La visión del hombre como compuesto de cuerpo y alma y

The next area to which the Committee turned was welfare supervision. The Committee reported in January 1916, issuing a memorandum urging the appointment of Welfare Supervisors to oversee the work of women in the munitions factories. The reasons given for the appointment of welfare supervisors were fourfold. First, there was a need to manage overcrowding in munition workers' accommodation and identify new housing in the vicinity of factories. Secondly there was a need to liaise with local transport providers to reduce overcrowding at peak travel times. Thirdly, there was a requirement to improve canteen provision especially at night and fourthly, there was a perceived need to manage the personal welfare of employees in large and impersonal establishments. The Committee recommended that the duties of the Welfare Supervisor in relation to women's employment should be as follows:266

- To be concerned with or directly engage new labour. 262 HMG (1918-1922), op cit, V, pp87-92. 263 ibid, p92. 264 ibid, p110. 265 Hurwitz (1968), op cit, p112. 266

HMG (1914-1916), British Parliamentary Papers 1914-1916, lv, Cmnd 8151, London, HMSO.

- To manage housing accommodation.

- To identify local transport facilities and adapt factory hours if necessary to reduce overcrowding.

- To advise on the establishment of canteens. - To investigate absence and sickness.

- To investigate slow and inefficient work. - To oversee young workers.

- To advise on recreation and education.

- To investigate complaints and assist in the maintenance of discipline. - To liaise with other organisations in the provision of worker welfare.

A question arises as to why the Committee adopt the idea of welfare supervision which, as we have seen, was only implemented in a very small number of workplaces prior to the war and why in particular did it focus on the welfare supervision of women rather than all employees? As regards the general idea of welfare supervision, it is possible to identify a number of strands coming together that led to such a recommendation. First and foremost, there was the pressing question of long hours, output and efficiency. Despite the adoption of new management techniques, the policies of the Ministry of Munitions did not represent an experiment in idealism for its own sake. Its main concerns were with stability of labour and the achievement of unbroken output and as its historians make clear, "the Ministry of Munitions developed a widespread system of intervention into the conditions of labour in the interests primarily of efficiency".267 Thus, it was the question of efficiency that primarily concerned the Health of Munition Workers Committee when they put forward the following rationale for recommending welfare supervision:

"If the present long hours, the lack of helpful and sympathetic oversight, the inability to obtain good wholesome food, and the great difficulties of travelling are allowed to continue, it will be impracticable to secure or maintain for an extended period the high maximum output of which women are undoubtedly capable".268

267

HMG (1918-1922), op cit, v.v, p1.

268

This does not explain why welfarism might not also have been applied to efficiency amongst men and this is a matter to which we shall return shortly.

A second possible explanation for the recommendation to adopt welfare supervision amongst women lay in the strong representation of the Home Office Factory Inspectorate on the Health of Munition Workers Committee. The women's branch of the Inspectorate had for a number of years before the war strongly advocated welfare supervision and had associated itself with the embryonic welfare movement.269 The Munitions of War Act created a unique opportunity to put the ideas which they had been recommending into practice. Indeed, the Factory Inspector's Annual Reports during wartime reported sympathetically on the achievement of welfare supervision.270

A third factor providing suitable conditions for the adoption of welfare work at the Ministry of Munitions arose out of the sympathetic attitude on the part of Lloyd George himself and the close relationship which he had formed with Seebohm Rowntree, one of the leading pioneers of welfarism in British industry. The two had first met in 1907 and had got to know each other well through their joint involvement in a Liberal policy group in 1912. Rowntree had also informed Lloyd George about his firm's welfare scheme at the Cocoa Works in York and at the time of the outbreak of war Rowntree had become Lloyd George' adviser and part-time consultant.271 Briggs concludes that "there seems little doubt that Rowntree was responsible for impressing on Lloyd George the urgency of the case for improved welfare conditions in munitions factories".272 The conclusion reached by Briggs is supported by Rowntree's own notes held in the archives of his personal papers at York, in which Rowntree recorded the following:273

269

Anderson, A (1922), Women in the Factory, London, Murray, pp254-256 & 260; Proud, ED (1916), Welfare Work, London, Bell, p66; HMI (1933), Annual Report of the Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops for the Year 1932, Cmnd 4377, London, HMSO, p63; Yeandle, S (1993), Women of Courage: 100 Years of Women Factory Inspectors 1893-1993, London, HMSO, pp42-43.

270

Lloyd George (1933), op cit, p1351.

271

Briggs, (1961), op cit, pp62-63.

272

ibid, p117.

273

"In November 1915, I was walking over Epsom Downs with Lloyd George and not unnaturally we were talking about the war. At that time he was the Minister of Munitions and he said to me 'we shall have to have a million women in industry before this war is over'. I replied 'it is time enough to talk like that when you are treating properly the women who are already in industry'. I told him of a factory in the North of England where conditions were unspeakably bad. Men were lying on the floor at night copulating with girls. A foreman in the factory said that he would rather his daughter went to hell direct than through that factory. Lloyd George said to me 'you can't tell me anything worse than I already know. I have tried to get someone to deal effectively with these bad factories but I have not found anyone suitable. Why don't you have a shot at it? If you do I will start a Welfare Department at the Ministry of Munitions and make you Director of it' ".

Following the publication of the Health of Munitions Workers Committee recommending the appointment of Welfare supervisors, Rowntree's appointment was announced on 3 January 1916 and he took up his duties immediately.274 Thus, welfarism appeared at the Ministry as a result of successful lobbying on the part of the Factory Inspectorate, aligned to a sympathetic predisposition towards it on the part of the Minister Lloyd George and because it was perceived as helping to resolve problems of efficiency. This does not explain why the main focus was on women's welfare and for this the explanations lie elsewhere. The first lies in the nature of state intervention within the political philosophy of minimum state intervention. Much of the factory legislation of the nineteenth century, in particular controls on working hours, was directed at women and young people, who were seen as vulnerable and in particular need of protection. Interference in the freedom of men to work in whatever conditions they chose in pursuit of their own economic interests tended to be seen as going too far in breach of the principle of minimal intervention by government. Moreover, men could look to their trade unions to seek improvement via collective bargaining rather than legal intervention.275 Such a view remained widely espoused at the time of the First World War, even on the part of such an enthusiastic proponent of welfarism as Rowntree himself276 and is also the reason given by the official

274

Briggs (1961), op cit, pp117-118.

275

Wedderburn, K (1971), The Worker and the Law, Harmondsworth, Penguin, p243.

276

historians of the Ministry of Munitions for the lack of focus on men's welfare.277 A second factor generating a focus on the welfare of women related to a perception of women and women's roles, as reflected in the Committee's recommendations. The influx of large numbers of women into the munitions factories was seen as a necessary, but essentially short-term, aberration. As Braybon has pointed out, a woman's role was seen as primarily reproductive and domestic and the Committee was concerned about the extent to which industrial work interfered with women's tasks in the family.278 These concerns in relation to the rationale for recommending welfare supervision were summed up in the Committee's own words:

"Upon the womanhood of the country most largely rests the privilege first of creating and maintaining a wholesome family life. More than ever is their welfare of importance to the nation and more than ordinarily is it threatened by conditions of employment".279

Underlying this rationale was a concern with the behaviour and morals of young working women as the nation's mothers working in close proximity to men and an implication that this required close supervision.280

By the end of the war, it has been estimated that over 1000 welfare workers of various grades were employed.281