It may be admitted of course that a wholesale transference of workers from the area of slump to the area of boom would never be possible all at once. The machines necessary for special work will not at first be forthcoming in numbers sufficient to meet a demand suddenly increased in so enormous a proportion. Then, again, a new demand for labour is usually a demand predominantly for young workers, and the older women thrown out of work may find it very difficult to adapt themselves to new requirements. Skill and practice in the handling of machines are necessary; machines differ very greatly. A dressmaker cannot, off-hand, be set to make cartridges or even uniforms. In some branches of industry a high degree of specialised skill may be a positive disadvantage in acquiring the methods of an allied but lower skilled trade; _e.g._ it has been found that tailors and tailoresses who have become expert in the handwork still largely used for the best "bespoke" work, the aristocracy of the trade, cannot easily adapt themselves to the modern "team work" tailoring, in which division of labour and the use of machinery play a considerable part; they may even impair their own special skill by attempting it.[61] In some processes a delicate sensitiveness of finger is a first essential for the work, and the operatives dare not take up any rough work which might impair this delicacy, their stock-in-trade and capital. Again, the difference of wage-levels in different industries is a cause of immobility of labour. Lancashire cotton workers might have adapted themselves without much difficulty to the processes of the Yorkshire woollen trade, but they could not have accepted the rates current in an imperfectly organised trade, and there would have been obvious difficulty in paying imported workers at a scale higher than those enjoyed by the local operatives. A good deal of dovetailing, however, can be done to bring the work to the workers or the workers to the work, and much more could have been done if the Local Government Board had taken the question of unemployment more seriously in the years preceding the war. But the local bodies were uninstructed, and in many cases had little idea of anything better than doles. In spite of the funds collected, there can be little doubt that much suffering, especially among women, was neglected and let alone, and the irregular payment of separation allowances at the beginning of the war added to the distress.