a foreman to me through the crashing noise of the machines among which we stood, "but," and he waved his hand over his domain in which 1700 women were at work, "these women, at occupations requiring speed and dexterity, already excel me."
He led me to the side of a girl who was drilling holes in brass. "See," he said, "she does 1000 holes at 50 centimes an hour. No man we were ever able to employ, ever did more than 500 holes an hour, and we had to pay him 75 centimes."
We came to the gauging department: "Here," he said, "women are more expert than men. See how well adapted to the task are their slender, supple fingers? And they work for 50 centimes an hour, where we should have to pay men 80."
Like this the evidence of woman's efficiency at the work they are doing, is everywhere in Europe. It has now been written into the records that cannot be gainsaid. That famous publication, Women's War Work, in announcing the 1701 jobs at which a woman can be employed, asserts under the authority of the British War Office that at all of these jobs a woman is "just as good as a man, and for some of them she is better." Then they sent a special commission over to see what women were accomplishing in French factories. After a conference with M. Albert Thomas, the French Minister of Munitions, and a wide tour of inspection, the special commission returned to England with this report: "The opinion in the French factories is that the output of females on small work equals and in some
