The registration, placing and moving of our workers is all done by our Labour Exchanges, now renamed Employment Exchanges and transferred from the Board of Trade to the Ministry of Labour.

When the National Service Department was set up, a Women’s Branch was established with Mrs. H.J.  Tennant, and Miss Violet Markham as Co-directors, and they made various appeals, registered women for the land, munitions, W.A.A.C. and for wood cutting and pitprop making.  A great demonstration of “Women’s Service” was held in the Albert Hall in January 17, 1917, at which Mrs. Tennant and Miss Markham, Lord Derby, Minister of War; Mr. Prothero, President of the Board of Agriculture, and Mr. John Hodge, Minister of Labour, spoke and at which the Queen was present.  It was an appeal to women for more work and a registration of their determination to go on doing all that was needed.  The men’s message was one to equals—­they asked great things.  A message from Queen Mary was read for the first time at any public meeting and it was the only occasion on which she has attended one.

The number of women now in our industry directly replacing men, according to our latest returns, is over one and a quarter millions.  This does not include domestic service, where our maids grow less and less numerous and Sir Auckland Geddes, Director of National Service, tells us he is considering cutting down servants in any establishment to not more than three, and it does not include very small shops and firms.

The processes in industry in which women work are numbered in hundreds.  The War Office in 1916 issued an official memorandum for the use of Military Representatives and Tribunals setting forth the processes in which women worked and the trades and occupations, and giving photographs of women doing unaccustomed and heavy work, to guide the Tribunals in deciding exemptions of men called up for Military Service.

In professional work today women are everywhere.  There are 198,000 women in Government Departments, 83,000 of these new since the war.  They are doing typing, shorthand, and secretarial work, organizing and executive work.  They are in the Censor’s office in large numbers and doing important work at the Census of Production.  There are 146,000 on Local Government work.  The woman teacher has invaded that stronghold of man in England, the Boys’ High and Grammar Schools, and is doing good work there.  They are replacing men chemists in works, doing research, working at dental mechanics, are tracing plans.  They are driving motor cars in large numbers.  Our Prime Minister has a woman chauffeur.  They are driving delivery vans and bringing us our goods, our bread and our milk.  They carry a great part of our mail and trudge through villages and cities with it.  They drive our mail vans, and I know two daughters of a peer who drive mail vans in London.  I know other women who never did any work in their lives who for three years have worked in factories, taking the same work, the same holidays, the same pay as the other girls.  Women are gardeners, elevator attendants, commissionaires and conductors on our buses and trams, and in provincial towns drive many of the electric trams.