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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:33:52 -0700 |
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| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:33:52 -0700 |
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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/10080-0.txt b/10080-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..01ed637 --- /dev/null +++ b/10080-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4268 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10080 *** + +MOBILIZING WOMAN-POWER + +By HARRIOT STANTON BLATCH + +1918 + + + + + + + +[Illustration: Jeanne d'Arc.--the spirit of the women of the Allies.] + + + + +TO THE ABLE AND DEVOTED WOMEN OF GREAT BRITAIN AND FRANCE + +Who have stood behind the armies of the Allies through the years of the +Great War as an unswerving second line of defense against an onslaught +upon the liberty and civilization of the world, I dedicate this volume. + +HARRIOT STANTON BLATCH + + + + +CONTENTS + +FOREWORD BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT + + I. OUR FOE + + II. WINNING THE WAR + + III. MOBILIZING WOMEN IN GREAT BRITAIN + + IV. MOBILIZING WOMEN IN FRANCE + + V. MOBILIZING WOMEN IN GERMANY + + VI. WOMEN OVER THE TOP IN AMERICA + + VII. EVE'S PAY ENVELOPE + +VIII. POOLING BRAINS + + IX. "BUSINESS AS USUAL" + + X. "AS MOTHER USED TO DO" + + XI. A LAND ARMY + + XII. WOMAN'S PART IN SAVING CIVILIZATION + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + +Jeanne d'Arc--the spirit of the women of the Allies + +They wear the uniforms of the Edinburgh trams and the New York City +subway and trolley guards, with pride and purpose. + +Then--the offered service of the Women's Reserve Ambulance Corps in +England was spurned. Now--they wear shrapnel helmets while working +during the Zeppelin raids. + +The French poilu on furlough is put to work harrowing. + +Has there ever been anything impossible to French women since the time +of Jeanne d'Arc? The fields must be harrowed--they have no horses. + +The daily round in the Erie Railroad workshops. + +In the well-lighted factory of the Briggs and Stratton Company, +Milwaukee, the girls are comfortably and becomingly garbed for work. + +The women of the Motor Corps of the National League for Woman's Service +refuting the traditions that women have neither strength nor endurance. + +Down the street they come, beginning their pilgrimage of alleviation and +succor on the battlefields of France. + +How can business be "as usual" when in Paris there are about 1800 of +these small workshops where a woman dips Bengal Fire and grenades into a +bath of paraffin! + +Countess de Berkaim and her canteen in the Gare de St. Lazarre, Paris. + +An agricultural unit in the uniform approved by the Woman's Land Army of +America. + +A useful blending of Allied women. Miss Kathleen Burke (Scotch) +exhibiting the X-ray ambulance equipped by Mrs. Ayrton (English) and +Madame Curie (French). + + + + +FOREWORD + + +It is a real pleasure to write this foreword to the book which Mrs. +Harriot Stanton Blatch dedicates to the women of Great Britain and +France; to the women who through the years of the great war have stood +as the second line of defense against the German horror which menaces +the liberty and civilization of the entire world. + +There could be no more timely book. Mrs. Blatch's aim is to stir the +women of this country to the knowledge that this is their war, and also +to make all our people feel that we, and especially our government, +should welcome the service of women, and make use of it to the utmost. +In other words, the appeal of Mrs. Blatch is essentially an appeal for +service. No one has more vividly realized that service benefits the one +who serves precisely as it benefits the one who is served. I join with +her in the appeal that the women shall back the men with service, and +that the men in their turn shall frankly and eagerly welcome the +rendering of such service _on the basis of service by equals for a +common end_. + +Mrs. Blatch makes her appeal primarily because of the war needs of the +moment. But she has in view no less the great tasks of the future. I +welcome her book as an answer to the cry that the admission of women to +an equal share in the right of self government will tend to soften the +body politic. Most certainly I will ever set my face like flint against +any unhealthy softening of our civilization, and as an answer in advance +to hyper-criticism I explain that I do not mean softness in the sense of +tender-heartedness; I mean the softness which, extends to the head and +to the moral fibre, I mean the softness which manifests itself either in +unhealthy sentimentality or in a materialism which may be either +thoughtless and pleasure-loving or sordid and money-getting. I believe +that the best women, when thoroughly aroused, and when the right appeal +is made to them, will offer our surest means of resisting this unhealthy +softening. + +No man who is not blind can fail to see that we have entered a new day +in the great epic march of the ages. For good or for evil the old days +have passed; and it rests with us, the men and women now alive, to +decide whether in the new days the world is to be a better or a worse +place to live in, for our descendants. + +In this new world women are to stand on an equal footing with men, in +ways and to an extent never hitherto dreamed of. In this country they +are on the eve of securing, and in much of the country have already +secured, their full political rights. It is imperative that they should +understand, exactly as it is imperative that men should understand, that +such rights are of worse than no avail, unless the will for the +performance of duty goes hand in hand with the acquirement of the +privilege. + +If the women in this country reinforce the elements that tend to a +softening of the moral fibre, to a weakening of the will, and +unwillingness to look ahead or to face hardship and labor and danger for +a high ideal--then all of us alike, men and women, will suffer. But if +they show, under the new conditions, the will to develop strength, and +the high idealism and the iron resolution which under less favorable +circumstances were shown by the women of the Revolution and of the Civil +War, then our nation has before it a career of greatness never hitherto +equaled. This book is fundamentally an appeal, not that woman shall +enjoy any privilege unearned, but that hers shall be the right to do +more than she has ever yet done, and to do it on terms of +self-respecting partnership with men. Equality of right does not mean +identity of function; but it does necessarily imply identity of purpose +in the performance of duty. + +Mrs. Blatch shows why every woman who inherits the womanly virtues of +the past, and who has grasped the ideal of the added womanly virtues of +the present and the future, should support this war with all her +strength and soul. She testifies from personal knowledge to the hideous +brutalities shown toward women and children by the Germany of to-day; +and she adds the fine sentence: "Women fight for a place in the sun for +those who hold right above might." + +She shows why women must unstintedly give their labor in order to win +this war; and why the labor of the women must be used to back up both +the labor and the fighting work of the men, for the fighting men leave +gaps in the labor world which must be filled by the work of women. She +says in another sentence worth remembering, "The man behind the counter +should of course be moved to a muscular employment; but we must not +interpret his dalliance with tapes and ribbons as a proof of a +superfluity of men." + +Particularly valuable is her description of the mobilization of women in +Great Britain and France. From these facts she draws the conclusion as +to America's needs along this very line. She paints as vividly as I have +ever known painted, the truth as to why it is a merit that women should +be forced to work, a merit that _every one_ should be forced to work! It +is just as good for women as for men that they should have to use body +and mind, that they should not be idlers. As she puts it, "Active +mothers insure a virile race. The peaceful nation, if its women fall +victims to the luxury which rapidly increasing wealth brings, will +decay." "Man power must give itself unreservedly at the front. Woman +power must show not only eagerness but fitness to substitute for +man power." + +I commend especially the chapter containing the sentence, "This war may +prove to us the wisdom and economy of devoting public funds to mothers +rather than to crèches and juvenile asylums;" and also the chapter in +which the author tells women that if they are merely looking for a soft +place in life their collective demand for a fair field and no favor will +be wholly ineffective. The doors for service now stand open, and it +rests with the women themselves to say whether they will enter in! + +The last chapter is itself an unconscious justification of woman's right +to a share in the great governmental decisions which to-day are vital. +No statesman or publicist could set forth more clearly than Mrs. Blatch +the need of winning this war, in order to prevent either endless and +ruinous wars in the future, or else a world despotism which would mean +the atrophy of everything that really tends to the elevation of mankind. + +Mrs. Blatch has herself rendered a very real service by this appeal that +women should serve, and that men should let them serve. + +Theodore Roosevelt + + + + +I + +OUR FOE + + +The nations in which women have influenced national aims face the nation +that glorifies brute force. America opposes the exaltation of the +glittering sword; opposes the determination of one nation to dominate +the world; opposes the claim that the head of one ruling family is the +direct and only representative of the Creator; and, above all, America +opposes the idea that might makes right. + +Let us admit the full weight of the paradox that a people in the name of +peace turns to force of arms. The tragedy for us lay in there being no +choice of ways, since pacific groups had failed to create machinery to +adjust vital international differences, and since the Allies each in +turn, we the last, had been struck by a foe determined to settle +disagreements by force. + +Never did a nation make a crusade more just than this of ours. We were +patient, too long patient, perhaps, with challenges. We seek no +conquest. We fight to protect the freedom of our citizens. On America's +standard is written democracy, on that of Germany autocracy. Without +reservation women can give their all to attain our end. + +There may be a cleavage between the German people and the ruling class. +It may be that our foe is merely the military caste, though I am +inclined to believe that we have the entire German nation on our hands. +The supremacy of might may be a doctrine merely instilled in the minds +of the people by its rulers. Perhaps the weed is not indigenous, but it +flourishes, nevertheless. Rabbits did not belong in Australia, nor +pondweed in England, but there they are, and dominating the situation. +Arrogance of the strong towards the weak, of the better placed towards +the less well placed, is part of the government teaching in Germany. The +peasant woman harries the dog that strains at the market cart, her +husband harries her as she helps the cow drag the plough, the petty +officer harries the peasant when he is a raw recruit, and the young +lieutenant harries the petty officer, and so it goes up to the +highest,--a well-planned system on the part of the superior to bring the +inferior to a high point of material efficiency. The propelling spirit +is devotion to the Fatherland: each believes himself a cog in the +machine chosen of God to achieve His purposes on earth. The world hears +of the Kaiser's "Ich und Gott," of his mailed fist beating down his +enemies, but those who have lived in Germany know that exactly the same +spirit reigns in every class. The strong in chastizing his inferior has +the conviction that since might makes right he is the direct +representative of Deity on the particular occasion. + +The overbearing spirit of the Prussian military caste has drilled a race +to worship might; men are overbearing towards women, women towards +children, and the laws reflect the cruelties of the strong towards +the weak. + +As the recent petition of German suffragists to the Reichstag states, +their country stands "in the lowest rank of nations as regards women's +rights." It is a platitude just now worth repeating that the +civilization of a people is indicated by the position accorded to its +women. On that head, then, the Teutonic Kultur stands challenged. + +An English friend of mine threw down the gauntlet thirty years ago. She +had married a German officer. After living at army posts all over the +Empire, she declared, "What we foreigners take as simple childlikeness +in the Germans is merely lack of civilization." This keen analysis came +from a woman trained as an investigator, and equipped with perfect +command of the language of her adopted country. + +"Lack of civilization,"--perhaps that explains my having seen again and +again officers striking the soldiers they were drilling, and journeys +made torture through witnessing slapping and brow-beating of children by +their parents. The memory of a father's conduct towards his little son +will never be wiped out. He twisted the child's arm, struck him savagely +from time to time, and for no reason but that the child did not sit bolt +upright and keep absolutely motionless. The witnesses of the brutality +smiled approvingly at the man, and scowled at the child. My own protest +being met with amazed silence and in no way regarded, I left the +compartment. I was near Eisenach, and I wished some good fairy would put +in my hand that inkpot which Luther threw at the devil. Severity towards +children is the rule. The child for weal or woe is in the complete +control of its parents, and corporal punishment is allowed in the +schools. The grim saying, "Saure Wochen, frohe Feste," seems to express +the pedagogic philosophy. The only trouble is that nature does not give +this attitude her sanction, for Germany reveals to us that figure, the +most pathetic in life, the child suicide. + +The man responding to his stern upbringing is in turn cruel to his +inferiors, and full of subterfuge in dealing with equals. He is at home +in the intrigues which have startled the world. In such a society the +frank and gentle go to the wall, or--get into trouble and emigrate. We +have profited--let us not forget it--by the plucky German immigrants who +threw off the yoke, and who now have the satisfaction of finding +themselves fighting shoulder to shoulder with the men of their adopted +country to free the Fatherland of the taskmaster. + +The philosophy of might quite naturally reflects itself in the education +of girls. Once when I visited a Höhere Töchter Schule, the principal had +a class in geometry recite for my edification. I soon saw that the young +girl who had been chosen as the star pupil to wrestle with the pons +asinorum was giving an exhibition of memorizing and not of mathematical +reasoning. I asked the principal if my surmise were correct. He replied +without hesitation, "Yes, it was entirely a feat in memory. Females have +only low reasoning power." I urged that if this were so, it would be +well to train the faculty, but he countered with the assertion, "We +Germans do not think so. Women are happier and more useful +without logic." + +It would be difficult to surpass in its subtle cruelty the etiquette at +a military function. The lieutenant and his wife come early,--this is +expected of them. For a few moments they play the role of honored +guests. The wife is shown by her hostess to the sofa and is seated there +as a mark of distinction. Then arrive the captain and his wife. They are +immediately the distinguished guests. The wife is shown to the sofa and +the lieutenant's little Frau must get herself out of the way as best +she can. + +My speculation, often indulged in, as to what would happen if the +major's wife did not move from the sofa when the colonel's wife +appeared, ended in assurance that a severe punishment would be meted out +to her, when I heard from an officer the story of the way his regiment +dealt with a woman who ignored another bit of military etiquette. A +débutant, once honored by being asked to dance with an officer at a +ball, must never, it seems, demean herself by accepting a civilian +partner. But in a town where my friend's regiment was stationed a very +pretty and popular young girl who had been taken, so to speak, to the +bosom of the regiment, danced one night at the Kurhaus early in the +summer season with a civilian, distinguished, undeniably, but +unmistakably civilian. The officers of the regiment met, weighed the +mighty question of the girl's offense, and solemnly resolved never again +to ask the culprit for a dance. I protested at the cruelty of a body of +men deliberately turning a pretty young thing into a wall-flower for an +entire season. The officer took my protest as an added reason for +congratulation upon their conduct. They meant to be cruel. My words +proved how well they had succeeded. + +Another little straw showing the set of the wind: we were sitting, four +Americans, one lovely early summer day, in a restaurant at Swinemünde. +We had the window open, looking out over the sea. At the next table were +some officers, one of whom with an "Es zieht," but not with a "by your +leave," came over to our table and shut the window with a bang. The +gentleman with us asked if we wanted the window closed, and on being +assured we did not, quietly rose and opened it again. No one who does +not know Prussia can imagine the threatening atmosphere which filled +that café. + +We met the officers the same night at the Kurhaus dance. They were +introduced, and almost immediately one of them brought up the window +incident and said most impressively that if ladies had not been at the +table, our escort would have been "called out." We could see they +regarded us as unworthy of being even transient participants of Kultur +when we opined that no American man would accept a challenge, and if so +unwise as to do so, his womenfolk would lock him up until he reached a +sounder judgment! The swords rattled in their sabres when the frivolous +member of our party said with a tone of finality, "You see we wouldn't +like our men's faces to look as if they had got into their mothers' +chopping bowls!" + +Although I had often lived months on end with all these petty tyrannies +of the mailed fist, and although life had taught me later that peoples +grow by what they feed upon, yet when I read the Bryce report,[1] German +frightfulness seemed too inhuman for belief. While still holding my +judgment in reserve, I met an intimate friend, a Prussian officer. He +happened to mention letters he had received from his relatives in Berlin +and at the front, and when I expressed a wish to hear them, kindly asked +whether he should translate them or read them in German as they stood. +Laughingly I ventured on the German, saying I would at least find out +how much I had forgotten. So I sat and listened with ears pricked up. +Some of the letters were from women folk and told of war conditions in +the capital. They were interesting at the time but not worth repeating +now. Then came a letter from a nephew, a lieutenant. He gave his +experience in crossing Belgium, told how in one village his men asked a +young woman with her tiny baby on her arm for water, how she answered +resentfully, and then, how he shot her--and her baby. I exclaimed, +thinking I had lost the thread of the letter, "Not the baby?" And the +man I supposed I knew as civilized, replied with a cruel smile, +"Yes--discipline!" That was frank, frank as a child would have been, +with no realization of the self-revelation of it. The young officer did +the deed, wrote of it to his uncle, and the uncle, without vision and +understanding, perverted by his training, did not feel shame and bury +the secret in his own heart, but treasured the evidence against his own +nephew, and laid it open before an American woman. + +I believed the Bryce report--every word of it! + +And I hate the system that has so bent and crippled a great race. +Revenge we must not feel, that would be to innoculate ourselves with the +enemy's virus. But let us be awake to the fact that might making right +cuts athwart our ideals. German Kultur, through worship of efficiency, +cramps originality and initiative, while our aim--why not be frank about +it!--is the protection of inefficiency, which means sympathy with +childhood, and opportunity for the spirit of art. German Kultur fixes an +inflexible limit to the aspirations of women, while our goal is complete +freedom for the mothers of men. + +The women of the Allies can fight for all that their men fight for--for +national self-respect, for protection of citizens, for the sacredness of +international agreements, for the rights of small nations, for the +security of democracy, and then our women can be inspired by one thing +more--the safety and development of all those things which they have +won for human welfare in a long and bloodless battle. + +Women fight for a place in the sun for those who hold right above might. + + +[Footnote 1: Report of the Committee on Alleged German Outrages +appointed by his Britannic Majesty's Government, 1915. Macmillan +Company, New York. + +Evidence and Documents laid before the Committee on Alleged German +Outrages. Ballantyne, Hanson & Co., London. 1915.] + + + + +II + +WINNING THE WAR + + +The group of nations that can make the greatest savings, will be +victorious, counsels one; the group that can produce the most food and +nourish the populations best, will win the war, urges another; but +whatever the prophecy, whatever the advice, all paths to victory lie +through labor-power. + +Needs are not answered in our day by manna dropping from heaven. Whether +it is food or big guns that are wanted, ships or coal, we can only get +our heart's desire by toil. Where are the workers who will win the war? + +We are a bit spoiled in the United States. We have been accustomed to +rub our Aladdin's lamp of opportunity and the good genii have sent us +workers. But suddenly, no matter how great our efforts, no one answers +our appeal. The reservoir of immigrant labor has run dry. We are in +sorry plight, for we have suffered from emigration, too. Thousands of +alien workers have been called back to serve in the armies of the +Allies. In my own little village on Long Island the industrious Italian +colony was broken up by the call to return to the colors in Piedmont. + +Then, too, while Europe suffers loss of labor, as do we, when men are +mobilized, our situation is peculiarly poignant, for when our armies are +gone they are gone. At first this was true in Europe. Men entered the +army and were employed as soldiers only. After a time it was realized +that the war would not be short, that fields must not lie untilled for +years, nor men undergo the deteriorating effects of trench warfare +continuously. The fallow field and the stale soldier were +brought together. + +We have all chanced on photographs of European soldiers helping the +women plough in springtime, and reap the harvest in the autumn. Perhaps +we have regarded the scene as a mere pastoral episode in a happy leave +from the battle front, instead of realizing that it is a snapshot +illustrating a well organized plan of securing labor. The soldiers are +given a furlough and are sent where the agricultural need is pressing. +But the American soldier will not be able to lend his skill in giving +the home fields a rich seed time and harvest. The two needs, the field +for the touch of the human hand, and the soldier for labor under calm +skies, cannot in our case be coördinated. + +Scarcity of labor is not only certain to grow, but the demands upon the +United States for service are increasing by leaps and bounds. America +must throw man-power into the trenches, must feed herself, must +contribute more and ever more food to the hungry populations of Europe, +must meet the old industrial obligations, and respond to a whole range +of new business requirements. And she is called upon for this effort at +a time when national prosperity is already making full use of man-power. + +When Europe went to war, the world had been suffering from depression a +year and more. Immediately on the outbreak of hostilities whole lines of +business shut down. Unemployment became serious. There were idle hands +everywhere. Germany, of all the belligerents, rallied most quickly to +meet war conditions. Unemployment gave place to a shortage of labor +sooner there than elsewhere. Great Britain did not begin to get the pace +until the middle of 1915. + +The business situation in the United States upon its entrance into the +war was the antithesis of this. For over a year, depression had been +superseded by increased industry, high wages, and greater demand for +labor. The country as measured by the ordinary financial signs, by its +commerce, by its labor market, was more prosperous than it had been for +years. Tremendous requisitions were being made upon us by Europe, and to +the limit of available labor we were answering them. Then into our +economic life, with industrial forces already working at high pressure, +were injected the new demands arising from changing the United States +from a people as unprepared for effective hostilities as a baby in its +cradle, into a nation equipped for war. There was no unemployment, but +on the contrary, shortage of labor. + +The country calls for everything, and all at once, like the spoiled +child on suddenly waking. It must have, and without delay, ships, coal, +cars, cantonments, uniforms, rules, and food, food, food. How can the +needs be supplied and with a million and a half of men dropping work +besides? By woman-power or coolie labor. Those are the horns of the +dilemma presented to puzzled America. The Senate of the United States +directs its Committee of Agriculture to ponder well the coolie problem, +for men hesitate to have women put their shoulder to the wheel. Trade +unionists are right in urging that a republic has no place for a +disfranchised class of imported toilers. Equally true is it that as a +nation we have shown no gift for dealing with less developed races. And +yet labor we must have. Will American women supply it, will they, loving +ease, favor contract labor from the outside, or will they accept the +optimistic view that lack of labor is not acute? + +The procrastinator queries, "Cannot American man-power meet the demand?" +It can, for a time perhaps, if the draft for the army goes as slowly in +the future as it has in the past. + +However, at any moment a full realization may come to us of the +significance of the fact that while the United States is putting only +three percent of its workers into the fighting forces, Great Britain has +put twenty-five percent, and is now combing its industrial army over to +find an additional five hundred thousand men to throw on the French +front. It is probable that it will be felt by this country in the near +future that such a contrast of fulfillment of obligation cannot continue +without serious reflection on our national honor. Roughly speaking, +Great Britain has twenty million persons in gainful pursuits. Of these, +five million have already been taken for the army. The contribution of +France is still greater. Her military force has reached the appalling +proportion of one-fifth of her entire population. But we who have +thirty-five million in gainful occupations are giving a paltry one +million, five hundred thousand in service with our Allies. The situation +is not creditable to us, and one of the things which stands in the way +of the United States reaching a more worthy position is reluctance to +see its women shouldering economic burdens. + +[Illustration: They wear the uniforms of the Edinburgh trams and the +New York City subway and trolley guards, with pride and purpose.] + +While it is quite true that shifting of man-power is needed, mere +shuffling of the cards, as labor leaders suggest, won't give a bigger +pack. Fifty-two cards it remains, though the Jack may be put into a more +suitable position. The man behind the counter should of course be moved +to a muscular employment, but we must not interpret his dalliance with +tapes and ribbons as proof of a superfluity of men. + +The latest reports of the New York State Department of Labor reflect the +meagerness of the supply. Here are some dull figures to prove +it:--comparing the situation with a year ago, we find in a corresponding +month, only one percent more employees this year, with a wage advance of +seventeen percent. Drawing the comparison between this year and two +years ago, there is an advance of "fifteen percent in employees and +fifty-one percent in wages;" and an increase of "thirty percent in +employees and eighty-seven percent in wages," if this year is compared +with the conditions when the world was suffering from industrial +depression. The State employment offices report eight thousand three +hundred and seventy-six requests for workers against seven thousand, six +hundred and fifty applicants for employment, and of the latter only +seventy-three percent were fitted for the grades of work open to them, +and were placed in situations. + +The last records of conditions in the Wilkes-Barre coal regions confirm +the fact of labor scarcity. There are one hundred and fifty-two thousand +men and boys at work today in the anthracite fields, twenty-five +thousand less than the number employed in 1916. These miners, owing to +the prod of the highest wages ever received--the skilled man earning +from forty dollars to seventy-five dollars a week--and to appeals to +their patriotism, are individually producing a larger output than ever +before. It is considered that production, with the present labor force, +is at its maximum, and if a yield of coal commensurate with the world's +need is to be attained, at least seventy percent more men must +be supplied. + +This is a call for man-power in addition to that suggested by the Fuel +Administrator to the effect that lack of coal is partly lack of cars and +that "back of the transportation shortage lies labor shortage." An order +was sent out by the Director General of Railways, soon after his +appointment, that mechanics from the repair shops of the west were to be +shifted to the east to supply the call for help on the Atlantic border. + +Suggestive of the cause of all this shortage, float the service flags of +the mining and railway companies, the hundreds of glowing stars telling +their tale of men gone to the front, and of just so many stars torn from +the standards of the industrial army at home. + +The Shipping Board recently called for two hundred and fifty thousand +men to be gradually recruited as a skilled army for work in shipyards. +At the same time the Congress passed an appropriation of fifty million +dollars for building houses to accommodate ship labor. Six months ago +only fifty thousand men were employed in ship-building, today there are +one hundred and forty-five thousand. This rapid drawing of men to new +centers creates a housing problem so huge that it must he met by the +government; and it need hardly be pointed out, shelter can be built only +by human hands. + +One state official, prompted no doubt by a wise hostility to coolie +labor, and dread of woman labor, has gone so far as to declare publicly +that any employer who will pay "adequate wages can get all the labor he +requires." This view suggests that we may soon have to adopt the methods +of other belligerents and stop employers by law from stealing a +neighbor's working force. I know of a shipyard with a normal pay-roll of +five hundred hands, which in one year engaged and lost to nearby +munition factories thirteen thousand laborers. Such "shifting," hiding +as it does shortage of manpower, leads to serious loss in our productive +efficiency and should not be allowed to go unchecked. + +The manager of one of the New York City street railways met with +complete denial the easy optimism that adequate remuneration will +command a sufficient supply of men. He told me that he had introduced +women at the same wage as male conductors, not because he wanted women, +but because he now had only five applications by fit men to thirty or +forty formerly. There were men to be had, he said, and at lower wages +than his company was paying; but they were "not of the class capable of +fulfilling the requirements of the position." + +The Labor Administration announced on its creation that its "policy +would be to prevent woman labor in positions for which men are +available," and one of the deputy commissioners of the Industrial +Commission of the State of New York declared quite frankly at a labor +conference that "if he could, he would exclude women from industry +altogether." + +We may try to prevent the oncoming tide of the economic independence of +women, but it will not be possible to force the business world to accept +permanently the service of the inefficient in place of that of the alert +and intelligent. To carry on the economic life of a nation with its +labor flotsam and jetsam is loss at any time; in time of storm and +stress it is suicide. + +Man-power is short, seriously so. The farm is always the best barometer +to give warning of scarcity of labor. The land has been drained of its +workers. A fair wage would keep them on the farm--this is the philosophy +of laissez faire. Without stopping to inquire as to what the munition +works would then do, we can still see that it is doubtful whether the +farm can act as magnet. Even men, let us venture the suggestion, like +change for the mere sake of change. A middle-aged man, who had taken up +work at Bridgeport, said to me, "I've mulled around on the farm all my +days. I grabbed the first chance to get away." And then there's a finer +spirit prompting the desertion of the hoe. A man of thirty-three gave me +the point of view. "My brother is 'over there,' and I feel as if I were +backing him up by making guns." + +The only thing that can change the idea that farming is "mulling +around," and making a gun "backs up" the man at the front more +thoroughly than raising turnips, is to bring to the farm new workers who +realize the vital part played by food in the winning of the war. As the +modern industrial system has developed with its marvels of specialized +machinery, its army of employees gathered and dispersed on the stroke of +the clock, and strong organizations created to protect the interests of +the worker, the calm and quiet processes of agriculture have in +comparison grown colorless. The average farmhand has never found push +and drive and group action on the farm, but only individualism to the +extreme of isolation. And now in war time, when in addition to its usual +life of stirring contacts, the factory takes on an intimate and striking +relation to the intense experience of the battle front, the work of the +farm seems as flat as it is likely to be unprofitable. The man in the +furrow has no idea that he is "backing up" the boy in the trench. + +The farmer in his turn does not find himself part of the wider relations +that attract and support the manufacturer. Crops are not grown on order. +The marketing is as uncertain as the weather. The farmer could by higher +wages attract more labor, but as the selling of the harvest remains a +haphazard matter, the venture might mean ruin all the more certain and +serious were wage outlay large. In response to a call for food and an +appeal to his patriotism, the farmer has repeatedly made unusual efforts +to bring his land to the maximum fertility, only to find his crops often +a dead loss, as he could not secure the labor to harvest them. I saw, +one summer, acres of garden truck at its prime ploughed under in +Connecticut because of a shortage of labor. I saw fruit left rotting by +the bushel in the orchards near Rochester because of scarcity of pickers +and a doubt of the reliability of the market. The industry which means +more than any other to the well-being of humanity at this crisis, is the +sport of methods outgrown and of servants who lack understanding and +inspiration. The war may furnish the spark for the needed revolution. +Man-power is not available, woman-power is at hand. A new labor force +always brings ideas and ideals peculiar to itself. May not women as +fresh recruits in a land army stamp their likes and dislikes on farm +life? Their enthusiasm may put staleness to rout, and the group system +of women land workers, already tested in the crucible of experience, may +bring to the farm the needed antidote to isolation. + +To win the war we must have man-power in the trenches sufficient to win +it with. To win, every soldier, every sailor, must be well fed, well +clothed, well equipped. To win, behind the armed forces must stand +determined peoples. To win, the people of America and her Allies must be +heartened by care and food. + +The sun shines on the fertile land, the earth teems with forests, with +coal, with every necessary mineral and food, but labor, labor alone can +transform all to meet our necessities. Man-power unaided cannot supply +the demand. Women in America must shoulder as nobly as have the women of +Europe, this duty. They must answer their country's call. Let them see +clearly that the desire of their men to shield them from possible injury +exposes the nation and the world to actual danger. + +Our winning of the war depends upon the full use of the energy of our +entire people. Every muscle, every brain, must be mobilized if the +national aim is to be achieved. + + + + +III + +MOBILIZING WOMEN IN GREAT BRITAIN [2] + + +In no country have women reached a mobilization so complete and +systematized as in Great Britain. This mobilization covers the whole +field of war service--in industry, business and professional life, and +in government administration. Women serve on the Ministry of Food and +are included in the membership of twenty-five of the important +government committees, not auxiliary or advisory, but administrative +committees, such as those on War Pensions, on Disabled Officers and Men, +on Education after the War, and the Labor Commission to Deal with +Industrial Unrest. + +In short, the women of Great Britain are working side by side with men +in the initiation and execution of plans to solve the problems which +confront the nation. + +Four committees, as for instance those making investigations and +recommendations on Women's Wages and Drink Among Women, are entirely +composed of women, and great departments, such as the Women's Land Army, +the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, are officered throughout by them. +Hospitals under the War Office have been placed in complete control of +medical women; they take rank with medical men in the army and receive +the pay going with their commissions. + +When Great Britain recognized that the war could not be won by merely +sending splendid fighters to the front and meeting the wastage by steady +drafts upon the manhood of the country, she began to build an efficient +organization of industry at home. + +To the call for labor-power British women gave instant response. In +munitions a million are mobilized, in the Land Army there have been +drafted and actually placed on the farms over three hundred thousand, +and in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps fourteen thousand women are +working in direct connection with the fighting force, and an additional +ten thousand are being called out for service each month. In the +clerical force of the government departments, some of which had never +seen women before in their sacred precincts, over one hundred and +ninety-eight thousand are now working. And the women civil servants are +not only engaged in indoor service, but outside too, most of the +carrying of mail being in their hands. + +Women are dock-laborers, some seven thousand strong. Four thousand act +as patrols and police, forty thousand are in banks and various financial +houses. It is said that there are in Great Britain scarce a million +women--and they are mostly occupied as housewives--who could render +greater service to their country than that which they are now giving. + +The wide inclusion of women in government administration is very +striking to us in America. But we must not forget that the contrast +between the two countries in the participation of women in political +life and public service has always been great. The women of the United +Kingdom have enjoyed the municipal and county franchise for years. For a +long time large numbers of women have been called to administrative +positions. They have had thorough training in government as Poor Law +Guardians, District and County Councilors, members of School Boards. No +women, the whole world over, are equipped as those of Great Britain for +service to the state. + +In the glamor of the extremely striking government service of British +women, we must not overlook their non-official organizations. Perhaps +these offer the most valuable suggestions for America. They are near +enough to our experience to be quite understandable. + +The mother country is not under regimentation. Originality and +initiative have full play. Perhaps it was well that the government +failed to appreciate what women could do, and neglected them so long. +Most of the effective work was started in volunteer societies and had +proved a success before there was an official laying on of hands. +Anglo-Saxons--it is our strong point--always work from below, up. + +A glance at any account of the mobilization of woman-power in Great +Britain, Miss Fraser's admirable "Women and War Work," for instance, +will reveal the printed page dotted thick with the names of volunteer +associations. A woman with sympathy sees a need, she gets an idea and +calls others about her. Quickly, there being no red tape, the need +begins to be met. What more admirable service could have been performed +than that inaugurated in the early months of the war under the Queen's +Work for Women Fund, when work was secured for the women in luxury +trades which were collapsing under war pressure? A hundred and thirty +firms employing women were kept running. + +What more thrilling example of courage and forethought has been shown +than by the Scottish Women's Hospitals in putting on the western front +the first X-ray car to move from point to point near the lines? It but +adds to the appeal of the work that those great scientists, Mrs. Ayrton +and Madame Curie, selected the equipment. + +It was a non-official body, the National Union of Women's Suffrage +Societies, which opened before the war was two weeks old the Women's +Service Bureau, and soon placed forty thousand women as paid and +volunteer workers. It was this bureau that furnished the government with +its supervisors for the arsenals. The Women's Farm and Garden Union was +the fore-runner of the official Land Army, and to it still is left the +important work of enrolling those women who, while willing to undertake +agricultural work, are disinclined to sign up for service "for the +duration of the war." + +Not only have unnumbered voluntary associations achieved miracles in +necessary work, but many of them have gained untold discipline in the +ridicule they have had to endure from a doubting public. I remember +hunting in vain all about Oxford Circus for the tucked-away office of +the Women's Signalling Corps. My inquiries only made the London bobbies +grin. Everyone laughed at the idea of women signalling, but to-day the +members are recognized officially, one holding an important appointment +in the college of wireless telegraphy. + +How Scotland Yard smiled, at first, at Miss Damer Dawson and her Women +Police Service! But now the metropolitan police are calling for the help +of her splendidly trained and reliable force. + +And the Women's Reserve Ambulance Corps--I climbed and climbed to an +attic to visit their headquarters! There was the commandant in her +khaki, very gracious, but very upstanding, and maintaining the strictest +discipline. No member of the corps entered or left her office without +clapping heels together and saluting. The ambulance about which the +corps revolved, I often met in the streets--empty. But those women had +vision. They saw that England would need them some day. They had faith +in their ability to serve. So on and on they went, training themselves +to higher efficiency in body and mind. And to-day--well, theirs is +always the first ambulance on the spot to care for the injured in the +air-raids. The scoffers have remained to pray. + +If Britain has a lesson for us it is an all-hail to non-official +societies, an encouragement to every idea, a blessing on every effort +which has behind it honesty of purpose. Great Britain's activities are +as refreshingly diversified as her talents. They are not all under +one hat. + +In the training for new industrial openings this same spirit of +non-official service showed itself. In munitions, for instance, private +employers were the first to recognize that they had in women-workers a +labor force worth the cost of training. The best of the skilled men in +many cases were told off to give the necessary instruction. The will to +do was in the learner; she soon mastered even complex processes, and at +the end of a few weeks was doing even better than men in the light work, +and achieving commendable output in the heavy. The suffrage +organizations, whenever a new line of skilled work was opened to women, +established well-equipped centers to give the necessary teaching. Not +until it became apparent that the new labor-power only needed training +to reach a high grade of proficiency, did County Councils establish, at +government expense, technical classes for girls and women. + +[Illustration: Then--the offered service of the Women's Reserve +Ambulance Corps in England was spurned. Now--they wear shrapnel helmets +while working during the Zeppelin raids.] + +Equipment of the army was obviously the first and pressing obligation. +Fields might lie fallow, for food in the early days could easily be +brought from abroad, but men had to be registered, soldiers clothed and +equipped. It was natural, then, that the new workers were principally +used in registration work and in making military supplies. + +But in the second year of the war came the conviction that the contest +was not soon to be ended, and that the matter of raising food at home +must be met. Women were again appealed to. A Land Army mobilized by +women was created. At first this work was carried on under a centralized +division of the National Service Department, but there has been +decentralization and the Land Army is now a department of the Board of +Agriculture. It is headed by Miss M. Talbot as director. Under this +central body are Women's Agricultural Committees in each county, with an +organizing secretary whose duty it is to secure full-time recruits. + +The part-time workers in a locality are obtained by the wife of the +squire or vicar acting as a volunteer registrar. Many of these +part-time workers register to do the domestic work of the lusty young +village housewife or mother while she is absent from home performing her +allotted task on a nearby farm. The full-time recruits are not only +secured by the organizers, but through registrations at every post +office. Any woman can ask for a registration card and fill it out, and +the postmaster then forwards the application to the committee. The next +step is that likely applicants are called to the nearest center for +examination and presentation of credentials. When finally accepted they +are usually sent for six weeks' or three months' training to a farm +belonging to some large estate. The landlord contributes the training, +and the government gives the recruit her uniform and fifteen shillings a +week to cover her board and lodging. At the end of her course she +receives an armlet signifying her rank in the Land Army and is ready to +go wherever the authorities send her. + +The farmer in Great Britain no longer needs to be converted to the value +of the new workers. He knows they can do every kind of farm work as well +as men, and are more reliable and conscientious than boys, and he is +ready, therefore, to pay the required minimum wage of eighteen +shillings a week, or above that amount if the rate ruling in the +district is higher. + +Equally well organized is the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, familiarly +known as the Waacs. The director is Mrs. Chalmers Watson. A would-be +Waac goes to the center in her county for examination, and then is +assigned to work at home or "somewhere in France" according to training +and capacity. She may be fitted as a cook, a storekeeper, a telephone or +telegraph operator, or for signalling or salvage work. Let us not say +she will supplant a man, but rather set a man free for fuller service. + +My niece, a slip of a girl, felt the call of duty at the beginning of +the war. Her brothers were early volunteers in Kitchener's Army. They +were in the trenches and she longed for the sensation of bearing a +burden of hard work. She went to Woolwich Arsenal and toiled twelve +hours a day. She broke under the strain, recuperated, and took up +munition work again. She became expert, and was in time an overseer told +off to train other women. But she was never satisfied, and always +anxious to be nearer the great struggle. She broke away one day and went +to Southampton for a Waac examination, and found herself one of a group +of a hundred and fifty gentlewomen all anxious to enter active service +and all prepared for some definite work. They stood their tests, and +Dolly--that's the little niece's pet name, given to her because she is +so tiny--is now working as an "engine fitter" just behind the fighting +lines. Dainty Dolly, whom we have always treated as a fragile bit of +Sèvres china, clad in breeches and puttees, under the booming of the +great guns, is fitting patiently, part to part, the beating engine which +will lift on wings some English boy in his flight through the blue skies +of France. + +But it must not be supposed that the magnificent service of British +women, devoted, efficient and well-organized from top to bottom, +realized itself without friction, any more than it will here. There were +certainly two wars going on in Great Britain for a long time, and the +internal strife was little less bitter than the international conflict. +The most active center of this contest of which we have heard so little +was in industry, and the combatants were the government, trade unions +and women. The unions were doing battle because of fear of unskilled +workers, especially when intelligent and easily trained; the government, +in sore need of munition hands, was bargaining with the unskilled for +long hours and low pay. Finally the government and the unions +reluctantly agreed that women must be employed; both wanted them to be +skillful, but not too skillful, and above all, to remain amenable. It +has been made clear, too, that women enter their new positions "for the +war only." At the end of hostilities--international hostilities--women +are to hand over their work and wages to men and go home and be content. +Will the program be fulfilled? + +The wishes of women themselves may play some part. How do they feel? +Obviously, every day the war lasts they get wider experience of the +sorrows and pleasures of financial independence. Women are called the +practical sex, and I certainly found them in England facing the fact +that peace will mean an insufficient number of breadwinners to go around +and that a maimed man may have low earning power. The women I met were +not dejected at the prospect; they showed, on the contrary, a spirit not +far removed from elation in finding new opportunities of service. After +I had sat and listened to speech after speech at the annual conference +of the National Union of Women Workers, with delegates from all parts of +the country, presided over by Mrs. Creighton, widow of the late Bishop +of London, there was no doubt in my mind that British women desired to +enter paid fields of work, and regarded as permanent the great increase +in their employment. No regrets or hesitations were expressed in a +single speech, and the solutions of the problems inherent in the new +situation all lay in the direction of equality of preparation and +equality of pay with men. + +The strongest element in the women's trade unions takes the same stand. +The great rise in the employment of women is not regarded as a "war +measure," and all the suggestions made to meet the hardships of +readjustment, such as a "minimum wage for all unskilled workers, men as +well as women," are based on the idea of the new workers being permanent +factors in the labor market. + +The same conclusion was reached in the report presented to the British +Association by the committee appointed to investigate the "Replacement +of Male by Female Labor." The committee found itself in entire +disagreement with the opinion that the increased employment of women was +a passing phase, and made recommendations bearing on such measures as +improved technical training for girls as well as for boys, a minimum +wage for unskilled men as well as women, equal pay for equal work, and +the abolition of "half-timers." But while it was obvious that the +greatest asset of belligerent nations is the labor of women, while +learned societies and organizations of women laid down rules for their +safe and permanent employment, the British Government showed marked +opposition to the new workers. If the Cabinet did not believe the war +would be brief, it certainly acted as if Great Britain alone among the +belligerents would have no shortage of male industrial hands. At a time +when Germany had five hundred thousand women in munition factories, +England had but ten thousand. + +There is no doubt that the country was at first organized merely for a +spurt. Boys and girls were pressed into service, wages were cut down for +women, hours lengthened for men. Government reports read like the +Shaftesbury attacks on the conditions of early factory days. We hear +again of beds that are never cold, the occupant of one shift succeeding +the occupant of the next, of the boy sleeping in the same bed with two +men, and three girls in a cot in the same room. Labor unrest was met at +first by the Munitions War Act prohibiting strikes and lockouts, +establishing compulsory arbitration and suspending all trade-union rules +which might "hamper production." Under the law a "voluntary army of +workers" signed up as ready to go anywhere their labor was needed, and +local munition committees became labor courts endowed with power to +change wage rates, to inflict fines on slackers, and on those who broke +the agreements of the "voluntary army." + +To meet the threatening rebellion, a Health of Munition Workers +Committee under the Ministry of Munitions was appointed to "consider and +advise on questions of industrial fatigue, hours of labor and other +matters affecting the physical health and physical efficiency of workers +in munition factories and workshops." On this committee there were +distinguished medical men, labor experts, members of parliament and two +women, Miss R.E. Squire of the Factory Department and Mrs. H.J. Tennant. + +The committee was guided by a desire to have immense quantities of +munitions turned out, and faced squarely the probability that the war +would be of long duration. Its findings, embodied in a series of +memoranda, have lessons for us, not only for war times, but for peace +times, for all time. + +On a seven day week the verdict was that "if the maximum output is to be +secured and maintained for any length of time, a weekly period of rest +must be allowed." Overtime was advised against, a double or triple shift +being recommended. + +In July, 1916, the committee published a most interesting memorandum on +experiments in the relation of output to hours. In one case the output +was increased eight percent by reducing the weekly hours from +sixty-eight to fifty-nine, and it was found that a decrease to fifty-six +hours per week gave the same output as fifty-nine. It need hardly be +said that there was no change in machinery, tools, raw material or +workers. All elements except hours of work were identical. Twenty-seven +workers doing very heavy work increased their output ten percent by +cutting weekly hours from sixty-one to fifty-five. In a munition plant +employing thirty-six thousand hands it was found that the sick rate +ranged from five to eight percent when the employees were working +overtime, and was only three percent when they were on a double shift. + +The war has forced Great Britain to carry out the findings of this +committee and to consider more seriously than ever before, and for both +men and women, the problem of industrial fatigue, the relation of +accidents to hours of labor, industrial diseases, housing, transit, and +industrial canteens. The munition worker is as important as the soldier +and must have the best of care. + +While the friction in the ranks of industrial women workers was still +far from being adjusted, the government met its Waterloo in the contest +with medical women. The service which they freely offered their country +was at first sternly refused. Undaunted, they sought recognition outside +the mother country. They knew their skill and they knew the soldiers' +need. They turned to hospitable France, and received official +recognition. On December 14, 1914, the first hospital at the front under +British medical women was opened in Abbaye Royaumont, near Creil. It +carries the official designation, "Hôpital Auxiliaire 301." The doctors, +the nurses, the cooks, are all women. One of the capable chauffeurs I +saw running the ambulance when I was in Creil. She was getting the +wounded as they came down from the front. The French Government +appreciated what the women were doing and urged them to give more help. +At Troyes another unit gave the French army its first experience of +nursing under canvas. + +After France had been profiting by the skill of British women for +months, Sir Alfred Keogh, Medical Director General, wisely insisted that +the War Office yield and place a hospital in the hands of women. The +War Hospital in Endell Street, London, is now under Dr. Flora Murray, +and every office, except that of gateman, is filled by women. From the +doctors, who rank as majors, down to the cooks, who rank as +non-commissioned officers, every one connected with Endell Street has +military standing. It indicated the long, hard road these women had +traveled to secure official recognition that the doctor who showed me +over the hospital told me, as a matter for congratulation, that at night +the police brought in drunken soldiers to be sobered. "Every war +hospital must receive them," she explained, "and we are glad we are not +passed over, for that gives the stamp to our official standing." + +It was a beautiful autumn day when I visited Endell Street. The great +court was full of convalescents, and the orderlies in khaki, with veils +floating back from their close-fitting toques, were carefully and +skillfully lifting the wounded from an ambulance. I spoke to one of the +soldier boys about the absence of men doctors and orderlies, and his +quick query was, "And what should we want men for?" It seems that they +always take that stand after a day or two. At first the patient is +puzzled; he calls the doctor "sister" and the orderly "nurse," but ends +by being an enthusiastic champion of the new order. Not a misogynist did +I find. One poor fellow who had been wounded again and again and had +been in many hospitals, declared, "I don't mean no flattery, but this +place leaves nothink wanting." + +The first woman I met on my last visit to England upset my expectation +of finding that war pushed women back into primitive conditions of toil, +crushed them under the idea that physical force rules the world, and +made them subservient. I chanced upon her as she was acting as +ticket-puncher at the Yarmouth station. She was well set-up, alert, +efficient, helpful in giving information, and, above all, cheerful. +There were two capable young women at the bookstall, too. One had lost a +brother at the front, the other her lover. I felt that they regarded +their loss as one item in the big national accounting. They were +heroically cheerful in "doing their bit." + +Throughout my stay in England I searched for, but could not find, the +self-effacing spinster of former days. In her place was a capable woman, +bright-eyed, happy. She was occupied and bustled at her work. She jumped +on and off moving vehicles with the alertness, if not the +unconsciousness, of the expert male. She never let me stand in omnibus +or subway, but quickly gave me her seat, as indeed she insisted upon +doing for elderly gentlemen as well. The British woman had found herself +and her muscles. England was a world of women--women in uniforms; there +was the army of nurses, and then the messengers, porters, elevator +hands, tram conductors, bank clerks, bookkeepers, shop attendants. They +each seemed to challenge the humble stranger, "Superfluous? Not I, I'm a +recruit for national service!" Even a woman doing time-honored womanly +work moved with an air of distinction; she dusted a room for the good of +her country. Just one glimpse was I given of the old-time daughter of +Eve, when a ticket-collector at Reading said: "I can't punch your +ticket. Don't you see I'm eating an apple!" + +One of the reactions of the wider functioning of brain and muscle which +struck me most forcibly was the increased joyfulness of women. They were +happy in their work, happy in the thought of rendering service, so happy +that the poignancy of individual loss was carried more easily. + +This cheerfulness is somewhat gruesomely voiced in a cartoon in _Punch_ +touching on the allowance given to the soldier's wife. She remarks, +"This war is 'eaven--twenty-five shillings a week and no 'usband +bothering about!" We have always credited _Punch_ with knowing England. +Truth stands revealed by a thrust, however cynical, when softened by +challenging humor. + +There was no discipline in the pension system. No work was required. The +case of a girl I met in a country town was common. She was working in a +factory earning eleven shillings a week. A day or two later I saw her, +and she told me she had stopped work, as she had "married a soldier, and +'e's gone to France, and I get twelve and six separation allowance a +week." Never did the strange English name, "separation allowance," seem +more appropriate for the wife's pension than in this girl's story. +Little wonder was it that in the early months of the war there was some +riotous living among soldiers' wives! + +And the comments of women of influence on the drunkenness and waste of +money on foolish finery were as striking to me as the sordid condition +itself. The woman chairman of a Board of Poor Law Guardians in the north +of England told me that when her fellow-members suggested that +Parliament ought to appoint committees to disburse the separation +allowances, she opposed them with the heroic philosophy that women can +be trained in wisdom only by freedom to err, that a sense of +responsibility had never been cultivated in them, and the country would +have to bear the consequences. In reply to my inquiry as to how the +Guardians received these theories, I learned that "they knew she was +right and dropped their plan." + +The faith of leading women that experience would be the best teacher for +the soldier's wife has been justified. A labor leader in the Midlands +told me that an investigation by his trade union showed that only one +hundred women in the ten thousand cases inquired into were mis-spending +their allowances. And when I was visiting a board school in a poor +district of London, and remarked to the head teacher that the children +looked well cared for, she told me that never had they been so well fed +and clothed. There seemed no doubt in her mind that it was best to have +the family budget in the hands of the mother. In the sordid surroundings +of the mean streets of great cities, there is developing in women +practical wisdom and a fine sense of individual responsibility. + +Perhaps of greater significance than just how separation allowances are +being spent is the fact that women have discovered that their work as +housewives and mothers has a value recognized by governments in hard +cash. It makes one speculate as to whether wives in the warring nations +will step back without a murmur into the old-time dependence on one man, +or whether these simple women may contribute valuable ideas towards the +working out of sound schemes of motherhood pensions. + +The women of Great Britain are experiencing economic independence, they +are living in an atmosphere of recognition of the value of their work as +housewives and mothers. Women leaders in all classes give no indication +of regarding pensions or remuneration in gainful pursuits as other than +permanent factors in social development, and much of the best thought of +men as well as women is centered on group experiments in domestic +coöperation, in factory canteens, in municipal kitchens, which are a +natural concomitant to the wider functioning of women. + +Great Britain is not talking about feminism, it is living it. Perhaps +nothing better illustrates the national acceptance of the fact than the +widespread amusement touched with derision caused by the story of the +choleric gentlemen who, on being asked at the time of one of the +government registrations whether his wife was dependent upon him or not, +roared in rage, "Well, if my wife isn't dependent on me, I'd like to +know what man she is dependent on!" + +Only second to Britain's lesson for us in the self-reliance of its +women, and the thorough mobilization of their labor-power and executive +ability, is its lesson in protection for all industrial workers. It +stands as one people against the present enemy, and in its effort does +not fail to give thought to race conservation for the future. + + +[Footnote 2: Through the courtesy of the Editors of _The Outlook_, I am +at liberty to use in this and the following chapter, some of the +material published in an article by me in _The Outlook_ of June +28, 1916.] + + + + +IV + +MOBILIZING WOMEN IN FRANCE + + +Compared with the friction in the mobilization of woman-power in Great +Britain, the readjustment in the lives of women in France was like the +opening out of some harmonious pageant in full accord with popular +sympathy. But who has not said, "France is different!" + +It is different, and in nothing more so than in its attitude toward its +women. Without discussion with organizations of men, without hindrance +from the government, women filled the gaps in the industrial army. It +was obvious that the new workers, being unskilled, would need training; +the government threw open the technical schools to them. A spirit of +hospitality, of helpfulness, of common sense, reigned. + +[Illustration: The French poilu on furlough is put to work harrowing.] + +And it was not only in industry that France showed herself wise. I found +that the government had coöperated unreservedly with all the +philanthropic work of women and had given them a wide sphere in which +they could rise above amateurish effort and carry out plans calling for +administrative ability. + +When the Conseil National des Femmes Françaises inaugurated its work to +bring together the scattered families of Belgium and northern France, +and when the Association pour l'Aide Fraternelle aux Évacués +Alsaciens-Lorrains began its work for the dispersed peoples of the +provinces, an order was issued by the government to every prefect to +furnish lists of all refugees in his district to the headquarters of the +women's societies in Paris. It was through this good will on the part of +the central government that these societies were able to bring together +forty thousand Belgian families, and to clothe and place in school, or +at work, the entire dispersed population of the reconquered districts of +Alsace-Lorraine. + +Nor did these societies cease work with the completion of their initial +effort. They turned themselves into employment bureaus and with the aid +and sanction of the government found work for the thousands of women who +were thrown out of employment. They had the machinery to accomplish +their object, the Council being an old established society organized +throughout the country, and the Association to Aid the Refugees from +Alsace-Lorraine (a nonpartisan name adopted, by the way, at the request +of the Minister of the Interior to cover for the moment the patriotic +work of the leading suffrage society) had active units in every +prefecture. + +One of the admirable private philanthropies was the canteen at the St. +Lazarre station in Paris. I am tempted to single it out because its +organizer, Countess de Berkaim, told me that in all the months she had +been running it--and it was open twenty-four hours of the day--not a +single volunteer had been five minutes late. The canteen was opened in +February, 1915, with a reading and rest room. Six hundred soldiers a day +have been fed. The two big rooms donated by the railway for the work +were charming with their blue and white checked curtains, dividing +kitchen from restaurant and rest room from reading room. The work is no +small monument to the reliability and organizing faculty of +French women. + +It was in France, too, that I found the group of women who realized that +the permanent change which the war was making in the relation of women +to society needed fundamental handling. Mlle. Valentine Thomson, founder +of La Vie Féminine, held that not only was the war an economic struggle +and not only must the financial power of the combatants rest on the +labor of women, but the future of the nations will largely depend upon +the attitude which women take toward their new obligations. Realizing +that business education would be a determining factor in that attitude, +Mlle. Thomson persuaded her father, who was then Minister of Commerce, +to send out an official recommendation to the Chambers of Commerce to +open the commercial schools to girls. The advice was very generally +followed, but as Paris refused, a group of women, backed by the +Ministry, founded a school in which were given courses of instruction in +the usual business subjects, and lectures on finance, commercial law and +international trade. + +Mlle. Thomson herself turned her business gifts to good use in a +successful effort to build up for the immediate benefit of artists and +workers the doll trade of which France was once supreme mistress. +Exhibitions of the art, old and new, were held in many cities in the +United States, in South America and in England. The dolls went to the +hearts of lovers of beauty, and what promised surer financial return, to +the hearts of the children. + +To do something for France--that stood first in the minds of the +initiators of this commercial project. They knew her people must be +employed. And next, the desire to bring back charm to an old art +prompted their effort. Mlle. Thomson fully realizes just what "Made in +Germany" signifies. The peoples of the world have had their taste +corrupted by floods of the cheap and tawdry. Germany has been steadily +educating us to demand quantity, quantity mountains high. There is +promise that the doll at least will be rescued by France and made worth +the child's devotion. + +In industry, as well as in all else, one feels that in France there has +not been so much a revolution as an orderly development. Women were in +munition factories even before the war, the number has merely swelled. +The women of the upper and lower bourgeois class always knew their +husband's business, the one could manage the shop, the other could +bargain with the best of them as to contracts and output. Women were +trained as bookkeepers and clerks under Napoleon I; he wanted men as +soldiers, and so decreed women should go into business. And the woman of +the aristocratic class has merely slipped out of her seclusion as if +putting aside an old-fashioned garment, and now carries on her +philanthropies in more serious and coördinated manner. We know the +practical business experience possessed by French women, and so are +prepared to learn that many a big commercial enterprise, the owner +having gone to the front, is now directed by his capable wife. That is +but a development, too, is it not? For we had all heard long ago of Mme. +Duval, even if we had not eaten at her restaurants, and though we had +never bought a ribbon or a carpet at the Bon Marché, we had heard of the +woman who helped break through old merchant habits and gave the world +the department store. + +But nothing has been more significant in its growth during the war than +the small enterprises in which the husband and wife in the domestic +munition shop, laboring side by side with a little group of assistants, +have been turning out marvels of skill. The man is now in the trenches +fighting for France, and the woman takes command and leads the +industrial battalion to victory. She knows she fights for France. + +A word more about her business, for she is playing an economic part that +brings us up at attention. She may be solving the problem of adjustment +of home and work so puzzling to women. There are just such domestic +shops dotted all over the map of France; in the Paris district alone +there are over eighteen hundred of them. The conditions are so +excellent and the ruling wages so high, that the minimum wage law passed +in 1915 applied only to the sweated home workers in the clothing trade, +and not to the domestic munition shops. + +A commission which included in its membership a trade unionist, sent by +the British government in the darkest days to find why it was that +France could produce so much more ammunition than England, found these +tiny workshops, with their primitive equipment, performing miracles. The +output was huge and of the best. The woman, when at the head, seemed to +turn out more than the man, she worked with such undying energy. The +commission said it was the "spirit of France" that drove the workers +forward and renewed the flagging energies. But even the trade unionist +referred to the absence of all opposition to women on the part of +organizations of men. Perhaps the spirit of France is undying because in +it is a spirit of unity and harmony. + +It seemed to me there was one very practical explanation of the +unmistakable energy of the French worker, both man and woman. The whole +nation has the wise custom of taking meal time with due seriousness. The +break at noon in the great manufactories, as well as in the family +workshop, is long, averaging one hour and a half, and reaching often to +two hours. The French never gobble. Because food is necessary to animal +life, they do not on that account take a puritanical view of it. They +dare enjoy it, in spite of its physiological bearing. They sit down to +it, dwell upon it, get its flavor, and after the meal they sit still and +as a nation permit themselves unabashed to enjoy the sensation of hunger +appeased. That's the common sense spirit of France. + +Of course the worker is renewed, hurls herself on the work again with +ardor, and losing no time through fatigue, throws off an +enormous output. + +Wages perform their material share in spurring the worker. Louis Barthou +says that the woman's average is eight francs a day. Long ago--it seems +long ago--she could earn at best five francs in the Paris district. She +works on piece work now, getting the same rate as men. And think of +it!