Page 69 - WW1 - 1915

Redditch Local History Society Remembering Redditch Residents & WW1

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The Bromsgrove, Droitwich and Redditch Messenger – Saturday 21 August
1915

The coming of women into almost every sphere of industrial and social activity – one
of the most notable of the many phenomena of the war – has naturally roused the
sociologist and the economist to many very important and exceedingly significant inquirers.
“Where’s it all going to end?” is the query of the plain man who, shouldering his patriotic
responsibilities and his rifle leaves his industrial post in the occupation of a pretty woman.
The exodus of hundreds of thousands, nay, millions, of the male population, and their
considerable substitution by women, must leave problems of both immediate and future
importance. What will happen “when the boys come marching home”? Will the girls be
good and retire to domestic duties or will there be an attempt to perpetuate the temporary
revolution which the war brought about, involving a situation something like that which
Aristophanes so caustically satirised in his day and generation. This of course, is but one
aspect of the matter one facet of the many sided question which asks whether the whole
phenomenon is coincident with war conditions and terminating with them, or whether it will
mark the beginning of a social upheaval and a new stage in the industrial and commercial –
to say nothing of the political – co-operation of men and women.

© RLHS 2014 Page: 69