CHAPTER XXXIIITHE WORK OF WOMEN FOR THE WAR
While the women of the United States did not enter war service by means of work in industries and auxiliary organizations to the extent of their enlistment in England, because the man-power problem had not yet, at the end of hostilities, become serious in this country, the many and varied kinds of work for the war in which they did engage was of great importance and it had the devoted and enthusiastic aid of almost every woman and girl throughout the land. From the mother who sent her sons across the ocean to the little Girl Scout who ran errands for a Red Cross chapter, they were ready for any sacrifice it should be necessary for them to make and any service they could render. Their spirit was as high, their patriotism as ardent and their wish to serve as keen as that of their husbands, fathers and brothers, and their spirit and their service were essential factors in the war achievements of America. Their spirit was always the same, but their services were of the greatest variety, being, for the greater part, such as they could render without leaving their homes. Being undertaken in addition to their usual duties in the care of homes and families, their war labors were less outstanding and much less likely to impress the superficial observer than if they hadbeen detached from woman’s usual environment. But they were none the less essential.
The shutting down or curtailment of non-essential industries and the rapid expansion of those directly or indirectly engaged in war production shifted many women already possessing some degree of industrial training into war work plants of one sort or another, while the need for workers and the desire to give service of direct consequence led many women to enter factories who had not before undertaken industrial work. Among the latter class were many of collegiate education, or of independent means, or engaged in office work who were moved by patriotism to undertake factory work for the war. The flow of women into war industrial work increased steadily throughout the year and a half of our participation and would have been very greatly augmented if the war had continued long enough to call the men of the second draft from their situations.
By the end of September, 1918, women were working in munition plants of many kinds, making shells, grenade belts, fuses, gas masks, metal parts of rifles, revolvers and machine guns, and many other sorts of the direct supplies of war. Accurate statistics of their numbers made in the early summer of 1918 showed that about 1,500,000 women were engaged in the industrial work directly or indirectly connected with the Government’s war program, while subsequent estimates added about 500,000 to that number to cover those entering such work down to the signing of the armistice.
Woman’s Land Army Members Sorting and Grading Potatoes
Woman’s Land Army Members Sorting and Grading Potatoes
Woman’s Land Army Members Sorting and Grading Potatoes
By Permission of Woman’s Land ArmyTraining Camp of Woman’s Land Army
By Permission of Woman’s Land ArmyTraining Camp of Woman’s Land Army
By Permission of Woman’s Land Army
Training Camp of Woman’s Land Army
The former report, covering the conditions at the end of our first year of war, showed 100,000 women working in private munition plants and Governmentowned arsenals, another 100,000 in trades necessary for the prosecution of the war, such as work in airplane factories, in chemical plants, in those making electrical appliances and in metal trades making bolts, screws and other small parts necessary for the building of many war essentials. More than 600,000 women were engaged in the manufacture of things necessary for the soldier’s equipment and 800,000 more in industries necessary to feed and clothe him. All these numbers were greatly augmented during the seven following months until the close of the war.
Training classes and entering schools were established in scores of plants for the training of unskilled women workers. Practically all the employers of women bore testimony to the efficiency with which they worked. In order to protect their welfare the United States Department of Labor organized a Woman in Industry Service which, by means of a council of representatives from all the Federal agencies for the prosecution of the war in which women were employed, established standards and policies for the controlling of wages and industrial conditions in plants employing women.
More than 100,000 women entered the service of the Railroad Administration, where they undertook capably many forms of unskilled labor and held many varieties of positions requiring knowledge and experience, from bookkeeping to office superintendency, while many thousands more filled places left vacant by men on surface, elevated and subway car lines.
It is impossible even to estimate the number of women who engaged in the production of food for the purpose of aiding the war. They cultivated wargardens from end to end of the country; in the South young women of social station, because of the lack of the usual labor, helped to gather cotton and other crops; in the Northwest women volunteered their help in the harvesting season and in some localities they formed half or more of the workers who shocked the grain in the fields; in other regions they picked berries and gathered fruit; they went from cities and towns to country districts to help the farmers’ wives; they took an active part, individually and through clubs, in the increase of poultry, hog and dairy production; in state after state they registered for farm work; and they organized the Woman’s Land Army which gave much and efficient aid in many parts of the country.
