The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1917-01-25
Within The Iron Ring
Woman's War Work.
By FREDERIC J. HASKlN

work in the munitions factories and
in the machine shops. Women drIv-
ers often bring your coal to your
home, and you get lasting, keen i'm
preston of the wide spread hardships
caused by the war, when, through your
curtained window, you watch such an
unfortunate woman through a weary
afternoon struggle load of coal into
the basement. bushel at time upon
her shoulder.
Rowland again in Hungarian villages
and towns, one happens upon women
builders, constructing houses and stores.
Women carpenters. masons, and women
nod carriers, plod back and forth, Jack
knitted under their heavy loads of bricks
and mortar. Women, greybeards, Grip
pies and children are doing almost all of
the work in Hungary; for this land
seems to be more stripped of its able
bodied men than any other land in Cen
trail Europe.
Women have supplanted the men to
very noticeable degree in the labors
of maintaining transportatiomn and CO.
munication. They sell and take tickets
in many of the stations. They load and
unload baggage. They are employed in
considerable numbers as drivers of de-
livery wagons and drays and of the
postoffice wagons. The German wo-
man driver dresses in a very short,
heavy skirt, a boxpleat jacket and short
boots. The stuff of her workaday Co.'S
tune is generally dark blue or grayish
color merging into black. She wears a
simple cap, mostly cap of military cut
with visor hiding her eyes from view.
The woman ''cabby" is not entirely
, war phenomenon. In the United States
she drives an occasional jitney, and en-
joys the mild excitement and newspaper
notices attendant upon her conspicuous
departure from kitchen and laundry.
War has made woman 'cabbles" in
Central Europe plentiful and common
place-great, robust, muscular women,
who seem to fit normally into the pre-
fession.
One Of these feminine jehus could he
seen at her stand on Inter der Linden,
near the Fredrichstrasse almost any
evening last summer, her heavy, booted
legs crossed, her high hat tilted de-
tiantIy over one ear, her broad face
| concealed into an expression of cynical
aggressiveness, reading torn, dirty
paper clasped in red fist while waiting
for fares
AS mOtOrmen and conductors, women
have proved an unqualified success.
The passenger now gets his information
and his transfer with smile, where he
formerly got it with a grunt. The
aged and those overburdened with
bundles are helped on and off the cars
nowadays. The woman conductor is an
Improvement over the male. On the
other hand, the woman motorman, with
stray wisps of hair straying from her
natty cap, takes a much more reckless
outlook upon life than the man she has
replaced. As the street cars sweep
through the crowded Potsdam Platz or
through the Leipzigerstrasse, one may
now see much alert lodging.
From the woman with sooty face and
blackened arms, straining splendid
muscles at the iron forge and the fleet
dime messenger girl to the woman ex-
ecutive successfully dominating the
most perpleXing details of the wonder
fully organized war welfare work, the
sex has acquitted itself we'll IN all lines
of endeavor
But there is difference in these wo-
men. They have freer swing and a
firmer tread than in the days before the
war. They are harder, more reserved,
more independent. Saucy glances have
given way to the steady gaze of resolu-
ton and to the apathetic stare of sor-
row. Soft, lovable dimples find little |
play in cheeks become drawn by war |
work and short rations There new,
war-tralned women are planted firmly |
upon their own feet
1t is not the least amazing effect of |
the war that in Germany, the land of
the Hausfrau and the traditional sub
lection of women, the sex has attained |
perhaps more of economic independence
and equality with men than any where
else in the world