--this must indeed be because of the spirit of France--this woman +does better than men on the light munition work, and equals, yes, equals +her menfolk on the heavy shells. I do not say this, a commission of men +says it, a commission with a trade union member to boot. The coming of +the woman-worker with the spirit of win-the-war in her heart is the same +in France as elsewhere, only here her coming is more gracious. Twelve +hundred easily take up work on the Paris subway. They are the wives of +mobilized employees. The offices of the Post, the Telegraph and +Telephone bristle with women, of course, for eleven thousand have taken +the places of men. Some seven thousand fill up the empty positions on +the railways, serving even as conductors on through trains. Their number +has swollen to a half million in munitions, and to over half that number +in powder mills and marine workshops; in civil establishments over three +hundred thousand render service; and even the conservative banking world +welcomes the help of some three thousand women. + +[Illustration: Has there ever been anything impossible to French women +since the time of Jeanne d'Arc? The fields must be harrowed--they have +no horses.] + +Out on the land the tally is greatest of all. Every woman from the +village bends over the bosom of France, urging fertility. The government +called them in the first hours of the conflict. Viviani spoke +the word:-- + +"The departure for the army of all those who can carry arms, leaves the +work in the fields undone; the harvest is not yet gathered in; the +vintage season is near. In the name of the entire nation united behind +it, I make an appeal to your courage, and to that of your children, +whose age alone and not their valour, keeps them from the war. + +"I ask you to keep on the work in the fields, to finish gathering in the +year's harvest, to prepare that of the coming year. You cannot render +your country a greater service. + +"It is not for you, but for her, that I appeal to your hearts. + +"You must safeguard your own living, the feeding of the urban +populations and especially the feeding of those who are defending the +frontier, as well as the independence of the country, civilization +and justice. + +"Up, then, French women, young children, daughters and sons of the +country! Replace on the field of work those who are on the field of +battle. Strive to show them to-morrow the cultivated soil, the harvests +all gathered in, the fields sown. + +"In hours of stress like the present, there is no ignoble work. +Everything that helps the country is great. Up! Act! To work! To-morrow +there will be glory for everyone. + +"Long live the Republic! Long live France!" + +Women instantly responded to the proclamation. Only the old men were +left to help, only decrepit horses, rejected by the military +requisition. More than once I journeyed far into the country, but I +never saw an able-bodied man. What a gap to be filled!--but the French +peasant woman filled it. She harvested that first year, she has sowed +and garnered season by season ever since. Men, horses, machinery were +lacking, the debit yawned, but she piled up a credit to meet it by +unflagging toil. + +With equal devotion and with initiative and power of organization the +woman of leisure has "carried on." The three great societies +corresponding with our Red Cross, the Société de Secours aux Blessés, +the Union des Femmes de France, and the Association des Dames +Françaises, have established fifteen hundred hospitals with one hundred +and fifteen thousand beds, and put forty-three thousand nurses in active +service. Efficiency has kept pace with this superb effort, as is +testified to by many a war cross, many a medal, and the cross of the +Legion of Honor. + +Up to the level of her means France sets examples in works of human +salvage worthy the imitation of all nations. The mairie in each +arrondissement has become no less than a community center. The XIV +arrondissement in Paris is but the pattern for many. Here the wife of +the mayor, Mme. Brunot, has made the stiff old building a human place. +The card catalogue carrying information about every soldier from the +district, gives its overwhelming news each day gently to wife or mother, +through the lips of Mme. Brunot or her women assistants. The work of Les +Amis des Orphelins de Guerre centers here, the "adopted" child receiving +from the good maire the gifts in money and presents sent by the +Americans who are generously filling the role of parent. The widows of +the soldiers gather here for comfort and advice. + +And the mairie holds a spirit of experiment. It houses not only courage +and sympathy, but progress. The "XIV" has ventured on a Cuisine +Populaire under Mme. Brunot's wholesome guidance. And so many other +arrondissements have followed suit that Paris may be regarded as making +a great experiment in the municipal feeding of her people. It is not +charity, the food is paid for. In the "XIV" fifteen hundred persons eat +a meal or two at the mairie each day. The charge is seventy-five +centimes--fifteen cents, and one gets a soup, meat and a vegetable, +and fruit. + +The world seems to be counselling us that if we wish to be well and +cheaply fed we must go where there are experts to cook, where buying is +done in quantity, and where the manager knows about nutritive values. + +If a word of praise is extended to the maire of the XIV arrondissement +for his very splendid work, an example to all France, he quickly urges, +"Ah, but Mme. Brunot!" And so it is always, if you exclaim, "Oh, the +spirit of the men of France!" and a Frenchman's ears catch your words, +he will correct, "Ah, but the women!" + +And the women do stand above all other women, they have had such +opportunity for heroism. Whose heart does not beat the faster when the +names Soisson and Mme. Macherez are spoken! The mayor and the council +gone, she assumes the office and keeps order while German shells fall +thick on the town. And then the enemy enters, and asks for the mayor, +and she replies, "Le maire, c'est moi." And then do we women not like to +think of Mlle. Deletete staying at her post in the telegraph office in +Houplines in spite of German bombardments, and calmly facing tormentors, +when they smashed her instruments and threatened her with death. +One-tenth of France in the enemy's hands, and in each village and town +some woman staying behind to nurse the sick and wounded, to calm the +population when panic threatens, to stand invincible between the people +and their conquerors! + +It is very splendid!--the French man holding steady at the front, the +French woman an unyielding second line of defense. But what of France? +Words of praise must not swallow our sense of obligation. Let us with +our hundred millions of people face the figures. The death rate in +France, not counting the military loss, is twenty per thousand, with a +birth rate of eight per thousand. In Paris for the year ending August, +1914, there were forty-eight thousand nine hundred and seventeen births; +in the year ending in the same month, 1916, the births dropped to +twenty-six thousand one hundred and seventy-nine. The total deaths for +that year in all France were one million, one hundred thousand, and the +births three hundred and twelve thousand. + +France is profoundly, infinitely sad. She has cause. I shall never +forget looking into the very depths of her sorrow when I was at Creil. A +great drive was in progress, the wounded were being brought down from +the front, troops hurried forward. Four different regiments passed as I +sat at déjeuner. The restaurant, full of its noonday patrons, was a +typical French café giving on the street. We could have reached out and +touched the soldiers. They marched without music, without song or word, +marched in silence. Some of the men were from this very town; their +little sons, with set faces, too, walked beside them and had brought +them bunches of flowers. The people in the restaurant never spoke above +a whisper, and when the troops passed were as silent as death. There was +no cheer, but just a long, wistful gaze, the soldiers looking into their +eyes, they into the soldiers'. + +But France can bear her burden, can solve her problem if we lift our +full share from her bent shoulders. Her women can save the children if +the older men, relieved by our young soldiers, come back from the +trenches, setting women free for the work of child saving. France can +rebuild her villages if her supreme architects, her skilled workers are +replaced in the trenches by our armies. France can renew her spirit and +save her body if her experts in science, if her poets and artists are +sent back to her, and our less great bare their breasts to the Huns. + + + + +V + +MOBILIZING WOMEN IN GERMANY + + +The military mobilization of Germany was no more immediate and effective +than the call to arms for women. On August 1, 1914, the summons went +out, and German women were at once part of the smooth running machine of +efficiency. + +The world says the Kaiser has been preparing for war for forty years. +The world means that he has been preparing the fighting force. The sword +and guns were to be ready. But the military arm of the nation, the +German government believes, is but the first line of attack; the people +are the second line, and so they, too, in all their life activities, +were not forgotten. The military aristocracy has never neglected the +function of women in the state. The definition of their function may +differ from ours, but that there is a function is recognized, and it is +related to the other vital social organs. + +Slowly, through the last half of the nineteenth century, there had grown +up clubs among German women focusing on a definite bit of work, or +crystallizing about an idea. Germany even had suffrage societies. +Politics, however, were forbidden by the government; women were not +allowed to hang on the fringe of a meeting held to discuss men's +politics. But the women of the Fatherland were free to pool their ideas +in philanthropic and hygienic corners, and venture out at times on +educational highways. The Froebel societies had many a contest with the +government, for to the military mind, the gentle pedagogue's theories +seemed subversive of discipline as enforced by spurs and bayonets. + +These clubs, covering every trade and profession, every duty and every +aspiration of women, were dotted over the German Empire. At last they +drew together in a federation. The government looked on. It saw a +machine created, and believing in thorough organization, no doubt gave +thought to the possibilities of the Bund deutscher, Frauenvereine. At +the outbreak of war, Dr. Gertrud Baumer was president of the Bund. She +was a leader of great ability, marshalling half a million of women. No +other organization was so widespread and well-knit, except perhaps Der +Vaterlandische Frauenverein with its two thousand one hundred and fifty +branches. It was evangelical and military. The Empress was its patron. +Its popular name is the "Armée der Kaiserin." + +There the two great national societies stood--one aristocratic, the +other democratic, one appealing to the ruling class, the other holding +in bonds of fellowship the rich and the poor, the urban and the rural, +the professional and the industrial woman. + +Every belligerent president or premier has faced exactly the same +perplexity. What woman, what society, is to be recognized as leader? The +question has brought beads of perspiration to the foreheads of +statesmen. + +France solved the difficulty urbanely. It said "yes" to each and all. It +promised coöperation and kept the promise. By affably--always affably +and hospitably--accepting this service from one society, and suggesting +another pressing need to its competitor, it sorted out capabilities, and +warded off duplication. Perhaps this did not bring the fullest +efficiency, but the loss was more than made up, no doubt, by a free +field for initiative. Britain ignored all existing organizations of +women, and after a year and a half of puzzlement created a separate +government department for their mobilization. America struck out still +another course. It took the heads of several national societies, bound +them in one committee, to which it gave, perhaps with the idea of +avoiding any danger of friction, neither power nor funds. + +Germany faced the same critical moment for decision. The government +wanted efficient use of woman-power on the land, in the factory, in the +home, and that quickly. It made use of the best existing machinery. Dr. +Gertrud Baumer visited the Ministerium des Innern, and on August 1 she +issued a call for the mobilization of women for service to the +Fatherland in the Nationale Frauendienst. Under the aegis of the +government, with the national treasury behind her, Dr. Baumer summoned +the women of the Empire. By order, every woman and every organization of +women was to fall in line under the Frauendienst in each village and +city for "the duration of the war." [3] + +In each army district, the government appointed a woman as directress, +and by order to town and provincial authorities made the Frauendienst +part of local executive affairs. + +Among the immediate duties laid upon the Frauendienst by the authorities +was the task of registering all needy persons, of providing cheap eating +places, opening workrooms, and setting up nurseries for children, +especially for those who were motherless and those whose fathers had +fallen at the front and whose mothers were in some gainful pursuit. With +these duties went the administrative service of coöperating with the +government in "keeping up an even supply of foodstuffs, and controlling +the buying and selling of food." + +Germany anticipated as did no other belligerent the unemployment which +would follow a declaration of war, and prepared to meet the condition. A +great deal of army work, such as tent sewing, belts for cartridges, +bread sacks, and sheets for hospitals, was made immediately available +for the women thrown out of luxury trades. In the first month of the war +the Frauendienst opened work-rooms in all great centers; machinery was +installed by magic and through the six work-rooms in Berlin alone +twenty-three thousand women were given paid employment in one week. + +Such efforts could not, of course, absorb the surplus labor, for +unemployment was very great. Eighty percent of the women's hat-makers +and milliners were out of work, seventy-two percent of the workers in +glass and fifty-eight percent in china. The Frauendienst investigated +two hundred and fifty-five thousand needy cases, and in Berlin alone +found sixty thousand women who had lost their employment. Charity had to +render help. Here, again, it is an example of the alertness of the +organization and its close connection with the government that the +Berlin magistracy deputed to twenty-three Hilfscommissionen from the +Frauendienst the work of giving advice and charity relief to the +unemployed. Knitting rooms were opened, clothing depots, mending rooms, +where donated clothing was repaired, and in one month fifty-six thousand +orders for milk, five hundred thousand for bread, and three hundred +thousand for meals were distributed for the city authorities. + +The adjustment to war requirements went on more quickly in Germany than +in any other country. Before a year had passed the surplus hands had +been absorbed, and a shortage of labor power was beginning to be felt. + +And now opens the war drama set with the same scene everywhere. Women +hurry forward to take up the burden laid down by men, and to assume the +new occupations made necessary by the organization of the world for +military conflict. To tell of Germany is merely to speak in bigger +numbers. Women in munitions? Of course, well over the million mark. +Trolley conductors? Of course, six hundred in Berlin alone before the +first Christmas. Women are making the fuses, fashioning the big shells, +and at the same heavy machines used by the men. That speaks volumes--the +same heavy machines. Great Britain and France have in every case +introduced lighter machinery for their women. But, whatever the +conditions, in Germany the women are handling high explosives, sewing +heavy saddlery, operating the heaviest drill machines. Women have been +put on the "hardest jobs hitherto filled by men." In the +German-Luxemburg Mining and Furnace Company at Differdingen, they are +found doing work at the slag and blast furnaces which had always +required men of great endurance. They work on the same shifts as the +men, receive the same pay, but are not worked overtime "because they +must go home and perform their domestic duties." + +One feels the weight of the German system. Patient women shoulder double +burdens. They always did. + +In the Post and Telegraph department there is an army of fifty thousand +women. The telephone service is entirely in their hands, and running +more smoothly than formerly. Dr. Käthe Schirmacher declares comfortingly +in the _Kriegsfrau_ that "one must not forget that these women know many +important bits of information--and keep silent." Women have learned to +keep a secret! + +One hundred and eighty nurses, experts with the X-ray, were in the front +line dressing stations in the early days of the war, and before a week +of conflict had passed women were in the Field Post, and Frau Reimer, +organizer of official chauffeurs, was on the western line of attack. + +Agriculture claims more women than any occupation in Germany. They were +always on the farm, perhaps they are happier there now since they +themselves are in command. It is said that "the peasants work in the +boots and trousers of their husbands and ride in the saddle." War has +liberated German women from the collar and put them on horseback! + +But strangest and most unexpected of all is the professional and +administrative use of women. The government has sent women architects +and interior decorators to East Prussia to plan and carry through +reconstruction work. Over a hundred--to be exact, one hundred and +sixteen at last accounts--have taken the places of men in +administrative departments connected with the railways. Many widows who +have shown capacity have been put in government positions of importance +formerly held by their husbands. Women have become farm managers, +superintendents of dairy industries, and representatives of landed +proprietors. + +The disseminating of all instruction and information for women on war +economies was delegated to the League of Women's Domestic Science Clubs. +The Berlin course was held in no less a place than the Abgeordnetenhaus, +and the Herrenhaus opened its doors wide on Rural Women's Day when +Agricultural Week was held at the capital. + +When the full history of the war comes to be written, no doubt one +reason for Germany's marvelous power to stand so long against the world +will be found in her use of every brain and muscle of the nation. This +has been for her no exclusive war. Her entire people to their last ounce +of energy have been engaged. + +And this supreme service on the part of German women seeks democratic +expression. From them comes the clearest, bravest word that has reached +us across the border. The most hopeful sign is this manifesto from the +suffrage organizations to the government: "Up to the present Germany +has stood in the lowest rank of nations as regards women's rights. In +most civilized lands women already have been given a large share in +public affairs. German women have been granted nothing except within the +most insignificant limits. In New Zealand, Australia and most American +States, and even before the war in Finland and Norway, they had been +given political rights; to-day, Sweden, Russia and many other countries +give them a full or limited franchise. The war has brought a full +victory to the women of England, Canada, Russia and Denmark, and large +concessions are within sight in France, Holland and Hungary. + +"Among us Germans not only the national but even the commercial +franchise is denied, and even a share in the industrial and commercial +courts. In the demand for the democratization of German public life our +legislators do not seem even to admit the existence of women. + +"But during the war the cooperation of women in public life has +unostentatiously grown from year to year until to-day the number of +women engaged in various callings in Germany exceeds the number of men. + +"The work they are doing includes all spheres of male activity; without +them it would no longer be possible to support the economic life of the +people. Women have done their full share in the work of the community. + +"Does not this performance of duty involve the right to share in the +building up and extension of the social order? + +"The women protest against this lack of political rights, in virtue both +of their work for the community and of their work as human beings. They +demand political equality with men. They demand the direct, equal and +secret franchise for all legislative bodies, full equality in the +communes and in legal representation of their interests. + +"This first joint pronouncement on women's demands will be followed by +others until the victory of our cause is won." + + +[Footnote 3: "Die Frauenvereine jeder Stadt verbinden sich für die Dauer +des Krieges zur Organization Nationaler Frauendienst die zu Berlin am +1ten August begründet wurde."] + + + + +VI + +WOMEN OVER THE TOP IN AMERICA + + +American women have begun to go over the top. They are going up the +scaling-ladder and out into All Man's Land. Perhaps love of adventure +tempts them, perhaps love of money, or a fine spirit of service, but +whatever the propelling motive, we are seeing them make the venture. + +There is nothing new in our day in a woman's being paid for her +work--some of it. But she has never before been seen in America +employed, for instance, as a section hand on a railway. The gangs are +few and small as yet, but there the women are big and strong specimens +of foreign birth. They "trim" the ballast and wield the heavy "tamping" +tool with zest. They certainly have muscles, and are tempted to use them +vigorously at three dollars a day. + +In the machine shops where more skill than strength is called for, the +American element with its quick wits and deft fingers predominates. +Young women are working at the lathe with so much precision and accuracy +that solicitude as to what would become of the world if all its men +marched off to war is in a measure assuaged. In the push and drive of +the industrial world, women are handling dangerous chemicals in making +flash lights, and T.N.T. for high explosive shells. The American college +girl is not as yet transmuting her prowess of the athletic field into +work on the anvil, as is the university woman in England, but she has +demonstrated her manual strength and skill on the farm with plough +and harrow. + +Women and girls answer our call for messenger service, and their +intelligence and courtesy are an improvement upon the manners of the +young barbarians of the race. Women operate elevators, lifting us with +safety to the seventh heaven, or plunging us with precision to the +depths. There were those at first who refused to entrust their lives to +such frail hands, and there are still some who look concerned when they +see a woman at the lever; but on the whole the elevator "girl" has +gained the confidence of her public, and has gained it by skill, not by +feminine wiles, for even men won't shoot into space with a woman at the +helm whose sole equipment is charm. With need of less skill than the +elevator operator, but more patience and tact in managing human nature, +the woman conductor is getting her patrons into line. We are still a +little embarrassed in her presence. We try not to stare at the +well-set-up woman in her sensible uniform, while she on her part tries +to look unconscious, and with much dignity accomplishes the common aim +much more successfully than do we. She is so attentive to her duties, so +courteous, and, withal, so calm and serious that I hope she will abide +with us longer than the "duration of the war." + +In short, America is witnessing the beginning of a great industrial and +social change, and even those who regard the situation as temporary +cannot doubt that the experience will have important reactions. The +development is more advanced than it was in Great Britain at a +corresponding time, for even before the United States entered the +conflict women were being recruited in war industries. They have opened +up every line of service. There is not an occupation in which a woman is +not found. + +When men go a-warring, women go to work. + +A distinguished general at the end of the Cuban War, enlarging upon the +poet's idea of woman's weeping rôle in wartime, said in a public speech: +"When the country called, women put guns in the hands of their soldier +boys and bravely sent them away. After the good-byes were said there was +nothing for these women to do but to go back and wait, wait, wait. The +excitement of battle was not for them. It was simply a season of anxiety +and heartrending inactivity." Now the fact is, when a great call to arms +is sounded for the men of a nation, women enlist in the industrial army. +If women did indeed sit at home and weep, the enemy would soon conquer. + +The dull census tells the thrilling story. Before our Civil War women +were found in less than a hundred trades, at its close in over four +hundred. The census of 1860 gives two hundred and eighty-five thousand +women in gainful pursuits; that of 1870, one million, eight hundred and +thirty-six thousand. Of the Transvaal at war, this story was told to me +by an English officer. He led a small band of soldiers down into the +Boer country, on the north from Rhodesia, as far as he dared. He "did +not see a man," even boys as young as fifteen had joined the army. But +at the post of economic duty stood the Boer woman; she was tending the +herds and carrying on all the work of the farm. She was the base of +supplies. That was why the British finally put her in a concentration +camp. Her man could not be beaten with her at his back. + +War compels women to work. That is one of its merits. Women are forced +to use body and mind, they are not, cannot be idlers. Perhaps that is +the reason military nations hold sway so long; their reign continues, +not because they draw strength from the conquered nation, but because +their women are roused to exertion. Active mothers ensure a virile race. + +The peaceful nation, if its women fall victims to the luxury which +rapidly increasing wealth brings, will decay. If there come no spiritual +awakening, no sense of responsibility of service, then perhaps war alone +can save it. The routing of idleness and ease by compulsory labor is the +good counterbalancing some of the evil. + +The rapidly increasing employment of women to-day, then, is the usual, +and happy, accompaniment of war. But the development has its opponents, +and that is nothing new, either. Let us look them over one by one. The +most mischievous objector is the person, oftenest a woman, who says the +war will be short, and fundamental changes, therefore, should not be +made. This agreeable prophecy does not spring from a heartening belief +in victory, but only from the procrastinating attitude, "Why get ready?" +To prepare for anything less certain than death seems folly to many of +the sex, over-trained in patient waiting. + +Then there is the official who constantly sees the seamy side of +industrial life and who concludes--we can scarcely blame him--that "it +would be well if women were excluded entirely from factory life." The +bad condition of industrial surroundings bulks large in his mind, and +the value of organized work to us mortals bulks small. We are all too +inclined to forget that the need for work cannot be eliminated, but the +unhealthy process in a dangerous trade can. Clean up the factory, rather +than clean out the women, is a sound slogan. + +And then comes the objector who is exercised as to the effect of paid +work upon woman's charm. Solicitude on this score is often buried in a +woman's heart. It was a woman, the owner of a large estate, who when +proposing to employ women asked how many men she would have to hire in +addition, "to dig, plough and do all the hard work." On learning that +the college units do everything on a farm, she queried anxiously, "But +how about their corsets?" To the explanation, "They don't wear any," +came the regret, "What a pity to make themselves so unattractive!" + +I have heard fear expressed, too, lest sex attraction be lost through +work on army hats, the machinery being noisy and the operative, if she +talk, running the danger of acquiring a sharp, high voice. One could but +wonder if most American women work on army hats. + +Among the women actually employed, I have found without exception a fine +spirit of service. So many of them have a friend or brother "over +there," that backing up the boys makes a strong personal appeal. But +some of the women who have left factory life behind are adopting an +attitude towards the present industrial situation as lacking in vision +as in patriotism. Throughout a long discussion in which some of these +women participated I was able to follow and get their point of view. To +them a woman acting as a messenger, an elevator operator, or a trolley +conductor, was anathema, and the tempting of women into these +employments seemed but the latest vicious trick of the capitalist. The +conductor in her becoming uniform was most reprehensible, and her +evident satisfaction in her job suggested to her critics that she merely +was trying to play a melodramatic part "as a war hero." In any case, the +conductor's occupation was one no woman should be in, "crowded and +pushed about as she is." It was puzzling to know why it was regarded as +right for a woman to pay five cents and be pushed, and unbecoming for +another woman to be paid eighteen dollars and ninety cents a week and +run the risk of a jolt when stepping outside her barrier. + +But the ideals of yesterday fail to make their appeal. It is not the +psychological moment to urge, on the ground of comfort, the woman's +right to protection. The contrast between the trenches and the street +car or factory is too striking. But it is, however, the exact moment to +plead for better care of workers, both women and men, because their +health and skill are as necessary in attaining the national aim as the +soldiers' prowess and well-being. It is the time to advocate the +protection of the worker from long hours, because the experience of +Europe has proved that a greater and better output is achieved when a +short day is strictly adhered to, when the weekly half-holiday is +enjoyed, and Sunday rest respected. The United States is behind other +great industrial countries in legal protection for the workers. War +requirements may force us to see in the health of the worker the +greatest of national assets. Meantime, whether approved or not, the +American woman is going over the top. Four hundred and more are busy on +aeroplanes at the Curtiss works. The manager of a munition shop where +to-day but fifty women are employed, is putting up a dormitory to +accommodate five hundred. An index of expectation! Five thousand are +employed by the Remington Arms Company at Bridgeport. At the +International Arms and Fuse Company at Bloomfield, New Jersey, two +thousand, eight hundred are employed. The day I visited the place, in +one of the largest shops women had only just been put on the work, but +it was expected that in less than a month they would be found handling +all of the twelve hundred machines under that one roof alone. + +The skill of the women staggers one. After a week or two they master the +operations on the "turret," gauging and routing machines. The best +worker on the "facing" machine is a woman. She is a piece worker, as +many of the women are, and is paid at the same rate as men. This woman +earned, the day I saw her, five dollars and forty cents. She tossed +about the fuse parts, and played with that machine, as I would with a +baby. Perhaps it was in somewhat the same spirit--she seemed to +love her toy. + +Most of the testers and inspectors are women. They measure the parts +step by step, and weigh the completed fuse, carrying off the palm for +reliability. The manager put it, "for inspection the women are more +conscientious than men. They don't measure or weigh just one piece, +shoving along a half-dozen untouched and let it go at that. They test +each." That did not surprise me, but I was not prepared to hear that the +women do not have so many accidents as men, or break the machines so +often. In explanation, the manager threw over an imaginary lever with +vigor sufficient to shake the factory, "Men put their whole strength on, +women are more gentle and patient." + +Nor are the railways neglecting to fill up gaps in their working force +with women. The Pennsylvania road, it is said, has recruited some seven +hundred of them. In the Erie Railroad women are not only engaged as +"work classifiers" in the locomotive clerical department, but hardy +Polish women are employed in the car repair shops. They move great +wheels as if possessed of the strength of Hercules. And in the +locomotive shops I found women working on drill-press machines with +ease and skill. Just as I came up to one operator, she lifted an engine +truck-box to the table and started drilling out the studs. She had been +at the work only a month, and explained her skill by the information +that she was Swedish, and had always worked with her husband in their +auto-repair shop. All the other drill-press hands and the "shapers," +too, were Americans whose husbands, old employees, were now "over +there." Not one seemed to have any sense of the unusual; even the little +blond check-clerk seated in her booth at the gates of the works with her +brass discs about her had in a few months' time changed a revolution +into an established custom. She and the discs seemed old friends. Women +are adaptable. + +[Illustration: _Copyright by Underwood and Underwood_ +The daily round in the Erie Railroad workshops.] + +But everywhere I gathered the impression that the men are a bit uneasy. +A foreman in one factory pointed out a man who "would not have voted for +suffrage" had he guessed that women were "to rush in and gobble +everything up." I tried to make him see that it wasn't the vote that +gave the voracious appetite, but necessity or desire to serve. And in +any case, women do not push men out, they push them up. In not a single +instance did I hear of a man being turned off to make a place for a +woman. He had left his job to go into the army, or was advanced to +heavier or more skilled work. + +As to how many women have supplanted men, or poured into the new war +industries, no figures are available. One guess has put it at a million. +But that is merely a guess. I have seen them by the tens, the hundreds, +the thousands. The number is large and rapidly increasing. We may know +that something important is happening when even the government takes +note. The United States Labor Department has recognized the new-comers +by establishing a Division of Women's Work with branches in every State. +It looks as if these bureaus of employment would not be idle, with a +showing of one thousand, five hundred applicants the first week the New +York office was opened. It is to be hoped that this government effort +will save the round pegs from getting into the square holes. + +But even the round peg in the round hole brings difficulties. When Adam +Smith asserted that of all sorts of luggage man was the most difficult +to move, he forgot woman! The instant women are carried into a new +industry, they bring with them puzzling problems. Where shall we put +their coats and picture hats, how shall we cover up their hair, what +shall we feed them with? They must have lockers and rest rooms, caps +and overalls, and above all, canteens. The munition workers, the +conductors, in fact, all women in active work, get prodigiously hungry. +They have made a regiment of dietitians think about calories. Here is +what one of the street railways in New York City offered them on a +given day:-- + +Tomato soup 10c. or with an order 5c. +Roast leg of veal 16c. +Beef 16c. +Lamb fricassee 16c. +Ham steak 16c. +Liver and onions 16c. +Sirloin steak 30c. +Small steak 20c. +Ham and eggs 20c. +Ham omelet 20c. +_Regular dinner_ + Soup, meat, + Vegetable, + Dessert, coffee 25c. +Rice pudding 5c. +Pie 5c. +Cake 5c. +Banana or orange 5c. + +The canteen is open every hour of the twenty-four, and the women +conductors at the end of each run usually take a bite, and then have a +substantial meal during the long break of an hour and a half in the +middle of the ten-hour day. + +Another problem brought to us by women in industry is, how can we house +them? The war industries have drawn large numbers to new centers. The +haphazard accommodation which men win put up with, won't satisfy women. +They demand more, and get more. To attract the best type of women the +munition plants are putting up dormitories to accommodate hundreds of +workers, and are making their plants more attractive, with rest rooms +and hospital accommodation. Take, for instance, the Briggs and Stratton +Company, which in order to draw high grade workers built its new factory +in one of the best sections of Milwaukee. The workrooms are as clean as +the proverbial Dutch woman's doorstep. From the top of the benches to +the ceiling the walls are glass to ensure daylight in every corner, and +by night the system of indirect lighting gives such perfectly diffused +light that not a heavy shadow falls anywhere. And the hospital room and +nurse--well, one would rejoice to have an accident daily! + +The factory may become the exemplar for the home. The professional +woman is going over the top, and with a good opinion of herself. "I can +do this work better than any man," was the announcement made by a young +woman from the Pacific Coast as she descended upon the city hall in an +eastern town, credentials in her hand, and asked for the position of +city chemist. There was not a microbe she did not know to its undoing, +or a deadly poison she could not bring from its hiding place. The town +had suffered from graft, and the mayor, thinking a woman might scare the +thieves as well as the bacteria, appointed the chemist who believed in +herself. And she is just one of many who have been taking up such work. + +Formerly two-thirds of the positions filled by the New York +Intercollegiate Bureau of Occupations were secretarial or teaching +positions; now three-fourths of its applicants have been placed as +physicists, chemists, office managers, sanitary experts, exhibit +secretaries, and the like. The temporary positions used to outnumber the +permanent placements; at present the reverse is true. Of the women +placed, four times as many as formerly get salaries ranging above +eighteen hundred dollars a year. + +The story told at the employment bureaus in connection with professional +societies and clubs such as the Chemists' Club is the same. Women are +being placed not merely as teachers of chemistry or as routine +laboratory workers in hospitals, but also as experimental and control +chemists in industrial plants. In the great rolling mills they are +testing steel, at the copper smelters they are found in the +laboratories. The government has thrown doors wide open to +college-trained women. They are physicists and chemists in the United +States Bureaus of Standards, Mines, and Soils, sanitary experts in +military camps, research chemists in animal nutrition and fertilizers at +state experiment stations. + +But the industrial barrier is the one most recently scaled. Women are +now found as analytical, research or control chemists in the canneries, +in dye and electrical works, in flour and paper mills, in insecticide +companies, and cement works. They test the steel that will carry us +safely on our journeys, they pass upon the chemical composition of the +flavor in our cake, as heads of departments in metal refining companies +they determine the kind of copper battery we shall use, and they have a +finger in our liquid glues, household oils and polishes. + +And the awakened spirit of social responsibility has opened new +callings. The college woman not only is beginning to fill welfare +positions inside the factory, but is acting as protective officer in +towns near military camps. Perhaps one of the newest and most +interesting positions is that of "employment secretary." The losing of +employees has become so serious and general that big industries have +engaged women who devote their time to looking up absentees and finding +out why each worker left. + +And so we see on all hands women breaking through the old accustomed +bounds. + +Not only as workers but as voters, the war has called women over the +top. Since that fateful August, 1914, four provinces of Canada and the +Dominion itself have raised the banner of votes for women. Nevada and +Montana declared for suffrage before the war was four months old, and +Denmark enfranchised its women before the year was out. And when America +went forth to fight for democracy abroad, Arkansas, Michigan, Vermont, +Nebraska, North Dakota, Rhode Island, began to lay the foundations of +freedom at home, and New York in no faltering voice proclaimed full +liberty for all its people. Lastly Great Britain has enfranchised its +women, and surely the Congress of the United States will not lag behind +the Mother of Parliaments! + +The world is facing changes as great as the breaking up of the feudal +system. Causes as fundamental, more wide-spread, and more cataclysmic +are at work than at the end of the Middle Ages. Among the changes none +is more marked than the intensified development in what one may call, +for lack of a better term, the woman movement. The advance in political +freedom has moved steadily forward during the past quarter of a century, +but in the last three years progress has been intense and striking. + +The peculiarity in attainment of political democracy for women has lain +in the fact that while for men economic freedom invariably preceded +political enfranchisement, in the case of women the conferring of the +vote in no single case was related to the stage which the enfranchised +group had attained in the matter of economic independence. Nowhere were +even those women who were entirely lacking in economic freedom, excluded +on that account from any extension of suffrage. Even in discussions of +the right of suffrage no reference has ever been made, in dealing with +women's claim, to the relation, universally recognized in the case of +men, of political enfranchisement to economic status. Serfdom gave way +to the wage system before democracy developed for men, and the colored +man was emancipated before he was enfranchised. For this reason the +coming of women as paid workers over the top may be regarded as +epoch-making. + +In any case, self-determination is certainly a strong element in +attaining any real political freedom. + +Complete service to their country in this crisis may lead women to that +economic freedom which will change a political possession into a +political power. But the requirement is readiness to do, and to do well, +the task which offers. Man-power must give itself unreservedly at the +front. Women must show not only eagerness but fitness to substitute for +man-power. It will hearten the nation, help to make the path clear, if +individual women declare that though the call to them has not yet come +for a definite service, the time of waiting will not be spent in +complaint, nor yet in foolish busy-ness, but in careful and +conscientious training for useful work. + +Each woman must prepare so that when the nation's need arises, she can +stand at salute and say, "Here is your servant, trained and ready." +Women are not driven over the top. Through self-discipline, they go over +it of their own accord. + + + + +VII + +EVE'S PAY ENVELOPE + + +No woman is a cross between an angel and a goose. She is a very human +creature. She has many of man's sins and some virtues of her own. + +Moving up from slavery through all the various forms of +serfdom--attachment to the soil, confinement to a given trade, exclusion +from citizenship, payment in kind, on to full economic freedom, men have +shown definite reactions at each step. Women respond to the +same stimuli. + +The free man is a better worker than slave or serf. So is the free +woman. All the old gibes at her ineptitudes have broken their points +against the actualities of her ability as a wage worker. The free man is +more alert to obligation, more conscientious in performance, than the +bond servant. So is the free woman. With pay envelope, or pension, Eve +is a better helpmate and mother than ever before. + +The free man carries a lighter heart than the villain. So does the free +woman. Men have always borne personal grief more easily than women; +observers remarked the fact. The reason is the same. An absorbing +occupation, ordered and regarded as important, which brings a return +allowing the recipient to patronize what he or she thinks wise, that +brings happiness, not boisterous, but dignified. It may be a holocaust +through which Eve gains that pay envelope, but the material possession +brings gratification nevertheless. It is a tiny straw showing the set of +the wind that leisure class British women, however large their unearned +bank account, show no reluctance to accept pay for their work, and full +responsibility in their new position of employee. + +Women are supposed to have liked to serve for mere love of service, for +love of child, love of husband. There is, of course, many a subtle +relation which can't be weighed and paid for; but toil, even for one's +very own hearthstone, can be valued in hard cash. The daughters of Eve, +no less than the sons of Adam, react happily to a recognition that +expresses itself in a fair wage. + +The verdict comes from all sides that women were never more content. Of +course they are content. The weight of suppression is being lifted. For +many their drudgery is for the first time paid for. Is not that +invigorating? The pay envelope is equal to that of men. Is not that a +new experience giving self-respect? Eve often finds her pay envelope +heavier than that of the man working at her side. Right there in her +hand, then, she holds proof that the old prejudice against her as an +inferior worker is ill-founded. + +Women are finding themselves. Even America's Eve discovers that pains +and aches are not "woman's lot." She is under no curse in the twentieth +century. With eighteen dollars a week for ringing up fares, and a +possible thirty-five for "facing" fuse-parts, nothing can persuade her +to be poor-spirited. She radiates the atmosphere, "I am needed!" Doors +fly open to her. She is welcome everywhere. No one seems to be able to +get too many of her kind. Politicians compete for her favor, employers +quarrel over her. It makes her breathe deep to have the Secretary of the +Navy summon her to the United States arsenals, pay her for her work, and +call her a patriot. + +[Illustration: In the well-lighted factory of the Briggs and Stratton +Company, Milwaukee, the girls are comfortably and becomingly garbed +for work.] + +And with the pay envelope women remain clearly human. Their purchases +often reflect past denials, rather than present needs or even tastes. +When set free one always buys what the days of dependence deprived one +of. One of Boston's leading merchants told me that Selfridge in London +was selling more jaunty ready-to-wear dresses than ever before. It was +part of John Bull's discipline in ante-bellum dependent days to keep his +women folk dowdy. The Lancashire lass with head shawl and pattens, the +wearer of the universal sailor hat, in these days of independence and +pounds, shillings and pence, are taking note of the shop windows. And +John is not turning his eyes away from his women folk in their day of +self-determination. + +But it is not to be concluded that it is all beer and skittles for Eve. +With a pay envelope and a vote come responsibilities. Public sympathy +has backed up laws cutting down long hours of work for women. The trade +unions, with a thought to possible competitors, have favored protecting +them from night work. Has Eve been a bit spoiled? Has she let herself +too easily be classed with children and allowed a line to be drawn +between men and women in industry? Is it a bit of woman's proverbial +logic to demand special protection, and at the same time insist upon +"equal pay for equal work"? + +The hopelessness of attaining the promise of the slogan is well +illustrated in the case of a gray haired woman I once met in a London +printing shop. In her early days she had been one of the women taken on +by the famous printing firm of McCorquodale. That was before protective +legislation applied to women. She became a highly skilled printer, +earning more than any man in the shop. When there was pressure of work +she was always one of the group of experts chosen to carry through the +rush order. That meant on occasion overtime or night work. Then she went +on to tell me how her skill was checked in her very prime. Regulations +as to women's labor were gradually fixed in the law. All the printers in +the shop, she said, favored the laws limiting her freedom but not +theirs. Soon her wages reflected the contrast. Her employer called her +to his office one day and explained, "I cannot afford to pay you as much +as the men any longer. You are not worth as much to me, not being able +to work Saturday afternoon, at night, or overtime." She was put on lower +grade work and her pay envelope grew slight. + +This woman was not discussing the value of shorter working hours, she +was pointing out that "equal pay" cannot rule for an entire group of +workers when restrictions apply to part of the group and not to the +whole body. We meet here, not a theory, but an incontrovertible fact. +Pay is not equal, and cannot be, where conditions are wholly unequal. +Protection for the woman worker means exactly what it would mean for the +alien man if by law he were forbidden to work Saturday afternoon, +overtime or at night, while the citizen worker was without restriction. +The alien would be cut off from advancement in every trade in which he +did not by overwhelming numbers dominate the situation, he would be kept +to lower grade processes, he would receive much lower pay than the +unprotected worker. + +What common sense would lead us to expect in the hypothetical case of an +alien man, has happened for the woman worker. Oddly enough she has not +herself asked for this protection, but it has been urged very largely by +women not of the industrial class. Women teachers, doctors, lawyers, +women of leisure are the advocates of special legislation for industrial +women. And yet in their own case they are entirely reasonable, and ask +no favors. The woman teacher, and quite truly, insists that she works as +hard and as long hours as the man in her grade of service, and on that +sound foundation she builds her just demand for equal pay. Women doctors +and lawyers have never asked for other than a square deal in their +professions. + +It would be well, perhaps, if industrial women were permitted to guide +their own ship. They have knowledge enough to reach a safe harbor. There +was a hint that they were about to assume the helm when the rank and +file of union workers voted down at the conference of the Women's Trade +Union League the resolution proposing a law to forbid women acting as +conductors. It was also suggestive when a woman rose and asked of the +speaker on dangerous trades, whether "men did not suffer from exposure +to fumes, acids and dust." + +Women have so long been urging that they are people, that they have +forgotten, perchance, that men are people also. Men respond to rest and +recreation as do human beings of the opposite sex. All workers need, and +both sexes should have, protection. But if only one sex in industrial +life can have bulwarks thrown up about it, men should be the favored +ones just now. They are few, they are precious, they should be wrapped +in cotton wool. + +The industrial woman should stand unqualifiedly for the exclusion of +children from gainful pursuits. Many years ago the British government +had Miss Collett, one of the Labor Correspondents of the Board of +Trade, make a special study of the influence of the employment of +married women on infant mortality. The object was to prove that there +was direct cause and effect. The investigator, after an exhaustive study +covering many industrial centers, brought back the report, "Not proven." +But the statistics showed one most interesting relation. In districts +where the prevailing custom permitted the employment of children as +early as the law allowed, infant mortality was high, and in districts +where few children were employed, infant mortality was low. No +explanation of this striking revelation was made in the report, but many +who commented on the tables, pointed out that the wide-spread employment +of the population in its early years sapped the vitality of the +community to such an extent that its offspring were weakened. In other +words, the employment of the immature child, more than the employment of +that child when grown and married, works harm to the race. + +The woman with a pay envelope must not, then, be willing to swell the +family budget by turning her children into the wage market. For if she +does, she creates a dangerous competitor for herself, and puts in +certain jeopardy the virility of her nation. But in this war time women +have secured more than new and larger pay envelopes, for each +belligerent has reckoned up the woman's worth as mother in coin of the +realm. It is enough to turn Eve's head--pay and pensions accorded her +all at once. + +Allowances to dependents are more, however, than financial expedients. +They are part of the psychological stage-setting of the Great War. The +fighting man must be more than well-fed, well-clothed, well-equipped, +more than assured of care if ill or wounded; he must have his mind +undisturbed by conditions at home. Governments now know that there must +be no just cause for complaint in the family at the rear, if the man at +the front is to be fully effective. In the interest of the fighting +line, governments dare not leave the home to the haphazard care +of charity. + +And so the great belligerents have adopted systems for an uninterrupted +flow of money aid to the hearthstone. The wife feels dependence on the +nation for which she and her man are making sacrifices, the soldier has +a sense of closer relationship with the country's cause for which he +fights. Content at home and sense of gratitude in the trenches build up +loyalty everywhere. The state allowance answers an economic want and a +psychological necessity. + +It is part of our national lack of technique that we were slow to make +provision for the dependents of enlisted men, and even then were not +whole hearted. It may have been our inherited distrust of the conscript +that led us to feel that only by his volunteering something will a +precious antidote be administered to the spirit of the drafted man. To +protect his individualism from taint, the United States soldier must +bear part of the financial burden. Europe, on the other hand, is working +on a basis of reciprocity. The nation exacts service from the man and +gives complete service to his dependents. In America the man is bound to +serve the community, but the community is not bound to serve him. And +yet in our case there is peculiar need of this even exchange of +obligations. The care of parents in the United States falls directly +upon their children, while some of our allies had, even before the war, +carefully devised laws regulating pensions to the aged. + +But first let us get the simple skeleton of the various allowance laws +in mind. The scale of the allowance in different countries adapts itself +to national standards and varying cost of living. The Canadian allowance +seems the most generous. At least one-half of the soldier's pay is +given directly to his dependents. The government gives an additional +twenty dollars and the donations of the Patriotic Fund bring up the +monthly allowance of a wife with three children to sixty dollars. The +allowance, as might be expected, is low in Italy. The soldier's wife +gets eight-tenths of a lira a day, each child four-tenths lira, and +either a father or mother alone eight-tenths lira, or if both are +living, one and three-tenths lire together. The British allowance is +much higher, the wife getting twelve shillings and sixpence a week. If +she has one child, the weekly allowance rises to nineteen and sixpence; +if two children, to twenty-four and sixpence; if three, to twenty-eight +shillings; and if there are four or more children, the mother receives +three shillings a week for each extra child. + +Between the extremes of Italy and England stands France, the wife +receiving one franc twenty-five centimes a day, each child under sixteen +years of age twenty-five centimes, and a dependent parent seventy-five +centimes. Japan grants no government allowance. A Japanese official, in +response to my inquiry, wrote, "Relations the first and friends the next +try to help the dependents as far as possible, but if they have neither +relatives nor friends who have sufficient means to help them, then the +association consisting of ladies or the municipal officials afford +subvention to them." + +Under the law passed by Congress in October, 1917, an American private +receiving thirty-three dollars a month when on service abroad must allot +fifteen dollars a month to his wife, and the government adds to this +twenty-five dollars, and if there is one child, an additional ten +dollars, with five dollars for each additional child. A man can secure +an allowance from the government of ten dollars a month to a dependent +parent, if he allots five dollars a month. Such are the bare bones of +the allowance schemes of the Allies on the western front. + +In the United States the general policy of exemption boards, as +suggested by the central authorities, is most disciplinary as regards +women. Their capacity for self-support is rigidly inquired into. Our men +are definitely urging women to a position of economic independence. The +aim is, while securing soldiers for the army, to relieve the government +of the expense of dependency on the part of women. There is no doubt +that our men at least are faced toward the future. No less indicative +is it of a new world that the allowance laws of all the western +belligerents recognize common-law marriages. In our own law, marriage is +"presumed if the man and woman have lived together in the openly +acknowledged relation of husband and wife during two years immediately +preceding the date of the declaration of war." And the illegitimate +child stands equal with the legitimate provided the father acknowledges +the child or has been "judicially ordered or decreed to contribute" to +the child's support. + +Men are feminists. Their hearts have softened even towards the wife's +relatives, for the word "parent" is not only broad enough to cover the +father, mother, grandparents or stepfather and mother of the man, but +"of the spouse" also. Thus passeth the curse of the mother-in-law. + +One need not be endowed with the spirit of prophecy to foretell that +"allowances" in war time will broaden out into motherhood pensions in +peace times. It would be an ordinary human reaction should the woman +enjoying a pension refuse to give up, on the day peace is declared, her +quickly acquired habit of holding the purse strings. That would be +accepting international calm at the expense of domestic differences. +The social value of encouraging the mother's natural feeling of +responsibility toward her child by putting into her hands a state +pension is being, let us note, widely tested, and may demonstrate the +wisdom and economy of devoting public funds to mothers rather than to +crêches and juvenile asylums. + +The allowance laws may prove the charter of woman's liberties; +her pay envelope may become her contract securing the right of +self-determination. + + + + +VIII + +POOLING BRAINS + + +"Employ them." This was the advice given to a large conference of women +met to discuss business opportunities for their sex. The advice was +vouchsafed by a young lawyer after the problem of opening wider fields +to women in the legal profession had been looked at from every angle, +only to end in the question, "What can we do to increase their +practice?" She spoke with animation, as if she had found the key to the +situation, "Employ them." Perhaps more self-accusation than +determination to mend their ways was roused by the short and +pointed remark. + +The advice has wider application. Taking thirty names of women at +random, I learned in response to an inquiry that only four had women +physicians, two had women lawyers, and only one, a woman dentist. +Twenty-five women of large real estate holdings had never even for the +most unimportant work secured the services of an architect of their own +sex. Further inquiry brought out the fact that of a long list of +women's clubs and associations which have built or altered property for +their purposes, only one had engaged a woman architect. + +Perhaps it is indicative of a lack of nothing more serious than a sense +of humor, that we women unite and, apparently without embarrassment, +demand that masculine presidents, governors, mayors and legislatures +shall appoint women to office. This unabashed faith in the good will of +men seems not misplaced, for not only do public men show some confidence +in the official capacity of women, but to my inquiry as to whom was due +their opportunities to "get on," business women invariably replied, +"To men." + +However, the loyalty of women to women is increasing, and their +solidarity on sound lines of service is a thing of steady growth. +Thoughtful women, for instance, do not wish a woman put in a position of +responsibility simply because she is a woman, but they are even more +opposed to having a candidate of peculiar fitness overlooked merely +because she is not a man. While the conscientious and poised women are +not willing to urge any and every woman for a given office, they do +tenaciously hold that there are positions which cry aloud for women and +for which the right women should he found. In conquering a fair field, +women will have to pool their brains even more effectively than they +have in the past. + +Our efforts at combination are a mere mushroom growth compared with the +generations of training our big brothers have had in pooling brains. War +and the chase gave them their first lessons in cooperation, nor has war +been a bad teacher for women. + +Just as the Crimean War and our Civil War put Florence Nightingale and +Clara Barton and the trained nurse on the map, this war is bringing the +medical woman to the fore. Women surgeons and doctors, unlike many other +groups, offer themselves fully trained for service. They know they have +something to give, and they know the soldiers' need. + +According to an official statement, the emergency call of the army for +men physicians and surgeons fell two thousand short of being answered. +The necessity of the soldier and the skill of the women will no doubt in +the end be brought effectively together; for although the government of +the United States, like Great Britain in the early days of the war, has +left to ever farseeing France the honor of extending hospitality to +American women doctors, their strong national organization, with a +membership of four thousand, will in time, no doubt, persuade Uncle Sam +to take his plucky women doctors over the top under the Stars and +Stripes! Organization crystallized about an unselfish desire and skilled +ability to serve is irresistible. + +The pooling of the brains of women that has been going on on a +country-wide scale for more than a half-century bears analyzing. These +associations have almost invariably centered about a service to be +rendered. Even the first petition for political enfranchisement urged it +as the "duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves the +elective franchise." Unselfishness draws numbers as a magnet draws steel +filings. The spirit of service lying at the heart of the great national +organizations made possible quick response to new duties immediately +upon our entrance into the war. The suffragists said, We wish to serve +and we are ready for service. The government used their wide-spread net +of local centers for purposes of registrations and war appeals. + +Naturally there were many efforts more foolish than effective in the +universal rush to help. America was not peculiar in this, nor for the +matter of that, were women. War!