Women and War Work Part 10

The Corps sent a group of 100 women under competent gang leaders.

The workers were housed in an empty country house and the War Office provided bedding. The Y.W.C.A. undertook the catering at the request of the Corps. The work, which was a great success, consisted in pulling, gating, wind mowing, stocking and tying flax.

The Corps has already been asked to undertake this again next year.

Owing to the Russian troubles and the closing of the Port of Riga, it will be necessary to put many more hundreds of acres under cultivation and it is probable four or five times as many women will be needed next year.

Some of the Corps members are doing good work in Army Remount Depots, working in the stables and exercising the horses. One of the latest interesting developments of women's work is in the care of sick horses, carried out in the Horse Hospital in London.

Within nine months of the outbreak of war, it was clear we must secure help for the farmers, in order to enable them to do their work. As the submarine menace developed, and the supply of grain in the world was affected by the numbers of men taken away from production, it was clear we must try to grow more food.

Our grain production at the best was only twelve weeks of our supply, and even to keep up to that seemed to be a problem.

It was clear that in agriculture, as in so many other things, women must fill up the ranks, and in the first official appeal of the Government for additional woman labor, the land had an important place.

Lord Selborne, President of the Board of Agriculture, drew up a scheme for the organization of agriculture throughout the country.

It consisted of War Agricultural Committee set up in each county who look after production, use of land, procuring use of motor machinery, etc., and of Women's Agricultural Committees. The latter undertake the organization of securing women workers for the land, choosing them, and arranging for training and placing out.

The voluntary groups of women who have been working at the problem in the war are now practically all merged in the Board of Agriculture's organization. The Women's Branch of the Food Production Department now controls and arranged the whole work and Miss Meriel Talbot is the able chief.

The Women's Land Corps, like the other organizations, was prepared to be merged in the new Land Army of the Board and to cease to exist as a separate organization. Its members were willing to become part of the new Land Army.

The Board found there was a distinct need for a voluntary a.s.sociation which would continue to enroll women, who could not sign on for the duration of the war, and who were able to forego the benefits of free training, outfit and travelling given under the Government scheme.

Over 100 members of the Corps did enroll and the original Corps members do not require to appear before the local Selection Committees nor to submit references, which marks the Board's confidence in the Corps.

Many of the Corps Workers are now organizing Secretaries for the Counties or a.s.sistant Secretaries, or are travelling Inspectors under the Board of Agriculture.

The Corps still organizes the supply of temporary workers for seasonal jobs such as potato dropping, hoeing, harvesting, fruitpicking, potato and root lifting, etc., done by groups under leaders. The work of organizing in the Counties is carried out by the appointment of a woman as District representative. She is responsible for a general supervision of the work in all the villages in her district. Each village has a woman to act as Registrar and her duty (with a.s.sistants, if necessary) is to canva.s.s all the village women and girls for volunteers for whole and part time work, and for training, and to canva.s.s the farmer to find out what labour he needs, and in the beginning they had to induce him to use women. She puts the farmer and the women suitable for his needs in her own district, in touch with each other, and pa.s.ses to the District Representative and to the Employment Exchanges the names of all women qualified to help and not placed, and of those willing to train.

All these committees, registrars and representatives are honorary workers. The Board of Agriculture appoints to each County for work with the committee a woman Organizing Secretary, and a.s.sistant also if necessary.

The Board of Agriculture, working through the Employment Exchanges and under the direction of their women heads, arranged a series of meetings and work of propaganda by posters and leaflets throughout the whole country early in 1916.

The Representatives and Registrars organized the meetings to which the farmers and the women were invited, and the whole scheme was explained. These were very frequently held in the market towns on market day and the farmer and his wife came in to hear after the sales. We had to a.s.sail the prejudices of some of our farmers pretty vigorously and of the women, too. We found the women who volunteered best for land work were in the cla.s.s above the industrial worker, and that the comfortable and well educated woman stood its work admirably.

The farmers were stiff to move in some cases and especially disliked the idea of having to train the women. "They weren't going to run after women all day--they had too much to do to go messing round with girls!" This objection was met by the Board of Agriculture arranging training centres in every county. Some of the training was done at the Women's Agricultural Colleges and among places that arranged training very early were the Harper Adam's College in Shropshire (Swanley); Garford (Leeds); Sparsholt (Winchester); The Midland Agricultural Training College (Kingston), and Aberystwith.

The Women's Agricultural Committee have arranged a great many training centres at big farms and on the Home farms of some of our estates.

The girls volunteering for training must be eighteen years of age.

