Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 January 1916 — WORK ON FRENCH RAILROADS [ARTICLE]

WORK ON FRENCH RAILROADS

Women There Have Equal Footing With Men Removed to Serve in Army Shops. There are to date In France no less than twenty-five thousand women occupying such positions as subway guards, conductors, station masters, porters, carpenters, clerks, platform cleaners, or cleaners of cars and locomotives, arid each month seeswthis number increase as the meii are taken out of the offices and put to work in the operating and shop departments, says a writer in the Railway Age. Months ago the telephone service was turned over to the women and but recently the railroad telegraph lines in the Paris station of the Paris-Lyons-Mediterranean railroad began to be operated by women. In the south of France, on the Southern railroad, women have -replaced men as porters and freight handlers in large numbers On the staterailroads alone, Kut one of the six great systems of France, more than five thousand women are already employed and they are on an equal footing with the men. While preference is given to the widows and daughters of employees, other women may enter the service after examination,, and once in the service they become entitled to participate in the sick benefits and pension funds of the men.