Слике страница
PDF
ePub

to the daughters of other mothers, who will become mothers in their turn. I do not think I have ever regretted more keenly the neglect of the education of girls in the middle and upper classes, the little provision there is in it by which they may save alive the soul of a man who is in danger of losing it.

It is one of the ironies of the times that the daughters whose education is in so many instances scarcely worthy the name, whose tastes are so often perverted by the empty life of pleasure that is the only life within their grasp, whose physique is injured by town life, badly ventilated rooms, ill-chosen food, fashionable clothes and the rest of the evil to which the daughters of wealthy parents are heir, should be asked to save the race. Yet, however great the irony of the situation, that situation exists. It must be faced. The battle of militarism against feminism will be resumed. Consciously or unconsciously, they will be combatants. They, and not the mothers who yearn for sons lost and sons worse than lost, must play their part, live awhile face to face with the grave prob

lem, solve, trifle with or ignore it. War has loaded the dice for militarism. The times will gamble with these loaded dice for the bodies of a generation yet unborn, and all that many a lad will have to stand between him and the further disaster of perpetuating the evils of our day will be some young, fair, foolish head with eyes that a piece of braid or ribbon may be able to dazzle.

I am conscious of a clear conviction that feminists of every class and creed should unite to face this problem; any other success while such a work remains undone is the gain of the shadow and the loss of the substance. The girls of England whose attractions will rule the English world and decide the character of the next generation must be reached while there is yet time, and something of their responsibilities brought home to them. If they are going to disregard them and help to prolong the agonies of our failing civilization, let it not be said that they erred through ignorance or because there were none to teach them the truth about the part they are called upon to play.

[ocr errors]

British Women in War Service

HE British War Office issued, at the end of February, 1917, the following statement of the terms and conditions governing the employment of women with the British armies in France. Many thousands of women in England had long been awaiting official arrangements enabling them to volunteer for this service:

For twelve months, subject to termination earlier at the discretion of the Army Council upon one month's notice, except for misconduct or incompetence, when one week's notice will be given. The engagement may be renewed by mutual consent at the termination of the first period. A bonus of £5 will be paid to each woman, irrespective of grade, on renewal of the agreement for a second period.

There are five main categories of employment, viz.: (a) Clerical, typist, shorthand typist; (b) cooks, waitresses, and domestic staff; (c) motor transport service; (d) storehouse women, checkers, and un

skilled labor; (e) telephone and postal services, and (f) in addition there will be certain miscellaneous services which do not fall within the above main classification.

(a) Ordinary clerical work and typists, 23s. to 27s. per week, according to efficiency; clerks employed on higher clerical and supervisory duties, 28s. to 32s. per week, according to efficiency; shorthand typists, 28s. to 32s. per week, according to efficiency. These rates of pay cover forty-two working hours per week, after which overtime will be paid at the rate of 7d. per hour for ordinary clerks and 9d. per hour for clerks employed on higher work and shorthand typists.

(b) Head cooks and waitresses, £40 per annum; cooks, waitresses, and housemaids, £26 per annum, with free board and lodging, together with 6d. per week for personal washing.

(c) Superintendents, first class, 52s. 6d. per week; superintendents, second class, 46s. per week; head drivers, 40s. per week; qualified driver-mechanics, 35s. per week; washers, 20s. per week. These above weekly rates in

clude Sunday work when necessary, but if employed on Sunday a day's rest in lieu will be given. In addition, overtime will be allowed, except to superintendents, at the rate of 5d. per hour after eight and a half working hours per day.

(d) Storehouse women and unskilled labor, 20s. per week. Extra pay up to 2s. per week where special aptitude is required; leading hands, 22s. per week; checkers, 22s. to 24s. per week; assistant forewomen, 24s. per week; forewomen, 21s. to 30s. per week, according to number of staff supervised. These rates cover forty-eight working hours per week. Overtime, at time and a quarter for the first two hours per day; thereafter and on Sundays, time and a half.

(e) Telephone and postal services. Rates of pay are under consideration by the Postmaster General and will be announced later.

(f) Miscellaneous services. Special rates of pay, according to nature of employment, with a minimum of 20s. per week.

[blocks in formation]

during each year's service. An allowance of £4 will be paid to provide uniform at the beginning of service, with a further grant of £1 at the end of six months. Similar grants will be made for the second year's service. Slightly different grants will be made in the case of the Motor Transport Section.