The Woman’s Land Army of America, numbering 15,000 members, was composed of women who had previously done little or no farm work and who enlisted in it primarily for the sake of doing something of consequence to help win the war. It was organized in seventeen states, the state organizations uniting under the national organization and each one forming and training its own farm units. In one state, New York, there were forty of these land units, each established at a camp under a woman supervisor. They lived at the camp, boarding themselves, and were carried in their own auto-truck to and fro between the camp and the farms where they worked by the eight hour day. They were carefully selected from volunteers for the work on the basis of physical qualification and probable morale and among their numbers were represented teachers, college girls, art students, telephone operators, stenographers, women of leisure. They planted, plowed and hoed, aided inthe harvesting, drove horses and tractors, gathered fruit, did dairy work, cared for poultry and stock and proved themselves equal to all the usual work of truck, dairy and general farming. There were, altogether, one hundred and twenty-seven units, ranging from twenty to one hundred and fifty members each. Farmers who employed them found them capable and efficient and their labor proved to be a welcome factor in solving the problem of increasing farm production when farm help had been seriously depleted by the draft and the munition factories. So successful was the Woman’s Land Army during the first year of its existence that in the autumn of 1918 an enthusiastic campaign was started for increasing its numbers the following year and plans were laid for courses of training during the winter.
In the conservation of food women everywhere coöperated with the Government in many ways. They enthusiastically supported the requests of the Food Administration, their organizations sent out food experts, dieticians, conservation instructors through country districts, into villages and towns and among the women of the poorer quarters in cities to give free instruction in the economical but efficient use of foods and in the best ways of canning, preserving and dehydrating fruits and vegetables.
In the financing of the war the women of the country gave noteworthy help. The National Woman’s Liberty Loan Committee was organized by the Secretary of the Treasury in May, 1917, as an independent bureau of the Treasury Department, the first and thus far the only executive committee of women in the Government of the United States. It was created too late to give much assistance in thefirst Liberty Loan, but it was active in all the succeeding ones and was thoroughly organized all over the country, for the greater part by states, with county organizations under the state or the district. It had 3,200 county chairmen and under these, reaching out into every community, 49,500 associate chairmen, while 800,000 women were engaged in its work. They organized meetings, engaged speakers and secured booths and workers for the sale of bonds, but the greater part of the work of the organization was done by canvassing from house to house.
This they did in cities, towns, villages, country districts, on foot, on horse-back, by carriage. They did not stop for rain, or sun, or wind, for dust, or mud. If it was planting time and all the horses of the farm were in use, the chairman of a rural committee walked miles upon miles to cover her territory. In two or three counties of the southern mountain region famous for their bloody feuds women rode on horseback up and down the mountain sides day after day canvassing for the Liberty Loans and carrying the counties over the top triumphantly with subscriptions above their quotas early in the course of each campaign. In these counties so many men had enlisted in the army before the draft went into effect that the burden of taking care of the loans fell to women.
In state after state the Woman’s Committee raised from one-third to one-half the quotas of the entire state and in the three Liberty Loans in which it worked it sold $3,500,000,000 worth of bonds. It was equally active in the campaigns for the sale of War Savings Stamps and its aid proved so important thatin several of the Federal Reserve Districts it was asked to take over the entire work.
The importance of the aid American women gave to the Red Cross was beyond computation and was so varied in kind and enormous in quantity that anything more than the merest outline of it is impossible. Volunteer women workers, nearly all of them doing the work at odd moments in addition to their home or other duties, knitted and sewed so busily that they made nearly 300,000,000 articles, valued at $60,000,000, for the Red Cross, to be used in training camps, by our fighting forces, in hospitals at home and abroad and by the refugees and sufferers in the war ridden countries of Europe.
