e 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 control instruments, automatic searchlights. "We can
hardly believe our eyes," said another foreman, "when we see the heavy
stuff brought to and from the shops in motor lorries driven by girls.
Before the war it was all carted by horses and men. The girls do the job
all right, though, and the only thing they ever complain about is that
their toes get cold." They worked without hesitation from twelve to
fourteen hours a day, or a night, for seven days a week, and with the
voluntary sacrifice of public holidays