In all cases other than (b) cooks, waitresses, and domestic staff; (d) storehouse women and unskilled labor, and (f) miscellaneous services-a deduction not exceeding 14s. per week will be made to cover cost of board and lodging and washing on a regulated scale, which will be provided by the military authorities. In the case of (d) storehouse women and unskilled labor and (f) miscellaneous services, when the pay is less than 21s. per week, the deduction will not in any case exceed 13s. a week. The women will be accommodated, while in France, in hostels, under the care and supervision of lady superintendents. The above applies to France only. It must be understood that enrollment for service includes service at home as well as in France. Those who have a preference should declare it. Where preference for France is declared it will be satisfied if possible, and service in France may ultimately follow service begun at home. The conditions of service of the various classes of women workers at home will remain as at present.

To the First Gun

By ROBERT UNDERWOOD JOHNSON

[The liner St. Louis, the first American merchant ship to carry guns through the German submarine zone, sailed from New York on March 18, 1917]

[blocks in formation]

By Caroline V. Kerr

The writer of this article has recently returned to the United States after having served for many years as Berlin correspondent of a New York newspaper. She is able, therefore, to furnish a first-hand report on the wartime activities of German women.

W

HAT are the women of Germany doing today? Everything, from sitting in the civic councils to sweeping the snow from the streets. From the very outbreak of the great war it was plain to be seen that the women of Germany were filled with the determination to play their part in the great national epic, and to play it with fortitude and devotion. At no time have they swerved or faltered, and Dr. Delbrück, late Minister for Home Affairs, paid the women of Germany a well-deserved tribute when he declared in the Reichstag that "such intelligent cooperation and striking. efficiency as that displayed by the women of the land since the beginning of the war could not be dispensed with when normal conditions were once more restored."

entirely in the hands of the women. Female labor is utilized, to a large extent, in the production of other war supplies which do not represent so striking a departure from normal activities. This is the case with the textile industries and the factories for readymade clothing.

[graphic]

CROWN PRINCESS CECILIE OF GERMANY

Not only are they engaged in the manifold phases of relief work such as obviously fall upon the womenfolk of a nation at war, but they have taken the places left vacant by the men on the farm and in the factory. The rapid readjustment of the German labor market was due to the fact that the number of female industrial workers was increased by half a million during the first eight months of the war. This new home army has been chiefly employed in the "war industries" -that is to say, in the metal and machine works or in the electrical and chemical plants. Fifty thousand women are employed in one large ammunition factory, and the manufacture of shells is almost

No one has been surprised to find German women developing great organizing gifts in dealing with the many ramifications of the Red Cross work, in operating a National League for Public Service, and in elaborating a well-nigh perfect system of municipal kitchens, but it was scarcely to be expected that they would SO readily fall into line when it came to recruiting the ranks of the thousand and one small trades and vocations which go to

make up the everyday life of a big nation. They are serving with success as letter carriers, as messenger boys, as chauffeurs, as window cleaners, as "motormen," as conductors on the street cars and subways, and one is reported as having joined the ancient and honorable guild of chimney-sweeps.

They are familiar figures on the streets where public works are in course of construction, and if you ask them who looks after their households in the meantime they cheerfully explain that they can rely upon the thoroughly organized system of municipal welfare work to care for them and their children.

Women have been included in the municipal councils of Berlin and other large cities, and no civic measure bear

ing upon the subjects of alimentation and public welfare is carried out without their counsel and co-operation; in fact, a few women of extraordinary initiative and executive ability may be spoken of as ex-officio members of the German Home Office.

Frau Heyl's Enterprises

One of these is Frau Sophie Heyl, the woman who gave the impulse to the centralization of the national movement in household economics. Frau Heyl has received many orders for distinguished service, but no one of these is as gratifying to her as the unofficial title bestowed upon her of "The Hindenburg of the Kitchen."

She is verily a generalissimo in her line of work, and in the opening days of the war gave striking proofs of her gifts in this direction by mobilizing the housekeepers of the land and initiating them into the rôle they were expected to play in the great campaign then opening. Her ever-fertile brain evolved one scheme after another for meeting the unexpected economic situation, and the awakening of a national consciousness among the cooks and housewives of the empire was largely due to the efforts of this remarkable woman.

66

It was she who organized and financed the first relief kitchen for the "shamefaced poor," and it was due to her foresight that the meat and vegetables were concocted into the savory stew, known as gulasch," millions of tins of which were sent to the soldiers in the trenches. More than that, her name became a household word throughout the land by means of the series of "War Cook Books," compiled at the request of the German Home Office and distributed gratis by the tens of thousands.

