Then began the search for work. Boys without training looked for jobs
with wages high enough to give them a margin for amusement, after the
cost of living decently had been reckoned on the scale of high prices,
mounting higher and higher. Not so easy as they had expected. The
girls were clinging to their jobs, would not let go of the pocket-
money which they had spent on frocks. Employers favored girl labor,
found it efficient and, on the whole, cheap. Young soldiers who had
been very skilled with machine-guns, trench-mortars, hand-grenades,
found that they were classed with the ranks of unskilled labor in
civil life. That was not good enough. They had fought for their
country. They had served England. Now they wanted good jobs with short
hours and good wages. They meant to get them. And meanwhile prices
were rising in the shops. Suits of clothes, boots, food, anything,
were at double and treble the price of pre-war days. The profiteers
were rampant. They were out to bleed the men who had been fighting.
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