Women in the Factory by Adelaide Mary Anderson

"Tis a sordid profit that's accompanied with the destruction of health. "-B. RAMAZZINI, 1678.

Let us turn now from general conditions affecting women and girls in factory life to special dangers due to "any manufacture, machinery, plant, process, or description of manual labour. "[92] Here the aid given by Women Inspectors, though extensive and indispensable, has hitherto been ancillary rather than primary in character. They have not before 1921 been brought into the Factory Department expressly in the capacity of medical, engineering, or chemical experts. And yet their early research into many imperfectly explored causes of injury to health and safety of women and young workers was so steadfast, and their evidence in Annual Reports so freely read and quoted in Parliament and the Press, that they stirred public opinion to a new outlook on women's needs in these matters. As time went on the Department was able to draw in an increasing number of women candidates with good degrees in science, and with considerable experience in research or in work of an administrative character. The steady pooling of knowledge and experience that went on in the Women's Branch yielded good fruit.