of Governor Herbert R. O'Conor 763

industry makes certain that women will continue to demand a prominent part
in every walk of life.

While the entry of additional thousands of women into the industries has
been heralded in press and magazine, there has been, likewise, a less publicized
infiltration of women into all the phases of business. In every office of size in
the land, I venture to say, already men have been supplanted by women, or at
any rate, such an interchange will be necessary as the demands for manpower
in our armed forces and in the heavy industries is felt increasingly.

On the other hand, a development that was not foreseen is operating to
remove a certain proportion of women from the professions and the offices, and
even from industry. I refer to the development of such organizations as the
Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, known, as the W A ACS, and the WAVES, and
the other military and semi-military organizations which now have been author-
ized to accept enlistments, and in which the business and professional women
naturally are sought as prospective leaders.

If it is felt, however, that women are doing all that will be expected of
them in connection, with the war effort, many of our people are due for a rude
awakening. Secretary of War Stimson told the House Military Committee to-
day that, by the end of 1943, America will have under arms a force of approxi-
mately 7, 000, 000 men.

What this will mean in the Nation's every-day life is difficult, indeed, to
grasp. Even now, the Selective Service Drafts each week and month are leav-
ing more and more gaps in the ranks of our men at home. Certainly when an
additional 3, 250, 000 men are taking from the accustomed places in life to swell
our military and naval forces, there will be a need for women, the like of which
even the most ardent proponent of womens' emancipation never foresaw, I am
sure.

The immediate effect will be that many women of all ages, who up to this
time have not felt that there was a place for them in the National picture, will
have to come forward an take their place in the great army of women workers.
Not only will this swell the ranks of the business and professional women, but
it will take many older women who possibly have never been inside a factory
in their lives, and it will put them at the lathes and work benches, doing jobs
that in many cases, as experience has shown, they can do really better than
their brothers and husbands.

Even now, in the fields of precision instruments, for instance, and in radio
and similar industries, the great bulk of workers are women. This utilization
of service will spread, I am convinced, until even in such activities as airplane
building, women may soon far exceed men.

All this, of course, makes for disclocation of the economic balance between
man and woman. This dislocation isn't making itself felt so severely now,
because there is work enough for all and, in fact, more work at hand than there
seem to be workers available. Once the war effort slackens, however, and the
need for quantity production ceases, the competition for jobs will emphasize the
advances that women have made in employment.