the shops back home. And to employers governments have said: Hire women in their places.
To this employers answered as they have so many times to us when we have asked to be hired: "But women don't know how."
You see, it has always been so difficult for us to learn. From the bricklayers and the printers up to the medical men and the lawyers and the ministers, there has always been that gentlemen's agreement in every trade: "Don't let her in. And if she gets in, don't let her up, any higher up than you have to."
But now over all the world, to every industry that shows a slackening in production, there is issued one common government General Order: "Teach the Women." And the employer looks questioningly toward the work-bench at the figure in the leather apron there, who in some of the most highly skilled trades, has always threatened to take off that apron and walk out of the shop when a petticoat crossed the threshold. There are shops in which there has never been a woman apprentice, because he wouldn't teach her. Would he now?
The skilled workman was summoned in England to the Home Office for a heart-to-heart talk with the Government. He came from the cotton trade, the woollen and the worsted trade, the bleachers and dyers' trade, the woodworkers and furnishers' trade, the biscuit trade, the boot and shoe trade, the engineering trade and a great many others. The Government spoke sternly of its power under martial law. The skilled workman, shifting his cap from