--it does make the blood course through +the veins. Every generous citizen cries aloud, "What can I do?" Perhaps +men are a little more voluble than women, their emotions not finding +such immediate and approved vent along clicking needles and tangled +skeins of wool. On the whole, the initiative and organizing ability of +women has stood out supremely. + +Of the two departments of the Red Cross which are still left in the +command of women, the Bureau of Nursing, with Miss Delano at its head, +mobilized immediately three thousand of the fourteen thousand nurses +enrolled. The first Red Cross Medical Unit with its full quota of +sixty-five nurses completely equipped stood on European soil before an +American soldier was there. Of the forty-nine units ready for service, +twelve, with from sixty-five to one hundred nurses each, are now in +France. Two of the five units organized for the navy, each with its +forty active nurses and twenty reserves, are established abroad, and two +hundred and thirty nurses are already in active naval service here. Miss +Delano holds constantly in reserve fifteen hundred nurses as emergency +detachments, a reservoir from which some eight hundred have been drawn +for cantonment hospitals. An inflow of nearly one thousand nurses each +month keeps the reservoir ready to meet the drain. + +The Chapter work-rooms sprang up at a call in the night. No one can help +admiring their well-ordered functioning. There may be criticism, +grumbling, but the work-room is moving irresistibly, like a well-oiled +machine. And women are the motive power from start to finish. The +Chapters, with their five million members joined in three thousand units +over the United States, are so many monuments to the ability of women +for detail. Once mobilized, the women have thus far been able to serve +two thousand war hospitals with surgical dressings, and to send abroad +thirteen million separate articles packed carefully, boxed, labelled and +accounted for on their books. + +Not only does this directing of manual work stand to the credit of the +Chapters, but they have given courses of lectures in home nursing and +dietetics to thirty-four thousand women, and in first aid; ten thousand +classes have been held and seventy-five thousand certificates issued to +the proficient. Certainly one object of the Red Cross, "to stimulate the +volunteer work of women," has been accomplished. + +It is difficult to understand why, with such examples of women's +efficiency before it, the Red Cross, founded by Clara Barton, places +merely two bureaus in the hands of a woman, has chosen no woman as an +officer, has put but one woman on its central and executive committee, +and not a single woman on its present controlling body, the War Council. +It may be that the protest against the centralization of all volunteer +effort in the Red Cross, in spite of President Wilson's appeal, was due +to the fact that women feared that their energies, running to other +lines than nursing and surgical dressings, would be entirely +sidetracked. + +The honor of the splendid war work of the Young Women's Christian +Association belongs to women. The War Work Council of the National Board +of Young Women's Christian Associations shows an example of how +immediately efficient an established organization can be in an +emergency. As one sees its great War Fund roll up, one exclaims, "What +money raisers women are!" The immediate demands upon the fund are for +Hostess Houses at cantonments where soldiers can meet their women +visitors, dormitories providing emergency housing for women employees at +certain army centers, the strengthening of club work among the younger +girls of the nation, profoundly affected by war conditions, and the +sending of experienced organizers to coöperate with the women leaders +of France and Russia and to install nurses' huts at the base hospitals +of France. It makes one's heart beat high to think of women spending +millions splendidly, they who have always been told to save pennies +frugally! Well, those hard days were times of training; women learned +not to waste. + +A very worthy pooling of brains, because springing up with no tradition +behind it, was the National League for Woman's Service. In six months it +drew to itself two hundred thousand members and built organizations in +thirty-nine States, established classes to train women for the new work +opening to them, opened recreation centers and canteens at which were +entertained on a single Sunday, at one center, eighteen hundred soldiers +and sailors. So excellent was its Bureau of Registration and Information +for women workers that the United States Department of Labor took over +not only the files and methods of the Woman's League for Service, but +the entire staff with Miss Obenauer at its head. If imitation is the +sincerest flattery, what shall we say of complete adoption of work and +workers, with an honorable "by your leave" and outspoken praise! And +nothing could show a finer spirit of service than this yielding up of +work initiated by a civil society and the willing passing of it into +government hands. + +Not only the Labor Department has established a special women's division +with a woman at its head, but the Ordnance Office of the War Department +has opened in its Industrial Service Section a woman's division, putting +Miss Mary Van Kleeck in charge. + +But still our government lags behind our Allies in mobilizing woman's +power of initiative and her organizing faculty. The Woman's Committee +of the Council of National Defense, appointed soon after the outbreak of +war, still has no administrative power. As one member of the Committee +says, "We are not allowed to do anything without the consent of the +Council of National Defense. There is no appropriation for the Woman's +Committee. We are furnished with headquarters, stationery, some printing +and two stenographers, but nothing more. It is essential that we raise +money to carry on the other expenses. The great trouble is that now, as +always, men want women to do the work while they do the overseeing." + +[Illustration: The women of the Motor Corps of the National League for +Woman's Service refuting the traditions that women have neither strength +nor endurance.] + +Perhaps holding the helm has become second nature to men simply because +they have held the helm so long, but I am inclined to think they have a +very definite desire to have women help steer the ship. Surely the +readiness with which they are sharing their political power with women, +would seem to indicate their wish for cooperation on a plan of +perfect equality. + +In any case, it is not necessary to hang on the skirts of government. +America has always shown evidence of greater gift in private enterprise +than state action. Perhaps women will demonstrate the national +characteristic. It was farsightedness and enterprise that led the +Intercollegiate Bureaus of Occupations, societies run for women by +women, to strike out in this crisis and open up new callings for their +clients, and still better, to persuade colleges and schools to modify +curricula to meet the changed demands. + +Women are often passed over because they are not prepared. + +The Bureaus have found the demand for women in industrial chemistry and +physics, for instance, to be greater than the supply because the +graduates of women's colleges have not been carried far enough in +mathematics, and in chemistry have been kept too much to theoretical +text-book work. For example, the head of a certain industry was willing +to give the position of chemist at his works to a woman. He needed some +one to suggest changes in process from time to time, and to watch waste. +He set down eight simple problems such as might arise any day in his +factory for the candidates to answer. Some of the women, all college +graduates, who had specialized in chemistry, could not answer a single +problem, and none showed that grip of the science which would enable +them to give other than rule of thumb solutions. He engaged a man. + +In answering the questionnaire which the New York Bureau of Occupations +sent to one hundred and twenty-five industrial plants, the manager in +almost every case replied, in regard to the possibility of employing +women in such positions as research or control chemists, that applicants +were "badly prepared." As hand workers, too, women are handicapped by +lack of knowledge of machinery. In this tool age, high school girls are +cut off from technical education, although they are destined to carry on +in large measure our skilled trades. I am told that in Germany many +factories had to close because only women were available as managers, +and they had not been fitted by business and technical schools for +the task. + +If women individually are looking for a soft place, if they are afraid, +as one manager expressed it, "to put on overalls and go into a vat," +even when their country is so in need of their service, it is futile for +them to ask collectively for equal opportunity and equal pay; if they +individually fail to prepare as for a life work, regarding themselves as +but temporarily in business or a profession, their collective demand +upon the world for a fair field and no favor will be as ineffective as +illogical. + +The doors stand wide open. It rests with women themselves as to whether +they shall enter in. + +To the steady appeals of the employment bureaus, backed by the stern +facts of life, the colleges are yielding. On examination I found that +curricula are already being modified. None but the sorriest pessimist +could doubt the nature of the final outcome, on realizing the pooling of +brains which is going on in such associations as the Intercollegiate +Bureau of Occupations and the League for Business Opportunities. They +work to the end of having young women not only soundly prepared for the +new openings, but sensitive to the demands of a world set towards +stern duty. + +Not only is there call for a pooling of brains to look after the timid +and unready, but there is need of combination to open the gates for the +prepared and brave. Few who cheered the Red Cross nurses as they made +their stirring march on Fifth Avenue, knew that those devoted women +would, on entering the Military Nurse Corps, find themselves the only +nurses among the Allies without a position of honor. The humiliation to +our nurses in placing them below the orderlies in the hospitals is not +only a blow to their esprit de corps, but a definite handicap to their +efficiency. A nurse who was at the head of the nursing staff in a state +hospital wrote from the front: "There is one thing the Nursing Committee +needs to work for, and work hard, too, and that is, to make for nurses +the rank of lieutenant. The Canadians have it, why not the Americans? +You will find that it will make a tremendous difference. You see, there +are no officers in our nursing personnel. One of our staff says we are +the hired extras! It is really a great mistake." Uncle Sam may merely be +waiting for a concentrated drive of public opinion against his tardy +representatives. + +[Illustration: Down the street they come, beginning their pilgrimage of +alleviation and succor on the battlefields of France.] + +And why should it be necessary to urge that while scores of young men +are dashing to death in endeavors to learn to fly, there are women +unmobilized who know how to soar aloft in safety? They have never, it is +true, been submitted to laboratory tests in twirlings and twistings, but +they reach the zenith. Two carried off the records in long distance +flights, but both have been refused admission to the Flying Corps. Will +it need a campaign to secure for our army this efficient service? Must +women pool their brains to have Ruth Law spread her protecting wings +over our boys in France? + +To any one who realizes the significance of the military situation as it +stands, and who is cognizant of the contrast between Germany's use of +her entire people in her national effort, and the slow mobilization of +woman-power among the Allies and entire lack of anything worthy the name +of mobilization of the labor-power of women in the United States, there +will come a determination to bury every jealousy between woman and +woman, all prejudice in men, to cut red tape in government, with the one +object of combining all resources. + +The full power of our men must be thrown into military effort. And, +then, if as a nation we have brains to pool, we will not stand niggling, +but will throw women doctors in to render their service, grant to the +nurse corps what it needs to ensure efficiency, throw open the technical +schools to girls as well as to boys, modify the college course to meet +the facts of life. Each woman unprepared is a national handicap, each +prejudice blocking the use of woman-power is treachery to our cause. + +As to the final outcome of united thought and group action among women, +no one can doubt. Contacts will rub off angles, capable service will +break down sex prejudice and overcome government opposition. But there +is not time to wait for the slow development of "final outcomes." + +Women must pool their brains against their own shortcomings, and in +favor of their own ability to back up their country now and here. + + + + +IX + +"BUSINESS AS USUAL" + + +It is a platitude to say that America is the most extravagant nation on +earth. The whole world tells us so, and we do not deny it, being, +indeed, a bit proud of the fact. Who is there among us who does not +respond with sympathetic understanding to the defense of the bride +reprimanded for extravagance by her mother-in-law (women have +mothers-in-law), "John and I find we can do without the necessities of +life. It's the luxuries we must have." One of the obstacles to complete +mobilization of our country is extravagance. And at the center of this +national failing sits the American woman enthroned. + +Europe found it could not allow old-time luxury trades to go on, if the +war was to be won. "Business as usual" is not in harmony with victory. + +I remember the first time I heard the slogan, and how it carried me and +everyone else away. The Zeppelins had visited London the night before. +A house in Red Lion Mews was crushed down into its cellar, a heap of +ruins. Every pane of glass was shattered in the hospitals surrounding +Queen's Square, and ploughed deep, making a great basin in the center of +the grass, lay the remnants of the bomb that had buried itself in the +heart of England. The shops along Theobald's Road were wrecked, but in +the heaps of broken glass in each show window were improvised signs such +as, "Don't sympathize with us, buy something." The sign which was +displayed oftenest read, "Business as usual." + +The first I noticed was in the window of a print shop, the owner a +woman. I talked to her through the frame of the shattered glass. She +looked very pale and her face was cut, but she and everyone else was +calm. And no one was doing business as usual more composedly than a wee +tot trudging along to school with a nasty scratch from a glass splinter +on her chubby cheek. + +"Business as usual" expressed the fine spirit, the courage, the +determination of a people. As the sporting motto of an indomitable race, +it was very splendid. But war is not a sport, it is a cold, hard +science, demanding every energy of the nation for its successful +pursuit. In proportion as our indulgence in luxury has been greater +than that of any European nation, our challenge to every business must +be the more insistent. There must be a straight answer to two questions: +Does this enterprise render direct war service, or, if not, is it +essential to the well-being of our citizens? + +But the discipline will not come from the gods. Nor will our government +readily turn taskmaster. The effort must come largely as +self-discipline, growing into group determination to win the war and the +conviction that it is impossible to achieve victory and conserve the +virility of our people, if any considerable part of the community +devotes its time, energy and money to creating useless things. A nation +can make good in this cataclysm only if it centers its whole power on +the two objects in view: military victory, and husbanding of life and +resources at home. + +Let me hasten to add that the act of creating a thing does not include +only the processes of industry. The act of buying is creative. The riot +of luxury trades in the United States will not end so long as the +American woman remains a steady buyer of luxuries. The mobilization of +women as workers is no more essential to the triumph of our cause, than +the mobilization of women for thrift. The beginning and end of saving +in America rests almost entirely in the hands of women. They are the +buyers in the working class and in the professional class. Among the +wealthy they set the standard of living. + +Practically every appeal for thrift has been addressed to the rich. I am +not referring to the supply of channels into which to pour savings, but +to appeals to make the economies which will furnish the means to buy +stamps or bonds. Those appeals are addressed almost wholly to the +well-to-do, as for example, suggestions as to reducing courses at dinner +or cutting out "that fourth meal." + +Self-denial, no doubt, is supposed to be good for the millionaire soul, +but to such it is chiefly recommended, I think, as an example sure of +imitation. What the rich do, other women will follow, is the idea. But +the steady insistence that we fight in this war for democracy has put +into the minds of the people very definite demands for independence and +for freedom. + +In such a democratic world the newly adopted habits of the wealthy will +not prove widely convincing. Economy needs other than an +aristocratic stimulus. + +[Illustration: How can business be "as usual" when in Paris there are +about 1800 of these small workshops where a woman dips Bengal Fire and +grenades into a bath of paraffin!] + +I do not mean to under-estimate the value of economy in the well-to-do +class. There is no doubt that shop windows on Fifth Avenue are a severe +commentary upon our present intelligence and earnestness of purpose. No +one, I think, would deny that it would be a service if the woman of +fashion ceased to drape fur here, there and everywhere on her gowns +except where she might really need the thick pelt to keep her warm, and +instead saved the price of the garment which serves no purpose but that +of display, and gave the money in Liberty Bonds to buy a fur-lined coat +for some soldier, or food for a starving baby abroad. And overburdened +as the railways are with freight and ordinary passenger traffic, I am +sure the general public will not fail to appreciate to the full a +self-denial which leads patrons of private cars, Pullman and dining +coaches to abandon their self-indulgence. + +Undoubtedly economy among the rich is of value. I presume few would +gainsay that it would have been well for America if the use of private +automobiles had long since ceased, and the labor and plants used in +their making turned to manufacturing much-needed trucks and ambulances. +But while not inclined to belittle the work of any possible saving and +self-sacrifice on the part of those of wealth, it seems to me that the +most fruitful field for war economy lies among simple people. Thrift +waits for democratization. + +We of limited means hug some of the most extravagant of habits. The +average working-class family enjoys none of the fruits of coöperation We +keep each to our isolated family group, while the richer a person is the +more does she gather under her roof representatives of other families. +Her cook may come from the Berri family, the waitress may be an +Andersen, the nurse an O'Hara. + +The poor might well practice the economy of fellowship. + +The better-off live in apartment houses where the economy of central +heating is practised, while the majority of the poor occupy tenements +where the extravagance of the individual stove is indulged in. The +saving of coal is urged, but the authorities do not seek to secure for +the poor the comfort of the true method of fuel saving. + +The richer a family is, the more it saves by the use of skilled service. +The poor, clinging to their prejudices and refusing to trust one +another, do not profit by coöperative buying, or by central kitchens run +by experts. Money is wasted by amateurish selection of food and +clothing, and nutritive values are squandered by poor cooking. + +Unfortunately Uncle Sam does not suggest how many War Saving Stamps +could be bought as a result of economy along these lines. + +The woman with the pay envelope may democratize thrift. She knows how +hard it is to earn money, and has learned to make her wages reach a long +way. Then, too, she has it brought home to her each pay day that health +is capital. She finds that it is economy to keep well, for lost time +brings a light pay envelope. Every woman who keeps herself in condition +is making a war saving. There has been no propaganda as yet appealing to +women to value dress according to durability and comfort rather than +according to its prettiness, to bow to no fashion which means the +lessening of power. To corset herself as fashion dictates, to prop +herself on high heels, means to a woman just so much lost efficiency, +and even the most thoughtless, if appealed to for national saving, might +learn to turn by preference in dress, in habits, in recreation, to the +simple things. + +The Japanese, I am told, make a ceremony of going out from the city to +enjoy the beauties of a moonlight night. We go to a stuffy theatre and +applaud a night "set." Nature gives her children the one, and the +producer charges his patrons for the other. A propaganda of democratic +war economy would teach us to delight in the beauties of nature. + +In making the change from business as usual to economy, Europe suffered +hardship, because although the retrenchments suggested were fairly +democratic it had not created channels into which savings might be +thrown with certainty of their flowing on to safe expenditures. Europe +was not ready with its great thrift schemes, nor had the adjustments +been made which would enable a shop to turn out a needed uniform, let us +say, in place of a useless dress. + +Definite use of savings has been provided for in the United States. The +government needs goods of every kind to make our military effort +successful. Camps must be built for training the soldiers, uniforms, +guns and ammunition supplied. Transportation on land and sea is called +for. The government needs money to carry on the industries essential to +winning the war. + +If a plucky girl who works in a button factory refuses to buy an +ornament which she at first thought of getting to decorate her belt, and +puts that twenty-five cents into a War Saving Stamp, all in the spirit +of backing up her man at the front, she will not find herself thrown +out of employment; instead, while demands for unnecessary ornamental +fastenings will gradually cease, she will be kept busy on +government orders. + +Profiting by the errors of those nations who had to blaze out new paths, +the United States knit into law, a few months after the declaration of +war, not only the quick drafting of its man-power for military service, +but methods of absorbing the people's savings. If we neither waste nor +hoard, we will not suffer as did Europe from wide-spread unemployment. +There is more work to be done than our available labor-power can meet. + +There is nothing to fear from the curtailment of luxury; our danger lies +in lack of a sound definition of extravagance. Uncle Sam could get more +by appeals to simple folk than by homilies preached to the rich. The +Great War is a conflict between the ideals of the peoples. 'Tis a +people's war, and with women as half the people. The savings made to +support the war must needs, then, be made by the people, for the people. + +There has been no compelling propaganda to that end. The suggestion of +mere "cutting down" may be a valuable goal to set for the well-to-do, +but it is not a mark to be hit by those already down to bed rock. The +only saving possible to those living on narrow margins is by +coöperation, civil or state. + +It is a mad extravagance, for instance, to kill with autos children at +play in the streets. A saving of life could easily be achieved through +group action, by securing children's attendants, by opening play-grounds +on the roofs of churches and public buildings, by shutting off streets +dedicated to the sacred right of children to play. This would be a war +saving touching the heart and the enthusiasm of the people. + +Central municipal heating is not a wild dream, but a recognized economy +in many places. Municipal kitchens are not vague surmisings, but facts +achieved in the towns of Europe. They are forms of war thrift. In +America no such converting examples of economy are as yet given, and not +an appeal has been made to women to save through solidarity. + +Uncle Sam has been commendably quick and wise in offering a reservoir to +hold the tiny savings, but slow in starting a democratic propaganda +suggesting ways of saving the pennies. + +If business as usual is a poor motto, so is life as usual, habits as +usual. + + + + +X + +"AS MOTHER USED TO DO" + + +Man's admiration for things as mother used to do them is as great an +obstacle as business as usual in the path of winning the war and +husbanding the race. The glamour surrounding the economic feats of +mother in the past hides the shortcomings of today. + +I once saw one of her old fortresses, a manor home where in bygone days +she had reigned supreme. In the court yard was the smoke house where she +cured meat and fish. In the cellar were the caldrons and vats where long +ago she tried tallow and brewed beer. And there were all the utensils +for dealing with flax. In the garret I saw the spindles for spinning +cotton and wool, and the hand looms for weaving the homespun. In her +day, mother was a great creator of wealth. + +But then an economic earthquake came. Foundations were shaken, the roof +was torn off her domestic workshop. Steam and machinery, like cyclones, +carried away her industries, and nothing was left to her but odds and +ends of occupations. + +Toiling in the family circle from the days of the cave dwellers, mother +had become so intimately associated in the tribal mind with the +hearthstone that the home was called her sphere. Around this segregation +accumulated accretions of opinion, layer on layer emanating from the +mind of her mate. Let us call the accretions the Adamistic Theory. Its +authors happened to be the government and could use the public treasury +in furtherance of publicity for their ideas set forth in hieroglyphics +cut in stone, or written in plain English and printed on the front page +of an American daily. + +One of the few occupations left to mother after the disruption of her +sphere at the end of the eighteenth century was the preparation of food. +In the minds of men, food, from its seed sowing up to its mastication, +has always been associated with woman. Mention food and the average man +thinks of mother. That is the Adam in him. And so, quite naturally, one +must first consider this relation of women to food in the +Adamistic Theory. + +[Illustration: Countess de Berkaim and her canteen in the Gare de St. +Lazarre, Paris.] + +When the world under war conditions asked to be fed, Adam, running true +to his theory, pointed to mother as the source of supply, and declared +with an emphasis that came of implicit faith, that the universe need +want for nothing, if each woman would eliminate waste in her kitchen and +become a voluntary and obedient reflector of the decisions of state and +national food authorities. This solution presupposed a highly developed +sense of community devotion in women running hand in hand with entire +lack of gift for community action. Woman, it was expected, would display +more than her proverbial lack of logic by embracing with enthusiasm +state direction and at the same time remain an exemplar of +individualistic performance. The Adamistic scheme seems still further to +demand for its smooth working that the feminine group show +self-abnegation and agree that it is not itself suited to reason out +general plans. + +It is within the range of possibility, however, that no comprehensive +scheme of food conservation or effective saving in any line can be +imposed on women without consulting them. The negro who agreed "dat de +colored folk should keep in dar places," touched a fundamental note in +human nature, over-running sex as well as racial boundaries, when he +added, "and de colored folk must do de placin'." It might seem to run +counter to this bit of wisdom for women to be told that the welfare of +the world depends upon them, and then for no woman to be given +administrative power to mobilize the group. + +But the contest between man's devotion to the habits of his ancestry in +the female line, and the ideas of his very living women folk, is as +trying to him as it is interesting to the outside observer. The +conflicting forces illustrate a universal fact. It is always true that +the ruling class, when a discipline and a sacrifice are recognized as +necessary, endeavors to make it appear that the new obligation should be +shouldered by the less powerful. For instance, to take an illustration +quite outside the domestic circle, when America first became convinced +that military preparation was incumbent upon us, the ruling class would +scarcely discuss conscription, much less adopt universal service. That +is, it vetoed self-discipline. In many States, laws were passed putting +off upon children in the schools the training which the voting adults +knew the nation needed. + +In the same way, when food falls short and the victualing of the world +becomes a pressing duty, the governing class adopts a thesis that a +politically less-favored group can, by saving in small and painful ways, +accumulate the extra food necessary to keep the world from starving. +The ruling class seeks cover in primitive ideas, accuses Eve of +introducing sin into the world, and calls upon her to mend her +wasteful ways. + +Men, of course, know intellectually that much food is a factory product +in these days, but emotionally they have a picture of mother, still +supplying the family in a complete, secret, and silent manner. + +This Adamistic emotion takes command at the crisis, for when human +beings are suddenly faced with a new and agitating situation, primitive +ideas seize them. Mother, it is true, did create the goods for immediate +consumption, and so the sons of Adam, in a spirit of admiration, doffing +their helmets, so to speak, to the primitive woman, turn in this time of +stress and call confidently upon Eve's daughters to create and save. The +confidence is touching, but perhaps the feminine reaction will not be, +and perchance ought not to be just such as Adam expects. + +Women have passed in aspiration, and to some extent in action, out of +the ultra-individualistic stage of civilization. + +The food propaganda reflects the hiatus in Adam's thought. I have looked +over hundreds of publications issued by the agricultural departments +and colleges of the various States. They tell housewives what to "put +into the garbage pail," what to "keep out of the garbage pail," what to +substitute for wheat, how to make soap, but, with a single exception, +not a word issued suggests to women any saving through group action. + +This exception, which stood out as a beacon light in an ocean of +literature worthy of the Stone Age, was a small pamphlet issued by the +Michigan Agricultural College on luncheons in rural schools. Sound +doctrine was preached on the need of the children for substantial and +warm noon meals, and the comparative ease and economy with which such +luncheons could be provided at the school house. Children can of course +be better and more cheaply fed as a group than as isolated units +supplied with a cold home-prepared lunch box. And yet with the whole +machinery of the state in his hands, Adam's commissions, backed by the +people's money, goad mother on to isolated endeavor. She plants and +weeds and harvests. She dries and cans, preserves and pickles. Then she +calculates and perchance finds that her finished product is not always +of the best and has often cost more than if purchased in the +open market. + +It may be the truest devotion to our Allies to challenge the +individualistic rôle recommended by Adam to mother, for it will hinder, +not help, the feeding of the world to put women back under eighteenth +century conditions. Food is short and expensive because labor is short. +And even when the harvest is ripe, the saving of food cannot be set as a +separate and commendable goal, and the choice as to where labor shall be +expended as negligible. It is a prejudiced devotion to mother and her +ways which leads Adam in his food pamphlets to advise that a woman shall +sit in her chimney corner and spend time peeling a peach "very thin," +when hundreds of bushels of peaches rot in the orchards for lack of +hands to pick them. + +Just how wide Adam's Eve has opened the gate of Eden and looked out into +the big world is not entirely clear, but probably wide enough to glimpse +the fact that all the advice Adam has recently given to her runs counter +to man's method of achievement. Men have preached to one another for a +hundred years and more and practiced so successfully the concentration +in industry of unlimited machinery with a few hands, that even mother +knows some of the truths in regard to the creation of wealth in the +business world, and she is probably not incapable of drawing a +conclusion from her own experience in the transfer of work from the +home to the factory. + +If they are city dwellers, women have seen bread and preserves +transferred; if farm dwellers, they have seen the curing of meat and +fish transferred, the making of butter and cheese. They know that +because of this transfer the home is cleaner and quieter, more people +better fed and clothed, and the hours of the factory worker made shorter +than those "mother used to work." With half an eye women cannot fail to +note that the labor which used to be occupied in the home in +interminable hours of spinning, baking and preserving, has come to +occupy itself for regulated periods in the school, in business, in +factory or cannery. And lo, Eve finds herself with a pay envelope able +to help support the quieter, cleaner home! + +All this is a commonplace to the business man, who knows that the +evolution has gone so far that ten percent of the married women of +America are in gainful pursuits, and that capital ventured on apartment +hotels brings a tempting return. + +But the Adamistic theory is based on the dream that women are +contentedly and efficiently conducting in their flats many occupations, +and longing to receive back into the life around the gas-log all those +industries which in years gone by were drawn from the fireside and +established as money making projects in mill or work-shop. And so Adam +addresses an exhortation to his Eve: "Don't buy bread, bake it; don't +buy flour, grind your own; don't buy soap, make it; don't buy canned, +preserved, or dried food, carry on the processes yourself; don't buy +fruits and vegetables, raise them." + +Not a doubt seems to exist in Adam's mind as to the efficiency of +functioning woman-power in this way. According to the Adamistic theory, +work as mother used to do it is unqualifiedly perfect. This flattering +faith is naturally balm to women's hearts, and yet there are skeptics +among them. When quite by themselves women speculate as to how much of +the fruit and vegetables now put up in the home will "work." + +They smile when the hope is expressed that the quality will rise above +the old-time domestic standard. The home of the past was a beehive in +which women drudged, and little children were weary toilers, and the +result was not of a high grade. Statistics have shown that seventy-five +percent of the home-made bread of America was a poor product. I lived as +a child in the days of home-made bread. Once in so often the batch of +bread "went sour," and there seemed to be an unfailing supply of stale +bread which "must be eaten first." Those who cry out against a city of +bakers' bread, have never lived in a country of the home-made loaf. It +is the Adamistic philosophy, so complimentary to Eve, that leads us to +expect that all housewives can turn out a product as good as that of an +expert who has specialized to the one end of making bread, and who is +supplied with expensive equipment beyond the reach of the individual to +possess. But there are rebellious consumers who point out that the baker +is under the law, while the housewife is a law unto herself. Against the +baker's shortcomings such brave doubters assure us we have redress, we +can refuse to patronize him; against the housewife there is no appeal, +her family must swallow her product to the detriment of digestion. + +It may be the brutal truth, taking bread as the index, that only a +quarter of the processes carried on in the home turn out satisfactorily, +while of the other three-quarters, a just verdict may show that mother +gets a "little too much lye" in the soap, cooks the preserves a "little +too hard," "candies the fruit just a little bit," and grinds the flour +in the mill "not quite fine enough." + +But perhaps even more than the quality of the product does the question +of the economical disposition of labor-power agitate some women. They +are asking, since labor is very scarce, whether the extreme +individualistic direction of their labor-power is permissible. The vast +majority of American homes are without servants. In those homes are the +women working such short hours that they can, without dropping important +obligations, take over preserving, canning, dehydrating, the making of +bread, soap, and butter substitute? Has the tenement-house dweller +accommodation suitable for introducing these industrial processes into +her home? Would the woman in the small ménage in the country be wise in +cutting down time given, for instance, to the care of her baby and to +reading to the older children, and using the precious moments +laboriously to grind wheat to flour? My observation convinces me that +conscientious housewives in servantless or one-servant households, with +work adjusted to a given end, with relative values already determined +upon, are not prepared by acceptance of the Adamistic theory to return +to primitive occupations. + +But even if business and home life could respond to the change without +strain, even if both could easily turn back on the road they have come +during the last hundred years, commerce yielding up and the home +re-adopting certain occupations, we should carefully weigh the economic +value of a reversion to primitive methods. + +The Adamistic attitude is influenced, perhaps unconsciously but no less +certainly, by the fact that the housewife is an unpaid worker. If an +unpaid person volunteers to do a thing, it is readily assumed that the +particular effort is worth while. "We get the labor for nothing" puts to +rout all thought of valuation. No doubt Adam will have to give over +thinking in this loose way. Labor-power, whether it is paid for or not, +must be used wisely or we shall not be able to maintain the structure of +our civilization. + +Then, too, the Adamistic theory weighs and values the housewife's time +as little as it questions the quality of the home product. Any careful +reader of the various "Hints to Housewives" which have appeared, will +note that the "simplifying of meals" recommended would require nearly +double the time to prepare. The simplification takes into consideration +only the question of food substitutions, price and waste. Mother is +supposed to be wholly or largely unemployed and longing for unpaid +toil. Should any housewife conscientiously follow the advice given her +by state and municipal authorities she would be the drudge at the center +of a home quite medieval in development. + +Let us take a concrete example:--In a recently published and widely +applauded cookbook put out by a whole committee of Adamistic +philosophers, it is stated that the object of the book is to give +practical hints as to the various ways in which "economies can be +effected and waste saved;" and yet no saving of the woman's time, nerves +and muscles is referred to from cover to cover. The housewife is told, +for instance, to "insist upon getting the meat trimmings." The fat "can +be rendered." And then follows the process in soap-making. Mother is to +place the scraps of fat on the back of the stove. If she "watches it +carefully" and does not allow it to get hot enough to smoke there will +be no odor. No doubt if she removes her watchful eye and turns to bathe +her baby, her tenement will reek with smoking fat. She is to pursue this +trying of fat and nerves day by day until she has six pounds of grease. +Next, she is to "stir it well," cool it, melt it again; she is then to +pour in the lye, "slowly stirring all the time." Add ammonia. Then +"stir the mixture constantly for twenty minutes or half an hour." + +In contrast to all this primeval elaboration is the simple, common-sense +rule: Do not buy the trimmings, make the butcher trim meat before +weighing, insist that soap-making shall not be brought back to defile +the home, but remain where it belongs, a trade in which the workers can +be protected by law, and its malodorousness brought under regulation. + +In the same spirit the Adamistic suggestion to Eve to save coal by a +"heatless day" is met by the cold challenge of the riotous extravagance +of cooking in twelve separate tenements, twelve separate potatoes, on +twelve separate fires. + +The Adamistic theory, through its emphasis on the relation of food to +Eve, and the almost religious necessity of its manipulation at the altar +of the home cook-stove, has drawn thought away from the nutritive side +of what we eat. While the child in the streets is tossing about such +words as calories and carbohydrates with a glibness that comes of much +hearing, physiology and food values are destined to remain as far away +as ever from the average family breakfast table. Segregating a sex in +the home, it is true, centralizes it in a given place, but it does not +necessarily train the individual to function efficiently. Mother, as she +"used to do," cooks by rule of thumb; in fact, how could she do +otherwise, since she must keep one eye on her approving Adam while the +other eye glances at the oven. The Adamistic theory requires +individualistic action, and disapproves specialization in Eve. + +The theory also demands economic dependence in the home builder. +Mother's labor is not her own, she lives under the truck system, so to +speak. She is paid in kind for her work. Influenced by the Adamistic +theory, the human animal is the only species in which sex and economic +relations are closely linked, the only one in which the female depends +upon the male for sustenance. Mother must give personal service to those +about her, and in return the law ensures her keep according to the +station of her husband, that is, not according to her ability or +usefulness, but according to the man's earning capacity. + +The close association of mother with home in the philosophy of her mate, +has circumscribed her most natural and modest attempts at relaxation. +Mother's holiday is a thing to draw tears from those who contemplate it. +The summer outing means carrying the family from one spot to another, +and making the best of new surroundings for the old group. The "day off" +means a concentration of the usual toil into a few hours, followed by a +hazy passing show that she is too weary to enjoy. The kindly farmer +takes his wife this year to the county fair. She's up at four to "get +on" with the work. She serves breakfast, gives the children an extra +polish in honor of the day, puts on the clean frocks and suits with an +admonition "not to get all mussed up" before the start. The farmer +cheerily counsels haste in order that "we may have a good long day of +it." He does not say what "it" is, but the wife knows. At last the house +is ready to be left, and the wife and her brood are ready to settle down +in the farm wagon. + +The fair grounds are reached. Adam has prepared the setting. It has no +relation to mother's needs. It was a most thrilling innovation when in +the summer of 1914 the Women's Political Union first set up big tents at +county fairs, fitted with comfortable chairs for mother, and cots and +toys, nurses and companions for the children. The farmer's wife for the +first time was relieved of care, and could go off to see the sights with +her mind at rest, if she desired anything more active than rocking +lazily with the delicious sensation of having nothing to do. + +Women must not blame Adam for lack of thoughtfulness. He cannot put +himself in mother's place. She must do her own thinking or let women who +are capable of thought do it for her. + +Men are relieved when mother is independent and happy. The farmer +approved the crèche tent at the county fairs. It convinced him that +women have ideas to contribute to the well-being of the community. The +venture proved the greatest of vote getters for the suffrage referendum. + +In fact, men themselves are the chief opponents of the Adamistic theory +to-day. The majority want women to organize the home and it is only a +small minority who place obstacles in the way of the wider functioning +of women. It is Eve herself who likes to exaggerate the necessity of her +personal service. I have seen many a primitive housewife grow hot at the +suggestion that her methods need modifying. It seemed like severing the +silken cords by which she held her mate, to challenge her pumpkin pie. + +But women are slowly overcoming Eve. Take the item of the care of +children in city parks. The old way is for fifty women to look after +fifty separate children, and thus waste the time of some thirty of them +in keeping fifty miserable children in segregation. The new way, now +successfully initiated, is to form play groups of happy children under +the leadership of capable young women trained for such work. + +Salvaging New York City's food waste was a very splendid bit of +coöperative action on the part of women. Mrs. William H. Lough of the +Women's University Club found on investigation that thousands of tons of +good food are lost by a condemnation, necessarily rough and ready, by +the Board of Health. She secured permission to have the sound and +unsound fruits and vegetables separated and with a large committee of +women saved the food for consumption by the community by dehydrating and +other preserving processes. + +This was not as mother used to do. + +Mother's ways are being investigated and discarded the whole world +round. At last accounts half the population of Hamburg was being fed +through municipal kitchens and in Great Britain an order has been issued +by Lord Rhondda, the Food Controller, authorizing local authorities to +open kitchens as food distributing centers. The central government is to +bear twenty-five percent of the cost of equipment and lend another +twenty-five percent to start the enterprise. + +Mother's cook stove cannot bear the strain of war economies. + +Dropping their old segregation, women are going forth in fellowship with +men to meet in new ways the pressing problems of a new world. + + + + +XI + +A LAND ARMY + + +Great Britain, France and Germany have mobilized a land army of women; +will the United States do less? Not if the farmer can be brought to have +as much faith in American women as the women have in themselves. And why +should they not have faith; the farm has already tested them out, and +they have not been found wanting. In face of this fine accomplishment +the minds of some men still entertain doubt, or worse, obliviousness, to +the possible contribution of women to land service. + +The farmer knows his need and has made clear statement of the national +dilemma in the form of a memorial to the President of the United States. +In part, it is as follows: + +"If food is to win the war, as we are assured on every side, the farmers +of America must produce more food in 1918 than they did in 1917. Under +existing conditions we cannot equal the production of 1917, much less +surpass it, and this for reasons over which the farmers have no control. + +"The chief causes which will inevitably bring about a smaller crop next +year, unless promptly removed by national action, are six in number, of +which the first is the shortage of farm labor. + +"Since the war began in 1914 and before the first draft was made there +is reason to believe that more farm workers had left farms than there +are men in our army and navy together. Those men were drawn away by the +high wages paid in munition plants and other war industries, and their +places remain unfilled. In spite of the new classification, future +drafts will still further reduce the farm labor supply." + +With a million and a half men drawn out of the country and ten billion +dollars to be expended on war material, making every ammunition factory +a labor magnet, it seems like the smooth deceptions of prestidigitation +to answer the cry of the farmer with suggestion that men rejected by the +draft or high school boys be paroled to meet the exigency. The farm +can't be run with decrepit men or larking boys, nor the war won with +less than its full quota of soldiers. Legislators, government officials +and farm associations by sudden shifting of labor battalions cannot +camouflage the fact that the front line trenches of the fighting army +and labor force are undermanned. + +Women can and will be the substitutes if the experiments already made +are signs of the times. + +Groups of women from colleges and seasonal trades have ploughed and +harrowed, sowed and planted, weeded and cultivated, mowed and harvested, +milked and churned, at Vassar, Bryn Mawr and Mount Holyoke, at Newburg +and Milton, at Bedford Hills and Mahwah. It has been demonstrated that +our girls from college and city trade can do farm work, and do it with a +will. And still better, at the end of the season their health wins high +approval from the doctors and their work golden opinions from +the farmers. + +Twelve crusaders were chosen from the thirty-three students who +volunteered for dangerous service during a summer vacation on the Vassar +College farm. The twelve ventured out on a new enterprise that meant +aching muscles, sunburn and blisters, but not one of the twelve "ever +lost a day" in their eight hours at hard labor, beginning at four-thirty +each morning for eight weeks during one of our hottest summers. They +ploughed with horses, they ploughed with tractors, they sowed the seed, +they thinned and weeded the plants, they reaped, they raked, they +pitched the hay, they did fencing and milking. The Vassar farm had +bumper crops on its seven hundred and forty acres, and its +superintendent, Mr. Louis P. Gillespie, said, "A very great amount of +the work necessary for the large production was done by our students. +They hoed and cultivated sixteen acres of field corn, ten acres of +ensilage corn, five acres of beans, five acres of potatoes; carried +sheaves of rye and wheat to the shocks and shocked them; and two of the +students milked seven cows at each milking time. In the garden they laid +out a strawberry bed of two thousand plants, helped to plant corn and +beans, picked beans and other vegetables. They took great interest in +the work and did the work just as well as the average man and made good +far beyond the most sanguine expectations." + +At first the students were paid twenty-five cents an hour, the same rate +as the male farm hands. The men objected, saying that the young women +were beginners, but by the end of the summer the critics realized that +"brains tell" and said the girls were worth the higher wage, though they +had only been getting, in order to appease the masculine prejudice, +seventeen and a half cents an hour. There is no pleasing some people! If +women are paid less, they are unfair competitors, if they are paid +equally they are being petted--in short, fair competitors. + +Mt. Holyoke and Bryn Mawr have made experiments, and, like Vassar, +demonstrated not only that women can, and that satisfactorily, work on +the land, but that they will, and that cheerfully. The groups were happy +and they comprehended that they were doing transcendently important +work, were rendering a patriotic service by filling up the places left +vacant by the drafted men. + +The Women's Agricultural Camp, known popularly as the "Bedford Unit," +proved an experiment rich in practical suggestion. Barnard students, +graduates of the Manhattan Trade School, and girls from seasonal trades +formed the backbone of the group. They were housed in an old farmhouse, +chaperoned by one of the Barnard professors, fed by student dietitians +from the Household Arts Department of Teachers College, transported from +farm to farm by seven chauffeurs, and coached in the arts of Ceres by an +agricultural expert. The "day laborers" as well as the experts were +all women. + +[Illustration: An agricultural unit, in the uniform approved by the Woman's +Land Army of America.] + +In founding the camp Mrs. Charles W. Short, Jr., had three definite +ideas in mind. First, she was convinced that young women could without +ill-effect on their health, and should as a patriotic service, do all +sorts of agricultural work. Second, that in the present crisis the +opening up of new land with women as farm managers is not called for, +but rather the supply of the labor-power on farms already under +cultivation is the need. Third, that the women laborers must, in groups, +have comfortable living conditions without being a burden on the +farmer's wife, must have adequate pay, and must have regulated hours +of work. + +With these sound ideas as its foundation the camp opened at Mt. Kisco, +backed by the Committee on Agriculture of the Mayor's Committee of Women +on National Defense of New York City, under the chairmanship of Virginia +Gildersleeve, Dean of Barnard College. + +At its greatest enrolment the unit had seventy-three members. When the +prejudice of the fanners was overcome, the demand for workers was +greater than the camp could supply. Practically the same processes were +carried through as at Vassar, and the verdict of the farmer on his new +helpers was that "while less strong than men, they more than made up for +this by superior conscientiousness and quickness." Proof of the +genuineness of his estimate was shown in his willingness to pay the +management of the camp the regulation two dollars for an eight hour +working day. And it indicated entire satisfaction with the experiment, +rather than abstract faith in woman, that each farmer anxiously urged +the captain of the group at the end of his first trial to "please bring +the same young ladies tomorrow." He was sure no others so good existed. + +The unit plan seems a heaven-born solution of many of the knotty +problems of the farm. In the first place, the farmer gets cheerful and +handy helpers, and his over-worked wife does not find her domestic cares +added to in the hot summer season. The new hands house and feed +themselves. From the point of view of the worker, the advantage is that +her food at the camp is prepared by trained hands and the proverbial +farm isolation gives way to congenial companionship. + +These separate experiments growing out of the need of food production +and the shortage of labor have brought new blood to the farm, have +turned the college girl on vacation and, what is more important, being a +solution of an industrial problem, the unemployed in seasonal trades, +into recruits for an agricultural army. And by concentrating workers in +well-run camps there has been attracted to the land a higher order +of helper. + +One obstacle in the way of the immediate success of putting such women +on the land is a wholly mistaken idea in the minds of many persons of +influence in agricultural matters that the new labor can be diverted to +domestic work in the farm house. This view is urged in the following +letter to me from the head of one of our best agricultural colleges: +"The farm labor shortage is much more acute than is generally understood +and I have much confidence in the possibility of a great amount of +useful work in food production being done by women who are physically +strong enough and who can secure sufficient preliminary training to do +this with some degree of efficiency. Probably the larger measure of +service could be done by relieving women now on the farms of this State +from the double burden of indoor work and the attempt to assist in farm +operations and chores. If farm women would get satisfactory domestic +assistance within the house they could add much to the success of field +husbandry. Women who know farm conditions and who could largely take the +place of men in the management of outdoor affairs can accomplish much +more than will ever be possible by drafting city-bred women directly +into garden or other forms of field work." + +The opinions expressed in this letter are as generally held as they are +mistaken. In the first place, the theory that the country-bred woman in +America is stronger and healthier than the city-bred has long since been +exploded. The assumption cannot stand up under the facts. Statistics +show that the death rate in the United States is lower in city than in +farm communities, and if any added proof were needed to indicate that +the stamina of city populations overbalances the country it was +furnished by the draft records. Any group of college and Manhattan Trade +School girls could be pitted against a group of women from the farms and +win the laurels in staying powers. Nor must it be overlooked that we are +not dealing here with uncertainties; the mettle of the girls has +been proved. + +In any case the fact must be faced that these agricultural units will +not do domestic work. Nine-tenths of the farm houses in America are +without modern conveniences. The well-appointed barn may have running +water, but the house has not. To undertake work as a domestic helper on +the average farm is to step back into quite primitive conditions. The +farmer's wife can attract no one from city life, where so much +cooperation is enjoyed, to her extreme individualistic surroundings. + +A second obstacle to the employment of this new labor-force is due to +the government's failure to see the possibility of saving most valuable +labor-power and achieving an economic gain by dovetailing the idle +months of young women in industrial life into the rush time of +agriculture. + +One department suggests excusing farm labor from the draft, as if we had +already fulfilled our obligation in man-power to the battlefront of our +Allies. The United States Senate discusses bringing in coolie and +contract labor, as if we had not demonstrated our unfitness to deal with +less advanced peoples, and as if a republic could live comfortably with +a class of disfranchised workers. The Labor Department declares it will +mobilize for the farm an army of a million boys, as if the wise saw, +"boys will be boys," did not apply with peculiar sharpness of flavor to +the American vintage, God bless them, and as if it were not our plain +duty at this world crisis to spur up rather than check civilizing +agencies and keep our boys in school for the full term. + +Refusing to be in the least crushed by government neglect, far-seeing +women determined to organize widely and carefully their solution of the +farm-labor problem. To this end the Women's National Farm and Garden +Association, the Garden Clubs of America, the Young Women's Christian +Association, the Woman's Suffrage Party, the New York Women's University +Club, and the Committee of the Women's Agricultural Camp, met with +representatives of the Grange, of the Cornell Agricultural College, and +of the Farmingdale State School of Agriculture, and formed an advisory +council, the object of which is to "stimulate the formation of a Land +Army of Women to take the places on the farms of the men who are being +drafted for active service." This is to be on a nationwide scale. + +The Council has put lecturers in the Granges to bring to the farmer by +the spoken word and lantern slides the value of the labor of women, and +is appealing to colleges, seasonal trades and village communities to +form units for the Land Army. It is asking the coöperation of the labor +bureaus to act as media through which units may be placed where labor is +most needed. + +This mobilization of woman-power is not yet large or striking. The +effort is entirely civil. But all the more is it praiseworthy. It shows +on the part of women, clear-eyed recognition of facts as they exist and +vision as to the future. + +The mobilization of this fresh labor-power should of course be taken in +hand by the government. Not only that, it should be led by women as in +Great Britain and Germany. But the spirit in America today is the same +as in England the first year of the war,--a disposition to exclude women +from full service. + +But facts remain facts in spite of prejudice, and the Woman's Land Army, +with faith and enthusiasm in lieu of a national treasury, are +endeavoring to bring woman-power and the untilled fields together. The +proved achievement of the individual worker will win the employer, the +unit plan with its solution of housing conditions and dreary isolation +will overcome not only the opposition of the farmer's wife, but that of +the intelligent worker. When the seed time of the movement has been +lived through by anxious and inspired women, the government may step in +to reap the harvest of a nation's gratitude. + +The mobilization of woman-power on the farm is the need of the hour, and +the wise and devoted women who are trying to answer the need, deserve an +all-hail from the people of the United States and her Allies. + + + + +XII + +WOMAN'S PART IN SAVING CIVILIZATION + + +Men have played--all honor to them--the major part in the actual +conflict of the war. Women will mobilize for the major part of binding +up the wounds and conserving civilization. + +The spirit of the world might almost be supposed to have been looking +forward to this day and clearly seeing its needs, so well are women +being prepared to receive and carry steadily the burden which will be +laid on their shoulders. For three-quarters of a century schools and +colleges have given to women what they had to confer in the way of +discipline. Gainful pursuits were opened up to them, adding training in +ordered occupation and self-support. Lastly has come the Great War, with +its drill in sacrifice and economy, its larger opportunities to function +and achieve, its ideals of democracy which have directly and quickly led +to the political enfranchisement of women in countries widely separated. + +Fate has prepared women to share fully in the saving of civilization. + +Whether victory be ours in the immediate future, or whether the dangers +rising so clearly on the horizon develop into fresh alignments leading +to years of war, civilization stands in jeopardy. Political ideals and +ultimate social aims may remain intact, but the immediate, practical +maintenance of those standards of life which are necessary to ensure +strong and fruitful reactions are in danger of being swept away. + +We have been destroying the life, the wealth and beauty of the world. +The nobility of our aim in the war must not blind us to the awfulness +and the magnitude of the destruction. In the fighting forces there are +at least thirty-eight million men involved in international or civil +conflict. Over four million men have fallen, and three million have been +maimed for life. Disease has taken its toll of fighting strength and +economic power. In addition to all this human depletion, we have the +loss of life and the destruction of health and initiative in harried +peoples madly flying across their borders from invading armies. + +Starvation has swept across wide areas, and steady underfeeding rules in +every country in Europe and in the cities of America, letting loose +malnutrition, that hidden enemy whose ambushes are more serious than the +attacks of an open foe. The world is sick. + +And the world is poor. The nations have spent over a hundred billions on +the war, and that is but part of the wealth which has gone down in the +catastrophe. Thousands of square miles are plowed so deep with shot and +shell and trench that the fertile soil lies buried beneath unyielding +clay. Orchards and forests are gone. Villages are wiped out, cities are +but skeletons of themselves. In the face of all the need of +reconstruction we must admit, however much we would wish to cover the +fact,--the world is poor. + +[Illustration: A useful blending of Allied women. Miss Kathleen Burke +(Scotch) exhibiting the X-ray ambulance equipped by Mrs. Ayrlon +(English) and Madame Curie (French).] + +And still, as in no other war, the will to guard human welfare has +remained dominant. The country rose to a woman in most spirited fashion +to combat the plan to lower the standards of labor conditions in the +supposed interest of war needs. With but few exceptions the States have +strengthened their labor laws. In its summary the American Association +for Labor Legislation says: + +"Eleven States strengthened their child labor laws, by raising age +limits, extending restrictions to new employments, or shortening hours. +Texas passed a new general statute setting a fifteen-year minimum age +for factories and Vermont provided for regulations in conformity with +those of the Federal Child Labor Act. Kansas and New Hampshire +legislated on factory safeguards, Texas on fire escapes, New Jersey on +scaffolds, Montana on electrical apparatus, Delaware on sanitary +equipment, and West Virginia on mines. New Jersey forbade the +manufacture of articles of food or children's wear in tenements. + +"Workmen's compensation laws were enacted in Delaware, Idaho, New +Mexico, South Dakota, and Utah, making forty States and Territories +which now have such laws, in addition to the Federal Government's +compensation law, for its own half-million civilian employees. In more +than twenty additional States existing acts were amended, the changes +being marked by a tendency to extend the scope, shorten the working +period, and increase provision for medical care." + +The Great War, far from checking the movement for social welfare, has +quickened the public sense of responsibility. That fact opens the widest +field to women for work in which they are best prepared by nature +and training. + +Many keen thinkers are concerned over the question of population. One of +our most distinguished professors has thrown out a hint of a possibility +that considering the greater proportion of women to men some form of +plurality of wives may become necessary. The disturbed balance of the +sexes is a thing that will right itself in one generation. Need of +population will be best answered by efforts to salvage the race. The +United States loses each year five hundred thousand babies under twelve +months of age from preventable causes. An effort to save them would seem +more reasonable than a demand for more children to neglect. Life will be +so full of drive and interest, that the woman who has given no hostages +to fortune will find ample scope for her powers outside of motherhood. +The "old maid" of tomorrow will have a mission more honored and +important than was hers in the past. + +But whatever the conclusions as to the wisest method of building up +population, there is no doubt that government and individuals will make +strict valuation of the essentials and non-essentials in national life. +In our poverty we will test all things in the light of their benefit to +the race and hold fast that which is good. + +The opinions of women will weigh in this national accounting. There will +be no money to squander, and women to a unit will stand behind those men +who think a recreation field is of more value than a race track. It will +be the woman's view, there being but one choice, that it is better to +encourage fleetness and skill in boys and girls than in horses. If we +have just so much money to spend and the question arises as to whether +there shall be corner saloons or municipal kitchens, public sentiment, +made in good measure by women, will eschew the saloon. + +The things that lend themselves to the husbanding of the race will draw +as a magnet those who have borne the race. The tired world will need for +its rejuvenation a broadened and deepened medical science. Women are too +wise to permit sanitation and research to fall to a low level. On the +contrary, they will wish them to be more thorough. There will be economy +along the less essential lines to meet the cost. + +The flagging spirit needs the inspiration of art and music. To secure +them in the future, state and municipal effort will be demanded. Women +are born economizers. They have been trained to pinch each penny. With +their advent into political life, roads and public buildings will cost +less. Through careful saving, funds will be made available for the +things of the spirit. + +One of the men conductors on the New York street railways somewhat +reproachfully remarked to me, "No one ever came to look at the +recreation room and restaurant at the car barns until women were taken +on. Men don't seem to count." Is the reproach deserved? Have women been +narrow in sympathy? Perhaps we have assumed that men can look out for +themselves. They could, but in private life they never do. Women have to +do the mothering. A trade-unionist is ready enough to regulate wages and +hours, but he gives not a thought to surroundings in factory +and workshop. + +An act of protection generally starts with solicitude about a woman or +child. Factory legislation took root in their needs. There was no mercy +for the man worker. His only chance of getting better conditions was +when women entered his occupation, and the regulation meant for her +benefit indirectly served his interest. + +"Men suffer more than women in certain dangerous trades, but I did not +suppose you were generous enough to care anything about them," came in +answer to an inquiry at a labor conference at the end of a most +admirable paper on women in dangerous trades, given by one of the +doctors in the New York City Department of Health. He was speaking to an +audience of working women. I doubt if his hearers had given a thought to +men workers. + +Perhaps this is natural, since there has been going on at the same time +with the development of factory legislation in America a strong +propaganda directed especially at political freedom for women. We have +been laying stress on the wrongs of woman and demanding very +persistently and convincingly her rights. The industrial needs and +rights of the man have been overlooked. + +With increasing numbers of women entering the industrial world, with +ever widening extension of the vote to women, and the consequent +quickening of public responsibility, together with the recent experience +of Europe demonstrating the importance of care for all workers, both men +and women, there is ground for hope that even the United States, where +protective legislation is so retarded in development, will enter upon +wide and fundamental plans for conservation of all our human resources. + +Protection of the worker, housing conditions, the feeding of factory +employees and school children, play grounds and recreation centers, will +challenge the world for first consideration. These are the social +processes which command most surely the hearts and minds of women. The +churning which the war has given humanity has roused in women a +realization that upon them rests at least half the burden of saving +civilization from wreck. Here is the world, with such and such needs +for food, clothing, shelter, with such and such needs for sanitation, +hospitals, and above all, for education, for science, for the arts, if +it is not to fall back into the conditions of the Middle Ages. How can +women aid in making secure the national position? Certainly not by +idleness, inefficiency, an easy policy of laissez faire. They must +labor, economize, and pool their brains. + +Women can save civilization only by the broadest coöperative action, by +daring to think, by daring to be themselves. The world is entering an +heroic age calling for heroic women. + + + + +APPENDIX + +DOCUMENTS USED IN WOMEN'S WAR-WORK IN +ENGLAND AND FRANCE + + + + +WAAC + +WOMEN'S ARMY +AUXILIARY +CORPS + + + + +CONFIDENTIAL. Reference No: J.W. 21 [o.] + +Joint Woman's V.A.D. Department. + +DEVONSHIRE HOUSE. PICCADILLY, LONDON. W.I. + +_Return to Secretary, +V.A.D Department. +Devonshire House, +Piccadilly, S.W.I._ + +Territorial Force Associations, +British Red Cross Society. +Order of St. John of Jerusalem. + +Telegrams [unreadable] +Telephone Mayfair 4707 + +_B.R.C.S. or Order of St. John ..._ + +Sir, + +Will you kindly fill up the following form of Medical Certificate, +returning it to the address given above. + +Your communication will be received as strictly confidential. + +It is urgently requested that Members' +names and detachment numbers should +be filled in legibly. + +Yours faithfully, + +MARGARET HEMPHILL + + +MEDICAL CERTIFICATE + + 1. Name + + 2. County No. of Detachment + + 3. How long have you been acquainted with her? + + 4. Have you attended her professionally? + + 5. For what complaint? + + 6. Is she intelligent and of active habits? + + 7. General health? + + 8. Has she flat feet, hammer-toe, or any other defect? + + 9. Is her vision good in each eye? + +10. Is her hearing perfect? + +11. Has she sound teeth, and if not, have they been properly + attended to by a Dentist lately? + +12. Has she shown any tendency to Rheumatism, Anaemia, + Tuberculosis, or other illness? + +13. When? + +14. What? + +15. Has she ever had influenza? + +16. Does she suffer from headaches? + +17. Any form of fits? + +18. Heart disease or varicose veins? + +19. Is she subject to any functional disturbance? + + * * * * * + +I have on the day of 191 seen and +examined and +hereby certify that she is apparently in good health, that she +is not labouring under any deformity, and is, in my opinion, +both physically and mentally competent to undertake duty in +a Military Hospital, and is [*]A. Fit for General Service. + B. Fit for Home Service only. + C. Unfit. + +_Date (Signed) + Address_ + +[Footnote *: Kindly delete categories which do not apply.] + + + + + * * * * * + + +Reference No.: J.W. 19c. + +JOINT WOMEN'S V.A.D. DEPARTMENT. +Territorial Forces Association. British Red Cross Society. Order of St. +John of Jerusalem. +DEVONSHIRE HOUSE, PICCADILLY, LONDON. W1. + + + + * * * * * + +QUALIFICATIONS +of Members of Women's Voluntary Aid Detachments for Nursing Service or +General Service. + + * * * * * + +1. (a) Name in full (_Mrs. or Miss_). + (b) If Married state Maiden Name. + +2. Permanent Postal Address. + Present Postal Address. + +3. Telephone No. + +4. Telegraphic Address. + +5. Detachment County and No. + B.R.C.S. + St. John Brigade. + St. John Association. + +6. Name and Address of Commandant of Detachment. + +7. Rank in Detachment. + +8. Time of Service in Detachment. + +9. Age and Date of Birth. + +10. Place and Country of Birth. + +11. Nationality at Birth. + +12. Present Nationality. + +13. Height. + +14. Weight. + +15. Where Educated. + +16. At what age did you leave school? + +17. Whether Single, Married, or Widow. + +18. If not Single, state Nationality of Husband. + +19. Name and Address of Next-of-Kin or Nearest Relation + residing in the British Isles. + +20. Father's Nationality at Birth. + +21. Mother's Nationality at Birth. + +22. Father's Profession. + +23. Religion. + +24. (a) If you volunteer for nursing duties state what experience + you have had in wards. + + (b) Name and address of hospital. + + (c) Date. + +25. Certificates held. + +26. (a) Nursing. (f) Motor Driver. + (b) Kitchen. (g) Laboratory Attendant. + (c) Clerical. (h) X-Ray Attendant. + (d) Storekeeping. (i) House Work. + (e) Dispenser. (j) Pantry Work. + +27. State what experience and qualifications you have had + for Categories in No. 26. + +28. Have you been inoculated against Enteric Fever? + If so, what date? + If not, are you willing to be? + + Have you been vaccinated? + It so, what date? + If not, are you willing to be? + +29. Your usual Occupation or Profession? + Your present Occupation or Profession? + +30. Give the Names and Addresses of two British Householders with + permanent addresses in the British Isles who have known applicant for + two or more years, but are not related to applicant, to act as + References, having previously obtained their permission to use + their names. + + (a) (Mayor, Magistrate, Justice of the Peace, Minister of Religion, + Barrister, Physician, Solicitor or Notary Public). + Acquaintance dating from year ________ + (b) Lady. + Acquaintance dating from year _______ + +31. Name and Address of Head of College or School, recent Business + Employer, Head of Government Department, Secretary of Society or some + other person who can be referred to for a report on your + qualifications for the work selected. (The Quartermaster of your + V.A.D. could be given if you have worked in her department.) + + In what capacity employed? + + How long employed? + Year? + +32. Are you willing to serve at home or abroad? + +33. Are you willing to serve in Civil Hospitals from which + personnel have been withdrawn for War Service? + +34. Are you willing to serve:-- + + (a) With pay, + (b) For expenses only, + on the terms of service laid down in our terms of service? + + N. B.--Members who can afford to work for their expenses only are + urgently needed. + +35. Date after which you will be available for duty. + +36. (a) Are you pledged to serve in any other organisation? + (b) If so, what? + +37. (a) Have you served with the Women's Legion or any + similar organisation? + (b) If so, what? + +I hereby declare that the above statements are complete and correct to +the best of my knowledge and belief. + +Date .......... Usual Signature .......... + +_For Office Purposes_, please add your full Christian Names and Surname +legibly written. + +I certify that the above declaration is, to the best of my knowledge and +belief, true; and that M ............ is a fit and proper person to be +employed by the Joint V.A.D. Committee. + +REMARKS:-- + +Date .......... Signed .................... + _Commandant_. + +Date .......... Countersigned .................... + _County Director_. + +NOTE.--Commandants are held responsible for all statements on this form +being accurate so far as it is possible for them to find out, also for +the fact that the member who signs it is a British subject, and in every +way suitable for appointment by the Joint V.A.D. Committee. + +This form must be signed by the Commandant, who should then send it to +the County Director for counter signature and forwarding to +Headquarters. + + + + +_Application No._ + +_For Official use only_. + +CONFIDENTIAL. + +WOMEN'S ARMY AUXILIARY CORPS +FORM OF APPLICATION + +N.B.--No woman need apply who is not prepared to offer her services for +the duration of the war and to take up work wherever she is required. + +1. Name in Full (Mrs. or Miss). + +2. Permanent Postal Address. + +2a. State nearest Railway Station. + +3. Surname at birth, if different. + +4. For what work do you offer your services? State your + qualifications for this work. (The occupations for which women are + required are set out in the accompanying leaflet.) + +5. Are you willing to serve:-- + (a) At Home and Abroad as may be required. + (b) At Home only. + +6. If selected and enrolled how many days' notice will you require before + your services are available? + +7. Age and date of birth. + +8. Place and Country of Birth. + +9. Nationality at Birth. + +10. Present Nationality + (if naturalised give date). + +11. Whether single, married or widow. + If married state number of children, + (a) under 12 years old. + (b) " 5 " " + +12. If not single state Nationality of Husband. + (a) Is your husband serving with the Forces? + (b) If so, where? + +13. Father's Nationality at Birth. + +14. Mother's Nationality at Birth. + +15. Father's Occupation. + +16. State school or college where educated. + At what age did you leave School? + +17. Particulars of any other Training, stating Certificates held. + +18. (a) Name and Address of your present employer + (_see Note on other side_). + + N.B.--(The employer will not be referred to unless he is given as a + reference under paragraph 20 below.) + + (b) Nature of his business. + + (c) Capacity in which you are employed. + + (d) Length of your service with him. + + (e) Salary which you are now receiving. + +19. Previous business experience (if any) giving dates, salaries + received, and names of Employers. + +20. Give below for purposes of reference the names of two or more + British householders with their permanent addresses, one of whom + should be, if possible, your present or previous Employer, a Teacher, + a Town Councillor, Mayor or Provost, Justice of Peace, Minister of + Religion, Doctor or Solicitor, who has known you for two or more + years, but is not related to you. One of the references must be + a woman. + + (a) Name. + Profession or Occupation. + Address. + + (b) Name. + Profession or Occupation. + Address. + + (c) Name. + Profession or Occupation. + Address. + +An offer of Service can in no way be regarded as a final enrolment. + +_I hereby declare that the above statements are complete and correct to +the best of my knowledge and belief_. + +_Date_ ___________ _Usual Signature_ ____________ + +This Form should be filled in by the Applicant and returned +to:--Employment Exchange _________________________ + + * * * * * + +NOTE. + +Women who are already engaged in any of the following occupations will +not be accepted unless they bring with them a letter from their Employer +or Head of Department stating that they have permission to volunteer:-- + +(i) Government Service. + +(ii) Munition work. + +(iii) Work in a Controlled Establishment. + +(iv) Full-time work in an establishment engaged on contract + work for a Government Department. + +(v) V.A.D. Military Hospitals and Red Cross Hospitals. + +(vi) School Teaching. + +(vii) Local Government Service. + +No woman who is a National Service Volunteer or is employed in +Agriculture will be accepted. + +N.B.--Applicants are urged not to give up any present employment until +they are called upon to do so. + + + + +(Part of the application form used in England by the +Women's Land Army.) + + * * * * * + +WOMEN'S LAND ARMY + + * * * * * + +CONDITIONS AND TERMS. + +There are three Sections of the Women's Land Army. + +(1). AGRICULTURE. + +(2). TIMBER CUTTING. + +(3). FORAGE. + +If you sign on for A YEAR and are prepared to go wherever you are sent, +you can join which Section you like. + + +YOU PROMISE:-- + +1. To sign on in the Land Army for ONE YEAR. + +2. To come to a Selection Board when summoned. + +3. To be medically examined, free of cost. + +4. To be prepared if PASSED by the Selection Board to take up work + after due notice. + +5. TO BE WILLING TO GO TO WHATEVER PART OF THE COUNTRY YOU ARE SENT. + + + +THE GOVERNMENT PROMISES:-- + +1. A MINIMUM WAGE to workers of 18/- a week. After they have passed + an efficiency test the wages given are £1 a week and upwards. + +2. A short course of FREE INSTRUCTION if necessary. + +3. FREE UNIFORM. + +4. FREE MAINTENANCE in a Depôt for a term not exceeding 4 weeks if + the worker is OUT OF EMPLOYMENT through no fault of her own. + +5. FREE RAILWAY travelling, when taking up or changing Employment. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10080 *** diff --git a/10080-h/10080-h.htm b/10080-h/10080-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e953879 --- /dev/null +++ b/10080-h/10080-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,3563 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Mobilizing Woman-Power, by Harriot Stanton Blatch</title> +<style type="text/css"> + <!-- + P margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; } + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { text-align: center; } + HR { width: 100%; } + a:link {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + link {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + a:visited {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + a:hover {color:red} + // --> + </style> +</head> +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10080 ***</div> +<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Mobilizing Woman-Power, by Harriot Stanton +Blatch</h1> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<hr> +<center> +<h1> +MOBILIZING WOMAN-POWER</h1></center> + +<center><i>By</i></center> + +<center> +<h1> +HARRIOT STANTON BLATCH</h1></center> + +<center> +<hr style="width: 100%;"><img SRC="images/006.gif" ALT="Jeanne d'Arc.--the spirit of the women of the Allies." height=436 width=258></center> + +<center> +<h4> +Jeanne d'Arc.--the spirit of the women of the Allies.</h4></center> + +<center> +<h1> +MOBILIZING WOMAN-POWER</h1></center> + +<center>BY</center> + +<center> +<h1> +HARRIOT STANTON BLATCH</h1></center> + +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<h3> +TO THE ABLE AND DEVOTED WOMEN OF GREAT BRITAIN AND FRANCE</h3> +Who have stood behind the armies of the Allies through the years of the +Great War as an unswerving second line of defense against an onslaught +upon the liberty and civilization of the world, I dedicate this volume. +<p>HARRIOT STANTON BLATCH +<h2> +<a NAME="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2> +<a href="#FOREWORD">FOREWORD BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT</a> +<p><a href="#I">I. OUR FOE</a> +<p><a href="#II">II. WINNING THE WAR</a> +<p><a href="#III">III. MOBILIZING WOMEN IN GREAT BRITAIN</a> +<p><a href="#IV">IV. MOBILIZING WOMEN IN FRANCE</a> +<p><a href="#V">V. MOBILIZING WOMEN IN GERMANY</a> +<p><a href="#VI">VI. WOMEN OVER THE TOP IN AMERICA</a> +<p><a href="#VII">VII. EVE'S PAY ENVELOPE</a> +<p><a href="#VIII">VIII. POOLING BRAINS</a> +<p><a href="#IX">IX. "BUSINESS AS USUAL"</a> +<p><a href="#X">X. "AS MOTHER USED TO DO"</a> +<p><a href="#XI">XI. A LAND ARMY</a> +<p><a href="#XII">XII. WOMAN'S PART IN SAVING CIVILIZATION</a> +<br> +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<h2> +ILLUSTRATIONS</h2> +Jeanne d'Arc--the spirit of the women of the Allies +<p>They wear the uniforms of the Edinburgh trams and the New York City +subway and trolley guards, with pride and purpose +<p>Then--the offered service of the Women's Reserve Ambulance Corps in +England was spurned. Now--they wear shrapnel helmets while working during +the Zeppelin raids +<p>The French poilu on furlough is put to work harrowing +<p>Has there ever been anything impossible to French women since the time +of Jeanne d'Arc? The fields must be harrowed--they have no horses +<p>The daily round in the Erie Railroad workshops +<p>In the well-lighted factory of the Briggs and Stratton Company, Milwaukee, +the girls are comfortably and becomingly garbed for work +<p>The women of the Motor Corps of the National League for Woman's Service +refuting the traditions that women have neither strength nor endurance +<p>Down the street they come, beginning their pilgrimage of alleviation +and succor on the battlefields of France. +<p>How can business be "as usual" when in Paris there are about 1800 of +these small workshops where a woman dips Bengal Fire and grenades into +a bath of paraffin! +<p>Countess de Berkaim and her canteen in the Gare de St. Lazarre, Paris. +<p>An agricultural unit in the uniform approved by the Woman's Land Army +of America. +<p>A useful blending of Allied women. Miss Kathleen Burke (Scotch) exhibiting +the X-ray ambulance equipped by Mrs. Ayrton (English) and Madame Curie +(French). +<br> +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<h2> +<a NAME="FOREWORD"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">FOREWORD</a></h2> +It is a real pleasure to write this foreword to the book which Mrs. Harriot +Stanton Blatch dedicates to the women of Great Britain and France; to the +women who through the years of the great war have stood as the second line +of defense against the German horror which menaces the liberty and civilization +of the entire world. +<p>There could be no more timely book. Mrs. Blatch's aim is to stir the +women of this country to the knowledge that this is their war, and also +to make all our people feel that we, and especially our government, should +welcome the service of women, and make use of it to the utmost. In other +words, the appeal of Mrs. Blatch is essentially an appeal for service. +No one has more vividly realized that service benefits the one who serves +precisely as it benefits the one who is served. I join with her in the +appeal that the women shall back the men with service, and that the men +in their turn shall frankly and eagerly welcome the rendering of such service +<i>on +the basis of service by equals for a common end</i>. +<p>Mrs. Blatch makes her appeal primarily because of the war needs of the +moment. But she has in view no less the great tasks of the future. I welcome +her book as an answer to the cry that the admission of women to an equal +share in the right of self government will tend to soften the body politic. +Most certainly I will ever set my face like flint against any unhealthy +softening of our civilization, and as an answer in advance to hyper-criticism +I explain that I do not mean softness in the sense of tender-heartedness; +I mean the softness which, extends to the head and to the moral fibre, +I mean the softness which manifests itself either in unhealthy sentimentality +or in a materialism which may be either thoughtless and pleasure-loving +or sordid and money-getting. I believe that the best women, when thoroughly +aroused, and when the right appeal is made to them, will offer our surest +means of resisting this unhealthy softening. +<p>No man who is not blind can fail to see that we have entered a new day +in the great epic march of the ages. For good or for evil the old days +have passed; and it rests with us, the men and women now alive, to decide +whether in the new days the world is to be a better or a worse place to +live in, for our descendants. +<p>In this new world women are to stand on an equal footing with men, in +ways and to an extent never hitherto dreamed of. In this country they are +on the eve of securing, and in much of the country have already secured, +their full political rights. It is imperative that they should understand, +exactly as it is imperative that men should understand, that such rights +are of worse than no avail, unless the will for the performance of duty +goes hand in hand with the acquirement of the privilege. +<p>If the women in this country reinforce the elements that tend to a softening +of the moral fibre, to a weakening of the will, and unwillingness to look +ahead or to face hardship and labor and danger for a high ideal--then all +of us alike, men and women, will suffer. But if they show, under the new +conditions, the will to develop strength, and the high idealism and the +iron resolution which under less favorable circumstances were shown by +the women of the Revolution and of the Civil War, then our nation has before +it a career of greatness never hitherto equaled. This book is fundamentally +an appeal, not that woman shall enjoy any privilege unearned, but that +hers shall be the right to do more than she has ever yet done, and to do +it on terms of self-respecting partnership with men. Equality of right +does not mean identity of function; but it does necessarily imply identity +of purpose in the performance of duty. +<p>Mrs. Blatch shows why every woman who inherits the womanly virtues of +the past, and who has grasped the ideal of the added womanly virtues of +the present and the future, should support this war with all her strength +and soul. She testifies from personal knowledge to the hideous brutalities +shown toward women and children by the Germany of to-day; and she adds +the fine sentence: "Women fight for a place in the sun for those who hold +right above might." +<p>She shows why women must unstintedly give their labor in order to win +this war; and why the labor of the women must be used to back up both the +labor and the fighting work of the men, for the fighting men leave gaps +in the labor world which must be filled by the work of women. She says +in another sentence worth remembering, "The man behind the counter should +of course be moved to a muscular employment; but we must not interpret +his dalliance with tapes and ribbons as a proof of a superfluity of men." +<p>Particularly valuable is her description of the mobilization of women +in Great Britain and France. From these facts she draws the conclusion +as to America's needs along this very line. She paints as vividly as I +have ever known painted, the truth as to why it is a merit that women should +be forced to work, a merit that <i>every one</i> should be forced to work! +It is just as good for women as for men that they should have to use body +and mind, that they should not be idlers. As she puts it, "Active mothers +insure a virile race. The peaceful nation, if its women fall victims to +the luxury which rapidly increasing wealth brings, will decay." "Man power +must give itself unreservedly at the front. Woman power must show not only +eagerness but fitness to substitute for man power." +<p>I commend especially the chapter containing the sentence, "This war +may prove to us the wisdom and economy of devoting public funds to mothers +rather than to crèches and juvenile asylums;" and also the chapter +in which the author tells women that if they are merely looking for a soft +place in life their collective demand for a fair field and no favor will +be wholly ineffective. The doors for service now stand open, and it rests +with the women themselves to say whether they will enter in! +<p>The last chapter is itself an unconscious justification of woman's right +to a share in the great governmental decisions which to-day are vital. +No statesman or publicist could set forth more clearly than Mrs. Blatch +the need of winning this war, in order to prevent either endless and ruinous +wars in the future, or else a world despotism which would mean the atrophy +of everything that really tends to the elevation of mankind. +<p>Mrs. Blatch has herself rendered a very real service by this appeal +that women should serve, and that men should let them serve. +<p>Theodore Roosevelt +<br> +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<h2> +<a NAME="I"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">I<br> +OUR FOE</a></h2> +The nations in which women have influenced national aims face the nation +that glorifies brute force. America opposes the exaltation of the glittering +sword; opposes the determination of one nation to dominate the world; opposes +the claim that the head of one ruling family is the direct and only representative +of the Creator; and, above all, America opposes the idea that might makes +right. +<p>Let us admit the full weight of the paradox that a people in the name +of peace turns to force of arms. The tragedy for us lay in there being +no choice of ways, since pacific groups had failed to create machinery +to adjust vital international differences, and since the Allies each in +turn, we the last, had been struck by a foe determined to settle disagreements +by force. +<p>Never did a nation make a crusade more just than this of ours. We were +patient, too long patient, perhaps, with challenges. We seek no conquest. +We fight to protect the freedom of our citizens. On America's standard +is written democracy, on that of Germany autocracy. Without reservation +women can give their all to attain our end. +<p>There may be a cleavage between the German people and the ruling class. +It may be that our foe is merely the military caste, though I am inclined +to believe that we have the entire German nation on our hands. The supremacy +of might may be a doctrine merely instilled in the minds of the people +by its rulers. Perhaps the weed is not indigenous, but it flourishes, nevertheless. +Rabbits did not belong in Australia, nor pondweed in England, but there +they are, and dominating the situation. Arrogance of the strong towards +the weak, of the better placed towards the less well placed, is part of +the government teaching in Germany. The peasant woman harries the dog that +strains at the market cart, her husband harries her as she helps the cow +drag the plough, the petty officer harries the peasant when he is a raw +recruit, and the young lieutenant harries the petty officer, and so it +goes up to the highest,--a well-planned system on the part of the superior +to bring the inferior to a high point of material efficiency. The propelling +spirit is devotion to the Fatherland: each believes himself a cog in the +machine chosen of God to achieve His purposes on earth. The world hears +of the Kaiser's "Ich und Gott," of his mailed fist beating down his enemies, +but those who have lived in Germany know that exactly the same spirit reigns +in every class. The strong in chastizing his inferior has the conviction +that since might makes right he is the direct representative of Deity on +the particular occasion. +<p>The overbearing spirit of the Prussian military caste has drilled a +race to worship might; men are overbearing towards women, women towards +children, and the laws reflect the cruelties of the strong towards the +weak. +<p>As the recent petition of German suffragists to the Reichstag states, +their country stands "in the lowest rank of nations as regards women's +rights." It is a platitude just now worth repeating that the civilization +of a people is indicated by the position accorded to its women. On that +head, then, the Teutonic Kultur stands challenged. +<p>An English friend of mine threw down the gauntlet thirty years ago. +She had married a German officer. After living at army posts all over the +Empire, she declared, "What we foreigners take as simple childlikeness +in the Germans is merely lack of civilization." This keen analysis came +from a woman trained as an investigator, and equipped with perfect command +of the language of her adopted country. +<p>"Lack of civilization,"--perhaps that explains my having seen again +and again officers striking the soldiers they were drilling, and journeys +made torture through witnessing slapping and brow-beating of children by +their parents. The memory of a father's conduct towards his little son +will never be wiped out. He twisted the child's arm, struck him savagely +from time to time, and for no reason but that the child did not sit bolt +upright and keep absolutely motionless. The witnesses of the brutality +smiled approvingly at the man, and scowled at the child. My own protest +being met with amazed silence and in no way regarded, I left the compartment. +I was near Eisenach, and I wished some good fairy would put in my hand +that inkpot which Luther threw at the devil. Severity towards children +is the rule. The child for weal or woe is in the complete control of its +parents, and corporal punishment is allowed in the schools. The grim saying, +"Saure Wochen, frohe Feste," seems to express the pedagogic philosophy. +The only trouble is that nature does not give this attitude her sanction, +for Germany reveals to us that figure, the most pathetic in life, the child +suicide. +<p>The man responding to his stern upbringing is in turn cruel to his inferiors, +and full of subterfuge in dealing with equals. He is at home in the intrigues +which have startled the world. In such a society the frank and gentle go +to the wall, or--get into trouble and emigrate. We have profited--let us +not forget it--by the plucky German immigrants who threw off the yoke, +and who now have the satisfaction of finding themselves fighting shoulder +to shoulder with the men of their adopted country to free the Fatherland +of the taskmaster. +<p>The philosophy of might quite naturally reflects itself in the education +of girls. Once when I visited a Höhere Töchter Schule, the principal +had a class in geometry recite for my edification. I soon saw that the +young girl who had been chosen as the star pupil to wrestle with the pons +asinorum was giving an exhibition of memorizing and not of mathematical +reasoning. I asked the principal if my surmise were correct. He replied +without hesitation, "Yes, it was entirely a feat in memory. Females have +only low reasoning power." I urged that if this were so, it would be well +to train the faculty, but he countered with the assertion, "We Germans +do not think so. Women are happier and more useful without logic." +<p>It would be difficult to surpass in its subtle cruelty the etiquette +at a military function. The lieutenant and his wife come early,--this is +expected of them. For a few moments they play the role of honored guests. +The wife is shown by her hostess to the sofa and is seated there as a mark +of distinction. Then arrive the captain and his wife. They are immediately +the distinguished guests. The wife is shown to the sofa and the lieutenant's +little Frau must get herself out of the way as best she can. +<p>My speculation, often indulged in, as to what would happen if the major's +wife did not move from the sofa when the colonel's wife appeared, ended +in assurance that a severe punishment would be meted out to her, when I +heard from an officer the story of the way his regiment dealt with a woman +who ignored another bit of military etiquette. A débutant, once +honored by being asked to dance with an officer at a ball, must never, +it seems, demean herself by accepting a civilian partner. But in a town +where my friend's regiment was stationed a very pretty and popular young +girl who had been taken, so to speak, to the bosom of the regiment, danced +one night at the Kurhaus early in the summer season with a civilian, distinguished, +undeniably, but unmistakably civilian. The officers of the regiment met, +weighed the mighty question of the girl's offense, and solemnly resolved +never again to ask the culprit for a dance. I protested at the cruelty +of a body of men deliberately turning a pretty young thing into a wall-flower +for an entire season. The officer took my protest as an added reason for +congratulation upon their conduct. They meant to be cruel. My words proved +how well they had succeeded. +<p>Another little straw showing the set of the wind: we were sitting, four +Americans, one lovely early summer day, in a restaurant at Swinemünde. +We had the window open, looking out over the sea. At the next table were +some officers, one of whom with an "Es zieht," but not with a "by your +leave," came over to our table and shut the window with a bang. The gentleman +with us asked if we wanted the window closed, and on being assured we did +not, quietly rose and opened it again. No one who does not know Prussia +can imagine the threatening atmosphere which filled that café. +<p>We met the officers the same night at the Kurhaus dance. They were introduced, +and almost immediately one of them brought up the window incident and said +most impressively that if ladies had not been at the table, our escort +would have been "called out." We could see they regarded us as unworthy +of being even transient participants of Kultur when we opined that no American +man would accept a challenge, and if so unwise as to do so, his womenfolk +would lock him up until he reached a sounder judgment! The swords rattled +in their sabres when the frivolous member of our party said with a tone +of finality, "You see we wouldn't like our men's faces to look as if they +had got into their mothers' chopping bowls!" +<p>Although I had often lived months on end with all these petty tyrannies +of the mailed fist, and although life had taught me later that peoples +grow by what they feed upon, yet when I read the Bryce report,<a NAME="FNanchor1"></a><sup><a href="#Footnote_1">[1]</a></sup> +German frightfulness seemed too inhuman for belief. While still holding +my judgment in reserve, I met an intimate friend, a Prussian officer. He +happened to mention letters he had received from his relatives in Berlin +and at the front, and when I expressed a wish to hear them, kindly asked +whether he should translate them or read them in German as they stood. +Laughingly I ventured on the German, saying I would at least find out how +much I had forgotten. So I sat and listened with ears pricked up. Some +of the letters were from women folk and told of war conditions in the capital. +They were interesting at the time but not worth repeating now. Then came +a letter from a nephew, a lieutenant. He gave his experience in crossing +Belgium, told how in one village his men asked a young woman with her tiny +baby on her arm for water, how she answered resentfully, and then, how +he shot her--and her baby. I exclaimed, thinking I had lost the thread +of the letter, "Not the baby?" And the man I supposed I knew as civilized, +replied with a cruel smile, "Yes--discipline!" That was frank, frank as +a child would have been, with no realization of the self-revelation of +it. The young officer did the deed, wrote of it to his uncle, and the uncle, +without vision and understanding, perverted by his training, did not feel +shame and bury the secret in his own heart, but treasured the evidence +against his own nephew, and laid it open before an American woman. +<p>I believed the Bryce report--every word of it! +<p>And I hate the system that has so bent and crippled a great race. Revenge +we must not feel, that would be to innoculate ourselves with the enemy's +virus. But let us be awake to the fact that might making right cuts athwart +our ideals. German Kultur, through worship of efficiency, cramps originality +and initiative, while our aim--why not be frank about it!--is the protection +of inefficiency, which means sympathy with childhood, and opportunity for +the spirit of art. German Kultur fixes an inflexible limit to the aspirations +of women, while our goal is complete freedom for the mothers of men. +<p>The women of the Allies can fight for all that their men fight for--for +national self-respect, for protection of citizens, for the sacredness of +international agreements, for the rights of small nations, for the security +of democracy, and then our women can be inspired by one thing more--the +safety and development of all those things which they have won for human +welfare in a long and bloodless battle. +<p>Women fight for a place in the sun for those who hold right above might. +<p><a NAME="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor1">[1] </a> Report of +the Committee on Alleged German Outrages appointed by his Britannic Majesty's +Government. 1915. Macmillan Company, New York. +<blockquote>Evidence and Documents laid before the Committee on Alleged +German Outrages. Ballantyne, Hanson & Co., London. 1915. +<p> +<hr WIDTH="100%"></blockquote> + +<h2> +<a NAME="II"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">II<br> +WINNING THE WAR</a></h2> +The group of nations that can make the greatest savings, will be victorious, +counsels one; the group that can produce the most food and nourish the +populations best, will win the war, urges another; but whatever the prophecy, +whatever the advice, all paths to victory lie through labor-power. +<p>Needs are not answered in our day by manna dropping from heaven. Whether +it is food or big guns that are wanted, ships or coal, we can only get +our heart's desire by toil. Where are the workers who will win the war? +<p>We are a bit spoiled in the United States. We have been accustomed to +rub our Aladdin's lamp of opportunity and the good genii have sent us workers. +But suddenly, no matter how great our efforts, no one answers our appeal. +The reservoir of immigrant labor has run dry. We are in sorry plight, for +we have suffered from emigration, too. Thousands of alien workers have +been called back to serve in the armies of the Allies. In my own little +village on Long Island the industrious Italian colony was broken up by +the call to return to the colors in Piedmont. +<p>Then, too, while Europe suffers loss of labor, as do we, when men are +mobilized, our situation is peculiarly poignant, for when our armies are +gone they are gone. At first this was true in Europe. Men entered the army +and were employed as soldiers only. After a time it was realized that the +war would not be short, that fields must not lie untilled for years, nor +men undergo the deteriorating effects of trench warfare continuously. The +fallow field and the stale soldier were brought together. +<p>We have all chanced on photographs of European soldiers helping the +women plough in springtime, and reap the harvest in the autumn. Perhaps +we have regarded the scene as a mere pastoral episode in a happy leave +from the battle front, instead of realizing that it is a snapshot illustrating +a well organized plan of securing labor. The soldiers are given a furlough +and are sent where the agricultural need is pressing. But the American +soldier will not be able to lend his skill in giving the home fields a +rich seed time and harvest. The two needs, the field for the touch of the +human hand, and the soldier for labor under calm skies, cannot in our case +be coördinated. +<p>Scarcity of labor is not only certain to grow, but the demands upon +the United States for service are increasing by leaps and bounds. America +must throw man-power into the trenches, must feed herself, must contribute +more and ever more food to the hungry populations of Europe, must meet +the old industrial obligations, and respond to a whole range of new business +requirements. And she is called upon for this effort at a time when national +prosperity is already making full use of man-power. +<p>When Europe went to war, the world had been suffering from depression +a year and more. Immediately on the outbreak of hostilities whole lines +of business shut down. Unemployment became serious. There were idle hands +everywhere. Germany, of all the belligerents, rallied most quickly to meet +war conditions. Unemployment gave place to a shortage of labor sooner there +than elsewhere. Great Britain did not begin to get the pace until the middle +of 1915. +<p>The business situation in the United States upon its entrance into the +war was the antithesis of this. For over a year, depression had been superseded +by increased industry, high wages, and greater demand for labor. The country +as measured by the ordinary financial signs, by its commerce, by its labor +market, was more prosperous than it had been for years. Tremendous requisitions +were being made upon us by Europe, and to the limit of available labor +we were answering them. Then into our economic life, with industrial forces +already working at high pressure, were injected the new demands arising +from changing the United States from a people as unprepared for effective +hostilities as a baby in its cradle, into a nation equipped for war. There +was no unemployment, but on the contrary, shortage of labor. +<p>The country calls for everything, and all at once, like the spoiled +child on suddenly waking. It must have, and without delay, ships, coal, +cars, cantonments, uniforms, rules, and food, food, food. How can the needs +be supplied and with a million and a half of men dropping work besides? +By woman-power or coolie labor. Those are the horns of the dilemma presented +to puzzled America. The Senate of the United States directs its Committee +of Agriculture to ponder well the coolie problem, for men hesitate to have +women put their shoulder to the wheel. Trade unionists are right in urging +that a republic has no place for a disfranchised class of imported toilers. +Equally true is it that as a nation we have shown no gift for dealing with +less developed races. And yet labor we must have. Will American women supply +it, will they, loving ease, favor contract labor from the outside, or will +they accept the optimistic view that lack of labor is not acute? +<p>The procrastinator queries, "Cannot American man-power meet the demand?" +It can, for a time perhaps, if the draft for the army goes as slowly in +the future as it has in the past. +<p>However, at any moment a full realization may come to us of the significance +of the fact that while the United States is putting only three percent +of its workers into the fighting forces, Great Britain has put twenty-five +percent, and is now combing its industrial army over to find an additional +five hundred thousand men to throw on the French front. It is probable +that it will be felt by this country in the near future that such a contrast +of fulfillment of obligation cannot continue without serious reflection +on our national honor. Roughly speaking, Great Britain has twenty million +persons in gainful pursuits. Of these, five million have already been taken +for the army. The contribution of France is still greater. Her military +force has reached the appalling proportion of one-fifth of her entire population. +But we who have thirty-five million in gainful occupations are giving a +paltry one million, five hundred thousand in service with our Allies. The +situation is not creditable to us, and one of the things which stands in +the way of the United States reaching a more worthy position is reluctance +to see its women shouldering economic burdens. +<center> +<p><img SRC="images/035.gif" ALT="They wear the uniforms of the Edinburgh trams and the New York City subway and trolley guards, with pride and purpose." height=451 width=600></center> + +<h4> +They wear the uniforms of the Edinburgh trams and the New York City subway +and trolley guards, with pride and purpose.</h4> +While it is quite true that shifting of man-power is needed, mere shuffling +of the cards, as labor leaders suggest, won't give a bigger pack. Fifty-two +cards it remains, though the Jack may be put into a more suitable position. +The man behind the counter should of course be moved to a muscular employment, +but we must not interpret his dalliance with tapes and ribbons as proof +of a superfluity of men. +<p>The latest reports of the New York State Department of Labor reflect +the meagerness of the supply. Here are some dull figures to prove it:--comparing +the situation with a year ago, we find in a corresponding month, only one +percent more employees this year, with a wage advance of seventeen percent. +Drawing the comparison between this year and two years ago, there is an +advance of "fifteen percent in employees and fifty-one percent in wages;" +and an increase of "thirty percent in employees and eighty-seven percent +in wages," if this year is compared with the conditions when the world +was suffering from industrial depression. The State employment offices +report eight thousand three hundred and seventy-six requests for workers +against seven thousand, six hundred and fifty applicants for employment, +and of the latter only seventy-three percent were fitted for the grades +of work open to them, and were placed in situations. +<p>The last records of conditions in the Wilkes-Barre coal regions confirm +the fact of labor scarcity. There are one hundred and fifty-two thousand +men and boys at work today in the anthracite fields, twenty-five thousand +less than the number employed in 1916. These miners, owing to the prod +of the highest wages ever received--the skilled man earning from forty +dollars to seventy-five dollars a week--and to appeals to their patriotism, +are individually producing a larger output than ever before. It is considered +that production, with the present labor force, is at its maximum, and if +a yield of coal commensurate with the world's need is to be attained, at +least seventy percent more men must be supplied. +<p>This is a call for man-power in addition to that suggested by the Fuel +Administrator to the effect that lack of coal is partly lack of cars and +that "back of the transportation shortage lies labor shortage." An order +was sent out by the Director General of Railways, soon after his appointment, +that mechanics from the repair shops of the west were to be shifted to +the east to supply the call for help on the Atlantic border. +<p>Suggestive of the cause of all this shortage, float the service flags +of the mining and railway companies, the hundreds of glowing stars telling +their tale of men gone to the front, and of just so many stars torn from +the standards of the industrial army at home. +<p>The Shipping Board recently called for two hundred and fifty thousand +men to be gradually recruited as a skilled army for work in shipyards. +At the same time the Congress passed an appropriation of fifty million +dollars for building houses to accommodate ship labor. Six months ago only +fifty thousand men were employed in ship-building, today there are one +hundred and forty-five thousand. This rapid drawing of men to new centers +creates a housing problem so huge that it must he met by the government; +and it need hardly be pointed out, shelter can be built only by human hands. +<p>One state official, prompted no doubt by a wise hostility to coolie +labor, and dread of woman labor, has gone so far as to declare publicly +that any employer who will pay "adequate wages can get all the labor he +requires." This view suggests that we may soon have to adopt the methods +of other belligerents and stop employers by law from stealing a neighbor's +working force. I know of a shipyard with a normal pay-roll of five hundred +hands, which in one year engaged and lost to nearby munition factories +thirteen thousand laborers. Such "shifting," hiding as it does shortage +of manpower, leads to serious loss in our productive efficiency and should +not be allowed to go unchecked. +<p>The manager of one of the New York City street railways met with complete +denial the easy optimism that adequate remuneration will command a sufficient +supply of men. He told me that he had introduced women at the same wage +as male conductors, not because he wanted women, but because he now had +only five applications by fit men to thirty or forty formerly. There were +men to be had, he said, and at lower wages than his company was paying; +but they were "not of the class capable of fulfilling the requirements +of the position." +<p>The Labor Administration announced on its creation that its "policy +would be to prevent woman labor in positions for which men are available," +and one of the deputy commissioners of the Industrial Commission of the +State of New York declared quite frankly at a labor conference that "if +he could, he would exclude women from industry altogether." +<p>We may try to prevent the oncoming tide of the economic independence +of women, but it will not be possible to force the business world to accept +permanently the service of the inefficient in place of that of the alert +and intelligent. To carry on the economic life of a nation with its labor +flotsam and jetsam is loss at any time; in time of storm and stress it +is suicide. +<p>Man-power is short, seriously so. The farm is always the best barometer +to give warning of scarcity of labor. The land has been drained of its +workers. A fair wage would keep them on the farm--this is the philosophy +of laissez faire. Without stopping to inquire as to what the munition works +would then do, we can still see that it is doubtful whether the farm can +act as magnet. Even men, let us venture the suggestion, like change for +the mere sake of change. A middle-aged man, who had taken up work at Bridgeport, +said to me, "I've mulled around on the farm all my days. I grabbed the +first chance to get away." And then there's a finer spirit prompting the +desertion of the hoe. A man of thirty-three gave me the point of view. +"My brother is 'over there,' and I feel as if I were backing him up by +making guns." +<p>The only thing that can change the idea that farming is "mulling around," +and making a gun "backs up" the man at the front more thoroughly than raising +turnips, is to bring to the farm new workers who realize the vital part +played by food in the winning of the war. As the modern industrial system +has developed with its marvels of specialized machinery, its army of employees +gathered and dispersed on the stroke of the clock, and strong organizations +created to protect the interests of the worker, the calm and quiet processes +of agriculture have in comparison grown colorless. The average farmhand +has never found push and drive and group action on the farm, but only individualism +to the extreme of isolation. And now in war time, when in addition to its +usual life of stirring contacts, the factory takes on an intimate and striking +relation to the intense experience of the battle front, the work of the +farm seems as flat as it is likely to be unprofitable. The man in the furrow +has no idea that he is "backing up" the boy in the trench. +<p>The farmer in his turn does not find himself part of the wider relations +that attract and support the manufacturer. Crops are not grown on order. +The marketing is as uncertain as the weather. The farmer could by higher +wages attract more labor, but as the selling of the harvest remains a haphazard +matter, the venture might mean ruin all the more certain and serious were +wage outlay large. In response to a call for food and an appeal to his +patriotism, the farmer has repeatedly made unusual efforts to bring his +land to the maximum fertility, only to find his crops often a dead loss, +as he could not secure the labor to harvest them. I saw, one summer, acres +of garden truck at its prime ploughed under in Connecticut because of a +shortage of labor. I saw fruit left rotting by the bushel in the orchards +near Rochester because of scarcity of pickers and a doubt of the reliability +of the market. The industry which means more than any other to the well-being +of humanity at this crisis, is the sport of methods outgrown and of servants +who lack understanding and inspiration. The war may furnish the spark for +the needed revolution. Man-power is not available, woman-power is at hand. +A new labor force always brings ideas and ideals peculiar to itself. May +not women as fresh recruits in a land army stamp their likes and dislikes +on farm life? Their enthusiasm may put staleness to rout, and the group +system of women land workers, already tested in the crucible of experience, +may bring to the farm the needed antidote to isolation. +<p>To win the war we must have man-power in the trenches sufficient to +win it with. To win, every soldier, every sailor, must be well fed, well +clothed, well equipped. To win, behind the armed forces must stand determined +peoples. To win, the people of America and her Allies must be heartened +by care and food. +<p>The sun shines on the fertile land, the earth teems with forests, with +coal, with every necessary mineral and food, but labor, labor alone can +transform all to meet our necessities. Man-power unaided cannot supply +the demand. Women in America must shoulder as nobly as have the women of +Europe, this duty. They must answer their country's call. Let them see +clearly that the desire of their men to shield them from possible injury +exposes the nation and the world to actual danger. +<p>Our winning of the war depends upon the full use of the energy of our +entire people. Every muscle, every brain, must be mobilized if the national +aim is to be achieved. +<br> +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<h2> +<a NAME="III"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">III<br> +MOBILIZING WOMEN IN GREAT BRITAIN</a> <a NAME="FNanchor2"></a><sup><a href="#Footnote_2">[2]</a></sup></h2> +In no country have women reached a mobilization so complete and systematized +as in Great Britain. This mobilization covers the whole field of war service--in +industry, business and professional life, and in government administration. +Women serve on the Ministry of Food and are included in the membership +of twenty-five of the important government committees, not auxiliary or +advisory, but administrative committees, such as those on War Pensions, +on Disabled Officers and Men, on Education after the War, and the Labor +Commission to Deal with Industrial Unrest. +<p>In short, the women of Great Britain are working side by side with men +in the initiation and execution of plans to solve the problems which confront +the nation. +<p>Four committees, as for instance those making investigations and recommendations +on Women's Wages and Drink Among Women, are entirely composed of women, +and great departments, such as the Women's Land Army, the Women's Army +Auxiliary Corps, are officered throughout by them. Hospitals under the +War Office have been placed in complete control of medical women; they +take rank with medical men in the army and receive the pay going with their +commissions. +<p>When Great Britain recognized that the war could not be won by merely +sending splendid fighters to the front and meeting the wastage by steady +drafts upon the manhood of the country, she began to build an efficient +organization of industry at home. +<p>To the call for labor-power British women gave instant response. In +munitions a million are mobilized, in the Land Army there have been drafted +and actually placed on the farms over three hundred thousand, and in the +Women's Army Auxiliary Corps fourteen thousand women are working in direct +connection with the fighting force, and an additional ten thousand are +being called out for service each month. In the clerical force of the government +departments, some of which had never seen women before in their sacred +precincts, over one hundred and ninety-eight thousand are now working. +And the women civil servants are not only engaged in indoor service, but +outside too, most of the carrying of mail being in their hands. +<p>Women are dock-laborers, some seven thousand strong. Four thousand act +as patrols and police, forty thousand are in banks and various financial +houses. It is said that there are in Great Britain scarce a million women--and +they are mostly occupied as housewives--who could render greater service +to their country than that which they are now giving. +<p>The wide inclusion of women in government administration is very striking +to us in America. But we must not forget that the contrast between the +two countries in the participation of women in political life and public +service has always been great. The women of the United Kingdom have enjoyed +the municipal and county franchise for years. For a long time large numbers +of women have been called to administrative positions. They have had thorough +training in government as Poor Law Guardians, District and County Councilors, +members of School Boards. No women, the whole world over, are equipped +as those of Great Britain for service to the state. +<p>In the glamor of the extremely striking government service of British +women, we must not overlook their non-official organizations. Perhaps these +offer the most valuable suggestions for America. They are near enough to +our experience to be quite understandable. +<p>The mother country is not under regimentation. Originality and initiative +have full play. Perhaps it was well that the government failed to appreciate +what women could do, and neglected them so long. Most of the effective +work was started in volunteer societies and had proved a success before +there was an official laying on of hands. Anglo-Saxons--it is our strong +point--always work from below, up. +<p>A glance at any account of the mobilization of woman-power in Great +Britain, Miss Fraser's admirable "Women and War Work," for instance, will +reveal the printed page dotted thick with the names of volunteer associations. +A woman with sympathy sees a need, she gets an idea and calls others about +her. Quickly, there being no red tape, the need begins to be met. What +more admirable service could have been performed than that inaugurated +in the early months of the war under the Queen's Work for Women Fund, when +work was secured for the women in luxury trades which were collapsing under +war pressure? A hundred and thirty firms employing women were kept running. +<p>What more thrilling example of courage and forethought has been shown +than by the Scottish Women's Hospitals in putting on the western front +the first X-ray car to move from point to point near the lines? It but +adds to the appeal of the work that those great scientists, Mrs. Ayrton +and Madame Curie, selected the equipment. +<p>It was a non-official body, the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, +which opened before the war was two weeks old the Women's Service Bureau, +and soon placed forty thousand women as paid and volunteer workers. It +was this bureau that furnished the government with its supervisors for +the arsenals. The Women's Farm and Garden Union was the fore-runner of +the official Land Army, and to it still is left the important work of enrolling +those women who, while willing to undertake agricultural work, are disinclined +to sign up for service "for the duration of the war." +<p>Not only have unnumbered voluntary associations achieved miracles in +necessary work, but many of them have gained untold discipline in the ridicule +they have had to endure from a doubting public. I remember hunting in vain +all about Oxford Circus for the tucked-away office of the Women's Signalling +Corps. My inquiries only made the London bobbies grin. Everyone laughed +at the idea of women signalling, but to-day the members are recognized +officially, one holding an important appointment in the college of wireless +telegraphy. +<p>How Scotland Yard smiled, at first, at Miss Damer Dawson and her Women +Police Service! But now the metropolitan police are calling for the help +of her splendidly trained and reliable force. +<p>And the Women's Reserve Ambulance Corps--I climbed and climbed to an +attic to visit their headquarters! There was the commandant in her khaki, +very gracious, but very upstanding, and maintaining the strictest discipline. +No member of the corps entered or left her office without clapping heels +together and saluting. The ambulance about which the corps revolved, I +often met in the streets--empty. But those women had vision. They saw that +England would need them some day. They had faith in their ability to serve. +So on and on they went, training themselves to higher efficiency in body +and mind. And to-day--well, theirs is always the first ambulance on the +spot to care for the injured in the air-raids. The scoffers have remained +to pray. +<p>If Britain has a lesson for us it is an all-hail to non-official societies, +an encouragement to every idea, a blessing on every effort which has behind +it honesty of purpose. Great Britain's activities are as refreshingly diversified +as her talents. They are not all under one hat. +<p>In the training for new industrial openings this same spirit of non-official +service showed itself. In munitions, for instance, private employers were +the first to recognize that they had in women-workers a labor force worth +the cost of training. The best of the skilled men in many cases were told +off to give the necessary instruction. The will to do was in the learner; +she soon mastered even complex processes, and at the end of a few weeks +was doing even better than men in the light work, and achieving commendable +output in the heavy. The suffrage organizations, whenever a new line of +skilled work was opened to women, established well-equipped centers to +give the necessary teaching. Not until it became apparent that the new +labor-power only needed training to reach a high grade of proficiency, +did County Councils establish, at government expense, technical classes +for girls and women. +<center> +<p><img SRC="images/052.gif" ALT="Then--the offered service of the Women's Reserve Ambulance Corps in England was spurned. Now--they wear shrapnel helmets while working during Zepplin raids" height=306 width=500></center> + +<h4> +Then--the offered service of the Women's Reserve Ambulance Corps in England +was spurned. Now--they wear shrapnel helmets while working during the Zeppelin +raids.</h4> +Equipment of the army was obviously the first and pressing obligation. +Fields might lie fallow, for food in the early days could easily be brought +from abroad, but men had to be registered, soldiers clothed and equipped. +It was natural, then, that the new workers were principally used in registration +work and in making military supplies. +<p>But in the second year of the war came the conviction that the contest +was not soon to be ended, and that the matter of raising food at home must +be met. Women were again appealed to. A Land Army mobilized by women was +created. At first this work was carried on under a centralized division +of the National Service Department, but there has been decentralization +and the Land Army is now a department of the Board of Agriculture. It is +headed by Miss M. Talbot as director. Under this central body are Women's +Agricultural Committees in each county, with an organizing secretary whose +duty it is to secure full-time recruits. +<p>The part-time workers in a locality are obtained by the wife of the +squire or vicar acting as a volunteer registrar. Many of these part-time +workers register to do the domestic work of the lusty young village housewife +or mother while she is absent from home performing her allotted task on +a nearby farm. The full-time recruits are not only secured by the organizers, +but through registrations at every post office. Any woman can ask for a +registration card and fill it out, and the postmaster then forwards the +application to the committee. The next step is that likely applicants are +called to the nearest center for examination and presentation of credentials. +When finally accepted they are usually sent for six weeks' or three months' +training to a farm belonging to some large estate. The landlord contributes +the training, and the government gives the recruit her uniform and fifteen +shillings a week to cover her board and lodging. At the end of her course +she receives an armlet signifying her rank in the Land Army and is ready +to go wherever the authorities send her. +<p>The farmer in Great Britain no longer needs to be converted to the value +of the new workers. He knows they can do every kind of farm work as well +as men, and are more reliable and conscientious than boys, and he is ready, +therefore, to pay the required minimum wage of eighteen shillings a week, +or above that amount if the rate ruling in the district is higher. +<p>Equally well organized is the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, familiarly +known as the Waacs. The director is Mrs. Chalmers Watson. A would-be Waac +goes to the center in her county for examination, and then is assigned +to work at home or "somewhere in France" according to training and capacity. +She may be fitted as a cook, a storekeeper, a telephone or telegraph operator, +or for signalling or salvage work. Let us not say she will supplant a man, +but rather set a man free for fuller service. +<p>My niece, a slip of a girl, felt the call of duty at the beginning of +the war. Her brothers were early volunteers in Kitchener's Army. They were +in the trenches and she longed for the sensation of bearing a burden of +hard work. She went to Woolwich Arsenal and toiled twelve hours a day. +She broke under the strain, recuperated, and took up munition work again. +She became expert, and was in time an overseer told off to train other +women. But she was never satisfied, and always anxious to be nearer the +great struggle. She broke away one day and went to Southampton for a Waac +examination, and found herself one of a group of a hundred and fifty gentlewomen +all anxious to enter active service and all prepared for some definite +work. They stood their tests, and Dolly--that's the little niece's pet +name, given to her because she is so tiny--is now working as an "engine +fitter" just behind the fighting lines. Dainty Dolly, whom we have always +treated as a fragile bit of Sèvres china, clad in breeches and puttees, +under the booming of the great guns, is fitting patiently, part to part, +the beating engine which will lift on wings some English boy in his flight +through the blue skies of France. +<p>But it must not be supposed that the magnificent service of British +women, devoted, efficient and well-organized from top to bottom, realized +itself without friction, any more than it will here. There were certainly +two wars going on in Great Britain for a long time, and the internal strife +was little less bitter than the international conflict. The most active +center of this contest of which we have heard so little was in industry, +and the combatants were the government, trade unions and women. The unions +were doing battle because of fear of unskilled workers, especially when +intelligent and easily trained; the government, in sore need of munition +hands, was bargaining with the unskilled for long hours and low pay. Finally +the government and the unions reluctantly agreed that women must be employed; +both wanted them to be skillful, but not too skillful, and above all, to +remain amenable. It has been made clear, too, that women enter their new +positions "for the war only." At the end of hostilities--international +hostilities--women are to hand over their work and wages to men and go +home and be content. Will the program be fulfilled? +<p>The wishes of women themselves may play some part. How do they feel? +Obviously, every day the war lasts they get wider experience of the sorrows +and pleasures of financial independence. Women are called the practical +sex, and I certainly found them in England facing the fact that peace will +mean an insufficient number of breadwinners to go around and that a maimed +man may have low earning power. The women I met were not dejected at the +prospect; they showed, on the contrary, a spirit not far removed from elation +in finding new opportunities of service. After I had sat and listened to +speech after speech at the annual conference of the National Union of Women +Workers, with delegates from all parts of the country, presided over by +Mrs. Creighton, widow of the late Bishop of London, there was no doubt +in my mind that British women desired to enter paid fields of work, and +regarded as permanent the great increase in their employment. No regrets +or hesitations were expressed in a single speech, and the solutions of +the problems inherent in the new situation all lay in the direction of +equality of preparation and equality of pay with men. +<p>The strongest element in the women's trade unions takes the same stand. +The great rise in the employment of women is not regarded as a "war measure," +and all the suggestions made to meet the hardships of readjustment, such +as a "minimum wage for all unskilled workers, men as well as women," are +based on the idea of the new workers being permanent factors in the labor +market. +<p>The same conclusion was reached in the report presented to the British +Association by the committee appointed to investigate the "Replacement +of Male by Female Labor." The committee found itself in entire disagreement +with the opinion that the increased employment of women was a passing phase, +and made recommendations bearing on such measures as improved technical +training for girls as well as for boys, a minimum wage for unskilled men +as well as women, equal pay for equal work, and the abolition of "half-timers." +But while it was obvious that the greatest asset of belligerent nations +is the labor of women, while learned societies and organizations of women +laid down rules for their safe and permanent employment, the British Government +showed marked opposition to the new workers. If the Cabinet did not believe +the war would be brief, it certainly acted as if Great Britain alone among +the belligerents would have no shortage of male industrial hands. At a +time when Germany had five hundred thousand women in munition factories, +England had but ten thousand. +<p>There is no doubt that the country was at first organized merely for +a spurt. Boys and girls were pressed into service, wages were cut down +for women, hours lengthened for men. Government reports read like the Shaftesbury +attacks on the conditions of early factory days. We hear again of beds +that are never cold, the occupant of one shift succeeding the occupant +of the next, of the boy sleeping in the same bed with two men, and three +girls in a cot in the same room. Labor unrest was met at first by the Munitions +War Act prohibiting strikes and lockouts, establishing compulsory arbitration +and suspending all trade-union rules which might "hamper production." Under +the law a "voluntary army of workers" signed up as ready to go anywhere +their labor was needed, and local munition committees became labor courts +endowed with power to change wage rates, to inflict fines on slackers, +and on those who broke the agreements of the "voluntary army." +<p>To meet the threatening rebellion, a Health of Munition Workers Committee +under the Ministry of Munitions was appointed to "consider and advise on +questions of industrial fatigue, hours of labor and other matters affecting +the physical health and physical efficiency of workers in munition factories +and workshops." On this committee there were distinguished medical men, +labor experts, members of parliament and two women, Miss R.E. Squire of +the Factory Department and Mrs. H.J. Tennant. +<p>The committee was guided by a desire to have immense quantities of munitions +turned out, and faced squarely the probability that the war would be of +long duration. Its findings, embodied in a series of memoranda, have lessons +for us, not only for war times, but for peace times, for all time. +<p>On a seven day week the verdict was that "if the maximum output is to +be secured and maintained for any length of time, a weekly period of rest +must be allowed." Overtime was advised against, a double or triple shift +being recommended. +<p>In July, 1916, the committee published a most interesting memorandum +on experiments in the relation of output to hours. In one case the output +was increased eight percent by reducing the weekly hours from sixty-eight +to fifty-nine, and it was found that a decrease to fifty-six hours per +week gave the same output as fifty-nine. It need hardly be said that there +was no change in machinery, tools, raw material or workers. All elements +except hours of work were identical. Twenty-seven workers doing very heavy +work increased their output ten percent by cutting weekly hours from sixty-one +to fifty-five. In a munition plant employing thirty-six thousand hands +it was found that the sick rate ranged from five to eight percent when +the employees were working overtime, and was only three percent when they +were on a double shift. +<p>The war has forced Great Britain to carry out the findings of this committee +and to consider more seriously than ever before, and for both men and women, +the problem of industrial fatigue, the relation of accidents to hours of +labor, industrial diseases, housing, transit, and industrial canteens. +The munition worker is as important as the soldier and must have the best +of care. +<p>While the friction in the ranks of industrial women workers was still +far from being adjusted, the government met its Waterloo in the contest +with medical women. The service which they freely offered their country +was at first sternly refused. Undaunted, they sought recognition outside +the mother country. They knew their skill and they knew the soldiers' need. +They turned to hospitable France, and received official recognition. On +December 14, 1914, the first hospital at the front under British medical +women was opened in Abbaye Royaumont, near Creil. It carries the official +designation, "Hôpital Auxiliaire 301." The doctors, the nurses, the +cooks, are all women. One of the capable chauffeurs I saw running the ambulance +when I was in Creil. She was getting the wounded as they came down from +the front. The French Government appreciated what the women were doing +and urged them to give more help. At Troyes another unit gave the French +army its first experience of nursing under canvas. +<p>After France had been profiting by the skill of British women for months, +Sir Alfred Keogh, Medical Director General, wisely insisted that the War +Office yield and place a hospital in the hands of women. The War Hospital +in Endell Street, London, is now under Dr. Flora Murray, and every office, +except that of gateman, is filled by women. From the doctors, who rank +as majors, down to the cooks, who rank as non-commissioned officers, every +one connected with Endell Street has military standing. It indicated the +long, hard road these women had traveled to secure official recognition +that the doctor who showed me over the hospital told me, as a matter for +congratulation, that at night the police brought in drunken soldiers to +be sobered. "Every war hospital must receive them," she explained, "and +we are glad we are not passed over, for that gives the stamp to our official +standing." +<p>It was a beautiful autumn day when I visited Endell Street. The great +court was full of convalescents, and the orderlies in khaki, with veils +floating back from their close-fitting toques, were carefully and skillfully +lifting the wounded from an ambulance. I spoke to one of the soldier boys +about the absence of men doctors and orderlies, and his quick query was, +"And what should we want men for?" It seems that they always take that +stand after a day or two. At first the patient is puzzled; he calls the +doctor "sister" and the orderly "nurse," but ends by being an enthusiastic +champion of the new order. Not a misogynist did I find. One poor fellow +who had been wounded again and again and had been in many hospitals, declared, +"I don't mean no flattery, but this place leaves nothink wanting." +<p>The first woman I met on my last visit to England upset my expectation +of finding that war pushed women back into primitive conditions of toil, +crushed them under the idea that physical force rules the world, and made +them subservient. I chanced upon her as she was acting as ticket-puncher +at the Yarmouth station. She was well set-up, alert, efficient, helpful +in giving information, and, above all, cheerful. There were two capable +young women at the bookstall, too. One had lost a brother at the front, +the other her lover. I felt that they regarded their loss as one item in +the big national accounting. They were heroically cheerful in "doing their +bit." +<p>Throughout my stay in England I searched for, but could not find, the +self-effacing spinster of former days. In her place was a capable woman, +bright-eyed, happy. She was occupied and bustled at her work. She jumped +on and off moving vehicles with the alertness, if not the unconsciousness, +of the expert male. She never let me stand in omnibus or subway, but quickly +gave me her seat, as indeed she insisted upon doing for elderly gentlemen +as well. The British woman had found herself and her muscles. England was +a world of women--women in uniforms; there was the army of nurses, and +then the messengers, porters, elevator hands, tram conductors, bank clerks, +bookkeepers, shop attendants. They each seemed to challenge the humble +stranger, "Superfluous? Not I, I'm a recruit for national service!" Even +a woman doing time-honored womanly work moved with an air of distinction; +she dusted a room for the good of her country. Just one glimpse was I given +of the old-time daughter of Eve, when a ticket-collector at Reading said: +"I can't punch your ticket. Don't you see I'm eating an apple!" +<p>One of the reactions of the wider functioning of brain and muscle which +struck me most forcibly was the increased joyfulness of women. They were +happy in their work, happy in the thought of rendering service, so happy +that the poignancy of individual loss was carried more easily. +<p>This cheerfulness is somewhat gruesomely voiced in a cartoon in <i>Punch</i> +touching on the allowance given to the soldier's wife. She remarks, "This +war is 'eaven--twenty-five shillings a week and no 'usband bothering about!" +We have always credited <i>Punch</i> with knowing England. Truth stands +revealed by a thrust, however cynical, when softened by challenging humor. +<p>There was no discipline in the pension system. No work was required. +The case of a girl I met in a country town was common. She was working +in a factory earning eleven shillings a week. A day or two later I saw +her, and she told me she had stopped work, as she had "married a soldier, +and 'e's gone to France, and I get twelve and six separation allowance +a week." Never did the strange English name, "separation allowance," seem +more appropriate for the wife's pension than in this girl's story. Little +wonder was it that in the early months of the war there was some riotous +living among soldiers' wives! +<p>And the comments of women of influence on the drunkenness and waste +of money on foolish finery were as striking to me as the sordid condition +itself. The woman chairman of a Board of Poor Law Guardians in the north +of England told me that when her fellow-members suggested that Parliament +ought to appoint committees to disburse the separation allowances, she +opposed them with the heroic philosophy that women can be trained in wisdom +only by freedom to err, that a sense of responsibility had never been cultivated +in them, and the country would have to bear the consequences. In reply +to my inquiry as to how the Guardians received these theories, I learned +that "they knew she was right and dropped their plan." +<p>The faith of leading women that experience would be the best teacher +for the soldier's wife has been justified. A labor leader in the Midlands +told me that an investigation by his trade union showed that only one hundred +women in the ten thousand cases inquired into were mis-spending their allowances. +And when I was visiting a board school in a poor district of London, and +remarked to the head teacher that the children looked well cared for, she +told me that never had they been so well fed and clothed. There seemed +no doubt in her mind that it was best to have the family budget in the +hands of the mother. In the sordid surroundings of the mean streets of +great cities, there is developing in women practical wisdom and a fine +sense of individual responsibility. +<p>Perhaps of greater significance than just how separation allowances +are being spent is the fact that women have discovered that their work +as housewives and mothers has a value recognized by governments in hard +cash. It makes one speculate as to whether wives in the warring nations +will step back without a murmur into the old-time dependence on one man, +or whether these simple women may contribute valuable ideas towards the +working out of sound schemes of motherhood pensions. +<p>The women of Great Britain are experiencing economic independence, they +are living in an atmosphere of recognition of the value of their work as +housewives and mothers. Women leaders in all classes give no indication +of regarding pensions or remuneration in gainful pursuits as other than +permanent factors in social development, and much of the best thought of +men as well as women is centered on group experiments in domestic coöperation, +in factory canteens, in municipal kitchens, which are a natural concomitant +to the wider functioning of women. +<p>Great Britain is not talking about feminism, it is living it. Perhaps +nothing better illustrates the national acceptance of the fact than the +widespread amusement touched with derision caused by the story of the choleric +gentlemen who, on being asked at the time of one of the government registrations +whether his wife was dependent upon him or not, roared in rage, "Well, +if my wife isn't dependent on me, I'd like to know what man she is dependent +on!" +<p>Only second to Britain's lesson for us in the self-reliance of its women, +and the thorough mobilization of their labor-power and executive ability, +is its lesson in protection for all industrial workers. It stands as one +people against the present enemy, and in its effort does not fail to give +thought to race conservation for the future. +<p><a NAME="Footnote_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor2">[2]</a> Through the courtesy +of the Editors of <i>The Outlook</i>, I am at liberty to use in this and +the following chapter, some of the material published in an article by +me in <i>The Outlook</i> of June 28, 1916. +<br> +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<h2> +<a NAME="IV"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">IV<br> +MOBILIZING WOMEN IN FRANCE</a></h2> +Compared with the friction in the mobilization of woman-power in Great +Britain, the readjustment in the lives of women in France was like the +opening out of some harmonious pageant in full accord with popular sympathy. +But who has not said, "France is different!" +<p>It is different, and in nothing more so than in its attitude toward +its women. Without discussion with organizations of men, without hindrance +from the government, women filled the gaps in the industrial army. It was +obvious that the new workers, being unskilled, would need training; the +government threw open the technical schools to them. A spirit of hospitality, +of helpfulness, of common sense, reigned. +<center> +<p><img SRC="images/071.gif" ALT="The French poilu on furlough is put to work harrowing." BORDER=1 height=273 width=500></center> + +<h4> +The French poilu on furlough is put to work harrowing.