Page:Women Wanted.djvu/175

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THE NEW WAGE ENVELOPE
159

each section there is a foreman. It was the foreman who called my attention to the machines. "They are," he said, "small lathes, specially adapted to the women. We had them made in America since the war."

EASY ENOUGH TO ARRANGE

Like that you see, it is done. Sometimes to make over the job for the woman, there was necessary only the simplest expedient like adding the "flap" seat in the Manchester tram-cars for the woman-conductor to rest between rush hours. Even in skilled trades it hasn't always been necessary to remodel an entire machine. Sometimes only a lever has to be shortened. Sometimes it has been done by the addition of "jigs and fixtures," so that a process formerly involving judgment and experience, is now automatically performed at a touch from the operator. Are there heavy weights to be lifted? The paper factories met the situation by reducing the size of the parcel. The leather, tanning and currying trade put in special lifting tackle. The chemical industries have trucks for transporting the heavy carboys. The pottery and brick trades have trolleys. And the engineering trade, for manipulating the heavy shells, has put in electrical cranes and carriages: they are operated by a woman who sits in a sort of easy chair from which she only lifts her hand to touch the right lever.

These and other innovations have been made inaccordance with a definite plan. You should hear