Excerpt from The Woman's Part: A Record of Munitions Work At the outbreak Of hostilities, a few of the most far-sighted employers, contemplating a shortage Of labour through the recruitment Of men for military service, hazarded the Opinion that women might be employed on all kinds Of simple repetition work in the Engineering Shops. Further than that even the Optimist did not go. [there was also no indic Degreeson that women would be willing to adventure into a world where long hours and night-work prevailed, from which evils they were protected in the days Of peace by vents have proved that the women Of Great Britain are as menfolk to sacrifice comfort and personal convenience to the demands Of a great cause, and as soon as it was made known that their services were required, they came forward in their hundreds Of thousands. They have come from the Office and the shop, from domestic service and the dressmaker's room, from the High Schools and the Colleges, and from the quietude of the stately homes Of the leisured rich. They have travelled from far-off corners in the United Kingdom as well as from homesteads in Australia and New Zealand, and from lonely farms in South Africa and Canada. Every stratum Of society has provided its share Of Willing women workers eager from one cause or another to 'do their bit'. Even in the early days Of the advent of women in the munitions shops, I have seen working together, side by side, the daughter Of an earl, a shop keeper's widow, a graduate from Girton, a domestic servant and a young woman from a lonely farm in Rhodesia, whose husband had joined the colours. Social status, so stiff a barrier in this country in pre-war days, was forgotten in the factory, as in the trenches, and they were all working together as happily as the members Of a united family. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.