</h4> +And it was not only in industry that France showed herself wise. I found +that the government had coöperated unreservedly with all the philanthropic +work of women and had given them a wide sphere in which they could rise +above amateurish effort and carry out plans calling for administrative +ability. +<p>When the Conseil National des Femmes Françaises inaugurated its +work to bring together the scattered families of Belgium and northern France, +and when the Association pour l'Aide Fraternelle aux Évacués +Alsaciens-Lorrains began its work for the dispersed peoples of the provinces, +an order was issued by the government to every prefect to furnish lists +of all refugees in his district to the headquarters of the women's societies +in Paris. It was through this good will on the part of the central government +that these societies were able to bring together forty thousand Belgian +families, and to clothe and place in school, or at work, the entire dispersed +population of the reconquered districts of Alsace-Lorraine. +<p>Nor did these societies cease work with the completion of their initial +effort. They turned themselves into employment bureaus and with the aid +and sanction of the government found work for the thousands of women who +were thrown out of employment. They had the machinery to accomplish their +object, the Council being an old established society organized throughout +the country, and the Association to Aid the Refugees from Alsace-Lorraine +(a nonpartisan name adopted, by the way, at the request of the Minister +of the Interior to cover for the moment the patriotic work of the leading +suffrage society) had active units in every prefecture. +<p>One of the admirable private philanthropies was the canteen at the St. +Lazarre station in Paris. I am tempted to single it out because its organizer, +Countess de Berkaim, told me that in all the months she had been running +it--and it was open twenty-four hours of the day--not a single volunteer +had been five minutes late. The canteen was opened in February, 1915, with +a reading and rest room. Six hundred soldiers a day have been fed. The +two big rooms donated by the railway for the work were charming with their +blue and white checked curtains, dividing kitchen from restaurant and rest +room from reading room. The work is no small monument to the reliability +and organizing faculty of French women. +<p>It was in France, too, that I found the group of women who realized +that the permanent change which the war was making in the relation of women +to society needed fundamental handling. Mlle. Valentine Thomson, founder +of La Vie Féminine, held that not only was the war an economic struggle +and not only must the financial power of the combatants rest on the labor +of women, but the future of the nations will largely depend upon the attitude +which women take toward their new obligations. Realizing that business +education would be a determining factor in that attitude, Mlle. Thomson +persuaded her father, who was then Minister of Commerce, to send out an +official recommendation to the Chambers of Commerce to open the commercial +schools to girls. The advice was very generally followed, but as Paris +refused, a group of women, backed by the Ministry, founded a school in +which were given courses of instruction in the usual business subjects, +and lectures on finance, commercial law and international trade. +<p>Mlle. Thomson herself turned her business gifts to good use in a successful +effort to build up for the immediate benefit of artists and workers the +doll trade of which France was once supreme mistress. Exhibitions of the +art, old and new, were held in many cities in the United States, in South +America and in England. The dolls went to the hearts of lovers of beauty, +and what promised surer financial return, to the hearts of the children. +<p>To do something for France--that stood first in the minds of the initiators +of this commercial project. They knew her people must be employed. And +next, the desire to bring back charm to an old art prompted their effort. +Mlle. Thomson fully realizes just what "Made in Germany" signifies. The +peoples of the world have had their taste corrupted by floods of the cheap +and tawdry. Germany has been steadily educating us to demand quantity, +quantity mountains high. There is promise that the doll at least will be +rescued by France and made worth the child's devotion. +<p>In industry, as well as in all else, one feels that in France there +has not been so much a revolution as an orderly development. Women were +in munition factories even before the war, the number has merely swelled. +The women of the upper and lower bourgeois class always knew their husband's +business, the one could manage the shop, the other could bargain with the +best of them as to contracts and output. Women were trained as bookkeepers +and clerks under Napoleon I; he wanted men as soldiers, and so decreed +women should go into business. And the woman of the aristocratic class +has merely slipped out of her seclusion as if putting aside an old-fashioned +garment, and now carries on her philanthropies in more serious and coördinated +manner. We know the practical business experience possessed by French women, +and so are prepared to learn that many a big commercial enterprise, the +owner having gone to the front, is now directed by his capable wife. That +is but a development, too, is it not? For we had all heard long ago of +Mme. Duval, even if we had not eaten at her restaurants, and though we +had never bought a ribbon or a carpet at the Bon Marché, we had +heard of the woman who helped break through old merchant habits and gave +the world the department store. +<p>But nothing has been more significant in its growth during the war than +the small enterprises in which the husband and wife in the domestic munition +shop, laboring side by side with a little group of assistants, have been +turning out marvels of skill. The man is now in the trenches fighting for +France, and the woman takes command and leads the industrial battalion +to victory. She knows she fights for France. +<p>A word more about her business, for she is playing an economic part +that brings us up at attention. She may be solving the problem of adjustment +of home and work so puzzling to women. There are just such domestic shops +dotted all over the map of France; in the Paris district alone there are +over eighteen hundred of them. The conditions are so excellent and the +ruling wages so high, that the minimum wage law passed in 1915 applied +only to the sweated home workers in the clothing trade, and not to the +domestic munition shops. +<p>A commission which included in its membership a trade unionist, sent +by the British government in the darkest days to find why it was that France +could produce so much more ammunition than England, found these tiny workshops, +with their primitive equipment, performing miracles. The output was huge +and of the best. The woman, when at the head, seemed to turn out more than +the man, she worked with such undying energy. The commission said it was +the "spirit of France" that drove the workers forward and renewed the flagging +energies. But even the trade unionist referred to the absence of all opposition +to women on the part of organizations of men. Perhaps the spirit of France +is undying because in it is a spirit of unity and harmony. +<p>It seemed to me there was one very practical explanation of the unmistakable +energy of the French worker, both man and woman. The whole nation has the +wise custom of taking meal time with due seriousness. The break at noon +in the great manufactories, as well as in the family workshop, is long, +averaging one hour and a half, and reaching often to two hours. The French +never gobble. Because food is necessary to animal life, they do not on +that account take a puritanical view of it. They dare enjoy it, in spite +of its physiological bearing. They sit down to it, dwell upon it, get its +flavor, and after the meal they sit still and as a nation permit themselves +unabashed to enjoy the sensation of hunger appeased. That's the common +sense spirit of France. +<p>Of course the worker is renewed, hurls herself on the work again with +ardor, and losing no time through fatigue, throws off an enormous output. +<p>Wages perform their material share in spurring the worker. Louis Barthou +says that the woman's average is eight francs a day. Long ago--it seems +long ago--she could earn at best five francs in the Paris district. She +works on piece work now, getting the same rate as men. And think of it!--this +must indeed be because of the spirit of France--this woman does better +than men on the light munition work, and equals, yes, equals her menfolk +on the heavy shells. I do not say this, a commission of men says it, a +commission with a trade union member to boot. The coming of the woman-worker +with the spirit of win-the-war in her heart is the same in France as elsewhere, +only here her coming is more gracious. Twelve hundred easily take up work +on the Paris subway. They are the wives of mobilized employees. The offices +of the Post, the Telegraph and Telephone bristle with women, of course, +for eleven thousand have taken the places of men. Some seven thousand fill +up the empty positions on the railways, serving even as conductors on through +trains. Their number has swollen to a half million in munitions, and to +over half that number in powder mills and marine workshops; in civil establishments +over three hundred thousand render service; and even the conservative banking +world welcomes the help of some three thousand women. +<center> +<p><img SRC="images/080.gif" ALT="Has there ever been anything impossible to French women since the time of Jeanne d'Arc? The fields must be harrowed--they have no horses" height=308 width=500></center> + +<h4> +Has there ever been anything impossible to French women since the time +of Jeanne d'Arc? The fields must be harrowed--they have no horses.</h4> +Out on the land the tally is greatest of all. Every woman from the village +bends over the bosom of France, urging fertility. The government called +them in the first hours of the conflict. Viviani spoke the word:-- +<p>"The departure for the army of all those who can carry arms, leaves +the work in the fields undone; the harvest is not yet gathered in; the +vintage season is near. In the name of the entire nation united behind +it, I make an appeal to your courage, and to that of your children, whose +age alone and not their valour, keeps them from the war. +<p>"I ask you to keep on the work in the fields, to finish gathering in +the year's harvest, to prepare that of the coming year. You cannot render +your country a greater service. +<p>"It is not for you, but for her, that I appeal to your hearts. +<p>"You must safeguard your own living, the feeding of the urban populations +and especially the feeding of those who are defending the frontier, as +well as the independence of the country, civilization and justice. +<p>"Up, then, French women, young children, daughters and sons of the country! +Replace on the field of work those who are on the field of battle. Strive +to show them to-morrow the cultivated soil, the harvests all gathered in, +the fields sown. +<p>"In hours of stress like the present, there is no ignoble work. Everything +that helps the country is great. Up! Act! To work! To-morrow there will +be glory for everyone. +<p>"Long live the Republic! Long live France!" +<p>Women instantly responded to the proclamation. Only the old men were +left to help, only decrepit horses, rejected by the military requisition. +More than once I journeyed far into the country, but I never saw an able-bodied +man. What a gap to be filled!--but the French peasant woman filled it. +She harvested that first year, she has sowed and garnered season by season +ever since. Men, horses, machinery were lacking, the debit yawned, but +she piled up a credit to meet it by unflagging toil. +<p>With equal devotion and with initiative and power of organization the +woman of leisure has "carried on." The three great societies corresponding +with our Red Cross, the Société de Secours aux Blessés, +the Union des Femmes de France, and the Association des Dames Françaises, +have established fifteen hundred hospitals with one hundred and fifteen +thousand beds, and put forty-three thousand nurses in active service. Efficiency +has kept pace with this superb effort, as is testified to by many a war +cross, many a medal, and the cross of the Legion of Honor. +<p>Up to the level of her means France sets examples in works of human +salvage worthy the imitation of all nations. The mairie in each arrondissement +has become no less than a community center. The XIV arrondissement in Paris +is but the pattern for many. Here the wife of the mayor, Mme. Brunot, has +made the stiff old building a human place. The card catalogue carrying +information about every soldier from the district, gives its overwhelming +news each day gently to wife or mother, through the lips of Mme. Brunot +or her women assistants. The work of Les Amis des Orphelins de Guerre centers +here, the "adopted" child receiving from the good maire the gifts in money +and presents sent by the Americans who are generously filling the role +of parent. The widows of the soldiers gather here for comfort and advice. +<p>And the mairie holds a spirit of experiment. It houses not only courage +and sympathy, but progress. The "XIV" has ventured on a Cuisine Populaire +under Mme. Brunot's wholesome guidance. And so many other arrondissements +have followed suit that Paris may be regarded as making a great experiment +in the municipal feeding of her people. It is not charity, the food is +paid for. In the "XIV" fifteen hundred persons eat a meal or two at the +mairie each day. The charge is seventy-five centimes--fifteen cents, and +one gets a soup, meat and a vegetable, and fruit. +<p>The world seems to be counselling us that if we wish to be well and +cheaply fed we must go where there are experts to cook, where buying is +done in quantity, and where the manager knows about nutritive values. +<p>If a word of praise is extended to the maire of the XIV arrondissement +for his very splendid work, an example to all France, he quickly urges, +"Ah, but Mme. Brunot!" And so it is always, if you exclaim, "Oh, the spirit +of the men of France!" and a Frenchman's ears catch your words, he will +correct, "Ah, but the women!" +<p>And the women do stand above all other women, they have had such opportunity +for heroism. Whose heart does not beat the faster when the names Soisson +and Mme. Macherez are spoken! The mayor and the council gone, she assumes +the office and keeps order while German shells fall thick on the town. +And then the enemy enters, and asks for the mayor, and she replies, "Le +maire, c'est moi." And then do we women not like to think of Mlle. Deletete +staying at her post in the telegraph office in Houplines in spite of German +bombardments, and calmly facing tormentors, when they smashed her instruments +and threatened her with death. One-tenth of France in the enemy's hands, +and in each village and town some woman staying behind to nurse the sick +and wounded, to calm the population when panic threatens, to stand invincible +between the people and their conquerors! +<p>It is very splendid!--the French man holding steady at the front, the +French woman an unyielding second line of defense. But what of France? +Words of praise must not swallow our sense of obligation. Let us with our +hundred millions of people face the figures. The death rate in France, +not counting the military loss, is twenty per thousand, with a birth rate +of eight per thousand. In Paris for the year ending August, 1914, there +were forty-eight thousand nine hundred and seventeen births; in the year +ending in the same month, 1916, the births dropped to twenty-six thousand +one hundred and seventy-nine. The total deaths for that year in all France +were one million, one hundred thousand, and the births three hundred and +twelve thousand. +<p>France is profoundly, infinitely sad. She has cause. I shall never forget +looking into the very depths of her sorrow when I was at Creil. A great +drive was in progress, the wounded were being brought down from the front, +troops hurried forward. Four different regiments passed as I sat at déjeuner. +The restaurant, full of its noonday patrons, was a typical French café +giving on the street. We could have reached out and touched the soldiers. +They marched without music, without song or word, marched in silence. Some +of the men were from this very town; their little sons, with set faces, +too, walked beside them and had brought them bunches of flowers. The people +in the restaurant never spoke above a whisper, and when the troops passed +were as silent as death. There was no cheer, but just a long, wistful gaze, +the soldiers looking into their eyes, they into the soldiers'. +<p>But France can bear her burden, can solve her problem if we lift our +full share from her bent shoulders. Her women can save the children if +the older men, relieved by our young soldiers, come back from the trenches, +setting women free for the work of child saving. France can rebuild her +villages if her supreme architects, her skilled workers are replaced in +the trenches by our armies. France can renew her spirit and save her body +if her experts in science, if her poets and artists are sent back to her, +and our less great bare their breasts to the Huns. +<br> +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<h2> +<a NAME="V"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">V<br> +MOBILIZING WOMEN IN GERMANY</a></h2> +The military mobilization of Germany was no more immediate and effective +than the call to arms for women. On August 1, 1914, the summons went out, +and German women were at once part of the smooth running machine of efficiency. +<p>The world says the Kaiser has been preparing for war for forty years. +The world means that he has been preparing the fighting force. The sword +and guns were to be ready. But the military arm of the nation, the German +government believes, is but the first line of attack; the people are the +second line, and so they, too, in all their life activities, were not forgotten. +The military aristocracy has never neglected the function of women in the +state. The definition of their function may differ from ours, but that +there is a function is recognized, and it is related to the other vital +social organs. +<p>Slowly, through the last half of the nineteenth century, there had grown +up clubs among German women focusing on a definite bit of work, or crystallizing +about an idea. Germany even had suffrage societies. Politics, however, +were forbidden by the government; women were not allowed to hang on the +fringe of a meeting held to discuss men's politics. But the women of the +Fatherland were free to pool their ideas in philanthropic and hygienic +corners, and venture out at times on educational highways. The Froebel +societies had many a contest with the government, for to the military mind, +the gentle pedagogue's theories seemed subversive of discipline as enforced +by spurs and bayonets. +<p>These clubs, covering every trade and profession, every duty and every +aspiration of women, were dotted over the German Empire. At last they drew +together in a federation. The government looked on. It saw a machine created, +and believing in thorough organization, no doubt gave thought to the possibilities +of the Bund deutscher, Frauenvereine. At the outbreak of war, Dr. Gertrud +Baumer was president of the Bund. She was a leader of great ability, marshalling +half a million of women. No other organization was so widespread and well-knit, +except perhaps Der Vaterlandische Frauenverein with its two thousand one +hundred and fifty branches. It was evangelical and military. The Empress +was its patron. Its popular name is the "Armée der Kaiserin." +<p>There the two great national societies stood--one aristocratic, the +other democratic, one appealing to the ruling class, the other holding +in bonds of fellowship the rich and the poor, the urban and the rural, +the professional and the industrial woman. +<p>Every belligerent president or premier has faced exactly the same perplexity. +What woman, what society, is to be recognized as leader? The question has +brought beads of perspiration to the foreheads of statesmen. +<p>France solved the difficulty urbanely. It said "yes" to each and all. +It promised coöperation and kept the promise. By affably--always affably +and hospitably--accepting this service from one society, and suggesting +another pressing need to its competitor, it sorted out capabilities, and +warded off duplication. Perhaps this did not bring the fullest efficiency, +but the loss was more than made up, no doubt, by a free field for initiative. +Britain ignored all existing organizations of women, and after a year and +a half of puzzlement created a separate government department for their +mobilization. America struck out still another course. It took the heads +of several national societies, bound them in one committee, to which it +gave, perhaps with the idea of avoiding any danger of friction, neither +power nor funds. +<p>Germany faced the same critical moment for decision. The government +wanted efficient use of woman-power on the land, in the factory, in the +home, and that quickly. It made use of the best existing machinery. Dr. +Gertrud Baumer visited the Ministerium des Innern, and on August 1 she +issued a call for the mobilization of women for service to the Fatherland +in the Nationale Frauendienst. Under the aegis of the government, with +the national treasury behind her, Dr. Baumer summoned the women of the +Empire. By order, every woman and every organization of women was to fall +in line under the Frauendienst in each village and city for "the duration +of the war."<a NAME="FNanchor3"></a><sup><a href="#Footnote_3">[3]</a></sup> +<p>In each army district, the government appointed a woman as directress, +and by order to town and provincial authorities made the Frauendienst part +of local executive affairs. +<p>Among the immediate duties laid upon the Frauendienst by the authorities +was the task of registering all needy persons, of providing cheap eating +places, opening workrooms, and setting up nurseries for children, especially +for those who were motherless and those whose fathers had fallen at the +front and whose mothers were in some gainful pursuit. With these duties +went the administrative service of coöperating with the government +in "keeping up an even supply of foodstuffs, and controlling the buying +and selling of food." +<p>Germany anticipated as did no other belligerent the unemployment which +would follow a declaration of war, and prepared to meet the condition. +A great deal of army work, such as tent sewing, belts for cartridges, bread +sacks, and sheets for hospitals, was made immediately available for the +women thrown out of luxury trades. In the first month of the war the Frauendienst +opened work-rooms in all great centers; machinery was installed by magic +and through the six work-rooms in Berlin alone twenty-three thousand women +were given paid employment in one week. +<p>Such efforts could not, of course, absorb the surplus labor, for unemployment +was very great. Eighty percent of the women's hat-makers and milliners +were out of work, seventy-two percent of the workers in glass and fifty-eight +percent in china. The Frauendienst investigated two hundred and fifty-five +thousand needy cases, and in Berlin alone found sixty thousand women who +had lost their employment. Charity had to render help. Here, again, it +is an example of the alertness of the organization and its close connection +with the government that the Berlin magistracy deputed to twenty-three +Hilfscommissionen from the Frauendienst the work of giving advice and charity +relief to the unemployed. Knitting rooms were opened, clothing depots, +mending rooms, where donated clothing was repaired, and in one month fifty-six +thousand orders for milk, five hundred thousand for bread, and three hundred +thousand for meals were distributed for the city authorities. +<p>The adjustment to war requirements went on more quickly in Germany than +in any other country. Before a year had passed the surplus hands had been +absorbed, and a shortage of labor power was beginning to be felt. +<p>And now opens the war drama set with the same scene everywhere. Women +hurry forward to take up the burden laid down by men, and to assume the +new occupations made necessary by the organization of the world for military +conflict. To tell of Germany is merely to speak in bigger numbers. Women +in munitions? Of course, well over the million mark. Trolley conductors? +Of course, six hundred in Berlin alone before the first Christmas. Women +are making the fuses, fashioning the big shells, and at the same heavy +machines used by the men. That speaks volumes--the same heavy machines. +Great Britain and France have in every case introduced lighter machinery +for their women. But, whatever the conditions, in Germany the women are +handling high explosives, sewing heavy saddlery, operating the heaviest +drill machines. Women have been put on the "hardest jobs hitherto filled +by men." In the German-Luxemburg Mining and Furnace Company at Differdingen, +they are found doing work at the slag and blast furnaces which had always +required men of great endurance. They work on the same shifts as the men, +receive the same pay, but are not worked overtime "because they must go +home and perform their domestic duties." +<p>One feels the weight of the German system. Patient women shoulder double +burdens. They always did. +<p>In the Post and Telegraph department there is an army of fifty thousand +women. The telephone service is entirely in their hands, and running more +smoothly than formerly. Dr. Käthe Schirmacher declares comfortingly +in the <i>Kriegsfrau</i> that "one must not forget that these women know +many important bits of information--and keep silent." Women have learned +to keep a secret! +<p>One hundred and eighty nurses, experts with the X-ray, were in the front +line dressing stations in the early days of the war, and before a week +of conflict had passed women were in the Field Post, and Frau Reimer, organizer +of official chauffeurs, was on the western line of attack. +<p>Agriculture claims more women than any occupation in Germany. They were +always on the farm, perhaps they are happier there now since they themselves +are in command. It is said that "the peasants work in the boots and trousers +of their husbands and ride in the saddle." War has liberated German women +from the collar and put them on horseback! +<p>But strangest and most unexpected of all is the professional and administrative +use of women. The government has sent women architects and interior decorators +to East Prussia to plan and carry through reconstruction work. Over a hundred--to +be exact, one hundred and sixteen at last accounts--have taken the places +of men in administrative departments connected with the railways. Many +widows who have shown capacity have been put in government positions of +importance formerly held by their husbands. Women have become farm managers, +superintendents of dairy industries, and representatives of landed proprietors. +<p>The disseminating of all instruction and information for women on war +economies was delegated to the League of Women's Domestic Science Clubs. +The Berlin course was held in no less a place than the Abgeordnetenhaus, +and the Herrenhaus opened its doors wide on Rural Women's Day when Agricultural +Week was held at the capital. +<p>When the full history of the war comes to be written, no doubt one reason +for Germany's marvelous power to stand so long against the world will be +found in her use of every brain and muscle of the nation. This has been +for her no exclusive war. Her entire people to their last ounce of energy +have been engaged. +<p>And this supreme service on the part of German women seeks democratic +expression. From them comes the clearest, bravest word that has reached +us across the border. The most hopeful sign is this manifesto from the +suffrage organizations to the government: "Up to the present Germany has +stood in the lowest rank of nations as regards women's rights. In most +civilized lands women already have been given a large share in public affairs. +German women have been granted nothing except within the most insignificant +limits. In New Zealand, Australia and most American States, and even before +the war in Finland and Norway, they had been given political rights; to-day, +Sweden, Russia and many other countries give them a full or limited franchise. +The war has brought a full victory to the women of England, Canada, Russia +and Denmark, and large concessions are within sight in France, Holland +and Hungary. +<p>"Among us Germans not only the national but even the commercial franchise +is denied, and even a share in the industrial and commercial courts. In +the demand for the democratization of German public life our legislators +do not seem even to admit the existence of women. +<p>"But during the war the cooperation of women in public life has unostentatiously +grown from year to year until to-day the number of women engaged in various +callings in Germany exceeds the number of men. +<p>"The work they are doing includes all spheres of male activity; without +them it would no longer be possible to support the economic life of the +people. Women have done their full share in the work of the community. +<p>"Does not this performance of duty involve the right to share in the +building up and extension of the social order? +<p>"The women protest against this lack of political rights, in virtue +both of their work for the community and of their work as human beings. +They demand political equality with men. They demand the direct, equal +and secret franchise for all legislative bodies, full equality in the communes +and in legal representation of their interests. +<p>"This first joint pronouncement on women's demands will be followed +by others until the victory of our cause is won." +<p><a NAME="Footnote_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor3">[3]</a> "Die Frauenvereine +jeder Stadt verbinden sich für die Dauer des Krieges zur Organization +Nationaler Frauendienst die zu Berlin am 1ten August begründet wurde." +<br> +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<h2> +<a NAME="VI"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">VI<br> +WOMEN OVER THE TOP IN AMERICA</a></h2> +American women have begun to go over the top. They are going up the scaling-ladder +and out into All Man's Land. Perhaps love of adventure tempts them, perhaps +love of money, or a fine spirit of service, but whatever the propelling +motive, we are seeing them make the venture. +<p>There is nothing new in our day in a woman's being paid for her work--some +of it. But she has never before been seen in America employed, for instance, +as a section hand on a railway. The gangs are few and small as yet, but +there the women are big and strong specimens of foreign birth. They "trim" +the ballast and wield the heavy "tamping" tool with zest. They certainly +have muscles, and are tempted to use them vigorously at three dollars a +day. +<p>In the machine shops where more skill than strength is called for, the +American element with its quick wits and deft fingers predominates. Young +women are working at the lathe with so much precision and accuracy that +solicitude as to what would become of the world if all its men marched +off to war is in a measure assuaged. In the push and drive of the industrial +world, women are handling dangerous chemicals in making flash lights, and +T.N.T. for high explosive shells. The American college girl is not as yet +transmuting her prowess of the athletic field into work on the anvil, as +is the university woman in England, but she has demonstrated her manual +strength and skill on the farm with plough and harrow. +<p>Women and girls answer our call for messenger service, and their intelligence +and courtesy are an improvement upon the manners of the young barbarians +of the race. Women operate elevators, lifting us with safety to the seventh +heaven, or plunging us with precision to the depths. There were those at +first who refused to entrust their lives to such frail hands, and there +are still some who look concerned when they see a woman at the lever; but +on the whole the elevator "girl" has gained the confidence of her public, +and has gained it by skill, not by feminine wiles, for even men won't shoot +into space with a woman at the helm whose sole equipment is charm. With +need of less skill than the elevator operator, but more patience and tact +in managing human nature, the woman conductor is getting her patrons into +line. We are still a little embarrassed in her presence. We try not to +stare at the well-set-up woman in her sensible uniform, while she on her +part tries to look unconscious, and with much dignity accomplishes the +common aim much more successfully than do we. She is so attentive to her +duties, so courteous, and, withal, so calm and serious that I hope she +will abide with us longer than the "duration of the war." +<p>In short, America is witnessing the beginning of a great industrial +and social change, and even those who regard the situation as temporary +cannot doubt that the experience will have important reactions. The development +is more advanced than it was in Great Britain at a corresponding time, +for even before the United States entered the conflict women were being +recruited in war industries. They have opened up every line of service. +There is not an occupation in which a woman is not found. +<p>When men go a-warring, women go to work. +<p>A distinguished general at the end of the Cuban War, enlarging upon +the poet's idea of woman's weeping rôle in wartime, said in a public +speech: "When the country called, women put guns in the hands of their +soldier boys and bravely sent them away. After the good-byes were said +there was nothing for these women to do but to go back and wait, wait, +wait. The excitement of battle was not for them. It was simply a season +of anxiety and heartrending inactivity." Now the fact is, when a great +call to arms is sounded for the men of a nation, women enlist in the industrial +army. If women did indeed sit at home and weep, the enemy would soon conquer. +<p>The dull census tells the thrilling story. Before our Civil War women +were found in less than a hundred trades, at its close in over four hundred. +The census of 1860 gives two hundred and eighty-five thousand women in +gainful pursuits; that of 1870, one million, eight hundred and thirty-six +thousand. Of the Transvaal at war, this story was told to me by an English +officer. He led a small band of soldiers down into the Boer country, on +the north from Rhodesia, as far as he dared. He "did not see a man," even +boys as young as fifteen had joined the army. But at the post of economic +duty stood the Boer woman; she was tending the herds and carrying on all +the work of the farm. She was the base of supplies. That was why the British +finally put her in a concentration camp. Her man could not be beaten with +her at his back. +<p>War compels women to work. That is one of its merits. Women are forced +to use body and mind, they are not, cannot be idlers. Perhaps that is the +reason military nations hold sway so long; their reign continues, not because +they draw strength from the conquered nation, but because their women are +roused to exertion. Active mothers ensure a virile race. +<p>The peaceful nation, if its women fall victims to the luxury which rapidly +increasing wealth brings, will decay. If there come no spiritual awakening, +no sense of responsibility of service, then perhaps war alone can save +it. The routing of idleness and ease by compulsory labor is the good counterbalancing +some of the evil. +<p>The rapidly increasing employment of women to-day, then, is the usual, +and happy, accompaniment of war. But the development has its opponents, +and that is nothing new, either. Let us look them over one by one. The +most mischievous objector is the person, oftenest a woman, who says the +war will be short, and fundamental changes, therefore, should not be made. +This agreeable prophecy does not spring from a heartening belief in victory, +but only from the procrastinating attitude, "Why get ready?" To prepare +for anything less certain than death seems folly to many of the sex, over-trained +in patient waiting. +<p>Then there is the official who constantly sees the seamy side of industrial +life and who concludes--we can scarcely blame him--that "it would be well +if women were excluded entirely from factory life." The bad condition of +industrial surroundings bulks large in his mind, and the value of organized +work to us mortals bulks small. We are all too inclined to forget that +the need for work cannot be eliminated, but the unhealthy process in a +dangerous trade can. Clean up the factory, rather than clean out the women, +is a sound slogan. +<p>And then comes the objector who is exercised as to the effect of paid +work upon woman's charm. Solicitude on this score is often buried in a +woman's heart. It was a woman, the owner of a large estate, who when proposing +to employ women asked how many men she would have to hire in addition, +"to dig, plough and do all the hard work." On learning that the college +units do everything on a farm, she queried anxiously, "But how about their +corsets?" To the explanation, "They don't wear any," came the regret, "What +a pity to make themselves so unattractive!" +<p>I have heard fear expressed, too, lest sex attraction be lost through +work on army hats, the machinery being noisy and the operative, if she +talk, running the danger of acquiring a sharp, high voice. One could but +wonder if most American women work on army hats. +<p>Among the women actually employed, I have found without exception a +fine spirit of service. So many of them have a friend or brother "over +there," that backing up the boys makes a strong personal appeal. But some +of the women who have left factory life behind are adopting an attitude +towards the present industrial situation as lacking in vision as in patriotism. +Throughout a long discussion in which some of these women participated +I was able to follow and get their point of view. To them a woman acting +as a messenger, an elevator operator, or a trolley conductor, was anathema, +and the tempting of women into these employments seemed but the latest +vicious trick of the capitalist. The conductor in her becoming uniform +was most reprehensible, and her evident satisfaction in her job suggested +to her critics that she merely was trying to play a melodramatic part "as +a war hero." In any case, the conductor's occupation was one no woman should +be in, "crowded and pushed about as she is." It was puzzling to know why +it was regarded as right for a woman to pay five cents and be pushed, and +unbecoming for another woman to be paid eighteen dollars and ninety cents +a week and run the risk of a jolt when stepping outside her barrier. +<p>But the ideals of yesterday fail to make their appeal. It is not the +psychological moment to urge, on the ground of comfort, the woman's right +to protection. The contrast between the trenches and the street car or +factory is too striking. But it is, however, the exact moment to plead +for better care of workers, both women and men, because their health and +skill are as necessary in attaining the national aim as the soldiers' prowess +and well-being. It is the time to advocate the protection of the worker +from long hours, because the experience of Europe has proved that a greater +and better output is achieved when a short day is strictly adhered to, +when the weekly half-holiday is enjoyed, and Sunday rest respected. The +United States is behind other great industrial countries in legal protection +for the workers. War requirements may force us to see in the health of +the worker the greatest of national assets. Meantime, whether approved +or not, the American woman is going over the top. Four hundred and more +are busy on aeroplanes at the Curtiss works. The manager of a munition +shop where to-day but fifty women are employed, is putting up a dormitory +to accommodate five hundred. An index of expectation! Five thousand are +employed by the Remington Arms Company at Bridgeport. At the International +Arms and Fuse Company at Bloomfield, New Jersey, two thousand, eight hundred +are employed. The day I visited the place, in one of the largest shops +women had only just been put on the work, but it was expected that in less +than a month they would be found handling all of the twelve hundred machines +under that one roof alone. +<p>The skill of the women staggers one. After a week or two they master +the operations on the "turret," gauging and routing machines. The best +worker on the "facing" machine is a woman. She is a piece worker, as many +of the women are, and is paid at the same rate as men. This woman earned, +the day I saw her, five dollars and forty cents. She tossed about the fuse +parts, and played with that machine, as I would with a baby. Perhaps it +was in somewhat the same spirit--she seemed to love her toy. +<p>Most of the testers and inspectors are women. They measure the parts +step by step, and weigh the completed fuse, carrying off the palm for reliability. +The manager put it, "for inspection the women are more conscientious than +men. They don't measure or weigh just one piece, shoving along a half-dozen +untouched and let it go at that. They test each." That did not surprise +me, but I was not prepared to hear that the women do not have so many accidents +as men, or break the machines so often. In explanation, the manager threw +over an imaginary lever with vigor sufficient to shake the factory, "Men +put their whole strength on, women are more gentle and patient." +<p>Nor are the railways neglecting to fill up gaps in their working force +with women. The Pennsylvania road, it is said, has recruited some seven +hundred of them. In the Erie Railroad women are not only engaged as "work +classifiers" in the locomotive clerical department, but hardy Polish women +are employed in the car repair shops. They move great wheels as if possessed +of the strength of Hercules. And in the locomotive shops I found women +working on drill-press machines with ease and skill. Just as I came up +to one operator, she lifted an engine truck-box to the table and started +drilling out the studs. She had been at the work only a month, and explained +her skill by the information that she was Swedish, and had always worked +with her husband in their auto-repair shop. All the other drill-press hands +and the "shapers," too, were Americans whose husbands, old employees, were +now "over there." Not one seemed to have any sense of the unusual; even +the little blond check-clerk seated in her booth at the gates of the works +with her brass discs about her had in a few months' time changed a revolution +into an established custom. She and the discs seemed old friends. Women +are adaptable. +<center> +<p><img SRC="images/109.gif" ALT="The daily round in the Erie Railroad workshops." height=305 width=500></center> + +<h4> +<i>Copyright by Underwood and Underwood <br> +</i>The daily round in the Erie Railroad workshops.</h4> +But everywhere I gathered the impression that the men are a bit uneasy. +A foreman in one factory pointed out a man who "would not have voted for +suffrage" had he guessed that women were "to rush in and gobble everything +up." I tried to make him see that it wasn't the vote that gave the voracious +appetite, but necessity or desire to serve. And in any case, women do not +push men out, they push them up. In not a single instance did I hear of +a man being turned off to make a place for a woman. He had left his job +to go into the army, or was advanced to heavier or more skilled work. +<p>As to how many women have supplanted men, or poured into the new war +industries, no figures are available. One guess has put it at a million. +But that is merely a guess. I have seen them by the tens, the hundreds, +the thousands. The number is large and rapidly increasing. We may know +that something important is happening when even the government takes note. +The United States Labor Department has recognized the new-comers by establishing +a Division of Women's Work with branches in every State. It looks as if +these bureaus of employment would not be idle, with a showing of one thousand, +five hundred applicants the first week the New York office was opened. +It is to be hoped that this government effort will save the round pegs +from getting into the square holes. +<p>But even the round peg in the round hole brings difficulties. When Adam +Smith asserted that of all sorts of luggage man was the most difficult +to move, he forgot woman! The instant women are carried into a new industry, +they bring with them puzzling problems. Where shall we put their coats +and picture hats, how shall we cover up their hair, what shall we feed +them with? They must have lockers and rest rooms, caps and overalls, and +above all, canteens. The munition workers, the conductors, in fact, all +women in active work, get prodigiously hungry. They have made a regiment +of dietitians think about calories. Here is what one of the street railways +in New York City offered them on a given day:-- +<p>Tomato soup 10c. or with an order 5c. +<br>Roast leg of veal 16c. +<br>Beef 16c. +<br>Lamb fricassee 16c. +<br>Ham steak 16c. +<br>Liver and onions 16c. +<br>Sirloin steak 30c. +<br>Small steak 20c. +<br>Ham and eggs 20c. +<br>Ham omelet 20c. +<br><i>Regular dinner</i> Soup, meat, +<br> Vegetable, +<br> Dessert, coffee 25c. +<br>Rice pudding 5c. +<br>Pie 5c. +<br>Cake 5c. +<br>Banana or orange 5c. +<p>The canteen is open every hour of the twenty-four, and the women conductors +at the end of each run usually take a bite, and then have a substantial +meal during the long break of an hour and a half in the middle of the ten-hour +day. +<p>Another problem brought to us by women in industry is, how can we house +them? The war industries have drawn large numbers to new centers. The haphazard +accommodation which men win put up with, won't satisfy women. They demand +more, and get more. To attract the best type of women the munition plants +are putting up dormitories to accommodate hundreds of workers, and are +making their plants more attractive, with rest rooms and hospital accommodation. +Take, for instance, the Briggs and Stratton Company, which in order to +draw high grade workers built its new factory in one of the best sections +of Milwaukee. The workrooms are as clean as the proverbial Dutch woman's +doorstep. From the top of the benches to the ceiling the walls are glass +to ensure daylight in every corner, and by night the system of indirect +lighting gives such perfectly diffused light that not a heavy shadow falls +anywhere. And the hospital room and nurse--well, one would rejoice to have +an accident daily! +<p>The factory may become the exemplar for the home. The professional woman +is going over the top, and with a good opinion of herself. "I can do this +work better than any man," was the announcement made by a young woman from +the Pacific Coast as she descended upon the city hall in an eastern town, +credentials in her hand, and asked for the position of city chemist. There +was not a microbe she did not know to its undoing, or a deadly poison she +could not bring from its hiding place. The town had suffered from graft, +and the mayor, thinking a woman might scare the thieves as well as the +bacteria, appointed the chemist who believed in herself. And she is just +one of many who have been taking up such work. +<p>Formerly two-thirds of the positions filled by the New York Intercollegiate +Bureau of Occupations were secretarial or teaching positions; now three-fourths +of its applicants have been placed as physicists, chemists, office managers, +sanitary experts, exhibit secretaries, and the like. The temporary positions +used to outnumber the permanent placements; at present the reverse is true. +Of the women placed, four times as many as formerly get salaries ranging +above eighteen hundred dollars a year. +<p>The story told at the employment bureaus in connection with professional +societies and clubs such as the Chemists' Club is the same. Women are being +placed not merely as teachers of chemistry or as routine laboratory workers +in hospitals, but also as experimental and control chemists in industrial +plants. In the great rolling mills they are testing steel, at the copper +smelters they are found in the laboratories. The government has thrown +doors wide open to college-trained women. They are physicists and chemists +in the United States Bureaus of Standards, Mines, and Soils, sanitary experts +in military camps, research chemists in animal nutrition and fertilizers +at state experiment stations. +<p>But the industrial barrier is the one most recently scaled. Women are +now found as analytical, research or control chemists in the canneries, +in dye and electrical works, in flour and paper mills, in insecticide companies, +and cement works. They test the steel that will carry us safely on our +journeys, they pass upon the chemical composition of the flavor in our +cake, as heads of departments in metal refining companies they determine +the kind of copper battery we shall use, and they have a finger in our +liquid glues, household oils and polishes. +<p>And the awakened spirit of social responsibility has opened new callings. +The college woman not only is beginning to fill welfare positions inside +the factory, but is acting as protective officer in towns near military +camps. Perhaps one of the newest and most interesting positions is that +of "employment secretary." The losing of employees has become so serious +and general that big industries have engaged women who devote their time +to looking up absentees and finding out why each worker left. +<p>And so we see on all hands women breaking through the old accustomed +bounds. +<p>Not only as workers but as voters, the war has called women over the +top. Since that fateful August, 1914, four provinces of Canada and the +Dominion itself have raised the banner of votes for women. Nevada and Montana +declared for suffrage before the war was four months old, and Denmark enfranchised +its women before the year was out. And when America went forth to fight +for democracy abroad, Arkansas, Michigan, Vermont, Nebraska, North Dakota, +Rhode Island, began to lay the foundations of freedom at home, and New +York in no faltering voice proclaimed full liberty for all its people. +Lastly Great Britain has enfranchised its women, and surely the Congress +of the United States will not lag behind the Mother of Parliaments! +<p>The world is facing changes as great as the breaking up of the feudal +system. Causes as fundamental, more wide-spread, and more cataclysmic are +at work than at the end of the Middle Ages. Among the changes none is more +marked than the intensified development in what one may call, for lack +of a better term, the woman movement. The advance in political freedom +has moved steadily forward during the past quarter of a century, but in +the last three years progress has been intense and striking. +<p>The peculiarity in attainment of political democracy for women has lain +in the fact that while for men economic freedom invariably preceded political +enfranchisement, in the case of women the conferring of the vote in no +single case was related to the stage which the enfranchised group had attained +in the matter of economic independence. Nowhere were even those women who +were entirely lacking in economic freedom, excluded on that account from +any extension of suffrage. Even in discussions of the right of suffrage +no reference has ever been made, in dealing with women's claim, to the +relation, universally recognized in the case of men, of political enfranchisement +to economic status. Serfdom gave way to the wage system before democracy +developed for men, and the colored man was emancipated before he was enfranchised. +For this reason the coming of women as paid workers over the top may be +regarded as epoch-making. +<p>In any case, self-determination is certainly a strong element in attaining +any real political freedom. +<p>Complete service to their country in this crisis may lead women to that +economic freedom which will change a political possession into a political +power. But the requirement is readiness to do, and to do well, the task +which offers. Man-power must give itself unreservedly at the front. Women +must show not only eagerness but fitness to substitute for man-power. It +will hearten the nation, help to make the path clear, if individual women +declare that though the call to them has not yet come for a definite service, +the time of waiting will not be spent in complaint, nor yet in foolish +busy-ness, but in careful and conscientious training for useful work. +<p>Each woman must prepare so that when the nation's need arises, she can +stand at salute and say, "Here is your servant, trained and ready." Women +are not driven over the top. Through self-discipline, they go over it of +their own accord. +<br> +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<h2> +<a NAME="VII"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">VII<br> +EVE'S PAY ENVELOPE</a></h2> +No woman is a cross between an angel and a goose. She is a very human creature. +She has many of man's sins and some virtues of her own. +<p>Moving up from slavery through all the various forms of serfdom--attachment +to the soil, confinement to a given trade, exclusion from citizenship, +payment in kind, on to full economic freedom, men have shown definite reactions +at each step. Women respond to the same stimuli. +<p>The free man is a better worker than slave or serf. So is the free woman. +All the old gibes at her ineptitudes have broken their points against the +actualities of her ability as a wage worker. The free man is more alert +to obligation, more conscientious in performance, than the bond servant. +So is the free woman. With pay envelope, or pension, Eve is a better helpmate +and mother than ever before. +<p>The free man carries a lighter heart than the villain. So does the free +woman. Men have always borne personal grief more easily than women; observers +remarked the fact. The reason is the same. An absorbing occupation, ordered +and regarded as important, which brings a return allowing the recipient +to patronize what he or she thinks wise, that brings happiness, not boisterous, +but dignified. It may be a holocaust through which Eve gains that pay envelope, +but the material possession brings gratification nevertheless. It is a +tiny straw showing the set of the wind that leisure class British women, +however large their unearned bank account, show no reluctance to accept +pay for their work, and full responsibility in their new position of employee. +<p>Women are supposed to have liked to serve for mere love of service, +for love of child, love of husband. There is, of course, many a subtle +relation which can't be weighed and paid for; but toil, even for one's +very own hearthstone, can be valued in hard cash. The daughters of Eve, +no less than the sons of Adam, react happily to a recognition that expresses +itself in a fair wage. +<p>The verdict comes from all sides that women were never more content. +Of course they are content. The weight of suppression is being lifted. +For many their drudgery is for the first time paid for. Is not that invigorating? +The pay envelope is equal to that of men. Is not that a new experience +giving self-respect? Eve often finds her pay envelope heavier than that +of the man working at her side. Right there in her hand, then, she holds +proof that the old prejudice against her as an inferior worker is ill-founded. +<p>Women are finding themselves. Even America's Eve discovers that pains +and aches are not "woman's lot." She is under no curse in the twentieth +century. With eighteen dollars a week for ringing up fares, and a possible +thirty-five for "facing" fuse-parts, nothing can persuade her to be poor-spirited. +She radiates the atmosphere, "I am needed!" Doors fly open to her. She +is welcome everywhere. No one seems to be able to get too many of her kind. +Politicians compete for her favor, employers quarrel over her. It makes +her breathe deep to have the Secretary of the Navy summon her to the United +States arsenals, pay her for her work, and call her a patriot. +<center> +<p><img SRC="images/122.gif" ALT="In the well-lighted factory of the Briggs and Stratton Company, Milwaukee, the girls are comfortably and becomingly garbed for work." height=303 width=500></center> + +<h4> +In the well-lighted factory of the Briggs and Stratton Company, Milwaukee, +the girls are comfortably and becomingly garbed for work.</h4> +And with the pay envelope women remain clearly human. Their purchases often +reflect past denials, rather than present needs or even tastes. When set +free one always buys what the days of dependence deprived one of. One of +Boston's leading merchants told me that Selfridge in London was selling +more jaunty ready-to-wear dresses than ever before. It was part of John +Bull's discipline in ante-bellum dependent days to keep his women folk +dowdy. The Lancashire lass with head shawl and pattens, the wearer of the +universal sailor hat, in these days of independence and pounds, shillings +and pence, are taking note of the shop windows. And John is not turning +his eyes away from his women folk in their day of self-determination. +<p>But it is not to be concluded that it is all beer and skittles for Eve. +With a pay envelope and a vote come responsibilities. Public sympathy has +backed up laws cutting down long hours of work for women. The trade unions, +with a thought to possible competitors, have favored protecting them from +night work. Has Eve been a bit spoiled? Has she let herself too easily +be classed with children and allowed a line to be drawn between men and +women in industry? Is it a bit of woman's proverbial logic to demand special +protection, and at the same time insist upon "equal pay for equal work"? +<p>The hopelessness of attaining the promise of the slogan is well illustrated +in the case of a gray haired woman I once met in a London printing shop. +In her early days she had been one of the women taken on by the famous +printing firm of McCorquodale. That was before protective legislation applied +to women. She became a highly skilled printer, earning more than any man +in the shop. When there was pressure of work she was always one of the +group of experts chosen to carry through the rush order. That meant on +occasion overtime or night work. Then she went on to tell me how her skill +was checked in her very prime. Regulations as to women's labor were gradually +fixed in the law. All the printers in the shop, she said, favored the laws +limiting her freedom but not theirs. Soon her wages reflected the contrast. +Her employer called her to his office one day and explained, "I cannot +afford to pay you as much as the men any longer. You are not worth as much +to me, not being able to work Saturday afternoon, at night, or overtime." +She was put on lower grade work and her pay envelope grew slight. +<p>This woman was not discussing the value of shorter working hours, she +was pointing out that "equal pay" cannot rule for an entire group of workers +when restrictions apply to part of the group and not to the whole body. +We meet here, not a theory, but an incontrovertible fact. Pay is not equal, +and cannot be, where conditions are wholly unequal. Protection for the +woman worker means exactly what it would mean for the alien man if by law +he were forbidden to work Saturday afternoon, overtime or at night, while +the citizen worker was without restriction. The alien would be cut off +from advancement in every trade in which he did not by overwhelming numbers +dominate the situation, he would be kept to lower grade processes, he would +receive much lower pay than the unprotected worker. +<p>What common sense would lead us to expect in the hypothetical case of +an alien man, has happened for the woman worker. Oddly enough she has not +herself asked for this protection, but it has been urged very largely by +women not of the industrial class. Women teachers, doctors, lawyers, women +of leisure are the advocates of special legislation for industrial women. +And yet in their own case they are entirely reasonable, and ask no favors. +The woman teacher, and quite truly, insists that she works as hard and +as long hours as the man in her grade of service, and on that sound foundation +she builds her just demand for equal pay. Women doctors and lawyers have +never asked for other than a square deal in their professions. +<p>It would be well, perhaps, if industrial women were permitted to guide +their own ship. They have knowledge enough to reach a safe harbor. There +was a hint that they were about to assume the helm when the rank and file +of union workers voted down at the conference of the Women's Trade Union +League the resolution proposing a law to forbid women acting as conductors. +It was also suggestive when a woman rose and asked of the speaker on dangerous +trades, whether "men did not suffer from exposure to fumes, acids and dust." +<p>Women have so long been urging that they are people, that they have +forgotten, perchance, that men are people also. Men respond to rest and +recreation as do human beings of the opposite sex. All workers need, and +both sexes should have, protection. But if only one sex in industrial life +can have bulwarks thrown up about it, men should be the favored ones just +now. They are few, they are precious, they should be wrapped in cotton +wool. +<p>The industrial woman should stand unqualifiedly for the exclusion of +children from gainful pursuits. Many years ago the British government had +Miss Collett, one of the Labor Correspondents of the Board of Trade, make +a special study of the influence of the employment of married women on +infant mortality. The object was to prove that there was direct cause and +effect. The investigator, after an exhaustive study covering many industrial +centers, brought back the report, "Not proven." But the statistics showed +one most interesting relation. In districts where the prevailing custom +permitted the employment of children as early as the law allowed, infant +mortality was high, and in districts where few children were employed, +infant mortality was low. No explanation of this striking revelation was +made in the report, but many who commented on the tables, pointed out that +the wide-spread employment of the population in its early years sapped +the vitality of the community to such an extent that its offspring were +weakened. In other words, the employment of the immature child, more than +the employment of that child when grown and married, works harm to the +race. +<p>The woman with a pay envelope must not, then, be willing to swell the +family budget by turning her children into the wage market. For if she +does, she creates a dangerous competitor for herself, and puts in certain +jeopardy the virility of her nation. But in this war time women have secured +more than new and larger pay envelopes, for each belligerent has reckoned +up the woman's worth as mother in coin of the realm. It is enough to turn +Eve's head--pay and pensions accorded her all at once. +<p>Allowances to dependents are more, however, than financial expedients. +They are part of the psychological stage-setting of the Great War. The +fighting man must be more than well-fed, well-clothed, well-equipped, more +than assured of care if ill or wounded; he must have his mind undisturbed +by conditions at home. Governments now know that there must be no just +cause for complaint in the family at the rear, if the man at the front +is to be fully effective. In the interest of the fighting line, governments +dare not leave the home to the haphazard care of charity. +<p>And so the great belligerents have adopted systems for an uninterrupted +flow of money aid to the hearthstone. The wife feels dependence on the +nation for which she and her man are making sacrifices, the soldier has +a sense of closer relationship with the country's cause for which he fights. +Content at home and sense of gratitude in the trenches build up loyalty +everywhere. The state allowance answers an economic want and a psychological +necessity. +<p>It is part of our national lack of technique that we were slow to make +provision for the dependents of enlisted men, and even then were not whole +hearted. It may have been our inherited distrust of the conscript that +led us to feel that only by his volunteering something will a precious +antidote be administered to the spirit of the drafted man. To protect his +individualism from taint, the United States soldier must bear part of the +financial burden. Europe, on the other hand, is working on a basis of reciprocity. +The nation exacts service from the man and gives complete service to his +dependents. In America the man is bound to serve the community, but the +community is not bound to serve him. And yet in our case there is peculiar +need of this even exchange of obligations. The care of parents in the United +States falls directly upon their children, while some of our allies had, +even before the war, carefully devised laws regulating pensions to the +aged. +<p>But first let us get the simple skeleton of the various allowance laws +in mind. The scale of the allowance in different countries adapts itself +to national standards and varying cost of living. The Canadian allowance +seems the most generous. At least one-half of the soldier's pay is given +directly to his dependents. The government gives an additional twenty dollars +and the donations of the Patriotic Fund bring up the monthly allowance +of a wife with three children to sixty dollars. The allowance, as might +be expected, is low in Italy. The soldier's wife gets eight-tenths of a +lira a day, each child four-tenths lira, and either a father or mother +alone eight-tenths lira, or if both are living, one and three-tenths lire +together. The British allowance is much higher, the wife getting twelve +shillings and sixpence a week. If she has one child, the weekly allowance +rises to nineteen and sixpence; if two children, to twenty-four and sixpence; +if three, to twenty-eight shillings; and if there are four or more children, +the mother receives three shillings a week for each extra child. +<p>Between the extremes of Italy and England stands France, the wife receiving +one franc twenty-five centimes a day, each child under sixteen years of +age twenty-five centimes, and a dependent parent seventy-five centimes. +Japan grants no government allowance. A Japanese official, in response +to my inquiry, wrote, "Relations the first and friends the next try to +help the dependents as far as possible, but if they have neither relatives +nor friends who have sufficient means to help them, then the association +consisting of ladies or the municipal officials afford subvention to them." +<p>Under the law passed by Congress in October, 1917, an American private +receiving thirty-three dollars a month when on service abroad must allot +fifteen dollars a month to his wife, and the government adds to this twenty-five +dollars, and if there is one child, an additional ten dollars, with five +dollars for each additional child. A man can secure an allowance from the +government of ten dollars a month to a dependent parent, if he allots five +dollars a month. Such are the bare bones of the allowance schemes of the +Allies on the western front +<p>In the United States the general policy of exemption boards, as suggested +by the central authorities, is most disciplinary as regards women. Their +capacity for self-support is rigidly inquired into. Our men are definitely +urging women to a position of economic independence. The aim is, while +securing soldiers for the army, to relieve the government of the expense +of dependency on the part of women. There is no doubt that our men at least +are faced toward the future. No less indicative is it of a new world that +the allowance laws of all the western belligerents recognize common-law +marriages. In our own law, marriage is "presumed if the man and woman have +lived together in the openly acknowledged relation of husband and wife +during two years immediately preceding the date of the declaration of war." +And the illegitimate child stands equal with the legitimate provided the +father acknowledges the child or has been "judicially ordered or decreed +to contribute" to the child's support. +<p>Men are feminists. Their hearts have softened even towards the wife's +relatives, for the word "parent" is not only broad enough to cover the +father, mother, grandparents or step-father and mother of the man, but +"of the spouse" also. Thus passeth the curse of the mother-in-law. +<p>One need not be endowed with the spirit of prophecy to foretell that +"allowances" in war time will broaden out into motherhood pensions in peace +times. It would be an ordinary human reaction should the woman enjoying +a pension refuse to give up, on the day peace is declared, her quickly +acquired habit of holding the purse strings. That would be accepting international +calm at the expense of domestic differences. The social value of encouraging +the mother's natural feeling of responsibility toward her child by putting +into her hands a state pension is being, let us note, widely tested, and +may demonstrate the wisdom and economy of devoting public funds to mothers +rather than to crêches and juvenile asylums. +<p>The allowance laws may prove the charter of woman's liberties; her pay +envelope may become her contract securing the right of self-determination. +<br> +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<h2> +<a NAME="VIII"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">VIII<br> +POOLING BRAINS</a></h2> +"Employ them." This was the advice given to a large conference of women +met to discuss business opportunities for their sex. The advice was vouchsafed +by a young lawyer after the problem of opening wider fields to women in +the legal profession had been looked at from every angle, only to end in +the question, "What can we do to increase their practice?" She spoke with +animation, as if she had found the key to the situation, "Employ them." +Perhaps more self-accusation than determination to mend their ways was +roused by the short and pointed remark. +<p>The advice has wider application. Taking thirty names of women at random, +I learned in response to an inquiry that only four had women physicians, +two had women lawyers, and only one, a woman dentist. Twenty-five women +of large real estate holdings had never even for the most unimportant work +secured the services of an architect of their own sex. Further inquiry +brought out the fact that of a long list of women's clubs and associations +which have built or altered property for their purposes, only one had engaged +a woman architect. +<p>Perhaps it is indicative of a lack of nothing more serious than a sense +of humor, that we women unite and, apparently without embarrassment, demand +that masculine presidents, governors, mayors and legislatures shall appoint +women to office. This unabashed faith in the good will of men seems not +misplaced, for not only do public men show some confidence in the official +capacity of women, but to my inquiry as to whom was due their opportunities +to "get on," business women invariably replied, "To men." +<p>However, the loyalty of women to women is increasing, and their solidarity +on sound lines of service is a thing of steady growth. Thoughtful women, +for instance, do not wish a woman put in a position of responsibility simply +because she is a woman, but they are even more opposed to having a candidate +of peculiar fitness overlooked merely because she is not a man. While the +conscientious and poised women are not willing to urge any and every woman +for a given office, they do tenaciously hold that there are positions which +cry aloud for women and for which the right women should he found. In conquering +a fair field, women will have to pool their brains even more effectively +than they have in the past. +<p>Our efforts at combination are a mere mushroom growth compared with +the generations of training our big brothers have had in pooling brains. +War and the chase gave them their first lessons in cooperation, nor has +war been a bad teacher for women. +<p>Just as the Crimean War and our Civil War put Florence Nightingale and +Clara Barton and the trained nurse on the map, this war is bringing the +medical woman to the fore. Women surgeons and doctors, unlike many other +groups, offer themselves fully trained for service. They know they have +something to give, and they know the soldiers' need. +<p>According to an official statement, the emergency call of the army for +men physicians and surgeons fell two thousand short of being answered. +The necessity of the soldier and the skill of the women will no doubt in +the end be brought effectively together; for although the government of +the United States, like Great Britain in the early days of the war, has +left to ever farseeing France the honor of extending hospitality to American +women doctors, their strong national organization, with a membership of +four thousand, will in time, no doubt, persuade Uncle Sam to take his plucky +women doctors over the top under the Stars and Stripes! Organization crystallized +about an unselfish desire and skilled ability to serve is irresistible. +<p>The pooling of the brains of women that has been going on on a country-wide +scale for more than a half-century bears analyzing. These associations +have almost invariably centered about a service to be rendered. Even the +first petition for political enfranchisement urged it as the "duty of the +women of this country to secure to themselves the elective franchise." +Unselfishness draws numbers as a magnet draws steel filings. The spirit +of service lying at the heart of the great national organizations made +possible quick response to new duties immediately upon our entrance into +the war. The suffragists said, We wish to serve and we are ready for service. +The government used their wide-spread net of local centers for purposes +of registrations and war appeals. +<p>Naturally there were many efforts more foolish than effective in the +universal rush to help. America was not peculiar in this, nor for the matter +of that, were women. War!