Page:Our Girls.pdf/57

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BY NIGHT
47

nership, the man receiving five-eighths of the piecework pay, and the woman three-eighths. They are roughing or drilling eight-inch shells. First the man lifts the shell into its place in one of the two machines, leaves the woman to watch it, and then crosses to the other machine, lifts another shell into its place, and stands by it himself. When the woman's shell has been roughed out or drilled she calls to the man, and he returns to it, lifts it off and substitutes another, while she, perhaps, takes her partner's place at his lathe. Each of these eight-inch shells weighs something like a hundredweight. Attending to two machines, the woman's and his own, the man fixes and removes about one hundred of them twice in the course of his twelve hours' shift. Thus he has lifted ten tons a day! And, if he works on Sunday also, seventy tons a week!

There are thousands of such men in the munition factories. I am not concerned about who they are, whether they are of military age, or what brought them