Now we may switch off that record with the snort of woe which Henry gave when he heard it. He was trying to tell a Duchess about prohibition in Kansas, who had never heard of either Kansas or prohibition and who was clearly scandalized at what she heard of both. But Henry's other ear was open to what the embassy ornament was saying to me. On the other side of this record of the swan song of the lady of the embassy is this record. It is a man's voice. The man has risen from an American farm, hustled his way into a place where as manager of the London factory of an American concern, he works several hundred employees. "Say, let me tell you something--never again! Never again for mine do the men come back into our shop. We may let a dozen or so of 'em back to handle the big machines. But the next size, which we thought that only men could handle--never again. And when they come back these men will have to work under women foremen. We thought when the war took our men bosses away that we should have to close the shop. But say--never again, I tell you. And let me give you a pointer. You wouldn't know them girls. When the war broke out they were getting ten shillings--about $2.50 a week, the best of 'em, and they were mean and slovenly and kind of skinny and dirty, and every once in awhile one would drop out, and the other girls had a great joke about her--you know. And they would soak the shop whenever they got a chance! The boss had to keep right after 'em, or they'd soldier on the job or break a machine, or slight the product, and they'd lie--why, man, the whole works would stand up and lie for each other against the shop. It took five men to boss them where we have one woman doing it now. And say, it ain't the woman boss that's done it. We pay 'em more. Them same girls is getting ten and twelve and fifteen bucks a week now--Lawsee, man--you ought to see 'em! Dressed up to kill; fat, cheerful, wide-awake! Goddlemighty, man, you wouldn't know 'em for that same measly bunch of grouches we had three years ago. And they work for the shop now, and not against it. They're different girls. I wouldn't-a believed ten dollars a week would-a turned the trick; but it's sure done it." "Perhaps," suggested his acquaintance, "the girls are cheerful and competent because they aren't afraid of poverty. Maybe they are motived by hope of getting on in the world and not motived by the terror of slipping down. Does that not make them stand by the shop instead of working against it? Isn't it a developed middle class feeling that accepts the shop as 'their kind of people' now?" "Search me, Cap--I give it up. I just only know what I know and see what I see. And never again--you hear me, man--never again does our shop go back to men. The ten or twelve dollar skirt has made a hit with me! Have a cigarette?" The net gain of women in this war, all over the world is, of course, a gain in fellowship.