--it does make the blood course through the veins. +Every generous citizen cries aloud, "What can I do?" Perhaps men are a +little more voluble than women, their emotions not finding such immediate +and approved vent along clicking needles and tangled skeins of wool. On +the whole, the initiative and organizing ability of women has stood out +supremely. +<p>Of the two departments of the Red Cross which are still left in the +command of women, the Bureau of Nursing, with Miss Delano at its head, +mobilized immediately three thousand of the fourteen thousand nurses enrolled. +The first Red Cross Medical Unit with its full quota of sixty-five nurses +completely equipped stood on European soil before an American soldier was +there. Of the forty-nine units ready for service, twelve, with from sixty-five +to one hundred nurses each, are now in France. Two of the five units organized +for the navy, each with its forty active nurses and twenty reserves, are +established abroad, and two hundred and thirty nurses are already in active +naval service here. Miss Delano holds constantly in reserve fifteen hundred +nurses as emergency detachments, a reservoir from which some eight hundred +have been drawn for cantonment hospitals. An inflow of nearly one thousand +nurses each month keeps the reservoir ready to meet the drain. +<p>The Chapter work-rooms sprang up at a call in the night. No one can +help admiring their well-ordered functioning. There may be criticism, grumbling, +but the work-room is moving irresistibly, like a well-oiled machine. And +women are the motive power from start to finish. The Chapters, with their +five million members joined in three thousand units over the United States, +are so many monuments to the ability of women for detail. Once mobilized, +the women have thus far been able to serve two thousand war hospitals with +surgical dressings, and to send abroad thirteen million separate articles +packed carefully, boxed, labelled and accounted for on their books. +<p>Not only does this directing of manual work stand to the credit of the +Chapters, but they have given courses of lectures in home nursing and dietetics +to thirty-four thousand women, and in first aid; ten thousand classes have +been held and seventy-five thousand certificates issued to the proficient. +Certainly one object of the Red Cross, "to stimulate the volunteer work +of women," has been accomplished. +<p>It is difficult to understand why, with such examples of women's efficiency +before it, the Red Cross, founded by Clara Barton, places merely two bureaus +in the hands of a woman, has chosen no woman as an officer, has put but +one woman on its central and executive committee, and not a single woman +on its present controlling body, the War Council. It may be that the protest +against the centralization of all volunteer effort in the Red Cross, in +spite of President Wilson's appeal, was due to the fact that women feared +that their energies, running to other lines than nursing and surgical dressings, +would be entirely sidetracked. +<p>The honor of the splendid war work of the Young Women's Christian Association +belongs to women. The War Work Council of the National Board of Young Women's +Christian Associations shows an example of how immediately efficient an +established organization can be in an emergency. As one sees its great +War Fund roll up, one exclaims, "What money raisers women are!" The immediate +demands upon the fund are for Hostess Houses at cantonments where soldiers +can meet their women visitors, dormitories providing emergency housing +for women employees at certain army centers, the strengthening of club +work among the younger girls of the nation, profoundly affected by war +conditions, and the sending of experienced organizers to coöperate +with the women leaders of France and Russia and to install nurses' huts +at the base hospitals of France. It makes one's heart beat high to think +of women spending millions splendidly, they who have always been told to +save pennies frugally! Well, those hard days were times of training; women +learned not to waste. +<p>A very worthy pooling of brains, because springing up with no tradition +behind it, was the National League for Woman's Service. In six months it +drew to itself two hundred thousand members and built organizations in +thirty-nine States, established classes to train women for the new work +opening to them, opened recreation centers and canteens at which were entertained +on a single Sunday, at one center, eighteen hundred soldiers and sailors. +So excellent was its Bureau of Registration and Information for women workers +that the United States Department of Labor took over not only the files +and methods of the Woman's League for Service, but the entire staff with +Miss Obenauer at its head. If imitation is the sincerest flattery, what +shall we say of complete adoption of work and workers, with an honorable +"by your leave" and outspoken praise! And nothing could show a finer spirit +of service than this yielding up of work initiated by a civil society and +the willing passing of it into government hands. +<p>Not only the Labor Department has established a special women's division +with a woman at its head, but the Ordnance Office of the War Department +has opened in its Industrial Service Section a woman's division, putting +Miss Mary Van Kleeck in charge. +<p>But still our government lags behind our Allies in mobilizing woman's +power of initiative and her organizing faculty. The Woman's Committee +of the Council of National Defense, appointed soon after the outbreak of +war, still has no administrative power. As one member of the Committee +says, "We are not allowed to do anything without the consent of the Council +of National Defense. There is no appropriation for the Woman's Committee. +We are furnished with headquarters, stationery, some printing and two stenographers, +but nothing more. It is essential that we raise money to carry on the other +expenses. The great trouble is that now, as always, men want women to do +the work while they do the overseeing." +<center> +<p><img SRC="images/143.gif" ALT="The women of the Motor Corps of the National League for Woman's Service refuting the traditions that women have neither strength nor endurance." height=301 width=500></center> + +<h4> +The women of the Motor Corps of the National League for Woman's Service +refuting the traditions that women have neither strength nor endurance.</h4> +Perhaps holding the helm has become second nature to men simply because +they have held the helm so long, but I am inclined to think they have a +very definite desire to have women help steer the ship. Surely the readiness +with which they are sharing their political power with women, would seem +to indicate their wish for cooperation on a plan of perfect equality. +<p>In any case, it is not necessary to hang on the skirts of government. +America has always shown evidence of greater gift in private enterprise +than state action. Perhaps women will demonstrate the national characteristic. +It was farsightedness and enterprise that led the Intercollegiate Bureaus +of Occupations, societies run for women by women, to strike out in this +crisis and open up new callings for their clients, and still better, to +persuade colleges and schools to modify curricula to meet the changed demands. +<p>Women are often passed over because they are not prepared. +<p>The Bureaus have found the demand for women in industrial chemistry +and physics, for instance, to be greater than the supply because the graduates +of women's colleges have not been carried far enough in mathematics, and +in chemistry have been kept too much to theoretical text-book work. For +example, the head of a certain industry was willing to give the position +of chemist at his works to a woman. He needed some one to suggest changes +in process from time to time, and to watch waste. He set down eight simple +problems such as might arise any day in his factory for the candidates +to answer. Some of the women, all college graduates, who had specialized +in chemistry, could not answer a single problem, and none showed that grip +of the science which would enable them to give other than rule of thumb +solutions. He engaged a man. +<p>In answering the questionnaire which the New York Bureau of Occupations +sent to one hundred and twenty-five industrial plants, the manager in almost +every case replied, in regard to the possibility of employing women in +such positions as research or control chemists, that applicants were "badly +prepared." As hand workers, too, women are handicapped by lack of knowledge +of machinery. In this tool age, high school girls are cut off from technical +education, although they are destined to carry on in large measure our +skilled trades. I am told that in Germany many factories had to close because +only women were available as managers, and they had not been fitted by +business and technical schools for the task. +<p>If women individually are looking for a soft place, if they are afraid, +as one manager expressed it, "to put on overalls and go into a vat," even +when their country is so in need of their service, it is futile for them +to ask collectively for equal opportunity and equal pay; if they individually +fail to prepare as for a life work, regarding themselves as but temporarily +in business or a profession, their collective demand upon the world for +a fair field and no favor will be as ineffective as illogical. +<p>The doors stand wide open. It rests with women themselves as to whether +they shall enter in. +<p>To the steady appeals of the employment bureaus, backed by the stern +facts of life, the colleges are yielding. On examination I found that curricula +are already being modified. None but the sorriest pessimist could doubt +the nature of the final outcome, on realizing the pooling of brains which +is going on in such associations as the Intercollegiate Bureau of Occupations +and the League for Business Opportunities. They work to the end of having +young women not only soundly prepared for the new openings, but sensitive +to the demands of a world set towards stern duty. +<p>Not only is there call for a pooling of brains to look after the timid +and unready, but there is need of combination to open the gates for the +prepared and brave. Few who cheered the Red Cross nurses as they made their +stirring march on Fifth Avenue, knew that those devoted women would, on +entering the Military Nurse Corps, find themselves the only nurses among +the Allies without a position of honor. The humiliation to our nurses in +placing them below the orderlies in the hospitals is not only a blow to +their esprit de corps, but a definite handicap to their efficiency. A nurse +who was at the head of the nursing staff in a state hospital wrote from +the front: "There is one thing the Nursing Committee needs to work for, +and work hard, too, and that is, to make for nurses the rank of lieutenant. +The Canadians have it, why not the Americans? You will find that it will +make a tremendous difference. You see, there are no officers in our nursing +personnel. One of our staff says we are the hired extras! It is really +a great mistake." Uncle Sam may merely be waiting for a concentrated drive +of public opinion against his tardy representatives. +<center> +<p><img SRC="images/149.gif" ALT="Down the street they come, beginning their pilgrimage of alleviation and succor on the battlefields of France." height=302 width=500></center> + +<h4> +Down the street they come, beginning their pilgrimage of alleviation and +succor on the battlefields of France.</h4> +And why should it be necessary to urge that while scores of young men are +dashing to death in endeavors to learn to fly, there are women unmobilized +who know how to soar aloft in safety? They have never, it is true, been +submitted to laboratory tests in twirlings and twistings, but they reach +the zenith. Two carried off the records in long distance flights, but both +have been refused admission to the Flying Corps. Will it need a campaign +to secure for our army this efficient service? Must women pool their brains +to have Ruth Law spread her protecting wings over our boys in France? +<p>To any one who realizes the significance of the military situation as +it stands, and who is cognizant of the contrast between Germany's use of +her entire people in her national effort, and the slow mobilization of +woman-power among the Allies and entire lack of anything worthy the name +of mobilization of the labor-power of women in the United States, there +will come a determination to bury every jealousy between woman and woman, +all prejudice in men, to cut red tape in government, with the one object +of combining all resources. +<p>The full power of our men must be thrown into military effort. And, +then, if as a nation we have brains to pool, we will not stand niggling, +but will throw women doctors in to render their service, grant to the nurse +corps what it needs to ensure efficiency, throw open the technical schools +to girls as well as to boys, modify the college course to meet the facts +of life. Each woman unprepared is a national handicap, each prejudice blocking +the use of woman-power is treachery to our cause. +<p>As to the final outcome of united thought and group action among women, +no one can doubt. Contacts will rub off angles, capable service will break +down sex prejudice and overcome government opposition. But there is not +time to wait for the slow development of "final outcomes." +<p>Women must pool their brains against their own shortcomings, and in +favor of their own ability to back up their country now and here. +<br> +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<h2> +<a NAME="IX"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">IX<br> +"BUSINESS AS USUAL"</a></h2> +It is a platitude to say that America is the most extravagant nation on +earth. The whole world tells us so, and we do not deny it, being, indeed, +a bit proud of the fact. Who is there among us who does not respond with +sympathetic understanding to the defense of the bride reprimanded for extravagance +by her mother-in-law (women have mothers-in-law), "John and I find we can +do without the necessities of life. It's the luxuries we must have." One +of the obstacles to complete mobilization of our country is extravagance. +And at the center of this national failing sits the American woman enthroned. +<p>Europe found it could not allow old-time luxury trades to go on, if +the war was to be won. "Business as usual" is not in harmony with victory. +<p>I remember the first time I heard the slogan, and how it carried me +and everyone else away. The Zeppelins had visited London the night before. +A house in Red Lion Mews was crushed down into its cellar, a heap of ruins. +Every pane of glass was shattered in the hospitals surrounding Queen's +Square, and ploughed deep, making a great basin in the center of the grass, +lay the remnants of the bomb that had buried itself in the heart of England. +The shops along Theobald's Road were wrecked, but in the heaps of broken +glass in each show window were improvised signs such as, "Don't sympathize +with us, buy something." The sign which was displayed oftenest read, "Business +as usual." +<p>The first I noticed was in the window of a print shop, the owner a woman. +I talked to her through the frame of the shattered glass. She looked very +pale and her face was cut, but she and everyone else was calm. And no one +was doing business as usual more composedly than a wee tot trudging along +to school with a nasty scratch from a glass splinter on her chubby cheek. +<p>"Business as usual" expressed the fine spirit, the courage, the determination +of a people. As the sporting motto of an indomitable race, it was very +splendid. But war is not a sport, it is a cold, hard science, demanding +every energy of the nation for its successful pursuit. In proportion as +our indulgence in luxury has been greater than that of any European nation, +our challenge to every business must be the more insistent. There must +be a straight answer to two questions: Does this enterprise render direct +war service, or, if not, is it essential to the well-being of our citizens? +<p>But the discipline will not come from the gods. Nor will our government +readily turn taskmaster. The effort must come largely as self-discipline, +growing into group determination to win the war and the conviction that +it is impossible to achieve victory and conserve the virility of our people, +if any considerable part of the community devotes its time, energy and +money to creating useless things. A nation can make good in this cataclysm +only if it centers its whole power on the two objects in view: military +victory, and husbanding of life and resources at home. +<p>Let me hasten to add that the act of creating a thing does not include +only the processes of industry. The act of buying is creative. The riot +of luxury trades in the United States will not end so long as the American +woman remains a steady buyer of luxuries. The mobilization of women as +workers is no more essential to the triumph of our cause, than the mobilization +of women for thrift. The beginning and end of saving in America rests almost +entirely in the hands of women. They are the buyers in the working class +and in the professional class. Among the wealthy they set the standard +of living. +<p>Practically every appeal for thrift has been addressed to the rich. +I am not referring to the supply of channels into which to pour savings, +but to appeals to make the economies which will furnish the means to buy +stamps or bonds. Those appeals are addressed almost wholly to the well-to-do, +as for example, suggestions as to reducing courses at dinner or cutting +out "that fourth meal." +<p>Self-denial, no doubt, is supposed to be good for the millionaire soul, +but to such it is chiefly recommended, I think, as an example sure of imitation. +What the rich do, other women will follow, is the idea. But the steady +insistence that we fight in this war for democracy has put into the minds +of the people very definite demands for independence and for freedom. +<p>In such a democratic world the newly adopted habits of the wealthy will +not prove widely convincing. Economy needs other than an aristocratic stimulus. +<center> +<p><img SRC="images/156.gif" ALT="How can business be as usual when in Paris there are about 1800 of these small workshops where a woman dips Bengal Fire and grenades into a bath of paraffin!" height=306 width=500></center> + +<h4> +How can business be "as usual" when in Paris there are about 1800 of these +small workshops where a woman dips Bengal Fire and grenades into a bath +of paraffin!</h4> +I do not mean to under-estimate the value of economy in the well-to-do +class. There is no doubt that shop windows on Fifth Avenue are a severe +commentary upon our present intelligence and earnestness of purpose. No +one, I think, would deny that it would be a service if the woman of fashion +ceased to drape fur here, there and everywhere on her gowns except where +she might really need the thick pelt to keep her warm, and instead saved +the price of the garment which serves no purpose but that of display, and +gave the money in Liberty Bonds to buy a fur-lined coat for some soldier, +or food for a starving baby abroad. And overburdened as the railways are +with freight and ordinary passenger traffic, I am sure the general public +will not fail to appreciate to the full a self-denial which leads patrons +of private cars, Pullman and dining coaches to abandon their self-indulgence. +<p>Undoubtedly economy among the rich is of value. I presume few would +gainsay that it would have been well for America if the use of private +automobiles had long since ceased, and the labor and plants used in their +making turned to manufacturing much-needed trucks and ambulances. But while +not inclined to belittle the work of any possible saving and self-sacrifice +on the part of those of wealth, it seems to me that the most fruitful field +for war economy lies among simple people. Thrift waits for democratization. +<p>We of limited means hug some of the most extravagant of habits. The +average working-class family enjoys none of the fruits of coöperation +We keep each to our isolated family group, while the richer a person is +the more does she gather under her roof representatives of other families. +Her cook may come from the Berri family, the waitress may be an Andersen, +the nurse an O'Hara. +<p>The poor might well practice the economy of fellowship. +<p>The better-off live in apartment houses where the economy of central +heating is practised, while the majority of the poor occupy tenements where +the extravagance of the individual stove is indulged in. The saving of +coal is urged, but the authorities do not seek to secure for the poor the +comfort of the true method of fuel saving. +<p>The richer a family is, the more it saves by the use of skilled service. +The poor, clinging to their prejudices and refusing to trust one another, +do not profit by coöperative buying, or by central kitchens run by +experts. Money is wasted by amateurish selection of food and clothing, +and nutritive values are squandered by poor cooking. +<p>Unfortunately Uncle Sam does not suggest how many War Saving Stamps +could be bought as a result of economy along these lines. +<p>The woman with the pay envelope may democratize thrift. She knows how +hard it is to earn money, and has learned to make her wages reach a long +way. Then, too, she has it brought home to her each pay day that health +is capital. She finds that it is economy to keep well, for lost time brings +a light pay envelope. Every woman who keeps herself in condition is making +a war saving. There has been no propaganda as yet appealing to women to +value dress according to durability and comfort rather than according to +its prettiness, to bow to no fashion which means the lessening of power. +To corset herself as fashion dictates, to prop herself on high heels, means +to a woman just so much lost efficiency, and even the most thoughtless, +if appealed to for national saving, might learn to turn by preference in +dress, in habits, in recreation, to the simple things. +<p>The Japanese, I am told, make a ceremony of going out from the city +to enjoy the beauties of a moonlight night. We go to a stuffy theatre and +applaud a night "set." Nature gives her children the one, and the producer +charges his patrons for the other. A propaganda of democratic war economy +would teach us to delight in the beauties of nature. +<p>In making the change from business as usual to economy, Europe suffered +hardship, because although the retrenchments suggested were fairly democratic +it had not created channels into which savings might be thrown with certainty +of their flowing on to safe expenditures. Europe was not ready with its +great thrift schemes, nor had the adjustments been made which would enable +a shop to turn out a needed uniform, let us say, in place of a useless +dress. +<p>Definite use of savings has been provided for in the United States. +The government needs goods of every kind to make our military effort successful. +Camps must be built for training the soldiers, uniforms, guns and ammunition +supplied. Transportation on land and sea is called for. The government +needs money to carry on the industries essential to winning the war. +<p>If a plucky girl who works in a button factory refuses to buy an ornament +which she at first thought of getting to decorate her belt, and puts that +twenty-five cents into a War Saving Stamp, all in the spirit of backing +up her man at the front, she will not find herself thrown out of employment; +instead, while demands for unnecessary ornamental fastenings will gradually +cease, she will be kept busy on government orders. +<p>Profiting by the errors of those nations who had to blaze out new paths, +the United States knit into law, a few months after the declaration of +war, not only the quick drafting of its man-power for military service, +but methods of absorbing the people's savings. If we neither waste nor +hoard, we will not suffer as did Europe from wide-spread unemployment. +There is more work to be done than our available labor-power can meet. +<p>There is nothing to fear from the curtailment of luxury; our danger +lies in lack of a sound definition of extravagance. Uncle Sam could get +more by appeals to simple folk than by homilies preached to the rich. The +Great War is a conflict between the ideals of the peoples. 'Tis a people's +war, and with women as half the people. The savings made to support the +war must needs, then, be made by the people, for the people. +<p>There has been no compelling propaganda to that end. The suggestion +of mere "cutting down" may be a valuable goal to set for the well-to-do, +but it is not a mark to be hit by those already down to bed rock. The only +saving possible to those living on narrow margins is by coöperation, +civil or state. +<p>It is a mad extravagance, for instance, to kill with autos children +at play in the streets. A saving of life could easily be achieved through +group action, by securing children's attendants, by opening play-grounds +on the roofs of churches and public buildings, by shutting off streets +dedicated to the sacred right of children to play. This would be a war +saving touching the heart and the enthusiasm of the people. +<p>Central municipal heating is not a wild dream, but a recognized economy +in many places. Municipal kitchens are not vague surmisings, but facts +achieved in the towns of Europe. They are forms of war thrift. In America +no such converting examples of economy are as yet given, and not an appeal +has been made to women to save through solidarity. +<p>Uncle Sam has been commendably quick and wise in offering a reservoir +to hold the tiny savings, but slow in starting a democratic propaganda +suggesting ways of saving the pennies. +<p>If business as usual is a poor motto, so is life as usual, habits as +usual. +<br> +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<h2> +<a NAME="X"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">X<br> +"AS MOTHER USED TO DO"</a></h2> +Man's admiration for things as mother used to do them is as great an obstacle +as business as usual in the path of winning the war and husbanding the +race. The glamour surrounding the economic feats of mother in the past +hides the shortcomings of today. +<p>I once saw one of her old fortresses, a manor home where in bygone days +she had reigned supreme. In the court yard was the smoke house where she +cured meat and fish. In the cellar were the caldrons and vats where long +ago she tried tallow and brewed beer. And there were all the utensils for +dealing with flax. In the garret I saw the spindles for spinning cotton +and wool, and the hand looms for weaving the homespun. In her day, mother +was a great creator of wealth. +<p>But then an economic earthquake came. Foundations were shaken, the roof +was torn off her domestic workshop. Steam and machinery, like cyclones, +carried away her industries, and nothing was left to her but odds and ends +of occupations. +<p>Toiling in the family circle from the days of the cave dwellers, mother +had become so intimately associated in the tribal mind with the hearthstone +that the home was called her sphere. Around this segregation accumulated +accretions of opinion, layer on layer emanating from the mind of her mate. +Let us call the accretions the Adamistic Theory. Its authors happened to +be the government and could use the public treasury in furtherance of publicity +for their ideas set forth in hieroglyphics cut in stone, or written in +plain English and printed on the front page of an American daily. +<p>One of the few occupations left to mother after the disruption of her +sphere at the end of the eighteenth century was the preparation of food. +In the minds of men, food, from its seed sowing up to its mastication, +has always been associated with woman. Mention food and the average man +thinks of mother. That is the Adam in him. And so, quite naturally, one +must first consider this relation of women to food in the Adamistic Theory. +<center> +<p><img SRC="images/165.gif" ALT="Countess de Berkaim and her canteen in the Gare de St. Lazarre, Paris." height=303 width=500></center> + +<center> +<h4> +Countess de Berkaim and her canteen in the Gare de St. Lazarre, Paris.</h4></center> +When the world under war conditions asked to be fed, Adam, running true +to his theory, pointed to mother as the source of supply, and declared +with an emphasis that came of implicit faith, that the universe need want +for nothing, if each woman would eliminate waste in her kitchen and become +a voluntary and obedient reflector of the decisions of state and national +food authorities. This solution presupposed a highly developed sense of +community devotion in women running hand in hand with entire lack of gift +for community action. Woman, it was expected, would display more than her +proverbial lack of logic by embracing with enthusiasm state direction and +at the same time remain an exemplar of individualistic performance. The +Adamistic scheme seems still further to demand for its smooth working that +the feminine group show self-abnegation and agree that it is not itself +suited to reason out general plans. +<p>It is within the range of possibility, however, that no comprehensive +scheme of food conservation or effective saving in any line can be imposed +on women without consulting them. The negro who agreed "dat de colored +folk should keep in dar places," touched a fundamental note in human nature, +over-running sex as well as racial boundaries, when he added, "and de colored +folk must do de placin'." It might seem to run counter to this bit of wisdom +for women to be told that the welfare of the world depends upon them, and +then for no woman to be given administrative power to mobilize the group. +<p>But the contest between man's devotion to the habits of his ancestry +in the female line, and the ideas of his very living women folk, is as +trying to him as it is interesting to the outside observer. The conflicting +forces illustrate a universal fact. It is always true that the ruling class, +when a discipline and a sacrifice are recognized as necessary, endeavors +to make it appear that the new obligation should be shouldered by the less +powerful. For instance, to take an illustration quite outside the domestic +circle, when America first became convinced that military preparation was +incumbent upon us, the ruling class would scarcely discuss conscription, +much less adopt universal service. That is, it vetoed self-discipline. +In many States, laws were passed putting off upon children in the schools +the training which the voting adults knew the nation needed. +<p>In the same way, when food falls short and the victualing of the world +becomes a pressing duty, the governing class adopts a thesis that a politically +less-favored group can, by saving in small and painful ways, accumulate +the extra food necessary to keep the world from starving. The ruling class +seeks cover in primitive ideas, accuses Eve of introducing sin into the +world, and calls upon her to mend her wasteful ways. +<p>Men, of course, know intellectually that much food is a factory product +in these days, but emotionally they have a picture of mother, still supplying +the family in a complete, secret, and silent manner. +<p>This Adamistic emotion takes command at the crisis, for when human beings +are suddenly faced with a new and agitating situation, primitive ideas +seize them. Mother, it is true, did create the goods for immediate consumption, +and so the sons of Adam, in a spirit of admiration, doffing their helmets, +so to speak, to the primitive woman, turn in this time of stress and call +confidently upon Eve's daughters to create and save. The confidence is +touching, but perhaps the feminine reaction will not be, and perchance +ought not to be just such as Adam expects. +<p>Women have passed in aspiration, and to some extent in action, out of +the ultra-individualistic stage of civilization. +<p>The food propaganda reflects the hiatus in Adam's thought. I have looked +over hundreds of publications issued by the agricultural departments and +colleges of the various States. They tell housewives what to "put into +the garbage pail," what to "keep out of the garbage pail," what to substitute +for wheat, how to make soap, but, with a single exception, not a word issued +suggests to women any saving through group action. +<p>This exception, which stood out as a beacon light in an ocean of literature +worthy of the Stone Age, was a small pamphlet issued by the Michigan Agricultural +College on luncheons in rural schools. Sound doctrine was preached on the +need of the children for substantial and warm noon meals, and the comparative +ease and economy with which such luncheons could be provided at the school +house. Children can of course be better and more cheaply fed as a group +than as isolated units supplied with a cold home-prepared lunch box. And +yet with the whole machinery of the state in his hands, Adam's commissions, +backed by the people's money, goad mother on to isolated endeavor. She +plants and weeds and harvests. She dries and cans, preserves and pickles. +Then she calculates and perchance finds that her finished product is not +always of the best and has often cost more than if purchased in the open +market. +<p>It may be the truest devotion to our Allies to challenge the individualistic +rôle recommended by Adam to mother, for it will hinder, not help, +the feeding of the world to put women back under eighteenth century conditions. +Food is short and expensive because labor is short. And even when the harvest +is ripe, the saving of food cannot be set as a separate and commendable +goal, and the choice as to where labor shall be expended as negligible. +It is a prejudiced devotion to mother and her ways which leads Adam in +his food pamphlets to advise that a woman shall sit in her chimney corner +and spend time peeling a peach "very thin," when hundreds of bushels of +peaches rot in the orchards for lack of hands to pick them. +<p>Just how wide Adam's Eve has opened the gate of Eden and looked out +into the big world is not entirely clear, but probably wide enough to glimpse +the fact that all the advice Adam has recently given to her runs counter +to man's method of achievement. Men have preached to one another for a +hundred years and more and practiced so successfully the concentration +in industry of unlimited machinery with a few hands, that even mother knows +some of the truths in regard to the creation of wealth in the business +world, and she is probably not incapable of drawing a conclusion from her +own experience in the transfer of work from the home to the factory. +<p>If they are city dwellers, women have seen bread and preserves transferred; +if farm dwellers, they have seen the curing of meat and fish transferred, +the making of butter and cheese. They know that because of this transfer +the home is cleaner and quieter, more people better fed and clothed, and +the hours of the factory worker made shorter than those "mother used to +work." With half an eye women cannot fail to note that the labor which +used to be occupied in the home in interminable hours of spinning, baking +and preserving, has come to occupy itself for regulated periods in the +school, in business, in factory or cannery. And lo, Eve finds herself with +a pay envelope able to help support the quieter, cleaner home! +<p>All this is a commonplace to the business man, who knows that the evolution +has gone so far that ten percent of the married women of America are in +gainful pursuits, and that capital ventured on apartment hotels brings +a tempting return. +<p>But the Adamistic theory is based on the dream that women are contentedly +and efficiently conducting in their flats many occupations, and longing +to receive back into the life around the gas-log all those industries which +in years gone by were drawn from the fireside and established as money +making projects in mill or work-shop. And so Adam addresses an exhortation +to his Eve: "Don't buy bread, bake it; don't buy flour, grind your own; +don't buy soap, make it; don't buy canned, preserved, or dried food, carry +on the processes yourself; don't buy fruits and vegetables, raise them." +<p>Not a doubt seems to exist in Adam's mind as to the efficiency of functioning +woman-power in this way. According to the Adamistic theory, work as mother +used to do it is unqualifiedly perfect. This flattering faith is naturally +balm to women's hearts, and yet there are skeptics among them. When quite +by themselves women speculate as to how much of the fruit and vegetables +now put up in the home will "work." +<p>They smile when the hope is expressed that the quality will rise above +the old-time domestic standard. The home of the past was a beehive in which +women drudged, and little children were weary toilers, and the result was +not of a high grade. Statistics have shown that seventy-five percent of +the home-made bread of America was a poor product. I lived as a child in +the days of home-made bread. Once in so often the batch of bread "went +sour," and there seemed to be an unfailing supply of stale bread which +"must be eaten first." Those who cry out against a city of bakers' bread, +have never lived in a country of the home-made loaf. It is the Adamistic +philosophy, so complimentary to Eve, that leads us to expect that all housewives +can turn out a product as good as that of an expert who has specialized +to the one end of making bread, and who is supplied with expensive equipment +beyond the reach of the individual to possess. But there are rebellious +consumers who point out that the baker is under the law, while the housewife +is a law unto herself. Against the baker's shortcomings such brave doubters +assure us we have redress, we can refuse to patronize him; against the +housewife there is no appeal, her family must swallow her product to the +detriment of digestion. +<p>It may be the brutal truth, taking bread as the index, that only a quarter +of the processes carried on in the home turn out satisfactorily, while +of the other three-quarters, a just verdict may show that mother gets a +"little too much lye" in the soap, cooks the preserves a "little too hard," +"candies the fruit just a little bit," and grinds the flour in the mill +"not quite fine enough." +<p>But perhaps even more than the quality of the product does the question +of the economical disposition of labor-power agitate some women. They are +asking, since labor is very scarce, whether the extreme individualistic +direction of their labor-power is permissible. The vast majority of American +homes are without servants. In those homes are the women working such short +hours that they can, without dropping important obligations, take over +preserving, canning, dehydrating, the making of bread, soap, and butter +substitute? Has the tenement-house dweller accommodation suitable for introducing +these industrial processes into her home? Would the woman in the small +ménage in the country be wise in cutting down time given, for instance, +to the care of her baby and to reading to the older children, and using +the precious moments laboriously to grind wheat to flour? My observation +convinces me that conscientious housewives in servantless or one-servant +households, with work adjusted to a given end, with relative values already +determined upon, are not prepared by acceptance of the Adamistic theory +to return to primitive occupations. +<p>But even if business and home life could respond to the change without +strain, even if both could easily turn back on the road they have come +during the last hundred years, commerce yielding up and the home re-adopting +certain occupations, we should carefully weigh the economic value of a +reversion to primitive methods. +<p>The Adamistic attitude is influenced, perhaps unconsciously but no less +certainly, by the fact that the housewife is an unpaid worker. If an unpaid +person volunteers to do a thing, it is readily assumed that the particular +effort is worth while. "We get the labor for nothing" puts to rout all +thought of valuation. No doubt Adam will have to give over thinking in +this loose way. Labor-power, whether it is paid for or not, must be used +wisely or we shall not be able to maintain the structure of our civilization. +<p>Then, too, the Adamistic theory weighs and values the housewife's time +as little as it questions the quality of the home product. Any careful +reader of the various "Hints to Housewives" which have appeared, will note +that the "simplifying of meals" recommended would require nearly double +the time to prepare. The simplification takes into consideration only the +question of food substitutions, price and waste. Mother is supposed to +be wholly or largely unemployed and longing for unpaid toil. Should any +housewife conscientiously follow the advice given her by state and municipal +authorities she would be the drudge at the center of a home quite medieval +in development. +<p>Let us take a concrete example:--In a recently published and widely +applauded cookbook put out by a whole committee of Adamistic philosophers, +it is stated that the object of the book is to give practical hints as +to the various ways in which "economies can be effected and waste saved;" +and yet no saving of the woman's time, nerves and muscles is referred to +from cover to cover. The housewife is told, for instance, to "insist upon +getting the meat trimmings." The fat "can be rendered." And then follows +the process in soap-making. Mother is to place the scraps of fat on the +back of the stove. If she "watches it carefully" and does not allow it +to get hot enough to smoke there will be no odor. No doubt if she removes +her watchful eye and turns to bathe her baby, her tenement will reek with +smoking fat. She is to pursue this trying of fat and nerves day by day +until she has six pounds of grease. Next, she is to "stir it well," cool +it, melt it again; she is then to pour in the lye, "slowly stirring all +the time." Add ammonia. Then "stir the mixture constantly for twenty minutes +or half an hour." +<p>In contrast to all this primeval elaboration is the simple, common-sense +rule: Do not buy the trimmings, make the butcher trim meat before weighing, +insist that soap-making shall not be brought back to defile the home, but +remain where it belongs, a trade in which the workers can be protected +by law, and its malodorousness brought under regulation. +<p>In the same spirit the Adamistic suggestion to Eve to save coal by a +"heatless day" is met by the cold challenge of the riotous extravagance +of cooking in twelve separate tenements, twelve separate potatoes, on twelve +separate fires. +<p>The Adamistic theory, through its emphasis on the relation of food to +Eve, and the almost religious necessity of its manipulation at the altar +of the home cook-stove, has drawn thought away from the nutritive side +of what we eat. While the child in the streets is tossing about such words +as calories and carbohydrates with a glibness that comes of much hearing, +physiology and food values are destined to remain as far away as ever from +the average family breakfast table. Segregating a sex in the home, it is +true, centralizes it in a given place, but it does not necessarily train +the individual to function efficiently. Mother, as she "used to do," cooks +by rule of thumb; in fact, how could she do otherwise, since she must keep +one eye on her approving Adam while the other eye glances at the oven. +The Adamistic theory requires individualistic action, and disapproves specialization +in Eve. +<p>The theory also demands economic dependence in the home builder. Mother's +labor is not her own, she lives under the truck system, so to speak. She +is paid in kind for her work. Influenced by the Adamistic theory, the human +animal is the only species in which sex and economic relations are closely +linked, the only one in which the female depends upon the male for sustenance. +Mother must give personal service to those about her, and in return the +law ensures her keep according to the station of her husband, that is, +not according to her ability or usefulness, but according to the man's +earning capacity. +<p>The close association of mother with home in the philosophy of her mate, +has circumscribed her most natural and modest attempts at relaxation. Mother's +holiday is a thing to draw tears from those who contemplate it. The summer +outing means carrying the family from one spot to another, and making the +best of new surroundings for the old group. The "day off" means a concentration +of the usual toil into a few hours, followed by a hazy passing show that +she is too weary to enjoy. The kindly farmer takes his wife this year to +the county fair. She's up at four to "get on" with the work. She serves +breakfast, gives the children an extra polish in honor of the day, puts +on the clean frocks and suits with an admonition "not to get all mussed +up" before the start. The farmer cheerily counsels haste in order that +"we may have a good long day of it." He does not say what "it" is, but +the wife knows. At last the house is ready to be left, and the wife and +her brood are ready to settle down in the farm wagon. +<p>The fair grounds are reached. Adam has prepared the setting. It has +no relation to mother's needs. It was a most thrilling innovation when +in the summer of 1914 the Women's Political Union first set up big tents +at county fairs, fitted with comfortable chairs for mother, and cots and +toys, nurses and companions for the children. The farmer's wife for the +first time was relieved of care, and could go off to see the sights with +her mind at rest, if she desired anything more active than rocking lazily +with the delicious sensation of having nothing to do. +<p>Women must not blame Adam for lack of thoughtfulness. He cannot put +himself in mother's place. She must do her own thinking or let women who +are capable of thought do it for her. +<p>Men are relieved when mother is independent and happy. The farmer approved +the crèche tent at the county fairs. It convinced him that women +have ideas to contribute to the well-being of the community. The venture +proved the greatest of vote getters for the suffrage referendum. +<p>In fact, men themselves are the chief opponents of the Adamistic theory +to-day. The majority want women to organize the home and it is only a small +minority who place obstacles in the way of the wider functioning of women. +It is Eve herself who likes to exaggerate the necessity of her personal +service. I have seen many a primitive housewife grow hot at the suggestion +that her methods need modifying. It seemed like severing the silken cords +by which she held her mate, to challenge her pumpkin pie. +<p>But women are slowly overcoming Eve. Take the item of the care of children +in city parks. The old way is for fifty women to look after fifty separate +children, and thus waste the time of some thirty of them in keeping fifty +miserable children in segregation. The new way, now successfully initiated, +is to form play groups of happy children under the leadership of capable +young women trained for such work. +<p>Salvaging New York City's food waste was a very splendid bit of coöperative +action on the part of women. Mrs. William H. Lough of the Women's University +Club found on investigation that thousands of tons of good food are lost +by a condemnation, necessarily rough and ready, by the Board of Health. +She secured permission to have the sound and unsound fruits and vegetables +separated and with a large committee of women saved the food for consumption +by the community by dehydrating and other preserving processes. +<p>This was not as mother used to do. +<p>Mother's ways are being investigated and discarded the whole world round. +At last accounts half the population of Hamburg was being fed through municipal +kitchens and in Great Britain an order has been issued by Lord Rhondda, +the Food Controller, authorizing local authorities to open kitchens as +food distributing centers. The central government is to bear twenty-five +percent of the cost of equipment and lend another twenty-five percent to +start the enterprise. +<p>Mother's cook stove cannot bear the strain of war economies. +<p>Dropping their old segregation, women are going forth in fellowship +with men to meet in new ways the pressing problems of a new world. +<br> +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<h2> +<a NAME="XI"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">XI<br> +A LAND ARMY</a></h2> +Great Britain, France and Germany have mobilized a land army of women; +will the United States do less? Not if the farmer can be brought to have +as much faith in American women as the women have in themselves. And why +should they not have faith; the farm has already tested them out, and they +have not been found wanting. In face of this fine accomplishment the minds +of some men still entertain doubt, or worse, obliviousness, to the possible +contribution of women to land service. +<p>The farmer knows his need and has made clear statement of the national +dilemma in the form of a memorial to the President of the United States. +In part, it is as follows: +<p>"If food is to win the war, as we are assured on every side, the farmers +of America must produce more food in 1918 than they did in 1917. Under +existing conditions we cannot equal the production of 1917, much less surpass +it, and this for reasons over which the farmers have no control. "The chief +causes which will inevitably bring about a smaller crop next year, unless +promptly removed by national action, are six in number, of which the first +is the shortage of farm labor. +<p>"Since the war began in 1914 and before the first draft was made there +is reason to believe that more farm workers had left farms than there are +men in our army and navy together. Those men were drawn away by the high +wages paid in munition plants and other war industries, and their places +remain unfilled. In spite of the new classification, future drafts will +still further reduce the farm labor supply." +<p>With a million and a half men drawn out of the country and ten billion +dollars to be expended on war material, making every ammunition factory +a labor magnet, it seems like the smooth deceptions of prestidigitation +to answer the cry of the farmer with suggestion that men rejected by the +draft or high school boys be paroled to meet the exigency. The farm can't +be run with decrepit men or larking boys, nor the war won with less than +its full quota of soldiers. Legislators, government officials and farm +associations by sudden shifting of labor battalions cannot camouflage the +fact that the front line trenches of the fighting army and labor force +are undermanned. +<p>Women can and will be the substitutes if the experiments already made +are signs of the times. +<p>Groups of women from colleges and seasonal trades have ploughed and +harrowed, sowed and planted, weeded and cultivated, mowed and harvested, +milked and churned, at Vassar, Bryn Mawr and Mount Holyoke, at Newburg +and Milton, at Bedford Hills and Mahwah. It has been demonstrated that +our girls from college and city trade can do farm work, and do it with +a will. And still better, at the end of the season their health wins high +approval from the doctors and their work golden opinions from the farmers. +<p>Twelve crusaders were chosen from the thirty-three students who volunteered +for dangerous service during a summer vacation on the Vassar College farm. +The twelve ventured out on a new enterprise that meant aching muscles, +sunburn and blisters, but not one of the twelve "ever lost a day" in their +eight hours at hard labor, beginning at four-thirty each morning for eight +weeks during one of our hottest summers. They ploughed with horses, they +ploughed with tractors, they sowed the seed, they thinned and weeded the +plants, they reaped, they raked, they pitched the hay, they did fencing +and milking. The Vassar farm had bumper crops on its seven hundred and +forty acres, and its superintendent, Mr. Louis P. Gillespie, said, "A very +great amount of the work necessary for the large production was done by +our students. They hoed and cultivated sixteen acres of field corn, ten +acres of ensilage corn, five acres of beans, five acres of potatoes; carried +sheaves of rye and wheat to the shocks and shocked them; and two of the +students milked seven cows at each milking time. In the garden they laid +out a strawberry bed of two thousand plants, helped to plant corn and beans, +picked beans and other vegetables. They took great interest in the work +and did the work just as well as the average man and made good far beyond +the most sanguine expectations." +<p>At first the students were paid twenty-five cents an hour, the same +rate as the male farm hands. The men objected, saying that the young women +were beginners, but by the end of the summer the critics realized that +"brains tell" and said the girls were worth the higher wage, though they +had only been getting, in order to appease the masculine prejudice, seventeen +and a half cents an hour. There is no pleasing some people! If women are +paid less, they are unfair competitors, if they are paid equally they are +being petted--in short, fair competitors. +<p>Mt. Holyoke and Bryn Mawr have made experiments, and, like Vassar, demonstrated +not only that women can, and that satisfactorily, work on the land, but +that they will, and that cheerfully. The groups were happy and they comprehended +that they were doing transcendently important work, were rendering a patriotic +service by filling up the places left vacant by the drafted men. +<p>The Women's Agricultural Camp, known popularly as the "Bedford Unit," +proved an experiment rich in practical suggestion. Barnard students, graduates +of the Manhattan Trade School, and girls from seasonal trades formed the +backbone of the group. They were housed in an old farmhouse, chaperoned +by one of the Barnard professors, fed by student dietitians from the Household +Arts Department of Teachers College, transported from farm to farm by seven +chauffeurs, and coached in the arts of Ceres by an agricultural expert. +The "day laborers" as well as the experts were all women. +<center> +<p><img SRC="images/188.gif" ALT="An agricultural unit, in the uniform approved by the Woman's Land Army of America." height=387 width=500></center> + +<center> +<h4> +An agricultural unit, in the uniform approved by the Woman's Land Army +of America.</h4></center> +In founding the camp Mrs. Charles W. Short, Jr., had three definite ideas +in mind. First, she was convinced that young women could without ill-effect +on their health, and should as a patriotic service, do all sorts of agricultural +work. Second, that in the present crisis the opening up of new land with +women as farm managers is not called for, but rather the supply of the +labor-power on farms already under cultivation is the need. Third, that +the women laborers must, in groups, have comfortable living conditions +without being a burden on the farmer's wife, must have adequate pay, and +must have regulated hours of work. +<p>With these sound ideas as its foundation the camp opened at Mt. Kisco, +backed by the Committee on Agriculture of the Mayor's Committee of Women +on National Defense of New York City, under the chairmanship of Virginia +Gildersleeve, Dean of Barnard College. +<p>At its greatest enrolment the unit had seventy-three members. When the +prejudice of the fanners was overcome, the demand for workers was greater +than the camp could supply. Practically the same processes were carried +through as at Vassar, and the verdict of the farmer on his new helpers +was that "while less strong than men, they more than made up for this by +superior conscientiousness and quickness." Proof of the genuineness of +his estimate was shown in his willingness to pay the management of the +camp the regulation two dollars for an eight hour working day. And it indicated +entire satisfaction with the experiment, rather than abstract faith in +woman, that each farmer anxiously urged the captain of the group at the +end of his first trial to "please bring the same young ladies tomorrow." +He was sure no others so good existed. +<p>The unit plan seems a heaven-born solution of many of the knotty problems +of the farm. In the first place, the farmer gets cheerful and handy helpers, +and his over-worked wife does not find her domestic cares added to in the +hot summer season. The new hands house and feed themselves. From the point +of view of the worker, the advantage is that her food at the camp is prepared +by trained hands and the proverbial farm isolation gives way to congenial +companionship. +<p>These separate experiments growing out of the need of food production +and the shortage of labor have brought new blood to the farm, have turned +the college girl on vacation and, what is more important, being a solution +of an industrial problem, the unemployed in seasonal trades, into recruits +for an agricultural army. And by concentrating workers in well-run camps +there has been attracted to the land a higher order of helper. +<p>One obstacle in the way of the immediate success of putting such women +on the land is a wholly mistaken idea in the minds of many persons of influence +in agricultural matters that the new labor can be diverted to domestic +work in the farm house. This view is urged in the following letter to me +from the head of one of our best agricultural colleges: "The farm labor +shortage is much more acute than is generally understood and I have much +confidence in the possibility of a great amount of useful work in food +production being done by women who are physically strong enough and who +can secure sufficient preliminary training to do this with some degree +of efficiency. Probably the larger measure of service could be done by +relieving women now on the farms of this State from the double burden of +indoor work and the attempt to assist in farm operations and chores. If +farm women would get satisfactory domestic assistance within the house +they could add much to the success of field husbandry. Women who know farm +conditions and who could largely take the place of men in the management +of outdoor affairs can accomplish much more than will ever be possible +by drafting city-bred women directly into garden or other forms of field +work." +<p>The opinions expressed in this letter are as generally held as they +are mistaken. In the first place, the theory that the country-bred woman +in America is stronger and healthier than the city-bred has long since +been exploded. The assumption cannot stand up under the facts. Statistics +show that the death rate in the United States is lower in city than in +farm communities, and if any added proof were needed to indicate that the +stamina of city populations overbalances the country it was furnished by +the draft records. Any group of college and Manhattan Trade School girls +could be pitted against a group of women from the farms and win the laurels +in staying powers. Nor must it be overlooked that we are not dealing here +with uncertainties; the mettle of the girls has been proved. +<p>In any case the fact must be faced that these agricultural units will +not do domestic work. Nine-tenths of the farm houses in America are without +modern conveniences. The well-appointed barn may have running water, but +the house has not. To undertake work as a domestic helper on the average +farm is to step back into quite primitive conditions. The farmer's wife +can attract no one from city life, where so much cooperation is enjoyed, +to her extreme individualistic surroundings. +<p>A second obstacle to the employment of this new labor-force is due to +the government's failure to see the possibility of saving most valuable +labor-power and achieving an economic gain by dovetailing the idle months +of young women in industrial life into the rush time of agriculture. +<p>One department suggests excusing farm labor from the draft, as if we +had already fulfilled our obligation in man-power to the battlefront of +our Allies. The United States Senate discusses bringing in coolie and contract +labor, as if we had not demonstrated our unfitness to deal with less advanced +peoples, and as if a republic could live comfortably with a class of disfranchised +workers. The Labor Department declares it will mobilize for the farm an +army of a million boys, as if the wise saw, "boys will be boys," did not +apply with peculiar sharpness of flavor to the American vintage, God bless +them, and as if it were not our plain duty at this world crisis to spur +up rather than check civilizing agencies and keep our boys in school for +the full term. +<p>Refusing to be in the least crushed by government neglect, far-seeing +women determined to organize widely and carefully their solution of the +farm-labor problem. To this end the Women's National Farm and Garden Association, +the Garden Clubs of America, the Young Women's Christian Association, the +Woman's Suffrage Party, the New York Women's University Club, and the Committee +of the Women's Agricultural Camp, met with representatives of the Grange, +of the Cornell Agricultural College, and of the Farmingdale State School +of Agriculture, and formed an advisory council, the object of which is +to "stimulate the formation of a Land Army of Women to take the places +on the farms of the men who are being drafted for active service." This +is to be on a nationwide scale. +<p>The Council has put lecturers in the Granges to bring to the farmer +by the spoken word and lantern slides the value of the labor of women, +and is appealing to colleges, seasonal trades and village communities to +form units for the Land Army. It is asking the coöperation of the +labor bureaus to act as media through which units may be placed where labor +is most needed. +<p>This mobilization of woman-power is not yet large or striking. The effort +is entirely civil. But all the more is it praiseworthy. It shows on the +part of women, clear-eyed recognition of facts as they exist and vision +as to the future. +<p>The mobilization of this fresh labor-power should of course be taken +in hand by the government. Not only that, it should be led by women as +in Great Britain and Germany. But the spirit in America today is the same +as in England the first year of the war,--a disposition to exclude women +from full service. +<p>But facts remain facts in spite of prejudice, and the Woman's Land Army, +with faith and enthusiasm in lieu of a national treasury, are endeavoring +to bring woman-power and the untilled fields together. The proved achievement +of the individual worker will win the employer, the unit plan with its +solution of housing conditions and dreary isolation will overcome not only +the opposition of the farmer's wife, but that of the intelligent worker. +When the seed time of the movement has been lived through by anxious and +inspired women, the government may step in to reap the harvest of a nation's +gratitude. +<p>The mobilization of woman-power on the farm is the need of the hour, +and the wise and devoted women who are trying to answer the need, deserve +an all-hail from the people of the United States and her Allies. +<br> +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<h2> +<a NAME="XII"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">XII<br> +WOMAN'S PART IN SAVING CIVILIZATION</a></h2> +Men have played--all honor to them--the major part in the actual conflict +of the war. Women will mobilize for the major part of binding up the wounds +and conserving civilization. +<p>The spirit of the world might almost be supposed to have been looking +forward to this day and clearly seeing its needs, so well are women being +prepared to receive and carry steadily the burden which will be laid on +their shoulders. For three-quarters of a century schools and colleges have +given to women what they had to confer in the way of discipline. Gainful +pursuits were opened up to them, adding training in ordered occupation +and self-support. Lastly has come the Great War, with its drill in sacrifice +and economy, its larger opportunities to function and achieve, its ideals +of democracy which have directly and quickly led to the political enfranchisement +of women in countries widely separated. +<p>Fate has prepared women to share fully in the saving of civilization. +<p>Whether victory be ours in the immediate future, or whether the dangers +rising so clearly on the horizon develop into fresh alignments leading +to years of war, civilization stands in jeopardy. Political ideals and +ultimate social aims may remain intact, but the immediate, practical maintenance +of those standards of life which are necessary to ensure strong and fruitful +reactions are in danger of being swept away. +<p>We have been destroying the life, the wealth and beauty of the world. +The nobility of our aim in the war must not blind us to the awfulness and +the magnitude of the destruction. In the fighting forces there are at least +thirty-eight million men involved in international or civil conflict. Over +four million men have fallen, and three million have been maimed for life. +Disease has taken its toll of fighting strength and economic power. In +addition to all this human depletion, we have the loss of life and the +destruction of health and initiative in harried peoples madly flying across +their borders from invading armies. +<p>Starvation has swept across wide areas, and steady underfeeding rules +in every country in Europe and in the cities of America, letting loose +malnutrition, that hidden enemy whose ambushes are more serious than the +attacks of an open foe. The world is sick. +<p>And the world is poor. The nations have spent over a hundred billions +on the war, and that is but part of the wealth which has gone down in the +catastrophe. Thousands of square miles are plowed so deep with shot and +shell and trench that the fertile soil lies buried beneath unyielding clay. +Orchards and forests are gone. Villages are wiped out, cities are but skeletons +of themselves. In the face of all the need of reconstruction we must admit, +however much we would wish to cover the fact,--the world is poor. +<br> +<center> +<h4> +.