World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, American
There has not been, as there was in England, a great pouring into
industry of the women of the middle classes. The women workers were
recruited from the home workers and from the luxury trades, so-called.
There were many more of these in France, which was the finery mine for
all the world, than in other countries. Thousands of girls and women
who made clothes and hats and _bijoux_ were thrown out of work and were
easily transferred to the munitions trades.
They seem to like the change. They are a much more coquettish class
than the English workers. They do not wear any hats, as a rule, but
they spend a good part of their wages on their hair. Even in the
factory a girl in overalls working at a forge has her black hair
elaborately coiffured and shining with brilliantine. Usually her hair
is dressed with bright pins and sidecombs. What the French working
girls would do if the war lasts long enough to exhaust the world’s
supply of rhinestone combs I really do not know.
The French woman who escorted me through the Citroen factory deplored
the fact that the working girls are beginning to wear dressy clothes
and high heeled boots. It did not used to be so, she said. I pointed
out that the girls formerly hadn’t the money to buy these things, and
that the evils of democracy were cured only by more democracy. Women
can’t learn, all at once, how to spend wisely.
The women of the French middle classes and those of the old aristocracy
have gone into war work, if not into war industries. The advent of so
many more women in factory work brought a new sense of responsibility
to the more fortunately placed women. They have done a great deal for
the workers to keep them in health and strength, to take care of the
children of married workers, and even to raise wages.
The Citroen factory is such a model establishment that it has been
written about in half a dozen American papers and magazines. It pays
very good wages, and the minimum for piece work, eight francs a
day--about a dollar and forty-five cents--is shared by men and women
alike. Most of the workers average ten and twelve francs a day.
In this factory an excellent noon meal is served at cost, about thirty
cents, with wine extra. The meal is prepared by professional cooks in
spotless kitchens and it is well served. But not every factory has a
canteen, and many have been established and are maintained by women
of wealth for the benefit of the workers. I visited one of these in
company with the principal founder, formerly a woman of the exclusive
“great world,” but now a hard and indefatigable worker.
“These girls must have good food,” she said. “It is a tradition in
France, and if we lose it we lose something national. We who have time
must feed those who have no time except for toil.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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