Many thousands of women worked in canteens, poured coffee, tea and chocolate and carried baskets of cakes and cigarettes for the refreshment of soldiers as their troop trains stopped at stations on their way to and from cantonments or poured into and out of ports of embarkation. More than a million and a half of the soldiers of America as they boarded their transports had their last touch of home at the hands of Red Cross women who, no matter what the hour of day or night, were ready at the piers with buns and cigarettes and cans of steaming hot drinks.
Many other thousands enlisted for the Red Cross Home Defense work and in its offices or as home visitors gave advice, aid, comfort to the families of soldiers and sailors, helped them to meet their problems, material, financial, spiritual, and procured for them, when necessary, professional advice and assistance, thus aiding morale at the front by upholding that of the family at home. Other thousands of women wearing the Red Cross insignia worked in the hospitalsoverseas and in convalescent homes on both sides of the ocean. No less than 8,000,000 women, and probably more, were actively working for the Red Cross throughout the war, organizing, directing and aiding the work of its chapters and making hospital bandages, sweaters and other knitted articles, clothing for refugees, and repairing soldiers’ garments.
More than 16,000 trained nurses enlisted in war service and worked in hospitals at home and overseas and 10,000 more had enrolled for service at the end of hostilities. The organization of the American Women’s Hospitals of the Red Cross recruited, organized and sent to France several units, each consisting of ten women physicians and as many aids, with the necessary hospital equipment.
Several hundred women entered the navy as yeomen and gave capable and efficient service. Others joined the Signal Corps of the army, 233 of these going to France, where their work as telephone and telegraph operators received high praise from army officers.
In work for the welfare of the fighting forces the women of every part of the country took a very prominent part. The War Camp Community Service, described in “Big-Brothering the Fighting Forces,” was carried on largely by their efforts. Organizations of women of many kinds drew together women of similar occupations for welfare work or brought together those of the greatest variety for the same ends. The Stage Women’s War Relief, composed of actresses, made and sent abroad or to hospitals at home great quantities of comfort kits, knitted articles, bandages, hospital supplies, dainties to tempt the appetite of convalescents, clothing for refugees,cigarettes and tobacco. The members of the Young Women’s Christian Association were to be found in active work for the war in nearly all the camps and cantonments of the United States, and also in France, and even in the frozen north of Russia, where in several cities their Hostess Houses and canteens offered cheer and comfort to soldiers and sailors.
The Association established a War Work Council which devised and carried out methods by which it could aid in the prosecution of the war. Its Hostess Houses in camps and cantonments were links between the men in training and the life they had put behind them, where their relatives and friends could meet them in pleasant surroundings. The type of the Hostess House was created for the Y. W. C. A. by a woman architect at the beginning of the war and was planned for the special needs which the Association foresaw. It combined the features of restaurant, reading and lounging rooms, and sleeping rooms for relatives who might have to stay overnight in the camp, while its semblance was that of a pleasant country club. The Hostess Houses were the scenes of many war weddings, of occasional christenings, of first meetings between returning happy soldier or sailor fathers and their children born in their absence, and they were sometimes a welcome refuge for mother or wife, sister or sweetheart, summoned to the camp by the fatal illness of a loved one.
The Association had a total of almost one hundred and fifty Hostess Houses in this country, in the camps and cantonments for both white and colored troops, in which were over four hundred workers. In France it carried on fifteen of these or similar houses for American women directly engaged in war work, suchas those in the Signal Corps, and for women connected with the British auxiliary organizations, twenty-one for nurses in base hospitals and eighteen for French women working in munition factories, offices, stores and for the American army. The Y. W. C. A. gave much assistance also in the providing of emergency housing for women engaged in work for the war in this country, while its endeavors for the improving of morale and the inculcating of American ideals among foreign born and colored women and girls aided in rousing their patriotic spirit. It operated War Service Industrial Clubs with cafeterias and recreation halls and a variety of entertainments and classes for study in centers of war industry where women were employed.