<img SRC="images/199.gif" ALT="A useful blending of Allied women. Miss Kathleen Burke (Scotch) exhibiting the X-ray ambulance equipped by Mrs. Ayrlon (English) and Madame Curie (French)." height=306 width=500></h4></center> + +<h4> +A useful blending of Allied women. Miss Kathleen Burke (Scotch) exhibiting +the X-ray ambulance equipped by Mrs. Ayrlon (English) and Madame Curie +(French)</h4> +And still, as in no other war, the will to guard human welfare has remained +dominant. The country rose to a woman in most spirited fashion to combat +the plan to lower the standards of labor conditions in the supposed interest +of war needs. With but few exceptions the States have strengthened their +labor laws. In its summary the American Association for Labor Legislation +says: +<p>"Eleven States strengthened their child labor laws, by raising age limits, +extending restrictions to new employments, or shortening hours. Texas passed +a new general statute setting a fifteen-year minimum age for factories +and Vermont provided for regulations in conformity with those of the Federal +Child Labor Act. Kansas and New Hampshire legislated on factory safeguards, +Texas on fire escapes, New Jersey on scaffolds, Montana on electrical apparatus, +Delaware on sanitary equipment, and West Virginia on mines. New Jersey +forbade the manufacture of articles of food or children's wear in tenements. +<p>"Workmen's compensation laws were enacted in Delaware, Idaho, New Mexico, +South Dakota, and Utah, making forty States and Territories which now have +such laws, in addition to the Federal Government's compensation law, for +its own half-million civilian employees. In more than twenty additional +States existing acts were amended, the changes being marked by a tendency +to extend the scope, shorten the working period, and increase provision +for medical care." +<p>The Great War, far from checking the movement for social welfare, has +quickened the public sense of responsibility. That fact opens the widest +field to women for work in which they are best prepared by nature and training. +<p>Many keen thinkers are concerned over the question of population. One +of our most distinguished professors has thrown out a hint of a possibility +that considering the greater proportion of women to men some form of plurality +of wives may become necessary. The disturbed balance of the sexes is a +thing that will right itself in one generation. Need of population will +be best answered by efforts to salvage the race. The United States loses +each year five hundred thousand babies under twelve months of age from +preventable causes. An effort to save them would seem more reasonable than +a demand for more children to neglect. Life will be so full of drive and +interest, that the woman who has given no hostages to fortune will find +ample scope for her powers outside of motherhood. The "old maid" of tomorrow +will have a mission more honored and important than was hers in the past. +<p>But whatever the conclusions as to the wisest method of building up +population, there is no doubt that government and individuals will make +strict valuation of the essentials and non-essentials in national life. +In our poverty we will test all things in the light of their benefit to +the race and hold fast that which is good. +<p>The opinions of women will weigh in this national accounting. There +will be no money to squander, and women to a unit will stand behind those +men who think a recreation field is of more value than a race track. It +will be the woman's view, there being but one choice, that it is better +to encourage fleetness and skill in boys and girls than in horses. If we +have just so much money to spend and the question arises as to whether +there shall be corner saloons or municipal kitchens, public sentiment, +made in good measure by women, will eschew the saloon. +<p>The things that lend themselves to the husbanding of the race will draw +as a magnet those who have borne the race. The tired world will need for +its rejuvenation a broadened and deepened medical science. Women are too +wise to permit sanitation and research to fall to a low level. On the contrary, +they will wish them to be more thorough. There will be economy along the +less essential lines to meet the cost. +<p>The flagging spirit needs the inspiration of art and music. To secure +them in the future, state and municipal effort will be demanded. Women +are born economizers. They have been trained to pinch each penny. With +their advent into political life, roads and public buildings will cost +less. Through careful saving, funds will be made available for the things +of the spirit. +<p>One of the men conductors on the New York street railways somewhat reproachfully +remarked to me, "No one ever came to look at the recreation room and restaurant +at the car barns until women were taken on. Men don't seem to count." Is +the reproach deserved? Have women been narrow in sympathy? Perhaps we have +assumed that men can look out for themselves. They could, but in private +life they never do. Women have to do the mothering. A trade-unionist is +ready enough to regulate wages and hours, but he gives not a thought to +surroundings in factory and workshop. +<p>An act of protection generally starts with solicitude about a woman +or child. Factory legislation took root in their needs. There was no mercy +for the man worker. His only chance of getting better conditions was when +women entered his occupation, and the regulation meant for her benefit +indirectly served his interest. +<p>"Men suffer more than women in certain dangerous trades, but I did not +suppose you were generous enough to care anything about them," came in +answer to an inquiry at a labor conference at the end of a most admirable +paper on women in dangerous trades, given by one of the doctors in the +New York City Department of Health. He was speaking to an audience of working +women. I doubt if his hearers had given a thought to men workers. +<p>Perhaps this is natural, since there has been going on at the same time +with the development of factory legislation in America a strong propaganda +directed especially at political freedom for women. We have been laying +stress on the wrongs of woman and demanding very persistently and convincingly +her rights. The industrial needs and rights of the man have been overlooked. +<p>With increasing numbers of women entering the industrial world, with +ever widening extension of the vote to women, and the consequent quickening +of public responsibility, together with the recent experience of Europe +demonstrating the importance of care for all workers, both men and women, +there is ground for hope that even the United States, where protective +legislation is so retarded in development, will enter upon wide and fundamental +plans for conservation of all our human resources. +<p>Protection of the worker, housing conditions, the feeding of factory +employees and school children, play grounds and recreation centers, will +challenge the world for first consideration. These are the social processes +which command most surely the hearts and minds of women. The churning which +the war has given humanity has roused in women a realization that upon +them rests at least half the burden of saving civilization from wreck. +Here is the world, with such and such needs for food, clothing, shelter, +with such and such needs for sanitation, hospitals, and above all, for +education, for science, for the arts, if it is not to fall back into the +conditions of the Middle Ages. How can women aid in making secure the national +position? Certainly not by idleness, inefficiency, an easy policy of laissez +faire. They must labor, economize, and pool their brains. +<p>Women can save civilization only by the broadest coöperative action, +by daring to think, by daring to be themselves. The world is entering an +heroic age calling for heroic women. +<br> +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<h2> +<a NAME="APPENDIX"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">APPENDIX</a></h2> + +<h3> +DOCUMENTS USED IN WOMEN'S WAR-WORK IN ENGLAND AND FRANCE</h3> + +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<center><img SRC="images/208.gif" ALT="Women's Army Auxillary Corps" height=530 width=316></center> + +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<br>CONFIDENTIAL. Reference No: J.W. 21 [o.] +<p>Joint Woman's V.A.D. Department. +<p>DEVONSHIRE HOUSE. PICCADILLY, LONDON. W.I. +<p><i>Return to Secretary, V.A.D Department. Devonshire House, Piccadilly, +S.W.I.</i> +<p>Territorial Force Associations, British Red Cross Society. Order of +St. John of Jerusalem. +<p>Telegrams [unreadable] Telephone Mayfair 4707 +<p><i>B.R.C.S. or Order of St. John ...</i> +<p>Sir, +<p>Will you kindly fill up the following form of Medical Certificate, returning +it to the address given above. +<p>Your communication will be received as strictly confidential. +<p>It is urgently requested that Members' names and detachment numbers +should be filled in legibly. +<p>Yours faithfully, +<p>MARGARET HEMPHILL +<h2> +MEDICAL CERTIFICATE</h2> + 1. Name +<p> 2. County +No. of Detachment +<p> 3. How long have you been acquainted with her? +<p> 4. Have you attended her professionally? +<p> 5. For what complaint? +<p> 6. Is she intelligent and of active habits? +<p> 7. General health? +<p> 8. Has she flat feet, hammer-toe, or any other defect? +<p> 9. Is her vision good in each eye? +<p>10. Is her hearing perfect? +<p>11. Has she sound teeth, and if not, have they been properly attended +to by a Dentist lately? +<p>12. Has she shown any tendency to Rheumatism, Anaemia, Tuberculosis, +or other illness? +<p>13. When? +<p>14. What? +<p>15. Has she ever had influenza? +<p>16. Does she suffer from headaches? +<p>17. Any form of fits? +<p>18. Heart disease or varicose veins? +<p>19. Is she subject to any functional disturbance? +<br> +<hr style="width: 25%;"> +<p>I have on the ................................. day of 191.... seen +and examined ....................................... and hereby certify +that she is apparently in good health, that she is not labouring under +any deformity, and is, in my opinion, both physically and mentally competent +to undertake duty in a Military Hospital, and is +<br><a NAME="FNanchor*"></a><sup><a href="#Footnote_*">[*]</a></sup>A. +Fit for General Service. +<br> B. Fit for Home Service only. +<br> C. Unfit. +<p><i>Date (Signed) +Address</i> +<p><a NAME="Footnote_*"></a><a href="#FNanchor*">[*]</a> Kindly delete +categories which do not apply. +<br> +<hr style="width: 25%;"> +<p>Reference No.: J.W. 19c. +<h3> +JOINT WOMEN'S V.A.D. DEPARTMENT. Territorial Forces Association. British +Red Cross Society. Order of St. John of Jerusalem. DEVONSHIRE HOUSE, PICCADILLY, +LONDON. W1.</h3> + +<hr style="width: 25%;"> +<h3> +QUALIFICATIONS of Members of Women's Voluntary Aid Detachments for Nursing +Service or General Service.</h3> + +<hr style="width: 25%;"> +<p>1. (a) Name in full (<i>Mrs. or Miss</i>). (b) If +Married state Maiden Name. +<p>2. Permanent Postal Address. Present Postal Address. +<p>3. Telephone No. +<p>4. Telegraphic Address. +<p>5. Detachment County and No. B.R.C.S. +<br> St. John Brigade. +<br> St. John Association. +<p>6. Name and Address of Commandant of Detachment. +<p>7. Rank in Detachment. +<p>8. Time of Service in Detachment. +<p>9. Age and Date of Birth. +<p>10. Place and Country of Birth. +<p>11. Nationality at Birth. +<p>12. Present Nationality. +<p>13. Height. +<p>14. Weight. +<p>15. Where Educated. +<p>16. At what age did you leave school? +<p>17. Whether Single, Married, or Widow. +<p>18. If not Single, state Nationality of Husband. +<p>19. Name and Address of Next-of-Kin or Nearest Relation residing in +the British Isles. +<p>20. Father's Nationality at Birth. +<p>21. Mother's Nationality at Birth. +<p>22. Father's Profession. +<p>23. Religion. +<p>24. (a) If you volunteer for nursing duties state what experience you +have had in wards. +<br> (b) Name and address of hospital. +<br> (c) Date. +<p>25. Certificates held. +<p>26. (a) Nursing. +(f) Motor Driver. +<br> (b) Kitchen. +(g) Laboratory Attendant. +<br> (c) Clerical. +(h) X-Ray Attendant. +<br> (d) Storekeeping. +(i) House Work. +<br> (e) Dispenser. +(j) Pantry Work. +<p>27. State what experience and qualifications you have had +for Categories in No. 26. +<p>28. Have you been inoculated against Enteric Fever? +If so, what date? +<br> If not, are you willing to be? +<br> Have you been vaccinated? +<br> It so, what date? +<br> If not, are you willing to be? +<p>29. Your usual Occupation or Profession? +<br> Your present Occupation or Profession? +<p>30. Give the Names and Addresses of two British Householders with permanent +addresses in the British Isles who have known applicant for two or more +years, but are not related to applicant, to act as References, having previously +obtained their permission to use their names. +<p> (a) (Mayor, Magistrate, Justice of the Peace, Minister +of Religion, +<br> Barrister, Physician, Solicitor +or Notary Public). +<br> Acquaintance dating from +year ________ +<p> (b) Lady. +<br> Acquaintance dating from +year _______ +<p>31. Name and Address of Head of College or School, recent Business +Employer, Head of Government Department, Secretary of Society or some other +person who can be referred to for a report on your qualifications for the +work selected. (The Quartermaster of your V.A.D. could be given if you +have worked in her department.) +<br> In what capacity employed? +<br> How long employed? +<br> Year? +<p>32. Are you willing to serve at home or abroad? +<p>33. Are you willing to serve in Civil Hospitals from which +personnel have been withdrawn for War Service? +<p>34. Are you willing to serve:-- +<br> (a) With pay, +<br> (b) For expenses only, +<br> on the terms of service laid down in our terms of service? +<br> N. B.--Members who can afford to work for their expenses +only are urgently needed. +<p>35. Date after which you will be available for duty. +<p>36. (a) Are you pledged to serve in any other organisation? +(b) If so, what? +<p>37. (a) Have you served with the Women's Legion or any +similar organisation? +<br> (b) If so, what? +<p>I hereby declare that the above statements are complete and correct +to the best of my knowledge and belief. +<p>Date .......... Usual Signature .......... +<p><i>For Office Purposes</i>, please add your full Christian Names and +Surname legibly written. +<p>I certify that the above declaration is, to the best of my knowledge +and belief, true; and that M ............ is a fit and proper person to +be employed by the Joint V.A.D. Committee. +<p>REMARKS:-- +<p>Date .......... Signed .................... + +<i>Commandant</i>. +<p>Date .......... Countersigned .................... + +<i>County Director</i>. +<p>NOTE.--Commandants are held responsible for all statements on this form +being accurate so far as it is possible for them to find out, also for +the fact that the member who signs it is a British subject, and in every +way suitable for appointment by the Joint V.A.D. Committee. +<p>This form must be signed by the Commandant, who should then send it +to the County Director for counter signature and forwarding to Headquarters. +<br> +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<p><i>Application No.</i> +<p><i>For Official use only</i>. +<p>CONFIDENTIAL. +<h2> +WOMEN'S ARMY AUXILIARY CORPS FORM OF APPLICATION</h2> +N.B.--No woman need apply who is not prepared to offer her services for +the duration of the war and to take up work wherever she is required. +<p>1. Name in Full (Mrs. or Miss). +<p>2. Permanent Postal Address. +<p>2a. State nearest Railway Station. +<p>3. Surname at birth, if different. +<p>4. For what work do you offer your services? State your +qualifications for this work. (The occupations for which women are +<br> required are set out in the accompanying leaflet.) +<p>5. Are you willing to serve:-- +<br> (a) At Home and Abroad as may be required. +<br> (b) At Home only. +<p>6. If selected and enrolled how many days' notice will you require before +your services are available? +<p>7. Age and date of birth. +<p>8. Place and Country of Birth. +<p>9. Nationality at Birth. +<p>10. Present Nationality (if naturalised give +date). +<p>11. Whether single, married or widow. If married +state number of children, +<br> (a) under 12 years old. +<br> (b) " +5 " " +<p>12. If not single state Nationality of Husband. +(a) Is your husband serving with the Forces? +<br> (b) If so, where? +<p>13. Father's Nationality at Birth. +<p>14. Mother's Nationality at Birth. +<p>15. Father's Occupation. +<p>16. State school or college where educated. +At what age did you leave School? +<p>17. Particulars of any other Training, stating Certificates held. +<p>18. (a) Name and Address of your present employer +(<i>see Note on other side</i>). +<br> N.B.--(The employer will not be referred to unless +he is given as a +<br> reference under paragraph 20 below.) +<br> (b) Nature of his business. +<br> (c) Capacity in which you are employed. +<p> (d) Length of your service with him. +<p> (e) Salary which you are now receiving. +<p>19. Previous business experience (if any) giving dates, salaries +received, and names of Employers. +<p>20. Give below for purposes of reference the names of two or more British +householders with their permanent addresses, one of whom should be, if +possible, your present or previous Employer, a Teacher, a Town Councillor, +Mayor or Provost, Justice of Peace, Minister of Religion, Doctor or Solicitor, +who has known you for two or more years, but is not related to you. One +of the references must be a woman. +<p> (a) Name. +<br> Profession or Occupation. +<br> Address. +<br> (b) Name. +<br> Profession or Occupation. +<br> Address. +<br> (c) Name. +<br> Profession or Occupation. +<br> Address. +<p>An offer of Service can in no way be regarded as a final enrolment. +<p><i>I hereby declare that the above statements are complete and correct +to the best of my knowledge and belief</i>. +<p><i>Date</i> ___________ <i>Usual Signature</i> ____________ +<p>This Form should be filled in by the Applicant and returned to:--Employment +Exchange _________________________ +<br> +<hr style="width: 25%;"> +<p>NOTE. +<p>Women who are already engaged in any of the following occupations will +not be accepted unless they bring with them a letter from their Employer +or Head of Department stating that they have permission to volunteer:-- +<p>(i) Government Service. +<p>(ii) Munition work. +<p>(iii) Work in a Controlled Establishment. +<p>(iv) Full-time work in an establishment engaged on contract +work for a Government Department. +<p>(v) V.A.D. Military Hospitals and Red Cross Hospitals. +<p>(vi) School Teaching. +<p>(vii) Local Government Service. +<p>No woman who is a National Service Volunteer or is employed in Agriculture +will be accepted. +<p>N.B.--Applicants are urged not to give up any present employment until +they are called upon to do so. +<br> +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<h3> +(Part of the application form used in England by the Women's Land Army.)</h3> + +<hr style="width: 25%;"> +<h2> +WOMEN'S LAND ARMY</h2> + +<hr style="width: 25%;"> +<p>CONDITIONS AND TERMS. +<p>There are three Sections of the Women's Land Army. +<p>(1). AGRICULTURE. +<p>(2). TIMBER CUTTING. +<p>(3). FORAGE. +<p>If you sign on for A YEAR and are prepared to go wherever you are sent, +you can join which Section you like. +<p><b>YOU PROMISE</b>:-- +<p>1. To sign on in the Land Army for ONE YEAR. +<p>2. To come to a Selection Board when summoned. +<p>3. To be medically examined, free of cost. +<p>4. To be prepared if PASSED by the Selection Board to take up work +after due notice. +<p>5. TO BE WILLING TO GO TO WHATEVER PART OF THE COUNTRY YOU ARE SENT. +<p> +<hr style="width: 35%;"> +<br> +<h3> +<b>THE GOVERNMENT PROMISES</b>:--</h3> +1. A MINIMUM WAGE to workers of 18/- a week. After they have passed +an efficiency test the wages given are £1 a week and upwards. +<p>2. A short course of FREE INSTRUCTION if necessary. +<p>3. FREE UNIFORM. +<p>4. FREE MAINTENANCE in a Depôt for a term not exceeding 4 weeks +if the worker is OUT OF EMPLOYMENT through no fault of +her own. +<p>5. FREE RAILWAY travelling, when taking up or changing Employment. +<br> +<br> +<br> +<hr> +<br> +<br> +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10080 ***</div> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/10080-h/images/006.gif b/10080-h/images/006.gif Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..40f6db5 --- /dev/null +++ b/10080-h/images/006.gif diff --git a/10080-h/images/035.gif b/10080-h/images/035.gif Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..f255b04 --- /dev/null +++ b/10080-h/images/035.gif diff --git a/10080-h/images/052.gif b/10080-h/images/052.gif Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..5748ecb --- /dev/null +++ b/10080-h/images/052.gif diff --git a/10080-h/images/071.gif b/10080-h/images/071.gif Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..fc71ab8 --- /dev/null +++ b/10080-h/images/071.gif diff --git a/10080-h/images/080.gif b/10080-h/images/080.gif Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..1997f81 --- /dev/null +++ b/10080-h/images/080.gif diff --git a/10080-h/images/109.gif b/10080-h/images/109.gif Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..7288244 --- /dev/null +++ b/10080-h/images/109.gif diff --git a/10080-h/images/122.gif b/10080-h/images/122.gif Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..98dcae2 --- /dev/null +++ b/10080-h/images/122.gif diff --git a/10080-h/images/143.gif b/10080-h/images/143.gif Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..83115bf --- /dev/null +++ b/10080-h/images/143.gif diff --git a/10080-h/images/149.gif b/10080-h/images/149.gif Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..9f83298 --- /dev/null +++ b/10080-h/images/149.gif diff --git a/10080-h/images/156.gif b/10080-h/images/156.gif Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..6535acc --- /dev/null +++ b/10080-h/images/156.gif diff --git a/10080-h/images/165.gif b/10080-h/images/165.gif Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..a8cf460 --- /dev/null +++ b/10080-h/images/165.gif diff --git a/10080-h/images/188.gif b/10080-h/images/188.gif Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..9ea0c96 --- /dev/null +++ b/10080-h/images/188.gif diff --git a/10080-h/images/199.gif b/10080-h/images/199.gif Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..b0d68bc --- /dev/null +++ b/10080-h/images/199.gif diff --git a/10080-h/images/208.gif b/10080-h/images/208.gif Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..be200d2 --- /dev/null +++ b/10080-h/images/208.gif diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..65072de --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #10080 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10080) diff --git a/old/10080-8.txt b/old/10080-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7a570c9 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/10080-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4694 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Mobilizing Woman-Power, by Harriot Stanton +Blatch + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Mobilizing Woman-Power + +Author: Harriot Stanton Blatch + +Release Date: November 14, 2003 [eBook #10080] + +Language: English + +Chatacter set encoding: iso-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOBILIZING WOMAN-POWER*** + + +E-text prepared by Debra Storr and Project Gutenberg Distributed +Proofreaders + + + +MOBILIZING WOMAN-POWER + +By HARRIOT STANTON BLATCH + +1918 + + + + + + + +[Illustration: Jeanne d'Arc.--the spirit of the women of the Allies.] + + + + +TO THE ABLE AND DEVOTED WOMEN OF GREAT BRITAIN AND FRANCE + +Who have stood behind the armies of the Allies through the years of the +Great War as an unswerving second line of defense against an onslaught +upon the liberty and civilization of the world, I dedicate this volume. + +HARRIOT STANTON BLATCH + + + + +CONTENTS + +FOREWORD BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT + + I. OUR FOE + + II. WINNING THE WAR + + III. MOBILIZING WOMEN IN GREAT BRITAIN + + IV. MOBILIZING WOMEN IN FRANCE + + V. MOBILIZING WOMEN IN GERMANY + + VI. WOMEN OVER THE TOP IN AMERICA + + VII. EVE'S PAY ENVELOPE + +VIII. POOLING BRAINS + + IX. "BUSINESS AS USUAL" + + X. "AS MOTHER USED TO DO" + + XI. A LAND ARMY + + XII. WOMAN'S PART IN SAVING CIVILIZATION + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + +Jeanne d'Arc--the spirit of the women of the Allies + +They wear the uniforms of the Edinburgh trams and the New York City +subway and trolley guards, with pride and purpose. + +Then--the offered service of the Women's Reserve Ambulance Corps in +England was spurned. Now--they wear shrapnel helmets while working +during the Zeppelin raids. + +The French poilu on furlough is put to work harrowing. + +Has there ever been anything impossible to French women since the time +of Jeanne d'Arc? The fields must be harrowed--they have no horses. + +The daily round in the Erie Railroad workshops. + +In the well-lighted factory of the Briggs and Stratton Company, +Milwaukee, the girls are comfortably and becomingly garbed for work. + +The women of the Motor Corps of the National League for Woman's Service +refuting the traditions that women have neither strength nor endurance. + +Down the street they come, beginning their pilgrimage of alleviation and +succor on the battlefields of France. + +How can business be "as usual" when in Paris there are about 1800 of +these small workshops where a woman dips Bengal Fire and grenades into a +bath of paraffin! + +Countess de Berkaim and her canteen in the Gare de St. Lazarre, Paris. + +An agricultural unit in the uniform approved by the Woman's Land Army of +America. + +A useful blending of Allied women. Miss Kathleen Burke (Scotch) +exhibiting the X-ray ambulance equipped by Mrs. Ayrton (English) and +Madame Curie (French). + + + + +FOREWORD + + +It is a real pleasure to write this foreword to the book which Mrs. +Harriot Stanton Blatch dedicates to the women of Great Britain and +France; to the women who through the years of the great war have stood +as the second line of defense against the German horror which menaces +the liberty and civilization of the entire world. + +There could be no more timely book. Mrs. Blatch's aim is to stir the +women of this country to the knowledge that this is their war, and also +to make all our people feel that we, and especially our government, +should welcome the service of women, and make use of it to the utmost. +In other words, the appeal of Mrs. Blatch is essentially an appeal for +service. No one has more vividly realized that service benefits the one +who serves precisely as it benefits the one who is served. I join with +her in the appeal that the women shall back the men with service, and +that the men in their turn shall frankly and eagerly welcome the +rendering of such service _on the basis of service by equals for a +common end_. + +Mrs. Blatch makes her appeal primarily because of the war needs of the +moment. But she has in view no less the great tasks of the future. I +welcome her book as an answer to the cry that the admission of women to +an equal share in the right of self government will tend to soften the +body politic. Most certainly I will ever set my face like flint against +any unhealthy softening of our civilization, and as an answer in advance +to hyper-criticism I explain that I do not mean softness in the sense of +tender-heartedness; I mean the softness which, extends to the head and +to the moral fibre, I mean the softness which manifests itself either in +unhealthy sentimentality or in a materialism which may be either +thoughtless and pleasure-loving or sordid and money-getting. I believe +that the best women, when thoroughly aroused, and when the right appeal +is made to them, will offer our surest means of resisting this unhealthy +softening. + +No man who is not blind can fail to see that we have entered a new day +in the great epic march of the ages. For good or for evil the old days +have passed; and it rests with us, the men and women now alive, to +decide whether in the new days the world is to be a better or a worse +place to live in, for our descendants. + +In this new world women are to stand on an equal footing with men, in +ways and to an extent never hitherto dreamed of. In this country they +are on the eve of securing, and in much of the country have already +secured, their full political rights. It is imperative that they should +understand, exactly as it is imperative that men should understand, that +such rights are of worse than no avail, unless the will for the +performance of duty goes hand in hand with the acquirement of the +privilege. + +If the women in this country reinforce the elements that tend to a +softening of the moral fibre, to a weakening of the will, and +unwillingness to look ahead or to face hardship and labor and danger for +a high ideal--then all of us alike, men and women, will suffer. But if +they show, under the new conditions, the will to develop strength, and +the high idealism and the iron resolution which under less favorable +circumstances were shown by the women of the Revolution and of the Civil +War, then our nation has before it a career of greatness never hitherto +equaled. This book is fundamentally an appeal, not that woman shall +enjoy any privilege unearned, but that hers shall be the right to do +more than she has ever yet done, and to do it on terms of +self-respecting partnership with men. Equality of right does not mean +identity of function; but it does necessarily imply identity of purpose +in the performance of duty. + +Mrs. Blatch shows why every woman who inherits the womanly virtues of +the past, and who has grasped the ideal of the added womanly virtues of +the present and the future, should support this war with all her +strength and soul. She testifies from personal knowledge to the hideous +brutalities shown toward women and children by the Germany of to-day; +and she adds the fine sentence: "Women fight for a place in the sun for +those who hold right above might." + +She shows why women must unstintedly give their labor in order to win +this war; and why the labor of the women must be used to back up both +the labor and the fighting work of the men, for the fighting men leave +gaps in the labor world which must be filled by the work of women. She +says in another sentence worth remembering, "The man behind the counter +should of course be moved to a muscular employment; but we must not +interpret his dalliance with tapes and ribbons as a proof of a +superfluity of men." + +Particularly valuable is her description of the mobilization of women in +Great Britain and France. From these facts she draws the conclusion as +to America's needs along this very line. She paints as vividly as I have +ever known painted, the truth as to why it is a merit that women should +be forced to work, a merit that _every one_ should be forced to work! It +is just as good for women as for men that they should have to use body +and mind, that they should not be idlers. As she puts it, "Active +mothers insure a virile race. The peaceful nation, if its women fall +victims to the luxury which rapidly increasing wealth brings, will +decay." "Man power must give itself unreservedly at the front. Woman +power must show not only eagerness but fitness to substitute for +man power." + +I commend especially the chapter containing the sentence, "This war may +prove to us the wisdom and economy of devoting public funds to mothers +rather than to crèches and juvenile asylums;" and also the chapter in +which the author tells women that if they are merely looking for a soft +place in life their collective demand for a fair field and no favor will +be wholly ineffective. The doors for service now stand open, and it +rests with the women themselves to say whether they will enter in! + +The last chapter is itself an unconscious justification of woman's right +to a share in the great governmental decisions which to-day are vital. +No statesman or publicist could set forth more clearly than Mrs. Blatch +the need of winning this war, in order to prevent either endless and +ruinous wars in the future, or else a world despotism which would mean +the atrophy of everything that really tends to the elevation of mankind. + +Mrs. Blatch has herself rendered a very real service by this appeal that +women should serve, and that men should let them serve. + +Theodore Roosevelt + + + + +I + +OUR FOE + + +The nations in which women have influenced national aims face the nation +that glorifies brute force. America opposes the exaltation of the +glittering sword; opposes the determination of one nation to dominate +the world; opposes the claim that the head of one ruling family is the +direct and only representative of the Creator; and, above all, America +opposes the idea that might makes right. + +Let us admit the full weight of the paradox that a people in the name of +peace turns to force of arms. The tragedy for us lay in there being no +choice of ways, since pacific groups had failed to create machinery to +adjust vital international differences, and since the Allies each in +turn, we the last, had been struck by a foe determined to settle +disagreements by force. + +Never did a nation make a crusade more just than this of ours. We were +patient, too long patient, perhaps, with challenges. We seek no +conquest. We fight to protect the freedom of our citizens. On America's +standard is written democracy, on that of Germany autocracy. Without +reservation women can give their all to attain our end. + +There may be a cleavage between the German people and the ruling class. +It may be that our foe is merely the military caste, though I am +inclined to believe that we have the entire German nation on our hands. +The supremacy of might may be a doctrine merely instilled in the minds +of the people by its rulers. Perhaps the weed is not indigenous, but it +flourishes, nevertheless. Rabbits did not belong in Australia, nor +pondweed in England, but there they are, and dominating the situation. +Arrogance of the strong towards the weak, of the better placed towards +the less well placed, is part of the government teaching in Germany. The +peasant woman harries the dog that strains at the market cart, her +husband harries her as she helps the cow drag the plough, the petty +officer harries the peasant when he is a raw recruit, and the young +lieutenant harries the petty officer, and so it goes up to the +highest,--a well-planned system on the part of the superior to bring the +inferior to a high point of material efficiency. The propelling spirit +is devotion to the Fatherland: each believes himself a cog in the +machine chosen of God to achieve His purposes on earth. The world hears +of the Kaiser's "Ich und Gott," of his mailed fist beating down his +enemies, but those who have lived in Germany know that exactly the same +spirit reigns in every class. The strong in chastizing his inferior has +the conviction that since might makes right he is the direct +representative of Deity on the particular occasion. + +The overbearing spirit of the Prussian military caste has drilled a race +to worship might; men are overbearing towards women, women towards +children, and the laws reflect the cruelties of the strong towards +the weak. + +As the recent petition of German suffragists to the Reichstag states, +their country stands "in the lowest rank of nations as regards women's +rights." It is a platitude just now worth repeating that the +civilization of a people is indicated by the position accorded to its +women. On that head, then, the Teutonic Kultur stands challenged. + +An English friend of mine threw down the gauntlet thirty years ago. She +had married a German officer. After living at army posts all over the +Empire, she declared, "What we foreigners take as simple childlikeness +in the Germans is merely lack of civilization." This keen analysis came +from a woman trained as an investigator, and equipped with perfect +command of the language of her adopted country. + +"Lack of civilization,"--perhaps that explains my having seen again and +again officers striking the soldiers they were drilling, and journeys +made torture through witnessing slapping and brow-beating of children by +their parents. The memory of a father's conduct towards his little son +will never be wiped out. He twisted the child's arm, struck him savagely +from time to time, and for no reason but that the child did not sit bolt +upright and keep absolutely motionless. The witnesses of the brutality +smiled approvingly at the man, and scowled at the child. My own protest +being met with amazed silence and in no way regarded, I left the +compartment. I was near Eisenach, and I wished some good fairy would put +in my hand that inkpot which Luther threw at the devil. Severity towards +children is the rule. The child for weal or woe is in the complete +control of its parents, and corporal punishment is allowed in the +schools. The grim saying, "Saure Wochen, frohe Feste," seems to express +the pedagogic philosophy. The only trouble is that nature does not give +this attitude her sanction, for Germany reveals to us that figure, the +most pathetic in life, the child suicide. + +The man responding to his stern upbringing is in turn cruel to his +inferiors, and full of subterfuge in dealing with equals. He is at home +in the intrigues which have startled the world. In such a society the +frank and gentle go to the wall, or--get into trouble and emigrate. We +have profited--let us not forget it--by the plucky German immigrants who +threw off the yoke, and who now have the satisfaction of finding +themselves fighting shoulder to shoulder with the men of their adopted +country to free the Fatherland of the taskmaster. + +The philosophy of might quite naturally reflects itself in the education +of girls. Once when I visited a Höhere Töchter Schule, the principal had +a class in geometry recite for my edification. I soon saw that the young +girl who had been chosen as the star pupil to wrestle with the pons +asinorum was giving an exhibition of memorizing and not of mathematical +reasoning. I asked the principal if my surmise were correct. He replied +without hesitation, "Yes, it was entirely a feat in memory. Females have +only low reasoning power." I urged that if this were so, it would be +well to train the faculty, but he countered with the assertion, "We +Germans do not think so. Women are happier and more useful +without logic." + +It would be difficult to surpass in its subtle cruelty the etiquette at +a military function. The lieutenant and his wife come early,--this is +expected of them. For a few moments they play the role of honored +guests. The wife is shown by her hostess to the sofa and is seated there +as a mark of distinction. Then arrive the captain and his wife. They are +immediately the distinguished guests. The wife is shown to the sofa and +the lieutenant's little Frau must get herself out of the way as best +she can. + +My speculation, often indulged in, as to what would happen if the +major's wife did not move from the sofa when the colonel's wife +appeared, ended in assurance that a severe punishment would be meted out +to her, when I heard from an officer the story of the way his regiment +dealt with a woman who ignored another bit of military etiquette. A +débutant, once honored by being asked to dance with an officer at a +ball, must never, it seems, demean herself by accepting a civilian +partner. But in a town where my friend's regiment was stationed a very +pretty and popular young girl who had been taken, so to speak, to the +bosom of the regiment, danced one night at the Kurhaus early in the +summer season with a civilian, distinguished, undeniably, but +unmistakably civilian. The officers of the regiment met, weighed the +mighty question of the girl's offense, and solemnly resolved never again +to ask the culprit for a dance. I protested at the cruelty of a body of +men deliberately turning a pretty young thing into a wall-flower for an +entire season. The officer took my protest as an added reason for +congratulation upon their conduct. They meant to be cruel. My words +proved how well they had succeeded. + +Another little straw showing the set of the wind: we were sitting, four +Americans, one lovely early summer day, in a restaurant at Swinemünde. +We had the window open, looking out over the sea. At the next table were +some officers, one of whom with an "Es zieht," but not with a "by your +leave," came over to our table and shut the window with a bang. The +gentleman with us asked if we wanted the window closed, and on being +assured we did not, quietly rose and opened it again. No one who does +not know Prussia can imagine the threatening atmosphere which filled +that café. + +We met the officers the same night at the Kurhaus dance. They were +introduced, and almost immediately one of them brought up the window +incident and said most impressively that if ladies had not been at the +table, our escort would have been "called out." We could see they +regarded us as unworthy of being even transient participants of Kultur +when we opined that no American man would accept a challenge, and if so +unwise as to do so, his womenfolk would lock him up until he reached a +sounder judgment! The swords rattled in their sabres when the frivolous +member of our party said with a tone of finality, "You see we wouldn't +like our men's faces to look as if they had got into their mothers' +chopping bowls!" + +Although I had often lived months on end with all these petty tyrannies +of the mailed fist, and although life had taught me later that peoples +grow by what they feed upon, yet when I read the Bryce report,[1] German +frightfulness seemed too inhuman for belief. While still holding my +judgment in reserve, I met an intimate friend, a Prussian officer. He +happened to mention letters he had received from his relatives in Berlin +and at the front, and when I expressed a wish to hear them, kindly asked +whether he should translate them or read them in German as they stood. +Laughingly I ventured on the German, saying I would at least find out +how much I had forgotten. So I sat and listened with ears pricked up. +Some of the letters were from women folk and told of war conditions in +the capital. They were interesting at the time but not worth repeating +now. Then came a letter from a nephew, a lieutenant. He gave his +experience in crossing Belgium, told how in one village his men asked a +young woman with her tiny baby on her arm for water, how she answered +resentfully, and then, how he shot her--and her baby. I exclaimed, +thinking I had lost the thread of the letter, "Not the baby?" And the +man I supposed I knew as civilized, replied with a cruel smile, +"Yes--discipline!" That was frank, frank as a child would have been, +with no realization of the self-revelation of it. The young officer did +the deed, wrote of it to his uncle, and the uncle, without vision and +understanding, perverted by his training, did not feel shame and bury +the secret in his own heart, but treasured the evidence against his own +nephew, and laid it open before an American woman. + +I believed the Bryce report--every word of it! + +And I hate the system that has so bent and crippled a great race. +Revenge we must not feel, that would be to innoculate ourselves with the +enemy's virus. But let us be awake to the fact that might making right +cuts athwart our ideals. German Kultur, through worship of efficiency, +cramps originality and initiative, while our aim--why not be frank about +it!--is the protection of inefficiency, which means sympathy with +childhood, and opportunity for the spirit of art. German Kultur fixes an +inflexible limit to the aspirations of women, while our goal is complete +freedom for the mothers of men. + +The women of the Allies can fight for all that their men fight for--for +national self-respect, for protection of citizens, for the sacredness of +international agreements, for the rights of small nations, for the +security of democracy, and then our women can be inspired by one thing +more--the safety and development of all those things which they have +won for human welfare in a long and bloodless battle. + +Women fight for a place in the sun for those who hold right above might. + + +[Footnote 1: Report of the Committee on Alleged German Outrages +appointed by his Britannic Majesty's Government, 1915. Macmillan +Company, New York. + +Evidence and Documents laid before the Committee on Alleged German +Outrages. Ballantyne, Hanson & Co., London. 1915.] + + + + +II + +WINNING THE WAR + + +The group of nations that can make the greatest savings, will be +victorious, counsels one; the group that can produce the most food and +nourish the populations best, will win the war, urges another; but +whatever the prophecy, whatever the advice, all paths to victory lie +through labor-power. + +Needs are not answered in our day by manna dropping from heaven. Whether +it is food or big guns that are wanted, ships or coal, we can only get +our heart's desire by toil. Where are the workers who will win the war? + +We are a bit spoiled in the United States. We have been accustomed to +rub our Aladdin's lamp of opportunity and the good genii have sent us +workers. But suddenly, no matter how great our efforts, no one answers +our appeal. The reservoir of immigrant labor has run dry. We are in +sorry plight, for we have suffered from emigration, too. Thousands of +alien workers have been called back to serve in the armies of the +Allies. In my own little village on Long Island the industrious Italian +colony was broken up by the call to return to the colors in Piedmont. + +Then, too, while Europe suffers loss of labor, as do we, when men are +mobilized, our situation is peculiarly poignant, for when our armies are +gone they are gone. At first this was true in Europe. Men entered the +army and were employed as soldiers only. After a time it was realized +that the war would not be short, that fields must not lie untilled for +years, nor men undergo the deteriorating effects of trench warfare +continuously. The fallow field and the stale soldier were +brought together. + +We have all chanced on photographs of European soldiers helping the +women plough in springtime, and reap the harvest in the autumn. Perhaps +we have regarded the scene as a mere pastoral episode in a happy leave +from the battle front, instead of realizing that it is a snapshot +illustrating a well organized plan of securing labor. The soldiers are +given a furlough and are sent where the agricultural need is pressing. +But the American soldier will not be able to lend his skill in giving +the home fields a rich seed time and harvest. The two needs, the field +for the touch of the human hand, and the soldier for labor under calm +skies, cannot in our case be coördinated. + +Scarcity of labor is not only certain to grow, but the demands upon the +United States for service are increasing by leaps and bounds. America +must throw man-power into the trenches, must feed herself, must +contribute more and ever more food to the hungry populations of Europe, +must meet the old industrial obligations, and respond to a whole range +of new business requirements. And she is called upon for this effort at +a time when national prosperity is already making full use of man-power. + +When Europe went to war, the world had been suffering from depression a +year and more. Immediately on the outbreak of hostilities whole lines of +business shut down. Unemployment became serious. There were idle hands +everywhere. Germany, of all the belligerents, rallied most quickly to +meet war conditions. Unemployment gave place to a shortage of labor +sooner there than elsewhere. Great Britain did not begin to get the pace +until the middle of 1915. + +The business situation in the United States upon its entrance into the +war was the antithesis of this. For over a year, depression had been +superseded by increased industry, high wages, and greater demand for +labor. The country as measured by the ordinary financial signs, by its +commerce, by its labor market, was more prosperous than it had been for +years. Tremendous requisitions were being made upon us by Europe, and to +the limit of available labor we were answering them. Then into our +economic life, with industrial forces already working at high pressure, +were injected the new demands arising from changing the United States +from a people as unprepared for effective hostilities as a baby in its +cradle, into a nation equipped for war. There was no unemployment, but +on the contrary, shortage of labor. + +The country calls for everything, and all at once, like the spoiled +child on suddenly waking. It must have, and without delay, ships, coal, +cars, cantonments, uniforms, rules, and food, food, food. How can the +needs be supplied and with a million and a half of men dropping work +besides? By woman-power or coolie labor. Those are the horns of the +dilemma presented to puzzled America. The Senate of the United States +directs its Committee of Agriculture to ponder well the coolie problem, +for men hesitate to have women put their shoulder to the wheel. Trade +unionists are right in urging that a republic has no place for a +disfranchised class of imported toilers. Equally true is it that as a +nation we have shown no gift for dealing with less developed races. And +yet labor we must have. Will American women supply it, will they, loving +ease, favor contract labor from the outside, or will they accept the +optimistic view that lack of labor is not acute? + +The procrastinator queries, "Cannot American man-power meet the demand?" +It can, for a time perhaps, if the draft for the army goes as slowly in +the future as it has in the past. + +However, at any moment a full realization may come to us of the +significance of the fact that while the United States is putting only +three percent of its workers into the fighting forces, Great Britain has +put twenty-five percent, and is now combing its industrial army over to +find an additional five hundred thousand men to throw on the French +front. It is probable that it will be felt by this country in the near +future that such a contrast of fulfillment of obligation cannot continue +without serious reflection on our national honor. Roughly speaking, +Great Britain has twenty million persons in gainful pursuits. Of these, +five million have already been taken for the army. The contribution of +France is still greater. Her military force has reached the appalling +proportion of one-fifth of her entire population. But we who have +thirty-five million in gainful occupations are giving a paltry one +million, five hundred thousand in service with our Allies. The situation +is not creditable to us, and one of the things which stands in the way +of the United States reaching a more worthy position is reluctance to +see its women shouldering economic burdens. + +[Illustration: They wear the uniforms of the Edinburgh trams and the +New York City subway and trolley guards, with pride and purpose.] + +While it is quite true that shifting of man-power is needed, mere +shuffling of the cards, as labor leaders suggest, won't give a bigger +pack. Fifty-two cards it remains, though the Jack may be put into a more +suitable position. The man behind the counter should of course be moved +to a muscular employment, but we must not interpret his dalliance with +tapes and ribbons as proof of a superfluity of men. + +The latest reports of the New York State Department of Labor reflect the +meagerness of the supply. Here are some dull figures to prove +it:--comparing the situation with a year ago, we find in a corresponding +month, only one percent more employees this year, with a wage advance of +seventeen percent. Drawing the comparison between this year and two +years ago, there is an advance of "fifteen percent in employees and +fifty-one percent in wages;" and an increase of "thirty percent in +employees and eighty-seven percent in wages," if this year is compared +with the conditions when the world was suffering from industrial +depression. The State employment offices report eight thousand three +hundred and seventy-six requests for workers against seven thousand, six +hundred and fifty applicants for employment, and of the latter only +seventy-three percent were fitted for the grades of work open to them, +and were placed in situations. + +The last records of conditions in the Wilkes-Barre coal regions confirm +the fact of labor scarcity. There are one hundred and fifty-two thousand +men and boys at work today in the anthracite fields, twenty-five +thousand less than the number employed in 1916. These miners, owing to +the prod of the highest wages ever received--the skilled man earning +from forty dollars to seventy-five dollars a week--and to appeals to +their patriotism, are individually producing a larger output than ever +before. It is considered that production, with the present labor force, +is at its maximum, and if a yield of coal commensurate with the world's +need is to be attained, at least seventy percent more men must +be supplied. + +This is a call for man-power in addition to that suggested by the Fuel +Administrator to the effect that lack of coal is partly lack of cars and +that "back of the transportation shortage lies labor shortage." An order +was sent out by the Director General of Railways, soon after his +appointment, that mechanics from the repair shops of the west were to be +shifted to the east to supply the call for help on the Atlantic border. + +Suggestive of the cause of all this shortage, float the service flags of +the mining and railway companies, the hundreds of glowing stars telling +their tale of men gone to the front, and of just so many stars torn from +the standards of the industrial army at home. + +The Shipping Board recently called for two hundred and fifty thousand +men to be gradually recruited as a skilled army for work in shipyards. +At the same time the Congress passed an appropriation of fifty million +dollars for building houses to accommodate ship labor. Six months ago +only fifty thousand men were employed in ship-building, today there are +one hundred and forty-five thousand. This rapid drawing of men to new +centers creates a housing problem so huge that it must he met by the +government; and it need hardly be pointed out, shelter can be built only +by human hands. + +One state official, prompted no doubt by a wise hostility to coolie +labor, and dread of woman labor, has gone so far as to declare publicly +that any employer who will pay "adequate wages can get all the labor he +requires." This view suggests that we may soon have to adopt the methods +of other belligerents and stop employers by law from stealing a +neighbor's working force. I know of a shipyard with a normal pay-roll of +five hundred hands, which in one year engaged and lost to nearby +munition factories thirteen thousand laborers. Such "shifting," hiding +as it does shortage of manpower, leads to serious loss in our productive +efficiency and should not be allowed to go unchecked. + +The manager of one of the New York City street railways met with +complete denial the easy optimism that adequate remuneration will +command a sufficient supply of men. He told me that he had introduced +women at the same wage as male conductors, not because he wanted women, +but because he now had only five applications by fit men to thirty or +forty formerly. There were men to be had, he said, and at lower wages +than his company was paying; but they were "not of the class capable of +fulfilling the requirements of the position." + +The Labor Administration announced on its creation that its "policy +would be to prevent woman labor in positions for which men are +available," and one of the deputy commissioners of the Industrial +Commission of the State of New York declared quite frankly at a labor +conference that "if he could, he would exclude women from industry +altogether." + +We may try to prevent the oncoming tide of the economic independence of +women, but it will not be possible to force the business world to accept +permanently the service of the inefficient in place of that of the alert +and intelligent. To carry on the economic life of a nation with its +labor flotsam and jetsam is loss at any time; in time of storm and +stress it is suicide. + +Man-power is short, seriously so. The farm is always the best barometer +to give warning of scarcity of labor. The land has been drained of its +workers. A fair wage would keep them on the farm--this is the philosophy +of laissez faire. Without stopping to inquire as to what the munition +works would then do, we can still see that it is doubtful whether the +farm can act as magnet. Even men, let us venture the suggestion, like +change for the mere sake of change. A middle-aged man, who had taken up +work at Bridgeport, said to me, "I've mulled around on the farm all my +days. I grabbed the first chance to get away." And then there's a finer +spirit prompting the desertion of the hoe. A man of thirty-three gave me +the point of view. "My brother is 'over there,' and I feel as if I were +backing him up by making guns." + +The only thing that can change the idea that farming is "mulling +around," and making a gun "backs up" the man at the front more +thoroughly than raising turnips, is to bring to the farm new workers who +realize the vital part played by food in the winning of the war. As the +modern industrial system has developed with its marvels of specialized +machinery, its army of employees gathered and dispersed on the stroke of +the clock, and strong organizations created to protect the interests of +the worker, the calm and quiet processes of agriculture have in +comparison grown colorless. The average farmhand has never found push +and drive and group action on the farm, but only individualism to the +extreme of isolation. And now in war time, when in addition to its usual +life of stirring contacts, the factory takes on an intimate and striking +relation to the intense experience of the battle front, the work of the +farm seems as flat as it is likely to be unprofitable. The man in the +furrow has no idea that he is "backing up" the boy in the trench. + +The farmer in his turn does not find himself part of the wider relations +that attract and support the manufacturer. Crops are not grown on order. +The marketing is as uncertain as the weather. The farmer could by higher +wages attract more labor, but as the selling of the harvest remains a +haphazard matter, the venture might mean ruin all the more certain and +serious were wage outlay large. In response to a call for food and an +appeal to his patriotism, the farmer has repeatedly made unusual efforts +to bring his land to the maximum fertility, only to find his crops often +a dead loss, as he could not secure the labor to harvest them. I saw, +one summer, acres of garden truck at its prime ploughed under in +Connecticut because of a shortage of labor. I saw fruit left rotting by +the bushel in the orchards near Rochester because of scarcity of pickers +and a doubt of the reliability of the market. The industry which means +more than any other to the well-being of humanity at this crisis, is the +sport of methods outgrown and of servants who lack understanding and +inspiration. The war may furnish the spark for the needed revolution. +Man-power is not available, woman-power is at hand. A new labor force +always brings ideas and ideals peculiar to itself. May not women as +fresh recruits in a land army stamp their likes and dislikes on farm +life? Their enthusiasm may put staleness to rout, and the group system +of women land workers, already tested in the crucible of experience, may +bring to the farm the needed antidote to isolation. + +To win the war we must have man-power in the trenches sufficient to win +it with. To win, every soldier, every sailor, must be well fed, well +clothed, well equipped. To win, behind the armed forces must stand +determined peoples. To win, the people of America and her Allies must be +heartened by care and food. + +The sun shines on the fertile land, the earth teems with forests, with +coal, with every necessary mineral and food, but labor, labor alone can +transform all to meet our necessities. Man-power unaided cannot supply +the demand. Women in America must shoulder as nobly as have the women of +Europe, this duty. They must answer their country's call. Let them see +clearly that the desire of their men to shield them from possible injury +exposes the nation and the world to actual danger. + +Our winning of the war depends upon the full use of the energy of our +entire people. Every muscle, every brain, must be mobilized if the +national aim is to be achieved. + + + + +III + +MOBILIZING WOMEN IN GREAT BRITAIN [2] + + +In no country have women reached a mobilization so complete and +systematized as in Great Britain. This mobilization covers the whole +field of war service--in industry, business and professional life, and +in government administration. Women serve on the Ministry of Food and +are included in the membership of twenty-five of the important +government committees, not auxiliary or advisory, but administrative +committees, such as those on War Pensions, on Disabled Officers and Men, +on Education after the War, and the Labor Commission to Deal with +Industrial Unrest. + +In short, the women of Great Britain are working side by side with men +in the initiation and execution of plans to solve the problems which +confront the nation. + +Four committees, as for instance those making investigations and +recommendations on Women's Wages and Drink Among Women, are entirely +composed of women, and great departments, such as the Women's Land Army, +the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, are officered throughout by them. +Hospitals under the War Office have been placed in complete control of +medical women; they take rank with medical men in the army and receive +the pay going with their commissions. + +When Great Britain recognized that the war could not be won by merely +sending splendid fighters to the front and meeting the wastage by steady +drafts upon the manhood of the country, she began to build an efficient +organization of industry at home. + +To the call for labor-power British women gave instant response. In +munitions a million are mobilized, in the Land Army there have been +drafted and actually placed on the farms over three hundred thousand, +and in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps fourteen thousand women are +working in direct connection with the fighting force, and an additional +ten thousand are being called out for service each month. In the +clerical force of the government departments, some of which had never +seen women before in their sacred precincts, over one hundred and +ninety-eight thousand are now working. And the women civil servants are +not only engaged in indoor service, but outside too, most of the +carrying of mail being in their hands. + +Women are dock-laborers, some seven thousand strong. Four thousand act +as patrols and police, forty thousand are in banks and various financial +houses. It is said that there are in Great Britain scarce a million +women--and they are mostly occupied as housewives--who could render +greater service to their country than that which they are now giving. + +The wide inclusion of women in government administration is very +striking to us in America. But we must not forget that the contrast +between the two countries in the participation of women in political +life and public service has always been great. The women of the United +Kingdom have enjoyed the municipal and county franchise for years. For a +long time large numbers of women have been called to administrative +positions. They have had thorough training in government as Poor Law +Guardians, District and County Councilors, members of School Boards. No +women, the whole world over, are equipped as those of Great Britain for +service to the state. + +In the glamor of the extremely striking government service of British +women, we must not overlook their non-official organizations. Perhaps +these offer the most valuable suggestions for America. They are near +enough to our experience to be quite understandable. + +The mother country is not under regimentation. Originality and +initiative have full play. Perhaps it was well that the government +failed to appreciate what women could do, and neglected them so long. +Most of the effective work was started in volunteer societies and had +proved a success before there was an official laying on of hands. +Anglo-Saxons--it is our strong point--always work from below, up. + +A glance at any account of the mobilization of woman-power in Great +Britain, Miss Fraser's admirable "Women and War Work," for instance, +will reveal the printed page dotted thick with the names of volunteer +associations. A woman with sympathy sees a need, she gets an idea and +calls others about her. Quickly, there being no red tape, the need +begins to be met. What more admirable service could have been performed +than that inaugurated in the early months of the war under the Queen's +Work for Women Fund, when work was secured for the women in luxury +trades which were collapsing under war pressure? A hundred and thirty +firms employing women were kept running. + +What more thrilling example of courage and forethought has been shown +than by the Scottish Women's Hospitals in putting on the western front +the first X-ray car to move from point to point near the lines? It but +adds to the appeal of the work that those great scientists, Mrs. Ayrton +and Madame Curie, selected the equipment. + +It was a non-official body, the National Union of Women's Suffrage +Societies, which opened before the war was two weeks old the Women's +Service Bureau, and soon placed forty thousand women as paid and +volunteer workers. It was this bureau that furnished the government with +its supervisors for the arsenals. The Women's Farm and Garden Union was +the fore-runner of the official Land Army, and to it still is left the +important work of enrolling those women who, while willing to undertake +agricultural work, are disinclined to sign up for service "for the +duration of the war." + +Not only have unnumbered voluntary associations achieved miracles in +necessary work, but many of them have gained untold discipline in the +ridicule they have had to endure from a doubting public. I remember +hunting in vain all about Oxford Circus for the tucked-away office of +the Women's Signalling Corps. My inquiries only made the London bobbies +grin. Everyone laughed at the idea of women signalling, but to-day the +members are recognized officially, one holding an important appointment +in the college of wireless telegraphy. + +How Scotland Yard smiled, at first, at Miss Damer Dawson and her Women +Police Service! But now the metropolitan police are calling for the help +of her splendidly trained and reliable force. + +And the Women's Reserve Ambulance Corps--I climbed and climbed to an +attic to visit their headquarters! There was the commandant in her +khaki, very gracious, but very upstanding, and maintaining the strictest +discipline. No member of the corps entered or left her office without +clapping heels together and saluting. The ambulance about which the +corps revolved, I often met in the streets--empty. But those women had +vision. They saw that England would need them some day. They had faith +in their ability to serve. So on and on they went, training themselves +to higher efficiency in body and mind. And to-day--well, theirs is +always the first ambulance on the spot to care for the injured in the +air-raids. The scoffers have remained to pray. + +If Britain has a lesson for us it is an all-hail to non-official +societies, an encouragement to every idea, a blessing on every effort +which has behind it honesty of purpose. Great Britain's activities are +as refreshingly diversified as her talents. They are not all under +one hat. + +In the training for new industrial openings this same spirit of +non-official service showed itself. In munitions, for instance, private +employers were the first to recognize that they had in women-workers a +labor force worth the cost of training. The best of the skilled men in +many cases were told off to give the necessary instruction. The will to +do was in the learner; she soon mastered even complex processes, and at +the end of a few weeks was doing even better than men in the light work, +and achieving commendable output in the heavy. The suffrage +organizations, whenever a new line of skilled work was opened to women, +established well-equipped centers to give the necessary teaching. Not +until it became apparent that the new labor-power only needed training +to reach a high grade of proficiency, did County Councils establish, at +government expense, technical classes for girls and women. + +[Illustration: Then--the offered service of the Women's Reserve +Ambulance Corps in England was spurned. Now--they wear shrapnel helmets +while working during the Zeppelin raids.] + +Equipment of the army was obviously the first and pressing obligation. +Fields might lie fallow, for food in the early days could easily be +brought from abroad, but men had to be registered, soldiers clothed and +equipped. It was natural, then, that the new workers were principally +used in registration work and in making military supplies. + +But in the second year of the war came the conviction that the contest +was not soon to be ended, and that the matter of raising food at home +must be met. Women were again appealed to. A Land Army mobilized by +women was created. At first this work was carried on under a centralized +division of the National Service Department, but there has been +decentralization and the Land Army is now a department of the Board of +Agriculture. It is headed by Miss M. Talbot as director. Under this +central body are Women's Agricultural Committees in each county, with an +organizing secretary whose duty it is to secure full-time recruits. + +The part-time workers in a locality are obtained by the wife of the +squire or vicar acting as a volunteer registrar. Many of these +part-time workers register to do the domestic work of the lusty young +village housewife or mother while she is absent from home performing her +allotted task on a nearby farm. The full-time recruits are not only +secured by the organizers, but through registrations at every post +office. Any woman can ask for a registration card and fill it out, and +the postmaster then forwards the application to the committee. The next +step is that likely applicants are called to the nearest center for +examination and presentation of credentials. When finally accepted they +are usually sent for six weeks' or three months' training to a farm +belonging to some large estate. The landlord contributes the training, +and the government gives the recruit her uniform and fifteen shillings a +week to cover her board and lodging. At the end of her course she +receives an armlet signifying her rank in the Land Army and is ready to +go wherever the authorities send her. + +The farmer in Great Britain no longer needs to be converted to the value +of the new workers. He knows they can do every kind of farm work as well +as men, and are more reliable and conscientious than boys, and he is +ready, therefore, to pay the required minimum wage of eighteen +shillings a week, or above that amount if the rate ruling in the +district is higher. + +Equally well organized is the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, familiarly +known as the Waacs. The director is Mrs. Chalmers Watson. A would-be +Waac goes to the center in her county for examination, and then is +assigned to work at home or "somewhere in France" according to training +and capacity. She may be fitted as a cook, a storekeeper, a telephone or +telegraph operator, or for signalling or salvage work. Let us not say +she will supplant a man, but rather set a man free for fuller service. + +My niece, a slip of a girl, felt the call of duty at the beginning of +the war. Her brothers were early volunteers in Kitchener's Army. They +were in the trenches and she longed for the sensation of bearing a +burden of hard work. She went to Woolwich Arsenal and toiled twelve +hours a day. She broke under the strain, recuperated, and took up +munition work again. She became expert, and was in time an overseer told +off to train other women. But she was never satisfied, and always +anxious to be nearer the great struggle. She broke away one day and went +to Southampton for a Waac examination, and found herself one of a group +of a hundred and fifty gentlewomen all anxious to enter active service +and all prepared for some definite work. They stood their tests, and +Dolly--that's the little niece's pet name, given to her because she is +so tiny--is now working as an "engine fitter" just behind the fighting +lines. Dainty Dolly, whom we have always treated as a fragile bit of +Sèvres china, clad in breeches and puttees, under the booming of the +great guns, is fitting patiently, part to part, the beating engine which +will lift on wings some English boy in his flight through the blue skies +of France. + +But it must not be supposed that the magnificent service of British +women, devoted, efficient and well-organized from top to bottom, +realized itself without friction, any more than it will here. There were +certainly two wars going on in Great Britain for a long time, and the +internal strife was little less bitter than the international conflict. +The most active center of this contest of which we have heard so little +was in industry, and the combatants were the government, trade unions +and women. The unions were doing battle because of fear of unskilled +workers, especially when intelligent and easily trained; the government, +in sore need of munition hands, was bargaining with the unskilled for +long hours and low pay. Finally the government and the unions +reluctantly agreed that women must be employed; both wanted them to be +skillful, but not too skillful, and above all, to remain amenable. It +has been made clear, too, that women enter their new positions "for the +war only." At the end of hostilities--international hostilities--women +are to hand over their work and wages to men and go home and be content. +Will the program be fulfilled? + +The wishes of women themselves may play some part. How do they feel? +Obviously, every day the war lasts they get wider experience of the +sorrows and pleasures of financial independence. Women are called the +practical sex, and I certainly found them in England facing the fact +that peace will mean an insufficient number of breadwinners to go around +and that a maimed man may have low earning power. The women I met were +not dejected at the prospect; they showed, on the contrary, a spirit not +far removed from elation in finding new opportunities of service. After +I had sat and listened to speech after speech at the annual conference +of the National Union of Women Workers, with delegates from all parts of +the country, presided over by Mrs. Creighton, widow of the late Bishop +of London, there was no doubt in my mind that British women desired to +enter paid fields of work, and regarded as permanent the great increase +in their employment. No regrets or hesitations were expressed in a +single speech, and the solutions of the problems inherent in the new +situation all lay in the direction of equality of preparation and +equality of pay with men. + +The strongest element in the women's trade unions takes the same stand. +The great rise in the employment of women is not regarded as a "war +measure," and all the suggestions made to meet the hardships of +readjustment, such as a "minimum wage for all unskilled workers, men as +well as women," are based on the idea of the new workers being permanent +factors in the labor market. + +The same conclusion