This blog is just over a year old and yet each month it leads me to a new discovery. For instance I checked my email late last month to discover a link to a site promoting journalist Elaine F. Weiss's "Fruits of Victory: The Woman's Land Army of America in the Great War." Already receiving coverage on NPR and in the pages of Smithsonian Magazine, one imagines Weiss will attract more attention as buzz for the book builds. (Note: An excerpt from her chapter, An Agricultural Army, is accessible on her website and worth reading as it discusses food riots--something that those of us concerned about peak oil and other environmental matters envision recurring soon.)
To my delight, Weiss graciously answered a few questions that I forwarded to her. Her responses appear below as part of RW&G's Profiles in Victory series.
RW&G: Briefly, what was the Woman's Land Army?
EW: The Woman’s Land Army of America was a civilian, volunteer organization during WWI which mobilized and trained women to replace the male agricultural laborers called off to war. From 1917 to 1919 it put about 20,000 women into uniform, living communally in camps and units, in 25 states, to work on farms. (Thousands more women were involved in the WLA as organizers and sponsors.) The WLA demanded an eight- hour work day and equal pay to male farm laborers—pretty audacious demands for the time. The WLA was woman- organized and woman-financed (it was not a government organization) and was embraced by the suffrage movement as a way for women to perform patriotic service in wartime—and in so doing, prove that women also deserved the right to vote.
RW&G: How were women recruited to participate?
EW: The WLA organizers were masters at publicity. Not only did they make sure that favorable articles were written about the Land Army in all the national newspapers and magazines-- from Ladies Home Journal to The New Republic to New York Times—but they also launched recruitment rallies and tours all over the country: at women’s colleges and co-ed universities, at town and city halls, at women’s social and civic clubs—gardening clubs were especially active in recruiting “famerettes”—at factories, and even houses of worship. Wonderful recruitment posters were made for the WLA by the most famous illustrators of the day, including Charles Dana Gibson and Edward Penfield. There were also cinema newsreels. And great songs
RW&G: How critical were the "farmerettes" to America's WWI effort?
EW: “Food Will Win the War” was the official war slogan of the U.S. Government—expressing the national, and international, anxiety about food shortages undermining the war effort, and perhaps provoking civil unrest. The U.S. was responsible for not only feeding its own people, and its soldiers fighting in Europe, but also helping to feed much of the population of our European allies, who were on the brink of starvation after three years of war. The most famous WLA recruitment poster read: “Help the Farmer Fight the Food Famine—Join the Land Army” And while there is no central database for counting the extra food produced by the labor of the Land Army women, every farmer and district Farm Bureau administrator where the WLA worked acknowledged that the WLA women’s work saved their crops—and allowed them to plant more acres. Many major newspapers and magazines, mayors and governors, offered glowing testimonials to the accomplishments of the WLA. (The Women’s Land Army of Great Britain is also given enormous credit for helping win the war there.)
RW&G: What led you to discover and decide to tell this forgotten story?
EW: I first heard about the WLA about 30 years ago, from a woman I knew in rural Vermont who had served as a farmerette, and was very proud of that service. She told me her stories, but I could never find anything written about the Land Army. I know now that’s because—indeed-- nothing had been written about it. At that time I didn’t know it was a national movement, all around the country, with so many prominent women involved in its organization. I just kept the idea tucked in the back of my mind. I’m a journalist, so there were many stories to write in the meantime.
I finally got the opportunity to do some serious research, and found that the Land Army story, though hidden for so long, is out there—scattered all around the country in archives, libraries, historical societies, college scrapbooks, gardening club reports, and lots of newspapers and magazines. It was like archeology—I had to locate the material, dig it up, and piece it together into a narrative. There is probably still more out there to find. I’m sorry my original farmerette, Alice Holway, is gone now—she’d be 108 years old!—but I dedicate the book to her, and I know she’d be very pleased.
RW&G: How has the process of telling this story changed your understanding of the era and the later 20th century?
EW: I was most struck by the amazing energy, intelligence, and organizational capabilities of the women who established and ran the WLA—these were the same women who were working for suffrage and for other progressive social and political goals. They knew how to work the levers of government—even before they had the vote—and were tireless, articulate, advocates. I found them fascinating, and inspiring. And many of the issues raised by the women of the Land Army—from equal pay to equal opportunity—are still on the national agenda.
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