THE 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 had been 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.
[Illustration: WOMAN’S LAND ARMY MEMBERS SORTING AND GRADING POTATOES]
[Illustration:
_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 Government owned 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 war gardens 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
in the 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 the first 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 that in 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 hospitals overseas
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, such as 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 other side 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 National League 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 directing of 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. The Woman’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.