The Draper Corporation has decided to abandon the policy heretofore followed in the conduct of the great Hopedale plant, with regard to the employment there of women workers.
At the present time and for years past, no women have worked for the corporation except a very few in the temple department, but as a result of the war, which has taken many men for military duty, and for work in munitions plants, etc., it has been decided that for such work as they are fitted the corporation will find employment for women at good wages, beginning with the bobbin department.
In this department 100 or more women and girls will be employed on light, easy tasks, requiring intelligent effort, and at which proficiency can soon be reached. They will work on the automatic machines, keeping the "hoppers" supplied with rough bobbins, and tending to the same.
Slight changes in the arrangement of this department, which the installation of women employees makes necessary, are already in process of completion.
Later on it is planned to include other departments among those where women may work, and thus increase the feminine forces to the number of several hundred.
This will allow of the transfer of many men to departments where the work is not suited to women, and eventually to a reorganization of the entire plant for the duration of the war at least.
An official of the corporation stated today to a Daily News man that the change from the long-established policy of the Drapers has been decided upon because the product of the plant is indirectly used for government needs, and production must be kept up for that reason.
There are, he said many intelligent women and girls who are left more or less dependent by the departure of men to the war and to work elsewhere, who should be able to become valued employees of the Hopedale plant, and for these reasons the directors have decided to make the change for the duration of the war, taking on feminine help as they apply, paying them good wages and encouraging them in every possible way.
The proposition has met with no opposition on the part of the men at the plant, so far as has yet been observed, but on the contrary has been welcomed. Milford Daily News, December 27, 1917.
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