At once immense numbers of women and girls responded to the call. They went into the tramway and railway service to act as ticket sellers and punchers, as conductors, brakemen and motormen. They replaced the letter carriers and chauffeurs; they climbed the lofty seats formerly occupied by cab-drivers and postilions. Mounting motor-cycles they delivered telegrams and performed other urgent errands. They formed street-cleaning and fire-brigades and took care of the sanitation and protection of the cities. In the offices and stores they assumed the duties of the bookkeeper and floor-walker; in the schools they substituted for male teachers who had followed the call of the war trumpet. They repaired telegraph-wires
WOMEN FILLING SHELLS IN A BRITISH AMMUNITION FACTORY.
and installed telephones; they became blacksmiths and repaired the roofs of houses. They cleaned windows and chimneys, delivered newspapers and carried the coal from the wagon into the bins and bunkers. They acted as "ice-men" and collected the garbage and ashes. They tilled the fields and vegetable gardens, and brought in the crops and the harvests. They thrashed the wheat and served in the mills as well as in the bakeries. They furnished clothes, and made and mended shoes. They finished the public roads and other works that had been left uncompleted. They built houses and tore down others. In Berlin the excavation for a new underground railway, badly needed, was done by women, and half of the gangs that worked on the railroad tracks were made up of girls.
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