Mrs. Black, I believe as a matter of fact, did have a headache one morning. And her output of munitions fell off. Now that must not happen. For the lack of the shells, you know, a battle might be lost. The headache was investigated by the Factory Inspector. And the Government made a great discovery, I think we may say as important to us, to every woman who works, as was Watt’s discovery of the principle of the steam-engine that day he watched the tea kettle. This was what the factory inspector found out: Last night after Mrs. Black left the shop, there was the dinner to cook, and it was eight o’clock before she could get it ready. Then, of course, there were the dishes to wash. Then she swept all her house through. Then she put the clothes to soak in the tub over night. Then she worked on the stockings in the piled-up mending basket until midnight. Then she went to bed, so that she could be awake next morning at four o’clock. And in the morning she built a fire under the “copper” and heated the water and washed the clothes and boiled them and hung them out on the line. And Mrs. Black, having already done a woman’s work before dawn, went out to fill in the rest of the day at a man’s work! BEYOND THE PHYSICAL ENDURANCE OF MEN This, you should remember, was the woman whom the government had hesitated about asking to work “overtime” on war orders. Would it be possible to extend labour’s eight-hour day, they had asked. The Trade Unions, when asked, had said it would be a great tax on the physique of men. It was more than they were equal to under ordinary circumstances. But, well, as an emergency measure, and for the duration of the war only, Union rules would be suspended to permit of overtime. But even then the Government decided on the eight-hour limit for women, in exceptional circumstances permitting twelve hours. But an employer working women longer should be liable to arrest! Then came the Factory Inspector’s report laid before the Home Office: Mrs. Black was working a 20-hour day! Her case was not at all unique. “Overtime” on home work is, of course, what the great majority of women who have gotten into industry in the past or into a profession or a career; have been accustomed to. _Only nobody ever noticed it before!_ Now every War Office saw it as early as the first year of the war: No woman could do a woman’s work in the home and a man’s work in the shop and maintain the maximum output. The efficiency experts were summoned all over Europe. They were shocked at such uneconomic management. Could you expect any competent workingman to cook his own dinner? There’d be a strike if you did. Why in thunder, then, should Mrs. Black be expected to cook hers? And every nation hurried to set up in its factories the industrial canteen, where meals are prepared and served to employés at cost price.