of shafting, sudden thuddings, clankings, and M. Citroen has
to raise his voice. He points out where he has made little changes in
procedures, cut out some wasteful movement.... He has an idea and makes
a note in the ever-ready notebook.

There is a beauty about all these women, there is extraordinary grace in
their finely adjusted movements. I have come from an after-lunch coffee
upon the boulevards and from watching the ugly fashion of our time;
it is a relief to be reminded that most women can after all be
beautiful--if only they would not "dress." these women wear simple
overalls and caps. In the cap is a rosette. Each shed has its own colour
of rosette.

"There is much esprit de corps here," says M. Citroen.

"And also," he adds, showing obverse as well as reverse of the world's
problem of employment and discipline, "we can see at once if a woman is
not in her proper shed."