UNEMPLOYMENT OF PROFESSIONAL WOMEN.
[TO THE EDITOR or TEE SPECTATOR."] SIR,—This winter is no time to relax efforts,.fer the relief of unemployment. We are, however, reluctantly compelled. to announce that the Women's Service Bureau, which has been dealing with employment problems among educated women since August, 1914, will have to be closed next March owing to lack of funds. The bureau has now 48,800 women on its regis- ter of workers and over 6,000 firms on its employers' list. It is a centre where women can find information on all the kindred subjects of employment, training, pensions,, and socie- ties for assistance, and its personal and sympathetic work has made it beloved by thousands.
During the War it recruited for all the War services and, among many other interesting enterprises, selected the first women for training in the Arsenal and for employment as London bus conductors, and introduced the first skilled women oxy-acetylene welders into the engineering trades—woanen trained in its own pioneer welding school..
After the Armistice it attempted to stay the worst effects of hard times on. destitute women workers. It has twice received grants of £5,000 from the National Relief Fund with which to carry On that part of its work which relates to women suffering through the War. It has acted in closest co-operation with the Central Committee on Women's Training and Employment, and its loss from the social organization of London will be incalculable.
Now, however, that the end of the last National Relief Fund grant is in sight, no prospect is left but to close. We are still hoping against hope that someone will step forward to save this work; those who prefer constructive work for the relief of unemployment to doles, and those who value human sym- pathy between employers and employed, would and those things furthered by the Women's Service Bureau. The sum required is 24,000 a year, and copies of its annual reports and balance- sheets can be obtained from the Secretary, Miss Philippa Strachey, 58 Victoria Street, S.W. 1. We do not care to con- template how the class of women it has helped will fare without it.—We are, Sir, &c., (Signed) P. D. ACLAND, HELENA ACLAND-HOOD, l'assiers BALFOUR, CLEMENTINA BLACK, SYBIL en V. BRASSEY, BURNHAM, ROBERT CECIL, A. COW- DRAY, LOME CREIGHTON, EMMOTT, MILLI- CENT GARRETT FAWCETT, DOROTHY GLADSTONE, I. MARY LOCKYER, EDITH LYTTELTOW, M. DE ROTHSCHILD, DOROTHY ST. CYP.ES, ALMS SILTS- BERT, MARY SCHARLIED, J. M. Sarsiencr, MARGARET J. TuKE.
London Society for Women's Service,
58 Victoria Street, Westminster, London, S.Y. 41,
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