Frau Heyl has not confined her energies to household economics on a large scale, but, believing in the efficacy of small economies, has instituted potato-paring and cherry-pit campaigns. Such activities may seem ridiculously small to the outside world, but are not to be despised in a country now passing through the state of "commercial isolation," once foreseen by the great German philosopher, Fichte.

Public Service League

What Frau Heyl has accomplished in the field of household economics has been achieved along the broader lines of national welfare work by Dr. Gertrude Baumer, President of the National Council of German Women and of that remarkable war organization known as the National League of Public Service.

This organization represents a concentration of effort and a comprehensiveness of scope never before attempted by the women of any country. The war was scarcely a week old when the call went out from Berlin to the remotest corner of the empire summoning the women of Germany to the colors, and the result was the present farreaching organization prepared to meet every exigency of the war relief and public welfare work.

Both Dr. Baumer and Frau Heyl attribute the phenomenal rapidity with which they were able to organize such large bodies of women, and direct their activities into channels of efficiency, to the much-decried "Prussian militarism," which they claim only means schooling and subordination of the individual to the well-being of the masses-in other words, discipline and organization.

Every town, town, village, and hamlet throughout Germany maintains a branch of the Public Service League, and these local organizations receive a weekly budget from the municipal treasuries and thus work hand in hand with the city authorities in disbursing the relief funds. Some idea of the magnitude of the work may be gained from the fact that in Berlin alone more than ten million marks are paid out every month to the soldiers' families, and practically all the applications for aid are handled by the league. In two months the Berlin relief committees distributed food certificates and bread and milk cards to a total amount of more than 130,000 marks. Relief of the Needy

Some of the duties of the league are to look after the war widows and orphans, to feed the hungry, to clothe the destitute, to find work for the unemployed, to mediate between land

lords and tenants, and in every possible way to come to the immediate and effective relief of all the needy classes of the population. One of the chief activities of the league at the beginning of the war was to care for the thousands and thousands of refugees from the devastated provinces of East Prussia who poured into Berlin and other cities of the interior and for months claimed the hospitality of their more fortunate compatriots living within the "safety zone." In addition to the funds appropriated by the city, the league is the constant recipient of voluntary contributions; in fact, its treasury is in no danger of being exhausted should the war tinue indefinitely.

con

A fact of striking significance in connection with this organization was the sweeping away of all religious and party barriers. The League of Catholic Women as well as those of pronounced Social Democrat tenets allied themselves with the national movement, and a Swedish writer, in commenting upon this phenomenon, says that if "dismembered Germany was welded into an empire by the war of 1870-71, the war of 1914 may be said to have accomplished still more for the nation by bringing about an inner unification and creating an entirely new quality of national consciousness."

ready amounting to many millions, designed as a special expression of gratitude from the women of Germany to their fallen heroes. The interest on this fund, which is splendidly invested, is to be supplied to the permanent support of the families thus left unprovided for.

It is the women who have also taken the lead in the national " Gold Offering." The official head of this work is the German Crown Princess, from whose various royal residences rich treasures

have been sent to swell the sacrifices laid upon the altar of the Fatherland.

There is no busier woman in the empire than the Crown Princess, as she must not only lend her name and influence to the manifold war organizations, but she is also called upon to represent the Empress at all public functions owing to the fact that the latter has withdrawn herself from active participation in the broader phases of the relief work and confines herself to a few charities lying very near to her heart.

[graphic]

GRAND DUCHESS LOUISE OF BADEN

The basic principle underlying the activities of the league is to discourage charity and make every applicant for aid self-supporting. It is not possible to carry out this principle in all cases, but its general wisdom is incontestable. Living upon the charity of others soon becomes an incurable habit and is utterly destructive of all feelings of selfrespect and personal responsibility.

Parallel with the work of the Public Service League is that of the so-called "Frauendank "-an endowment fund al

Thus it happens that the Crown Princess is daily claimed by some official duty or errand of mercy; now she makes the round of the military hospitals; now she is investigatng the progress made at the lace school started under her aegis; now she is presiding at a bazaar, where her services are eagerly sought as a saleswoman; now she is acting as patroness at a charity concert, the least irksome of all her duties, as she is a thorough musician. She is particularly interested in the work being accomplished by the Crown Princess Hospital Train, the gift of the Schoeneberg Borough of Greater Berlin and said to be the best-equipped hospital on wheels in Germany.

The active participation taken by the royal women of Germany in all phases

« ПретходнаНастави »