They are interviewed as to suitability and references by the Selection Committee. They must have a medical certificate filled in by their own doctor or by one of the committee's doctors.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BACK TO THE LAND

WOMEN TACKLE A STRONG MAN'S PROBLEM]

On being pa.s.sed, they go to the training centre, the travelling expenses being paid by the Board. Outfit is free and the uniform is a very sensible one of breeches, tunic, boots and gaiters or puttees, and soft hat, breeches, etc., cut to measure for each girl. Training and maintenance are free and there is always an instructor on the farm in addition to the farmer and his workers. The travelling to the post found, is again paid by the Government, and if work is not found at once, on completion of training, maintenance is paid till it is.

The training is generally of four to six weeks' duration and in some cases longer, and over 7,000 women have been trained in this way and placed.

Appeals for land recruits were made in February, 1916, and in January and April, 1917, when the Women's National Service Department asked for 100,000 women.

The Land Army women after three months' service receive an official armlet--a green band with lion rampant in red and a certificate of honour. The Land women are the only women who receive an armlet--the munition girl wears a triangular bra.s.s brooch with "On war service."

To induce the conservative farmer to try the women, exhibitions of farm work were arranged in different part of the country with great success, and the girls showed they could plough, and weed and hoe and milk and care for stock, and do all the farm work, except the heaviest, extremely well.

The War Office in its official memorandum of 1916 gives a long list of the farm and garden work in which women are successfully employed, and they have been particularly successful in the care of stock.

The farmer who used to declare he would never have a woman and that they were no use, and who has them now, is always quite pleased and generally cherishes a profound conviction that the reason why his women are all right is because he has the most exceptional ones in the country.

Housing the worker and especially the groups for seasonal work has been a problem, but it has been done and the feeding of groups well has been managed, too.

The housing conditions for the girl going to work whole-time are investigated by the Board organizer, and the representatives of committee. Very frequently a small group of girls have a cottage on the farm.

The Inspectors of the Board are in charge of three counties each and look after all conditions.

The girls are now being trained to drive the motor tractors for ploughing, and for women who understand horses there is at present a greater demand than supply.

The Women's Branch of the Board is also at this time appealing for well-educated women to aid in Timber Supply for two pieces of work--measuring trees when felled, calculating the amount of wood in the log, and marking off for sawing, and as forewomen to superintend cross-cutting, felling small timber and coppice and to do the lighter work of forestry.

Girls and women are in market gardens and on private gardens in very large numbers. The King has a great many women in his gardens and conservatories. Most estates are growing as many vegetables as possible to supply the many hospitals and the Fleet, and girls are helping very much in this. A great deal has been done by work in allotments, plots of land taken up by town dwellers and cultivated. In one part of South Wales alone 40,000 allotments have been worked and the allotment holders are organizing themselves co-operatively for the purchase of seed, etc. We have Governmental powers now not only to enable Local Authorities to secure unused land for allotments, but to compel farmers to cultivate all their ground. We have fixed a price for wheat for five years, and a minimum wage for the agricultural man and woman.

The girls on the land improve in health and increase in weight. The work is not only of supreme usefulness to the country--we have the submarine ceaselessly gnawing at our shipping and making our burden heavier--so we must produce everything possible. It has improved the physique of our girls--they like it, and many will permanently adopt it. Our Board of Agriculture is also encouraging, for the benefit of the country woman, the formation of Women's Inst.i.tutes, like those in Canada and America.

In the Lord Mayor's Procession in London, on November 9, 1917, with the men-in-arms of all our great Commonwealth of Nations, with the Turks and the captured German aeroplanes and guns, the munition girls and the Land girls marched. No group in all that great array had a warmer welcome from our vast crowds than our sensibly clothed, healthy, happy and supremely useful Land girls.

WAR SAVINGS--THE MONEY BEHIND THE GUNS

"You cannot have absolute equality of sacrifice in a war. That is impossible. But you can have equal readiness to sacrifice from all.

There are hundreds of thousands who have given their lives, there are millions who have given up comfortable homes and exchanged them for a daily communion with death. Mult.i.tudes have given up those whom they loved best. Let the nation as a whole place its comforts, its luxuries, its indulgences, its elegances, on a national altar, consecrated by such sacrifices as these men have made."

--THE PRIME MINISTER.

"Deep down in the heart of every one of us there is the spirit of love for our native land, dulled it may be in some cases, perhaps temporarily obscured, by hardship, injustice and suffering, but it is there and it remains for us to touch the chord which will bring it to life; once aroused it will prove irresistible."

--Sir R.M. KINDERSLEY, K.B.E.

CHAPTER IX

WAR SAVINGS--THE MONEY BEHIND THE GUNS

To win the war, we must save. There is no task more imperative, no need more urgent, and there is no greater work than the work of educating the peoples of our countries, and inducing them to save and lend to their Governments.