Sir William Beardmore, then President of the Iron and Steel Institute, and Chairman of the Parkhead Ironworks, Glasgow, spoke in his presidential address of the high productivity of women's labour. He quoted the case of a new machine introduced by his firm, of which it was desired to test the utility. A good workman was induced with some difficulty to try it and to lay aside, for the sake of the experiment, the traditional restriction of output. The machine did well, but not so well as the firm had been led to expect. Then another experiment was made, that of putting women on the job. "Using the same machines, and working the same number of hours, their output was more than double that of the thoroughly trained mechanic." The newspapers about this time began to be full of articles praising up to the skies the "wonderful," "amazing," "extraordinary" mechanical capability of women. The case was quoted of a woman, formerly a charwoman, who had been put on to do gun breech work. Her job was to bore a hole ⅛ inch in diameter dead true through 12 inches of solid steel. The test was the tally of broken tools, and at the time of writing this woman, the former "char," had a clean slate. Every successive Minister of Munitions, and almost every other Minister, spoke enthusiastically of the extraordinary value to the nation of women's work. Mr. Lloyd George said: "Their work is absolutely indispensable, and they themselves are extraordinarily adaptable." And again: "I am anxious to bear testimony to the tremendous part played by the women of England in this vital epoch of human history." Mr. Montagu said in the House of Commons in his first speech after becoming Minister of Munitions: "Women of every station, with or without previous experience ... have proved themselves able to undertake work which before the war was regarded solely as the province of men, and often of skilled men alone. Indeed, it is not too much to say that our armies have been saved and victory assured by the women in the munition factories." Mr. Churchill confessed that without the work of women it would have been impossible to win the war; and also referred to the excellence of its quality, as well as the enormous character of its volume. [Illustration: PRO PATRIA: A TRIBUTE TO WOMAN'S WORK IN WAR-TIME. (Reproduced by special permission of the Proprietors of _Punch_.) _Punch_, January 26, 1916.] [Facing page 112. ] Lord Selborne, as Minister of Agriculture, gave unstinted praise to women's work on farms, and said he had heard nothing but unqualified praise of the hundreds of women thus employed.