Cash call to help women

Facilities fund for war workers

A meeting was held in Stirling, 100 years ago this week, to raise money for a fund set up to improve facilities for women war workers.

An audience at the Lesser Town Hall was told that the YWCA (Young Women’s Christian Association) wanted £25,000 to erect rest rooms, temperance canteens and hostels for women working in factories. Almost half the cash was to be spent in Scotland.

Women all over the country were filling gaps in occupations left by millions of men called away to the front.

By the end of the war, almost one million were involved in munitions manufacturing. Others joined the police and the number of women working on the railways rose from 9,000 to 50,000 during the conflict.

Miss E Picton-Turberville, vice-president of the national YWCA, said the first and enduring picture of the war was of the brave men fighting in the trenches.

She added: “A second picture has been created in the last 18 months and it represents the wonderful way the women have come to the rescue and gone out to replace men in every branch of industry.

“There has been no beating of drums, it has been done quietly and unobtrusively and after the war is over it will come to be regarded as one of the most eventful things that has happened.”

Mis Picton-Turberville gave a vivid account of the work being done by women in the munitions industry and stressed the necessity for the provision of canteens and rest rooms.

She said neither the Government nor employers could make such facilities available without the help of the nation.

“If women are to turn out munitions and by doing so save the lives of the men, the least they could do was to see that they worked in proper conditions,” she added. “It is a mistake to suppose that every women munitions worker is making high wages, and to allow suffering that could be easily be alleviated is bad for the soul of the nation.”

Mrs Galloway, wife of the principal of St Mary’s College, St Andrews, who was formerly engaged in YWCA work in England, said it was in the interest of women and girls, working in munitions factories, to have suitable canteens where they could receive proper food and rooms where they could rest in meal intervals.

Backing the appeal, MR DHL Young, Glasgow, member of the Board of Trade’s advisory committees on the substitution of women’s labour for men’s in the factories, said “magnificent work” had been done by the women but there was a great deal to be done in mitigating the inconveniences and trials that were put upon these women.

Subscription cards, to enable audience members to donate to the fund, were distributed following the speeches.