Henrietta Boardman, “somewhere in England” has arrived at one of the highest skilled operations in munitions, tool-tempering. She sits before a Bunsen burner and holds the tool in the flame while it turns all beautiful tints, straw colour, purple, blue or red. She must be able to distinguish just the right shade for its perfection. She does it so well that all the tool-fitters in the shop now have the habit of bringing to her, in preference to any other workman, the tools they want tempered. Because hers last longer! There sits next to her a skilled tool-temperer who is a member of the Engineers’ Trade Union and the tools that he tempers will last for three-quarters of an hour: they are considered good by the trade if they last three-quarters of an hour. But the tools that Henrietta Boardman tempers are lasting sometimes all night! “It’s curious,” the foreman directing my attention to Henrietta Boardman’s work commented. “Great colour sense a woman seems to have. Nothing like it in men. Lots of ’em are even colour blind.” “So?” I replied. “Then you must be putting in a great many women for tool-tempering.” “Hush!” he answered, raising a warning finger. And then he smiled. “She’s the first woman tool-temperer in England. So far there’s only one other. You see, it’s a highly technical operation,” he went on to explain. “By the ‘diluting’ of labour scheme we aim to keep women in unskilled processes. We admit them to skilled processes only when it’s unavoidable.” Now the workshop in which we stood, C-F-5, is the tool-room, confined to highly skilled processes. The employés, he told me, number 1000 and of these about 34 are women. There you have an excellent comparative view of the outlook for women in the most desirable occupations. The way, it is true, is still a little steep and difficult. But with my eyes on Henrietta Boardman’s bright flame, I saw that in making over industry they at least have set the ladder up: it goes all the way up! And they’ve made room at the top! Every week of this ghastly war, there is more and more room made at the top for women! It was in November, 1916, that an English manufacturer made the statement: “Given two more years of war and we can build a battleship from keel to aërial in all its complex detail and ready for trial, entirely by woman labour.” _Then what will become of the labour of men?_ That skilled workman, cap in hand, going down the steps of the Government House, met Gabrielle Duchene coming up. At least her message to the Government has been carried right to the War Office by the feminists in all lands. In England, after Mrs. Pankhurst’s great triumphal procession, little Sylvia Pankhurst, feminist, led another which served as it were as a postscript to the first: it is in a postscript, you know, that a woman always put the really important thing she has to say. On the banner that Sylvia carried in London’s East End was inscribed the feminist message: “We are willing to work _for a fair wage!_”