Voluntary effort, it needs hardly saying, was instantly ready to do its best to meet the occasion. The Suffrage Societies, in especial, did splendid work in improvising employment bureaux and relief workrooms for the sufferers. A special fund and committee were also formed, under the style of the Central Committee for Women's Employment, to find new channels of employment for women. This Committee was presided over by the Queen, and was aided in its labours by specialists highly versed in industrial conditions, and its efforts for adjustment are full of interest. The primary aim of this Committee was to equalise employment in factories and workshops. The problem was how to achieve the adaptation, as far as possible, of unemployed firms and workers to new and urgent national needs. It had been supposed that only certain special firms could make army clothing, and that the numerous women and girls thrown out of work in ordinary wholesale tailoring would be unable to do unaccustomed work. A business adviser of the Committee suggested to the War Office authorities some simplifications in the make of military greatcoats and uniforms. The experiment was tried, with the result that many thousand great-coats and uniforms were made by firms which under the dominance of red tape must have stopped work. In the shirt-making, also, much unemployment occurred at first, and the Committee gave information to firms not previously employed by Government that they could apply for contracts. Carpet-yarn factories were utilised for the supply of yarn to satisfy the enormous demand created by the war. Numbers of orders for shirts, socks, and belts were placed in dressmakers' workrooms, and carried out by women whose normal occupation had failed them. Another field of this Committee's work was to stimulate the introduction of new trades and open new fields of work for women wage-earners. This is a difficult undertaking at a time when spending power must be much curtailed, but it may be destined to have good results in happier times, and in any case any widening of the field of employment for women, any development of their technical skill, is much to be welcomed.[62]