A Woman’s Division was instituted by the Young Men’s Christian Association at the end of our first war year and during the next seven months its work grew to important proportions. Carefully chosen for the service, the women were given just before they sailed a week of intensive training for their duties on the other side. Instruction in hygiene taught them how to keep themselves fit under conditions that would call for all their strength; their knowledge of French was freshened; they had lectures on the kind of cooking needed for canteen work and talks on the geography, history, customs and characteristics of France, in order to give them a degree of sympathetic understanding of the people among whom they would have to work; they were encouraged to practice any sort of special facility for the entertainment of groups of men which they might possess; and they were expected to be accomplished dancers before they were enlisted. On the otherside they worked in canteens and were especially useful in the recreation centers described in “Big-Brothering the Fighting Forces,” of which twenty-six were organized in different parts of France. In these recreation camps, or “leave areas,” in the “Y” centers in Paris and other French cities, in canteens in camps and behind the front lines, the Red Triangle women made and poured coffee and chocolate and tea, distributed candy, cakes, gum, cigarettes and tobacco, provided Christmas boxes, sang, danced, recited, played games and did whatever the moment demanded for the welfare and the entertainment of the American fighting men. The women practically created the service of the “leave areas,” which was something entirely new in warfare. They went with the canteens to the front lines, advanced with the Army of Occupation through Luxemburg and Alsace, and settled down with it in Germany. They worked also with the American forces in England and Scotland, Russia and Italy. After the armistice, when many of the men secretaries of the Y. M. C. A. began to return to their neglected business in the United States, the women took over more and more of the canteen and other work. When hostilities ended, a thousand women were engaged in Red Triangle work overseas and so important was their service that in response to the call for them that number was doubled during the next three months, and the Association was then still recruiting, training and sending them to France.
Three organizations enlisted women as automobile drivers for war service,—the Motor and Ambulance Corps of the American Red Cross, the Motor Corps of America and the Motor Corps of the NationalLeague for Woman’s Service. Together they had an estimated membership of several thousand women, most of whom were women of leisure who owned their own cars and were glad to give for the country’s needs their own time and work and the service of their automobiles. Before being received in either of the organizations they had to undergo a course of intensive training averaging six weeks and including revolver shooting, first aid treatment, surgery clinics as a test and training for the nerves, clinics for the handling of the insane because mentally unbalanced soldiers had to be transferred by ambulance from transport to hospital, military drill twice a week and a course in mechanics. A member of a woman’s motor corps had to know how her car was built and be able to take it apart, if necessary, and put it together again and if it balked to discover what was the matter and apply the needed remedy. The Motor Corps women served both at home and overseas and they drove trucks, ambulances and cars. Their service was ready for any war organization that needed them, their vehicles plied between transports and hospitals, carried convalescent soldiers out for an airing, were on duty at cantonments and camps and answered many similar calls. Their rules demanded at least nine hours per day on duty, but actual service often stretched to fifteen or twenty hours out of the twenty-four.
The National League for Woman’s Service, by which one of these corps was recruited and directed, was organized for patriotic purposes two months before America entered the war and upon that event was ready to begin active work in the coördinating of women’s organizations and the enlisting and directingof all manner of women’s resources and abilities that would aid the nation in the prosecution of the war. Its organization spread into almost every state of the Union and numbered 300,000 members. Its Motor Corps Service, which was recognized by the Surgeon General of the Army, had throughout the country seventy-eight chapters with a membership of about five hundred women car owners. Its social and welfare division established many soldiers’ and sailors’ club rooms and club houses, with reading and lounging rooms, billiard and pool tables, dances and entertainments, and classes in French and English. It also conducted classes for the instruction of women in occupational therapy and handicraft who worked in hospitals and camps, recruited and trained women to serve as nurses’ aids, and coöperated with the War Camp Community Service in many ways. Its members worked in canteens and clubs, gave their services in workrooms where clothing and supplies were made for hospitals and for soldiers and sailors, distributed the thousands upon thousands of flower donations made to hospitals by florists, worked with the Food Administration by distributing food pledges, establishing emergency and community kitchens and providing experts in home economics who gave instruction in food conservation. The League collected books, magazines, games and tobacco for the fighting forces, recruited a Woman’s Reserve Camouflage Corps which gave some important services, enlisted the aid of authors and artists for the publicity needs of one or another department of the Government, and served, in general, as a means of mustering and directing the resources and abilities of women for war work.
