LINCOLN MOTOR COMPANY

Detroit, Mich.

Our school is going along nicely and while we are not perfecting machine tool operators to the degree I would like because of the necessity of rushing them through the school to the shop proper, we are accomplishing, I think, that which we set out to do, namely, to take away from the girl the fear of the shop and to give her a fair knowledge of the tool she is to handle. The women undoubtedly have benefited beyond measure by the short time spent in the school room, and have gone into the factory with the confidence that carried them through the first few days and made them efficiently productive in a shorter period of time.

The training room is located in the smaller of our two plants and is equipped with a lathe, milling machine, gear cutter, drill press, profiler, etc., those being the tools upon which it was decided to train operators. In charge of this room was placed an instructor who had had some slight experience in a continuation school and who went to work under the direct supervision of a high grade specialist secured from a well known eastern factory efficiency organization. The instructor was given no special instruction beyond being told what we hoped to accomplish in the way of building up an organization of women of more than ordinary ability and moral character.

The training room up to the present time has been used only in connection with supplying the factory with women workers. Women of the age of twenty-one and upwards have been taken, their references carefully examined, and they have been given from one to three days’ training in this school. Because of the demand of the shop for help it has not always been possible to keep them in a training room for as long a period as would seem desirable, and in some instances they have stayed only one day.

During the training period they have been paid the regular rate for women, thirty cents per hour, which rate maintains after they enter the shop until such time as they are placed upon a piece-work basis.

We believe, however, that through the medium of the training room we shall be able to instruct women workers in machine tool operation so they will go direct from the school room into the shop without fear of what is to be encountered therein, and with a better knowledge of the tool they are operating, and the reason they are operating it, than they could possibly acquire through any other method.

Inspecting pistons and valves. Lincoln Motor Co.

Machining Main Bearing Bolts. Lincoln Motor Co.

Hand Milling Machines. Lincoln Motor Co.

In the training department. Lincoln Motor Co.

New arrivals in Training Room—Lincoln Motor Co.

The school is favorably looked upon by all of the employees, and in those cases where it is found that a woman is not working out well upon the work to which the school has assigned her, and is returned to it for further instruction, she has in all cases gone back to it with a cheerfulness and willingness that is both surprising and gratifying.

The writer is of the opinion that the school in this factory has come to stay and that when we build up our organization and get through the strenuous times we are now experiencing, the advantage of the vestibule school instruction will be given men employees as well as women.

(Signed) J. M. Eaton, Assistant to President Henry M. Leland.