worked before, work year after year beside the
working girl. Just at first some of the working girls were not quite
sure of her, but it is all right long, long ago, and they mutually
admire each other. The well-off woman works her hours and takes her
pay, and takes it very proudly. I have been told many times by these
women who, for the first time know the joy of earning money, "I never
felt so proud in my life as when I got my first week's money." And the
men in the factories learn a lot, too. "Women have been too much kept
back," was the comment of a foreman in a shell factory to the Chief
Woman Factory Inspector on a visit she was paying to it. The skilled
men, teaching the women, have learned a great deal about them, too,
and have helped the women in so many ways. Men have been amazed at the
ability and power and capacity for work of the women and are, on the
whole, very willing to say so and express their admiration.

One munition girl writes: "The timekeeper, quite a gorgeous gentleman
in uniform, gave us quite a welcome.... The charge-hand of the
Welder's shop helped us to start, and stayed with us most of Friday.
He was most kind, and showed us the best way to tackle each job, did
one for us, and then watched us doing it."

Another says, "Our foreman is a dear old man, so kind and full of fun.
The men welders are awfully good to us."

In considering the practical facts of new opportunities for women, one
thing is clear. Masses of our women took their new work as "temporary
war workers," but as the war has gone on, it has become clearer and
clearer that, in many cases, these tasks are going to be permanently
open to women. One reason is that many of the men will never return to
take up their work again--another, that many of them will never return
to what they did before.

They have been living in the open-air, doing such different things,
such big vistas have opened out that they will never be content to
go back to some of their tasks. There is the other fact that we,
like every other country, will need to repair and renovate so much,
will need to create new and more industries, will need to add to our
productiveness to pay off our burdens of debt, and to carry out our
schemes of reconstruction, so women will still be needed. Our women,
in still greater numbers, will not be able to marry, and the best
thing for any nation and any set of women is to do work, and there
will be plenty of room for all the work