Women’s clubs of every sort all over the country had their war service committees, or mobilized all their members for that purpose, and these were closely linked together through their federations so that their work, which included assistance for every war making and war assisting agency of Government or people, could be done without overlapping or waste. Women’s colleges and women students in co-educational institutions also took up war work, as described in “Feeding the Nations.” As the men students of the colleges mobilized for training for the war in the Students’ Army Training Corps, the women students mobilized for work to uphold the war. The Association of Collegiate Alumnæ, with membership spread all through the Union, organized itself for war effort with especial reference to the task of bringing home to people everywhere the fundamental issues involved in the war, the necessity of fighting it through to a completely victorious conclusion and the dangers that would lurk in a premature peace. The Association coöperated with the Committee on Public Information, held college women’s rallies, formed local speakers’ bureaus, helped to procure trained workers for various forms of national service, set on foot a movement to provide in colleges preparatory nursing courses for women, and worked with and for all of the war sustaining agencies of the Government.
Coöperating with all these and with the many other women’s organizations for war effort and comprehending in its nation-wide scope all the women of the country was the Woman’s Committee of the Council of National Defense, which interlocked in effective team-work all organizations of women and, reaching out to almost every community in the land,inspired those outside such organizations to definite, regular, organized effort for war service especially fitted for women’s hands. It served solely among women, just as the Council of National Defense, of which it was a part, joined in team-work all war sustaining and war producing agencies and organized the communities, as told in “Organizing the Nation.”
The Woman’s Committee was created in April, 1917, and very soon had its divisions organized in each of the forty-eight states and also in Alaska, Hawaii, Porto Rico and the District of Columbia. Upon each State Committee were represented both the state-wide women’s organizations and the women not connected with any organization, and these committees organized the states into small units. Over 15,000 of these subordinate units had been formed and were at work by mid-summer of 1918, including 2,500 counties and 8,500 cities, towns and townships and, in addition, many thousand smaller units, such as school districts, wards, precincts, city blocks. These small units brought the organization into direct touch with women everywhere and enlisted them as individuals and as groups in the great army of patriotic women who were giving everything in their power for the prosecution of the war.
In half or more of the states women registered for war work, stating the amount of time they could give, the special service for which they were fitted and the kinds of work they could do. When the request came for volunteers for any particular service, or when it became known that there was some new need for woman’s assistance, the leader of each unit knew just where to look for the necessary help. TheWoman’s Committee, from its central offices in Washington to the members of local units in city block or country district, worked with the Food Administration for the increased production and the conservation of food and, similarly, gave their help to the conservation program of the Fuel Administration. So also, they coöperated with the War Camp Community Service and the Training Camp Commissions, with the Liberty Loan and War Savings Stamps campaigns, aided in the campaign to recruit nurses and in that to secure workers for the ship yards, and helped to find trained women workers who were needed at once by the rapidly expanding departments and the new boards and commissions at Washington.
The Woman’s Committee endeavored always, while aiding in the work of the war agencies, to preserve and improve the peace time standards and values of life. And therefore not a little of its work was along the lines of maintaining the health and protecting the welfare of women and children. It had a department of Child Welfare and carried on a vigorous campaign to further these aims while it endeavored to promote public sentiment in favor of proper living and working conditions for women in industry.
The Woman’s Committee of the Council of National Defense, in short, mobilized in one great, enthusiastic, democratic army the women of all the land, rich and poor, ignorant and cultured, of many races, of foreign birth and of American ancestry, and by organization enabled them to use their time, ability and effort in the way and at the time when they would be of best service.