was reached in the report presented to the British +Association by the committee appointed to investigate the "Replacement +of Male by Female Labor." The committee found itself in entire +disagreement with the opinion that the increased employment of women was +a passing phase, and made recommendations bearing on such measures as +improved technical training for girls as well as for boys, a minimum +wage for unskilled men as well as women, equal pay for equal work, and +the abolition of "half-timers." But while it was obvious that the +greatest asset of belligerent nations is the labor of women, while +learned societies and organizations of women laid down rules for their +safe and permanent employment, the British Government showed marked +opposition to the new workers. If the Cabinet did not believe the war +would be brief, it certainly acted as if Great Britain alone among the +belligerents would have no shortage of male industrial hands. At a time +when Germany had five hundred thousand women in munition factories, +England had but ten thousand. + +There is no doubt that the country was at first organized merely for a +spurt. Boys and girls were pressed into service, wages were cut down for +women, hours lengthened for men. Government reports read like the +Shaftesbury attacks on the conditions of early factory days. We hear +again of beds that are never cold, the occupant of one shift succeeding +the occupant of the next, of the boy sleeping in the same bed with two +men, and three girls in a cot in the same room. Labor unrest was met at +first by the Munitions War Act prohibiting strikes and lockouts, +establishing compulsory arbitration and suspending all trade-union rules +which might "hamper production." Under the law a "voluntary army of +workers" signed up as ready to go anywhere their labor was needed, and +local munition committees became labor courts endowed with power to +change wage rates, to inflict fines on slackers, and on those who broke +the agreements of the "voluntary army." + +To meet the threatening rebellion, a Health of Munition Workers +Committee under the Ministry of Munitions was appointed to "consider and +advise on questions of industrial fatigue, hours of labor and other +matters affecting the physical health and physical efficiency of workers +in munition factories and workshops." On this committee there were +distinguished medical men, labor experts, members of parliament and two +women, Miss R.E. Squire of the Factory Department and Mrs. H.J. Tennant. + +The committee was guided by a desire to have immense quantities of +munitions turned out, and faced squarely the probability that the war +would be of long duration. Its findings, embodied in a series of +memoranda, have lessons for us, not only for war times, but for peace +times, for all time. + +On a seven day week the verdict was that "if the maximum output is to be +secured and maintained for any length of time, a weekly period of rest +must be allowed." Overtime was advised against, a double or triple shift +being recommended. + +In July, 1916, the committee published a most interesting memorandum on +experiments in the relation of output to hours. In one case the output +was increased eight percent by reducing the weekly hours from +sixty-eight to fifty-nine, and it was found that a decrease to fifty-six +hours per week gave the same output as fifty-nine. It need hardly be +said that there was no change in machinery, tools, raw material or +workers. All elements except hours of work were identical. Twenty-seven +workers doing very heavy work increased their output ten percent by +cutting weekly hours from sixty-one to fifty-five. In a munition plant +employing thirty-six thousand hands it was found that the sick rate +ranged from five to eight percent when the employees were working +overtime, and was only three percent when they were on a double shift. + +The war has forced Great Britain to carry out the findings of this +committee and to consider more seriously than ever before, and for both +men and women, the problem of industrial fatigue, the relation of +accidents to hours of labor, industrial diseases, housing, transit, and +industrial canteens. The munition worker is as important as the soldier +and must have the best of care. + +While the friction in the ranks of industrial women workers was still +far from being adjusted, the government met its Waterloo in the contest +with medical women. The service which they freely offered their country +was at first sternly refused. Undaunted, they sought recognition outside +the mother country. They knew their skill and they knew the soldiers' +need. They turned to hospitable France, and received official +recognition. On December 14, 1914, the first hospital at the front under +British medical women was opened in Abbaye Royaumont, near Creil. It +carries the official designation, "Hôpital Auxiliaire 301." The doctors, +the nurses, the cooks, are all women. One of the capable chauffeurs I +saw running the ambulance when I was in Creil. She was getting the +wounded as they came down from the front. The French Government +appreciated what the women were doing and urged them to give more help. +At Troyes another unit gave the French army its first experience of +nursing under canvas. + +After France had been profiting by the skill of British women for +months, Sir Alfred Keogh, Medical Director General, wisely insisted that +the War Office yield and place a hospital in the hands of women. The +War Hospital in Endell Street, London, is now under Dr. Flora Murray, +and every office, except that of gateman, is filled by women. From the +doctors, who rank as majors, down to the cooks, who rank as +non-commissioned officers, every one connected with Endell Street has +military standing. It indicated the long, hard road these women had +traveled to secure official recognition that the doctor who showed me +over the hospital told me, as a matter for congratulation, that at night +the police brought in drunken soldiers to be sobered. "Every war +hospital must receive them," she explained, "and we are glad we are not +passed over, for that gives the stamp to our official standing." + +It was a beautiful autumn day when I visited Endell Street. The great +court was full of convalescents, and the orderlies in khaki, with veils +floating back from their close-fitting toques, were carefully and +skillfully lifting the wounded from an ambulance. I spoke to one of the +soldier boys about the absence of men doctors and orderlies, and his +quick query was, "And what should we want men for?" It seems that they +always take that stand after a day or two. At first the patient is +puzzled; he calls the doctor "sister" and the orderly "nurse," but ends +by being an enthusiastic champion of the new order. Not a misogynist did +I find. One poor fellow who had been wounded again and again and had +been in many hospitals, declared, "I don't mean no flattery, but this +place leaves nothink wanting." + +The first woman I met on my last visit to England upset my expectation +of finding that war pushed women back into primitive conditions of toil, +crushed them under the idea that physical force rules the world, and +made them subservient. I chanced upon her as she was acting as +ticket-puncher at the Yarmouth station. She was well set-up, alert, +efficient, helpful in giving information, and, above all, cheerful. +There were two capable young women at the bookstall, too. One had lost a +brother at the front, the other her lover. I felt that they regarded +their loss as one item in the big national accounting. They were +heroically cheerful in "doing their bit." + +Throughout my stay in England I searched for, but could not find, the +self-effacing spinster of former days. In her place was a capable woman, +bright-eyed, happy. She was occupied and bustled at her work. She jumped +on and off moving vehicles with the alertness, if not the +unconsciousness, of the expert male. She never let me stand in omnibus +or subway, but quickly gave me her seat, as indeed she insisted upon +doing for elderly gentlemen as well. The British woman had found herself +and her muscles. England was a world of women--women in uniforms; there +was the army of nurses, and then the messengers, porters, elevator +hands, tram conductors, bank clerks, bookkeepers, shop attendants. They +each seemed to challenge the humble stranger, "Superfluous? Not I, I'm a +recruit for national service!" Even a woman doing time-honored womanly +work moved with an air of distinction; she dusted a room for the good of +her country. Just one glimpse was I given of the old-time daughter of +Eve, when a ticket-collector at Reading said: "I can't punch your +ticket. Don't you see I'm eating an apple!" + +One of the reactions of the wider functioning of brain and muscle which +struck me most forcibly was the increased joyfulness of women. They were +happy in their work, happy in the thought of rendering service, so happy +that the poignancy of individual loss was carried more easily. + +This cheerfulness is somewhat gruesomely voiced in a cartoon in _Punch_ +touching on the allowance given to the soldier's wife. She remarks, +"This war is 'eaven--twenty-five shillings a week and no 'usband +bothering about!" We have always credited _Punch_ with knowing England. +Truth stands revealed by a thrust, however cynical, when softened by +challenging humor. + +There was no discipline in the pension system. No work was required. The +case of a girl I met in a country town was common. She was working in a +factory earning eleven shillings a week. A day or two later I saw her, +and she told me she had stopped work, as she had "married a soldier, and +'e's gone to France, and I get twelve and six separation allowance a +week." Never did the strange English name, "separation allowance," seem +more appropriate for the wife's pension than in this girl's story. +Little wonder was it that in the early months of the war there was some +riotous living among soldiers' wives! + +And the comments of women of influence on the drunkenness and waste of +money on foolish finery were as striking to me as the sordid condition +itself. The woman chairman of a Board of Poor Law Guardians in the north +of England told me that when her fellow-members suggested that +Parliament ought to appoint committees to disburse the separation +allowances, she opposed them with the heroic philosophy that women can +be trained in wisdom only by freedom to err, that a sense of +responsibility had never been cultivated in them, and the country would +have to bear the consequences. In reply to my inquiry as to how the +Guardians received these theories, I learned that "they knew she was +right and dropped their plan." + +The faith of leading women that experience would be the best teacher for +the soldier's wife has been justified. A labor leader in the Midlands +told me that an investigation by his trade union showed that only one +hundred women in the ten thousand cases inquired into were mis-spending +their allowances. And when I was visiting a board school in a poor +district of London, and remarked to the head teacher that the children +looked well cared for, she told me that never had they been so well fed +and clothed. There seemed no doubt in her mind that it was best to have +the family budget in the hands of the mother. In the sordid surroundings +of the mean streets of great cities, there is developing in women +practical wisdom and a fine sense of individual responsibility. + +Perhaps of greater significance than just how separation allowances are +being spent is the fact that women have discovered that their work as +housewives and mothers has a value recognized by governments in hard +cash. It makes one speculate as to whether wives in the warring nations +will step back without a murmur into the old-time dependence on one man, +or whether these simple women may contribute valuable ideas towards the +working out of sound schemes of motherhood pensions. + +The women of Great Britain are experiencing economic independence, they +are living in an atmosphere of recognition of the value of their work as +housewives and mothers. Women leaders in all classes give no indication +of regarding pensions or remuneration in gainful pursuits as other than +permanent factors in social development, and much of the best thought of +men as well as women is centered on group experiments in domestic +coöperation, in factory canteens, in municipal kitchens, which are a +natural concomitant to the wider functioning of women. + +Great Britain is not talking about feminism, it is living it. Perhaps +nothing better illustrates the national acceptance of the fact than the +widespread amusement touched with derision caused by the story of the +choleric gentlemen who, on being asked at the time of one of the +government registrations whether his wife was dependent upon him or not, +roared in rage, "Well, if my wife isn't dependent on me, I'd like to +know what man she is dependent on!" + +Only second to Britain's lesson for us in the self-reliance of its +women, and the thorough mobilization of their labor-power and executive +ability, is its lesson in protection for all industrial workers. It +stands as one people against the present enemy, and in its effort does +not fail to give thought to race conservation for the future. + + +[Footnote 2: Through the courtesy of the Editors of _The Outlook_, I am +at liberty to use in this and the following chapter, some of the +material published in an article by me in _The Outlook_ of June +28, 1916.] + + + + +IV + +MOBILIZING WOMEN IN FRANCE + + +Compared with the friction in the mobilization of woman-power in Great +Britain, the readjustment in the lives of women in France was like the +opening out of some harmonious pageant in full accord with popular +sympathy. But who has not said, "France is different!" + +It is different, and in nothing more so than in its attitude toward its +women. Without discussion with organizations of men, without hindrance +from the government, women filled the gaps in the industrial army. It +was obvious that the new workers, being unskilled, would need training; +the government threw open the technical schools to them. A spirit of +hospitality, of helpfulness, of common sense, reigned. + +[Illustration: The French poilu on furlough is put to work harrowing.] + +And it was not only in industry that France showed herself wise. I found +that the government had coöperated unreservedly with all the +philanthropic work of women and had given them a wide sphere in which +they could rise above amateurish effort and carry out plans calling for +administrative ability. + +When the Conseil National des Femmes Françaises inaugurated its work to +bring together the scattered families of Belgium and northern France, +and when the Association pour l'Aide Fraternelle aux Évacués +Alsaciens-Lorrains began its work for the dispersed peoples of the +provinces, an order was issued by the government to every prefect to +furnish lists of all refugees in his district to the headquarters of the +women's societies in Paris. It was through this good will on the part of +the central government that these societies were able to bring together +forty thousand Belgian families, and to clothe and place in school, or +at work, the entire dispersed population of the reconquered districts of +Alsace-Lorraine. + +Nor did these societies cease work with the completion of their initial +effort. They turned themselves into employment bureaus and with the aid +and sanction of the government found work for the thousands of women who +were thrown out of employment. They had the machinery to accomplish +their object, the Council being an old established society organized +throughout the country, and the Association to Aid the Refugees from +Alsace-Lorraine (a nonpartisan name adopted, by the way, at the request +of the Minister of the Interior to cover for the moment the patriotic +work of the leading suffrage society) had active units in every +prefecture. + +One of the admirable private philanthropies was the canteen at the St. +Lazarre station in Paris. I am tempted to single it out because its +organizer, Countess de Berkaim, told me that in all the months she had +been running it--and it was open twenty-four hours of the day--not a +single volunteer had been five minutes late. The canteen was opened in +February, 1915, with a reading and rest room. Six hundred soldiers a day +have been fed. The two big rooms donated by the railway for the work +were charming with their blue and white checked curtains, dividing +kitchen from restaurant and rest room from reading room. The work is no +small monument to the reliability and organizing faculty of +French women. + +It was in France, too, that I found the group of women who realized that +the permanent change which the war was making in the relation of women +to society needed fundamental handling. Mlle. Valentine Thomson, founder +of La Vie Féminine, held that not only was the war an economic struggle +and not only must the financial power of the combatants rest on the +labor of women, but the future of the nations will largely depend upon +the attitude which women take toward their new obligations. Realizing +that business education would be a determining factor in that attitude, +Mlle. Thomson persuaded her father, who was then Minister of Commerce, +to send out an official recommendation to the Chambers of Commerce to +open the commercial schools to girls. The advice was very generally +followed, but as Paris refused, a group of women, backed by the +Ministry, founded a school in which were given courses of instruction in +the usual business subjects, and lectures on finance, commercial law and +international trade. + +Mlle. Thomson herself turned her business gifts to good use in a +successful effort to build up for the immediate benefit of artists and +workers the doll trade of which France was once supreme mistress. +Exhibitions of the art, old and new, were held in many cities in the +United States, in South America and in England. The dolls went to the +hearts of lovers of beauty, and what promised surer financial return, to +the hearts of the children. + +To do something for France--that stood first in the minds of the +initiators of this commercial project. They knew her people must be +employed. And next, the desire to bring back charm to an old art +prompted their effort. Mlle. Thomson fully realizes just what "Made in +Germany" signifies. The peoples of the world have had their taste +corrupted by floods of the cheap and tawdry. Germany has been steadily +educating us to demand quantity, quantity mountains high. There is +promise that the doll at least will be rescued by France and made worth +the child's devotion. + +In industry, as well as in all else, one feels that in France there has +not been so much a revolution as an orderly development. Women were in +munition factories even before the war, the number has merely swelled. +The women of the upper and lower bourgeois class always knew their +husband's business, the one could manage the shop, the other could +bargain with the best of them as to contracts and output. Women were +trained as bookkeepers and clerks under Napoleon I; he wanted men as +soldiers, and so decreed women should go into business. And the woman of +the aristocratic class has merely slipped out of her seclusion as if +putting aside an old-fashioned garment, and now carries on her +philanthropies in more serious and coördinated manner. We know the +practical business experience possessed by French women, and so are +prepared to learn that many a big commercial enterprise, the owner +having gone to the front, is now directed by his capable wife. That is +but a development, too, is it not? For we had all heard long ago of Mme. +Duval, even if we had not eaten at her restaurants, and though we had +never bought a ribbon or a carpet at the Bon Marché, we had heard of the +woman who helped break through old merchant habits and gave the world +the department store. + +But nothing has been more significant in its growth during the war than +the small enterprises in which the husband and wife in the domestic +munition shop, laboring side by side with a little group of assistants, +have been turning out marvels of skill. The man is now in the trenches +fighting for France, and the woman takes command and leads the +industrial battalion to victory. She knows she fights for France. + +A word more about her business, for she is playing an economic part that +brings us up at attention. She may be solving the problem of adjustment +of home and work so puzzling to women. There are just such domestic +shops dotted all over the map of France; in the Paris district alone +there are over eighteen hundred of them. The conditions are so +excellent and the ruling wages so high, that the minimum wage law passed +in 1915 applied only to the sweated home workers in the clothing trade, +and not to the domestic munition shops. + +A commission which included in its membership a trade unionist, sent by +the British government in the darkest days to find why it was that +France could produce so much more ammunition than England, found these +tiny workshops, with their primitive equipment, performing miracles. The +output was huge and of the best. The woman, when at the head, seemed to +turn out more than the man, she worked with such undying energy. The +commission said it was the "spirit of France" that drove the workers +forward and renewed the flagging energies. But even the trade unionist +referred to the absence of all opposition to women on the part of +organizations of men. Perhaps the spirit of France is undying because in +it is a spirit of unity and harmony. + +It seemed to me there was one very practical explanation of the +unmistakable energy of the French worker, both man and woman. The whole +nation has the wise custom of taking meal time with due seriousness. The +break at noon in the great manufactories, as well as in the family +workshop, is long, averaging one hour and a half, and reaching often to +two hours. The French never gobble. Because food is necessary to animal +life, they do not on that account take a puritanical view of it. They +dare enjoy it, in spite of its physiological bearing. They sit down to +it, dwell upon it, get its flavor, and after the meal they sit still and +as a nation permit themselves unabashed to enjoy the sensation of hunger +appeased. That's the common sense spirit of France. + +Of course the worker is renewed, hurls herself on the work again with +ardor, and losing no time through fatigue, throws off an +enormous output. + +Wages perform their material share in spurring the worker. Louis Barthou +says that the woman's average is eight francs a day. Long ago--it seems +long ago--she could earn at best five francs in the Paris district. She +works on piece work now, getting the same rate as men. And think of +it!--this must indeed be because of the spirit of France--this woman +does better than men on the light munition work, and equals, yes, equals +her menfolk on the heavy shells. I do not say this, a commission of men +says it, a commission with a trade union member to boot. The coming of +the woman-worker with the spirit of win-the-war in her heart is the same +in France as elsewhere, only here her coming is more gracious. Twelve +hundred easily take up work on the Paris subway. They are the wives of +mobilized employees. The offices of the Post, the Telegraph and +Telephone bristle with women, of course, for eleven thousand have taken +the places of men. Some seven thousand fill up the empty positions on +the railways, serving even as conductors on through trains. Their number +has swollen to a half million in munitions, and to over half that number +in powder mills and marine workshops; in civil establishments over three +hundred thousand render service; and even the conservative banking world +welcomes the help of some three thousand women. + +[Illustration: Has there ever been anything impossible to French women +since the time of Jeanne d'Arc? The fields must be harrowed--they have +no horses.] + +Out on the land the tally is greatest of all. Every woman from the +village bends over the bosom of France, urging fertility. The government +called them in the first hours of the conflict. Viviani spoke +the word:-- + +"The departure for the army of all those who can carry arms, leaves the +work in the fields undone; the harvest is not yet gathered in; the +vintage season is near. In the name of the entire nation united behind +it, I make an appeal to your courage, and to that of your children, +whose age alone and not their valour, keeps them from the war. + +"I ask you to keep on the work in the fields, to finish gathering in the +year's harvest, to prepare that of the coming year. You cannot render +your country a greater service. + +"It is not for you, but for her, that I appeal to your hearts. + +"You must safeguard your own living, the feeding of the urban +populations and especially the feeding of those who are defending the +frontier, as well as the independence of the country, civilization +and justice. + +"Up, then, French women, young children, daughters and sons of the +country! Replace on the field of work those who are on the field of +battle. Strive to show them to-morrow the cultivated soil, the harvests +all gathered in, the fields sown. + +"In hours of stress like the present, there is no ignoble work. +Everything that helps the country is great. Up! Act! To work! To-morrow +there will be glory for everyone. + +"Long live the Republic! Long live France!" + +Women instantly responded to the proclamation. Only the old men were +left to help, only decrepit horses, rejected by the military +requisition. More than once I journeyed far into the country, but I +never saw an able-bodied man. What a gap to be filled!--but the French +peasant woman filled it. She harvested that first year, she has sowed +and garnered season by season ever since. Men, horses, machinery were +lacking, the debit yawned, but she piled up a credit to meet it by +unflagging toil. + +With equal devotion and with initiative and power of organization the +woman of leisure has "carried on." The three great societies +corresponding with our Red Cross, the Société de Secours aux Blessés, +the Union des Femmes de France, and the Association des Dames +Françaises, have established fifteen hundred hospitals with one hundred +and fifteen thousand beds, and put forty-three thousand nurses in active +service. Efficiency has kept pace with this superb effort, as is +testified to by many a war cross, many a medal, and the cross of the +Legion of Honor. + +Up to the level of her means France sets examples in works of human +salvage worthy the imitation of all nations. The mairie in each +arrondissement has become no less than a community center. The XIV +arrondissement in Paris is but the pattern for many. Here the wife of +the mayor, Mme. Brunot, has made the stiff old building a human place. +The card catalogue carrying information about every soldier from the +district, gives its overwhelming news each day gently to wife or mother, +through the lips of Mme. Brunot or her women assistants. The work of Les +Amis des Orphelins de Guerre centers here, the "adopted" child receiving +from the good maire the gifts in money and presents sent by the +Americans who are generously filling the role of parent. The widows of +the soldiers gather here for comfort and advice. + +And the mairie holds a spirit of experiment. It houses not only courage +and sympathy, but progress. The "XIV" has ventured on a Cuisine +Populaire under Mme. Brunot's wholesome guidance. And so many other +arrondissements have followed suit that Paris may be regarded as making +a great experiment in the municipal feeding of her people. It is not +charity, the food is paid for. In the "XIV" fifteen hundred persons eat +a meal or two at the mairie each day. The charge is seventy-five +centimes--fifteen cents, and one gets a soup, meat and a vegetable, +and fruit. + +The world seems to be counselling us that if we wish to be well and +cheaply fed we must go where there are experts to cook, where buying is +done in quantity, and where the manager knows about nutritive values. + +If a word of praise is extended to the maire of the XIV arrondissement +for his very splendid work, an example to all France, he quickly urges, +"Ah, but Mme. Brunot!" And so it is always, if you exclaim, "Oh, the +spirit of the men of France!" and a Frenchman's ears catch your words, +he will correct, "Ah, but the women!" + +And the women do stand above all other women, they have had such +opportunity for heroism. Whose heart does not beat the faster when the +names Soisson and Mme. Macherez are spoken! The mayor and the council +gone, she assumes the office and keeps order while German shells fall +thick on the town. And then the enemy enters, and asks for the mayor, +and she replies, "Le maire, c'est moi." And then do we women not like to +think of Mlle. Deletete staying at her post in the telegraph office in +Houplines in spite of German bombardments, and calmly facing tormentors, +when they smashed her instruments and threatened her with death. +One-tenth of France in the enemy's hands, and in each village and town +some woman staying behind to nurse the sick and wounded, to calm the +population when panic threatens, to stand invincible between the people +and their conquerors! + +It is very splendid!--the French man holding steady at the front, the +French woman an unyielding second line of defense. But what of France? +Words of praise must not swallow our sense of obligation. Let us with +our hundred millions of people face the figures. The death rate in +France, not counting the military loss, is twenty per thousand, with a +birth rate of eight per thousand. In Paris for the year ending August, +1914, there were forty-eight thousand nine hundred and seventeen births; +in the year ending in the same month, 1916, the births dropped to +twenty-six thousand one hundred and seventy-nine. The total deaths for +that year in all France were one million, one hundred thousand, and the +births three hundred and twelve thousand. + +France is profoundly, infinitely sad. She has cause. I shall never +forget looking into the very depths of her sorrow when I was at Creil. A +great drive was in progress, the wounded were being brought down from +the front, troops hurried forward. Four different regiments passed as I +sat at déjeuner. The restaurant, full of its noonday patrons, was a +typical French café giving on the street. We could have reached out and +touched the soldiers. They marched without music, without song or word, +marched in silence. Some of the men were from this very town; their +little sons, with set faces, too, walked beside them and had brought +them bunches of flowers. The people in the restaurant never spoke above +a whisper, and when the troops passed were as silent as death. There was +no cheer, but just a long, wistful gaze, the soldiers looking into their +eyes, they into the soldiers'. + +But France can bear her burden, can solve her problem if we lift our +full share from her bent shoulders. Her women can save the children if +the older men, relieved by our young soldiers, come back from the +trenches, setting women free for the work of child saving. France can +rebuild her villages if her supreme architects, her skilled workers are +replaced in the trenches by our armies. France can renew her spirit and +save her body if her experts in science, if her poets and artists are +sent back to her, and our less great bare their breasts to the Huns. + + + + +V + +MOBILIZING WOMEN IN GERMANY + + +The military mobilization of Germany was no more immediate and effective +than the call to arms for women. On August 1, 1914, the summons went +out, and German women were at once part of the smooth running machine of +efficiency. + +The world says the Kaiser has been preparing for war for forty years. +The world means that he has been preparing the fighting force. The sword +and guns were to be ready. But the military arm of the nation, the +German government believes, is but the first line of attack; the people +are the second line, and so they, too, in all their life activities, +were not forgotten. The military aristocracy has never neglected the +function of women in the state. The definition of their function may +differ from ours, but that there is a function is recognized, and it is +related to the other vital social organs. + +Slowly, through the last half of the nineteenth century, there had grown +up clubs among German women focusing on a definite bit of work, or +crystallizing about an idea. Germany even had suffrage societies. +Politics, however, were forbidden by the government; women were not +allowed to hang on the fringe of a meeting held to discuss men's +politics. But the women of the Fatherland were free to pool their ideas +in philanthropic and hygienic corners, and venture out at times on +educational highways. The Froebel societies had many a contest with the +government, for to the military mind, the gentle pedagogue's theories +seemed subversive of discipline as enforced by spurs and bayonets. + +These clubs, covering every trade and profession, every duty and every +aspiration of women, were dotted over the German Empire. At last they +drew together in a federation. The government looked on. It saw a +machine created, and believing in thorough organization, no doubt gave +thought to the possibilities of the Bund deutscher, Frauenvereine. At +the outbreak of war, Dr. Gertrud Baumer was president of the Bund. She +was a leader of great ability, marshalling half a million of women. No +other organization was so widespread and well-knit, except perhaps Der +Vaterlandische Frauenverein with its two thousand one hundred and fifty +branches. It was evangelical and military. The Empress was its patron. +Its popular name is the "Armée der Kaiserin." + +There the two great national societies stood--one aristocratic, the +other democratic, one appealing to the ruling class, the other holding +in bonds of fellowship the rich and the poor, the urban and the rural, +the professional and the industrial woman. + +Every belligerent president or premier has faced exactly the same +perplexity. What woman, what society, is to be recognized as leader? The +question has brought beads of perspiration to the foreheads of +statesmen. + +France solved the difficulty urbanely. It said "yes" to each and all. It +promised coöperation and kept the promise. By affably--always affably +and hospitably--accepting this service from one society, and suggesting +another pressing need to its competitor, it sorted out capabilities, and +warded off duplication. Perhaps this did not bring the fullest +efficiency, but the loss was more than made up, no doubt, by a free +field for initiative. Britain ignored all existing organizations of +women, and after a year and a half of puzzlement created a separate +government department for their mobilization. America struck out still +another course. It took the heads of several national societies, bound +them in one committee, to which it gave, perhaps with the idea of +avoiding any danger of friction, neither power nor funds. + +Germany faced the same critical moment for decision. The government +wanted efficient use of woman-power on the land, in the factory, in the +home, and that quickly. It made use of the best existing machinery. Dr. +Gertrud Baumer visited the Ministerium des Innern, and on August 1 she +issued a call for the mobilization of women for service to the +Fatherland in the Nationale Frauendienst. Under the aegis of the +government, with the national treasury behind her, Dr. Baumer summoned +the women of the Empire. By order, every woman and every organization of +women was to fall in line under the Frauendienst in each village and +city for "the duration of the war." [3] + +In each army district, the government appointed a woman as directress, +and by order to town and provincial authorities made the Frauendienst +part of local executive affairs. + +Among the immediate duties laid upon the Frauendienst by the authorities +was the task of registering all needy persons, of providing cheap eating +places, opening workrooms, and setting up nurseries for children, +especially for those who were motherless and those whose fathers had +fallen at the front and whose mothers were in some gainful pursuit. With +these duties went the administrative service of coöperating with the +government in "keeping up an even supply of foodstuffs, and controlling +the buying and selling of food." + +Germany anticipated as did no other belligerent the unemployment which +would follow a declaration of war, and prepared to meet the condition. A +great deal of army work, such as tent sewing, belts for cartridges, +bread sacks, and sheets for hospitals, was made immediately available +for the women thrown out of luxury trades. In the first month of the war +the Frauendienst opened work-rooms in all great centers; machinery was +installed by magic and through the six work-rooms in Berlin alone +twenty-three thousand women were given paid employment in one week. + +Such efforts could not, of course, absorb the surplus labor, for +unemployment was very great. Eighty percent of the women's hat-makers +and milliners were out of work, seventy-two percent of the workers in +glass and fifty-eight percent in china. The Frauendienst investigated +two hundred and fifty-five thousand needy cases, and in Berlin alone +found sixty thousand women who had lost their employment. Charity had to +render help. Here, again, it is an example of the alertness of the +organization and its close connection with the government that the +Berlin magistracy deputed to twenty-three Hilfscommissionen from the +Frauendienst the work of giving advice and charity relief to the +unemployed. Knitting rooms were opened, clothing depots, mending rooms, +where donated clothing was repaired, and in one month fifty-six thousand +orders for milk, five hundred thousand for bread, and three hundred +thousand for meals were distributed for the city authorities. + +The adjustment to war requirements went on more quickly in Germany than +in any other country. Before a year had passed the surplus hands had +been absorbed, and a shortage of labor power was beginning to be felt. + +And now opens the war drama set with the same scene everywhere. Women +hurry forward to take up the burden laid down by men, and to assume the +new occupations made necessary by the organization of the world for +military conflict. To tell of Germany is merely to speak in bigger +numbers. Women in munitions? Of course, well over the million mark. +Trolley conductors? Of course, six hundred in Berlin alone before the +first Christmas. Women are making the fuses, fashioning the big shells, +and at the same heavy machines used by the men. That speaks volumes--the +same heavy machines. Great Britain and France have in every case +introduced lighter machinery for their women. But, whatever the +conditions, in Germany the women are handling high explosives, sewing +heavy saddlery, operating the heaviest drill machines. Women have been +put on the "hardest jobs hitherto filled by men." In the +German-Luxemburg Mining and Furnace Company at Differdingen, they are +found doing work at the slag and blast furnaces which had always +required men of great endurance. They work on the same shifts as the +men, receive the same pay, but are not worked overtime "because they +must go home and perform their domestic duties." + +One feels the weight of the German system. Patient women shoulder double +burdens. They always did. + +In the Post and Telegraph department there is an army of fifty thousand +women. The telephone service is entirely in their hands, and running +more smoothly than formerly. Dr. Käthe Schirmacher declares comfortingly +in the _Kriegsfrau_ that "one must not forget that these women know many +important bits of information--and keep silent." Women have learned to +keep a secret! + +One hundred and eighty nurses, experts with the X-ray, were in the front +line dressing stations in the early days of the war, and before a week +of conflict had passed women were in the Field Post, and Frau Reimer, +organizer of official chauffeurs, was on the western line of attack. + +Agriculture claims more women than any occupation in Germany. They were +always on the farm, perhaps they are happier there now since they +themselves are in command. It is said that "the peasants work in the +boots and trousers of their husbands and ride in the saddle." War has +liberated German women from the collar and put them on horseback! + +But strangest and most unexpected of all is the professional and +administrative use of women. The government has sent women architects +and interior decorators to East Prussia to plan and carry through +reconstruction work. Over a hundred--to be exact, one hundred and +sixteen at last accounts--have taken the places of men in +administrative departments connected with the railways. Many widows who +have shown capacity have been put in government positions of importance +formerly held by their husbands. Women have become farm managers, +superintendents of dairy industries, and representatives of landed +proprietors. + +The disseminating of all instruction and information for women on war +economies was delegated to the League of Women's Domestic Science Clubs. +The Berlin course was held in no less a place than the Abgeordnetenhaus, +and the Herrenhaus opened its doors wide on Rural Women's Day when +Agricultural Week was held at the capital. + +When the full history of the war comes to be written, no doubt one +reason for Germany's marvelous power to stand so long against the world +will be found in her use of every brain and muscle of the nation. This +has been for her no exclusive war. Her entire people to their last ounce +of energy have been engaged. + +And this supreme service on the part of German women seeks democratic +expression. From them comes the clearest, bravest word that has reached +us across the border. The most hopeful sign is this manifesto from the +suffrage organizations to the government: "Up to the present Germany +has stood in the lowest rank of nations as regards women's rights. In +most civilized lands women already have been given a large share in +public affairs. German women have been granted nothing except within the +most insignificant limits. In New Zealand, Australia and most American +States, and even before the war in Finland and Norway, they had been +given political rights; to-day, Sweden, Russia and many other countries +give them a full or limited franchise. The war has brought a full +victory to the women of England, Canada, Russia and Denmark, and large +concessions are within sight in France, Holland and Hungary. + +"Among us Germans not only the national but even the commercial +franchise is denied, and even a share in the industrial and commercial +courts. In the demand for the democratization of German public life our +legislators do not seem even to admit the existence of women. + +"But during the war the cooperation of women in public life has +unostentatiously grown from year to year until to-day the number of +women engaged in various callings in Germany exceeds the number of men. + +"The work they are doing includes all spheres of male activity; without +them it would no longer be possible to support the economic life of the +people. Women have done their full share in the work of the community. + +"Does not this performance of duty involve the right to share in the +building up and extension of the social order? + +"The women protest against this lack of political rights, in virtue both +of their work for the community and of their work as human beings. They +demand political equality with men. They demand the direct, equal and +secret franchise for all legislative bodies, full equality in the +communes and in legal representation of their interests. + +"This first joint pronouncement on women's demands will be followed by +others until the victory of our cause is won." + + +[Footnote 3: "Die Frauenvereine jeder Stadt verbinden sich für die Dauer +des Krieges zur Organization Nationaler Frauendienst die zu Berlin am +1ten August begründet wurde."] + + + + +VI + +WOMEN OVER THE TOP IN AMERICA + + +American women have begun to go over the top. They are going up the +scaling-ladder and out into All Man's Land. Perhaps love of adventure +tempts them, perhaps love of money, or a fine spirit of service, but +whatever the propelling motive, we are seeing them make the venture. + +There is nothing new in our day in a woman's being paid for her +work--some of it. But she has never before been seen in America +employed, for instance, as a section hand on a railway. The gangs are +few and small as yet, but there the women are big and strong specimens +of foreign birth. They "trim" the ballast and wield the heavy "tamping" +tool with zest. They certainly have muscles, and are tempted to use them +vigorously at three dollars a day. + +In the machine shops where more skill than strength is called for, the +American element with its quick wits and deft fingers predominates. +Young women are working at the lathe with so much precision and accuracy +that solicitude as to what would become of the world if all its men +marched off to war is in a measure assuaged. In the push and drive of +the industrial world, women are handling dangerous chemicals in making +flash lights, and T.N.T. for high explosive shells. The American college +girl is not as yet transmuting her prowess of the athletic field into +work on the anvil, as is the university woman in England, but she has +demonstrated her manual strength and skill on the farm with plough +and harrow. + +Women and girls answer our call for messenger service, and their +intelligence and courtesy are an improvement upon the manners of the +young barbarians of the race. Women operate elevators, lifting us with +safety to the seventh heaven, or plunging us with precision to the +depths. There were those at first who refused to entrust their lives to +such frail hands, and there are still some who look concerned when they +see a woman at the lever; but on the whole the elevator "girl" has +gained the confidence of her public, and has gained it by skill, not by +feminine wiles, for even men won't shoot into space with a woman at the +helm whose sole equipment is charm. With need of less skill than the +elevator operator, but more patience and tact in managing human nature, +the woman conductor is getting her patrons into line. We are still a +little embarrassed in her presence. We try not to stare at the +well-set-up woman in her sensible uniform, while she on her part tries +to look unconscious, and with much dignity accomplishes the common aim +much more successfully than do we. She is so attentive to her duties, so +courteous, and, withal, so calm and serious that I hope she will abide +with us longer than the "duration of the war." + +In short, America is witnessing the beginning of a great industrial and +social change, and even those who regard the situation as temporary +cannot doubt that the experience will have important reactions. The +development is more advanced than it was in Great Britain at a +corresponding time, for even before the United States entered the +conflict women were being recruited in war industries. They have opened +up every line of service. There is not an occupation in which a woman is +not found. + +When men go a-warring, women go to work. + +A distinguished general at the end of the Cuban War, enlarging upon the +poet's idea of woman's weeping rôle in wartime, said in a public speech: +"When the country called, women put guns in the hands of their soldier +boys and bravely sent them away. After the good-byes were said there was +nothing for these women to do but to go back and wait, wait, wait. The +excitement of battle was not for them. It was simply a season of anxiety +and heartrending inactivity." Now the fact is, when a great call to arms +is sounded for the men of a nation, women enlist in the industrial army. +If women did indeed sit at home and weep, the enemy would soon conquer. + +The dull census tells the thrilling story. Before our Civil War women +were found in less than a hundred trades, at its close in over four +hundred. The census of 1860 gives two hundred and eighty-five thousand +women in gainful pursuits; that of 1870, one million, eight hundred and +thirty-six thousand. Of the Transvaal at war, this story was told to me +by an English officer. He led a small band of soldiers down into the +Boer country, on the north from Rhodesia, as far as he dared. He "did +not see a man," even boys as young as fifteen had joined the army. But +at the post of economic duty stood the Boer woman; she was tending the +herds and carrying on all the work of the farm. She was the base of +supplies. That was why the British finally put her in a concentration +camp. Her man could not be beaten with her at his back. + +War compels women to work. That is one of its merits. Women are forced +to use body and mind, they are not, cannot be idlers. Perhaps that is +the reason military nations hold sway so long; their reign continues, +not because they draw strength from the conquered nation, but because +their women are roused to exertion. Active mothers ensure a virile race. + +The peaceful nation, if its women fall victims to the luxury which +rapidly increasing wealth brings, will decay. If there come no spiritual +awakening, no sense of responsibility of service, then perhaps war alone +can save it. The routing of idleness and ease by compulsory labor is the +good counterbalancing some of the evil. + +The rapidly increasing employment of women to-day, then, is the usual, +and happy, accompaniment of war. But the development has its opponents, +and that is nothing new, either. Let us look them over one by one. The +most mischievous objector is the person, oftenest a woman, who says the +war will be short, and fundamental changes, therefore, should not be +made. This agreeable prophecy does not spring from a heartening belief +in victory, but only from the procrastinating attitude, "Why get ready?" +To prepare for anything less certain than death seems folly to many of +the sex, over-trained in patient waiting. + +Then there is the official who constantly sees the seamy side of +industrial life and who concludes--we can scarcely blame him--that "it +would be well if women were excluded entirely from factory life." The +bad condition of industrial surroundings bulks large in his mind, and +the value of organized work to us mortals bulks small. We are all too +inclined to forget that the need for work cannot be eliminated, but the +unhealthy process in a dangerous trade can. Clean up the factory, rather +than clean out the women, is a sound slogan. + +And then comes the objector who is exercised as to the effect of paid +work upon woman's charm. Solicitude on this score is often buried in a +woman's heart. It was a woman, the owner of a large estate, who when +proposing to employ women asked how many men she would have to hire in +addition, "to dig, plough and do all the hard work." On learning that +the college units do everything on a farm, she queried anxiously, "But +how about their corsets?" To the explanation, "They don't wear any," +came the regret, "What a pity to make themselves so unattractive!" + +I have heard fear expressed, too, lest sex attraction be lost through +work on army hats, the machinery being noisy and the operative, if she +talk, running the danger of acquiring a sharp, high voice. One could but +wonder if most American women work on army hats. + +Among the women actually employed, I have found without exception a fine +spirit of service. So many of them have a friend or brother "over +there," that backing up the boys makes a strong personal appeal. But +some of the women who have left factory life behind are adopting an +attitude towards the present industrial situation as lacking in vision +as in patriotism. Throughout a long discussion in which some of these +women participated I was able to follow and get their point of view. To +them a woman acting as a messenger, an elevator operator, or a trolley +conductor, was anathema, and the tempting of women into these +employments seemed but the latest vicious trick of the capitalist. The +conductor in her becoming uniform was most reprehensible, and her +evident satisfaction in her job suggested to her critics that she merely +was trying to play a melodramatic part "as a war hero." In any case, the +conductor's occupation was one no woman should be in, "crowded and +pushed about as she is." It was puzzling to know why it was regarded as +right for a woman to pay five cents and be pushed, and unbecoming for +another woman to be paid eighteen dollars and ninety cents a week and +run the risk of a jolt when stepping outside her barrier. + +But the ideals of yesterday fail to make their appeal. It is not the +psychological moment to urge, on the ground of comfort, the woman's +right to protection. The contrast between the trenches and the street +car or factory is too striking. But it is, however, the exact moment to +plead for better care of workers, both women and men, because their +health and skill are as necessary in attaining the national aim as the +soldiers' prowess and well-being. It is the time to advocate the +protection of the worker from long hours, because the experience of +Europe has proved that a greater and better output is achieved when a +short day is strictly adhered to, when the weekly half-holiday is +enjoyed, and Sunday rest respected. The United States is behind other +great industrial countries in legal protection for the workers. War +requirements may force us to see in the health of the worker the +greatest of national assets. Meantime, whether approved or not, the +American woman is going over the top. Four hundred and more are busy on +aeroplanes at the Curtiss works. The manager of a munition shop where +to-day but fifty women are employed, is putting up a dormitory to +accommodate five hundred. An index of expectation! Five thousand are +employed by the Remington Arms Company at Bridgeport. At the +International Arms and Fuse Company at Bloomfield, New Jersey, two +thousand, eight hundred are employed. The day I visited the place, in +one of the largest shops women had only just been put on the work, but +it was expected that in less than a month they would be found handling +all of the twelve hundred machines under that one roof alone. + +The skill of the women staggers one. After a week or two they master the +operations on the "turret," gauging and routing machines. The best +worker on the "facing" machine is a woman. She is a piece worker, as +many of the women are, and is paid at the same rate as men. This woman +earned, the day I saw her, five dollars and forty cents. She tossed +about the fuse parts, and played with that machine, as I would with a +baby. Perhaps it was in somewhat the same spirit--she seemed to +love her toy. + +Most of the testers and inspectors are women. They measure the parts +step by step, and weigh the completed fuse, carrying off the palm for +reliability. The manager put it, "for inspection the women are more +conscientious than men. They don't measure or weigh just one piece, +shoving along a half-dozen untouched and let it go at that. They test +each." That did not surprise me, but I was not prepared to hear that the +women do not have so many accidents as men, or break the machines so +often. In explanation, the manager threw over an imaginary lever with +vigor sufficient to shake the factory, "Men put their whole strength on, +women are more gentle and patient." + +Nor are the railways neglecting to fill up gaps in their working force +with women. The Pennsylvania road, it is said, has recruited some seven +hundred of them. In the Erie Railroad women are not only engaged as +"work classifiers" in the locomotive clerical department, but hardy +Polish women are employed in the car repair shops. They move great +wheels as if possessed of the strength of Hercules. And in the +locomotive shops I found women working on drill-press machines with +ease and skill. Just as I came up to one operator, she lifted an engine +truck-box to the table and started drilling out the studs. She had been +at the work only a month, and explained her skill by the information +that she was Swedish, and had always worked with her husband in their +auto-repair shop. All the other drill-press hands and the "shapers," +too, were Americans whose husbands, old employees, were now "over +there." Not one seemed to have any sense of the unusual; even the little +blond check-clerk seated in her booth at the gates of the works with her +brass discs about her had in a few months' time changed a revolution +into an established custom. She and the discs seemed old friends. Women +are adaptable. + +[Illustration: _Copyright by Underwood and Underwood_ +The daily round in the Erie Railroad workshops.] + +But everywhere I gathered the impression that the men are a bit uneasy. +A foreman in one factory pointed out a man who "would not have voted for +suffrage" had he guessed that women were "to rush in and gobble +everything up." I tried to make him see that it wasn't the vote that +gave the voracious appetite, but necessity or desire to serve. And in +any case, women do not push men out, they push them up. In not a single +instance did I hear of a man being turned off to make a place for a +woman. He had left his job to go into the army, or was advanced to +heavier or more skilled work. + +As to how many women have supplanted men, or poured into the new war +industries, no figures are available. One guess has put it at a million. +But that is merely a guess. I have seen them by the tens, the hundreds, +the thousands. The number is large and rapidly increasing. We may know +that something important is happening when even the government takes +note. The United States Labor Department has recognized the new-comers +by establishing a Division of Women's Work with branches in every State. +It looks as if these bureaus of employment would not be idle, with a +showing of one thousand, five hundred applicants the first week the New +York office was opened. It is to be hoped that this government effort +will save the round pegs from getting into the square holes. + +But even the round peg in the round hole brings difficulties. When Adam +Smith asserted that of all sorts of luggage man was the most difficult +to move, he forgot woman! The instant women are carried into a new +industry, they bring with them puzzling problems. Where shall we put +their coats and picture hats, how shall we cover up their hair, what +shall we feed them with? They must have lockers and rest rooms, caps +and overalls, and above all, canteens. The munition workers, the +conductors, in fact, all women in active work, get prodigiously hungry. +They have made a regiment of dietitians think about calories. Here is +what one of the street railways in New York City offered them on a +given day:-- + +Tomato soup 10c. or with an order 5c. +Roast leg of veal 16c. +Beef 16c. +Lamb fricassee 16c. +Ham steak 16c. +Liver and onions 16c. +Sirloin steak 30c. +Small steak 20c. +Ham and eggs 20c. +Ham omelet 20c. +_Regular dinner_ + Soup, meat, + Vegetable, + Dessert, coffee 25c. +Rice pudding 5c. +Pie 5c. +Cake 5c. +Banana or orange 5c. + +The canteen is open every hour of the twenty-four, and the women +conductors at the end of each run usually take a bite, and then have a +substantial meal during the long break of an hour and a half in the +middle of the ten-hour day. + +Another problem brought to us by women in industry is, how can we house +them? The war industries have drawn large numbers to new centers. The +haphazard accommodation which men win put up with, won't satisfy women. +They demand more, and get more. To attract the best type of women the +munition plants are putting up dormitories to accommodate hundreds of +workers, and are making their plants more attractive, with rest rooms +and hospital accommodation. Take, for instance, the Briggs and Stratton +Company, which in order to draw high grade workers built its new factory +in one of the best sections of Milwaukee. The workrooms are as clean as +the proverbial Dutch woman's doorstep. From the top of the benches to +the ceiling the walls are glass to ensure daylight in every corner, and +by night the system of indirect lighting gives such perfectly diffused +light that not a heavy shadow falls anywhere. And the hospital room and +nurse--well, one would rejoice to have an accident daily! + +The factory may become the exemplar for the home. The professional +woman is going over the top, and with a good opinion of herself. "I can +do this work better than any man," was the announcement made by a young +woman from the Pacific Coast as she descended upon the city hall in an +eastern town, credentials in her hand, and asked for the position of +city chemist. There was not a microbe she did not know to its undoing, +or a deadly poison she could not bring from its hiding place. The town +had suffered from graft, and the mayor, thinking a woman might scare the +thieves as well as the bacteria, appointed the chemist who believed in +herself. And she is just one of many who have been taking up such work. + +Formerly two-thirds of the positions filled by the New York +Intercollegiate Bureau of Occupations were secretarial or teaching +positions; now three-fourths of its applicants have been placed as +physicists, chemists, office managers, sanitary experts, exhibit +secretaries, and the like. The temporary positions used to outnumber the +permanent placements; at present the reverse is true. Of the women +placed, four times as many as formerly get salaries ranging above +eighteen hundred dollars a year. + +The story told at the employment bureaus in connection with professional +societies and clubs such as the Chemists' Club is the same. Women are +being placed not merely as teachers of chemistry or as routine +laboratory workers in hospitals, but also as experimental and control +chemists in industrial plants. In the great rolling mills they are +testing steel, at the copper smelters they are found in the +laboratories. The government has thrown doors wide open to +college-trained women. They are physicists and chemists in the United +States Bureaus of Standards, Mines, and Soils, sanitary experts in +military camps, research chemists in animal nutrition and fertilizers at +state experiment stations. + +But the industrial barrier is the one most recently scaled. Women are +now found as analytical, research or control chemists in the canneries, +in dye and electrical works, in flour and paper mills, in insecticide +companies, and cement works. They test the steel that will carry us +safely on our journeys, they pass upon the chemical composition of the +flavor in our cake, as heads of departments in metal refining companies +they determine the kind of copper battery we shall use, and they have a +finger in our liquid glues, household oils and polishes. + +And the awakened spirit of social responsibility has opened new +callings. The college woman not only is beginning to fill welfare +positions inside the factory, but is acting as protective officer in +towns near military camps. Perhaps one of the newest and most +interesting positions is that of "employment secretary." The losing of +employees has become so serious and general that big industries have +engaged women who devote their time to looking up absentees and finding +out why each worker left. + +And so we see on all hands women breaking through the old accustomed +bounds. + +Not only as workers but as voters, the war has called women over the +top. Since that fateful August, 1914, four provinces of Canada and the +Dominion itself have raised the banner of votes for women. Nevada and +Montana declared for suffrage before the war was four months old, and +Denmark enfranchised its women before the year was out. And when America +went forth to fight for democracy abroad, Arkansas, Michigan, Vermont, +Nebraska, North Dakota, Rhode Island, began to lay the foundations of +freedom at home, and New York in no faltering voice proclaimed full +liberty for all its people. Lastly Great Britain has enfranchised its +women, and surely the Congress of the United States will not lag behind +the Mother of Parliaments! + +The world is facing changes as great as the breaking up of the feudal +system. Causes as fundamental, more wide-spread, and more cataclysmic +are at work than at the end of the Middle Ages. Among the changes none +is more marked than the intensified development in what one may call, +for lack of a better term, the woman movement. The advance in political +freedom has moved steadily forward during the past quarter of a century, +but in the last three years progress has been intense and striking. + +The peculiarity in attainment of political democracy for women has lain +in the fact that while for men economic freedom invariably preceded +political enfranchisement, in the case of women the conferring of the +vote in no single case was related to the stage which the enfranchised +group had attained in the matter of economic independence. Nowhere were +even those women who were entirely lacking in economic freedom, excluded +on that account from any extension of suffrage. Even in discussions of +the right of suffrage no reference has ever been made, in dealing with +women's claim, to the relation, universally recognized in the case of +men, of political enfranchisement to economic status. Serfdom gave way +to the wage system before democracy developed for men, and the colored +man was emancipated before he was enfranchised. For this reason the +coming of women as paid workers over the top may be regarded as +epoch-making. + +In any case, self-determination is certainly a strong element in +attaining any real political freedom. + +Complete service to their country in this crisis may lead women to that +economic freedom which will change a political possession into a +political power. But the requirement is readiness to do, and to do well, +the task which offers. Man-power must give itself unreservedly at the +front. Women must show not only eagerness but fitness to substitute for +man-power. It will hearten the nation, help to make the path clear, if +individual women declare that though the call to them has not yet come +for a definite service, the time of waiting will not be spent in +complaint, nor yet in foolish busy-ness, but in careful and +conscientious training for useful work. + +Each woman must prepare so that when the nation's need arises, she can +stand at salute and say, "Here is your servant, trained and ready." +Women are not driven over the top. Through self-discipline, they go over +it of their own accord. + + + + +VII + +EVE'S PAY ENVELOPE + + +No woman is a cross between an angel and a goose. She is a very human +creature. She has many of man's sins and some virtues of her own. + +Moving up from slavery through all the various forms of +serfdom--attachment to the soil, confinement to a given trade, exclusion +from citizenship, payment in kind, on to full economic freedom, men have +shown definite reactions at each step. Women respond to the +same stimuli. + +The free man is a better worker than slave or serf. So is the free +woman. All the old gibes at her ineptitudes have broken their points +against the actualities of her ability as a wage worker. The free man is +more alert to obligation, more conscientious in performance, than the +bond servant. So is the free woman. With pay envelope, or pension, Eve +is a better helpmate and mother than ever before. + +The free man carries a lighter heart than the villain. So does the free +woman. Men have always borne personal grief more easily than women; +observers remarked the fact. The reason is the same. An absorbing +occupation, ordered and regarded as important, which brings a return +allowing the recipient to patronize what he or she thinks wise, that +brings happiness, not boisterous, but dignified. It may be a holocaust +through which Eve gains that pay envelope, but the material possession +brings gratification nevertheless. It is a tiny straw showing the set of +the wind that leisure class British women, however large their unearned +bank account, show no reluctance to accept pay for their work, and full +responsibility in their new position of employee. + +Women are supposed to have liked to serve for mere love of service, for +love of child, love of husband. There is, of course, many a subtle +relation which can't be weighed and paid for; but toil, even for one's +very own hearthstone, can be valued in hard cash. The daughters of Eve, +no less than the sons of Adam, react happily to a recognition that +expresses itself in a fair wage. + +The verdict comes from all sides that women were never more content. Of +course they are content. The weight of suppression is being lifted. For +many their drudgery is for the first time paid for. Is not that +invigorating? The pay envelope is equal to that of men. Is not that a +new experience giving self-respect? Eve often finds her pay envelope +heavier than that of the man working at her side. Right there in her +hand, then, she holds proof that the old prejudice against her as an +inferior worker is ill-founded. + +Women are finding themselves. Even America's Eve discovers that pains +and aches are not "woman's lot." She is under no curse in the twentieth +century. With eighteen dollars a week for ringing up fares, and a +possible thirty-five for "facing" fuse-parts, nothing can persuade her +to be poor-spirited. She radiates the atmosphere, "I am needed!" Doors +fly open to her. She is welcome everywhere. No one seems to be able to +get too many of her kind. Politicians compete for her favor, employers +quarrel over her. It makes her breathe deep to have the Secretary of the +Navy summon her to the United States arsenals, pay her for her work, and +call her a patriot. + +[Illustration: In the well-lighted factory of the Briggs and Stratton +Company, Milwaukee, the girls are comfortably and becomingly garbed +for work.] + +And with the pay envelope women remain clearly human. Their purchases +often reflect past denials, rather than present needs or even tastes. +When set free one always buys what the days of dependence deprived one +of. One of Boston's leading merchants told me that Selfridge in London +was selling more jaunty ready-to-wear dresses than ever before. It was +part of John Bull's discipline in ante-bellum dependent days to keep his +women folk dowdy. The Lancashire lass with head shawl and pattens, the +wearer of the universal sailor hat, in these days of independence and +pounds, shillings and pence, are taking note of the shop windows. And +John is not turning his eyes away from his women folk in their day of +self-determination. + +But it is not to be concluded that it is all beer and skittles for Eve. +With a pay envelope and a vote come responsibilities. Public sympathy +has backed up laws cutting down long hours of work for women. The trade +unions, with a thought to possible competitors, have favored protecting +them from night work. Has Eve been a bit spoiled? Has she let herself +too easily be classed with children and allowed a line to be drawn +between men and women in industry? Is it a bit of woman's proverbial +logic to demand special protection, and at the same time insist upon +"equal pay for equal work"? + +The hopelessness of attaining the promise of the slogan is well +illustrated in the case of a gray haired woman I once met in a London +printing shop. In her early days she had been one of the women taken on +by the famous printing firm of McCorquodale. That was before protective +legislation applied to women. She became a highly skilled printer, +earning more than any man in the shop. When there was pressure of work +she was always one of the group of experts chosen to carry through the +rush order. That meant on occasion overtime or night work. Then she went +on to tell me how her skill was checked in her very prime. Regulations +as to women's labor were gradually fixed in the law. All the printers in +the shop, she said, favored the laws limiting her freedom but not +theirs. Soon her wages reflected the contrast. Her employer called her +to his office one day and explained, "I cannot afford to pay you as much +as the men any longer. You are not worth as much to me, not being able +to work Saturday afternoon, at night, or overtime." She was put on lower +grade work and her pay envelope grew slight. + +This woman was not discussing the value of shorter working hours, she +was pointing out that "equal pay" cannot rule for an entire group of +workers when restrictions apply to part of the group and not to the +whole body. We meet here, not a theory, but an incontrovertible fact. +Pay is not equal, and cannot be, where conditions are wholly unequal. +Protection for the woman worker means exactly what it would mean for the +alien man if by law he were forbidden to work Saturday afternoon, +overtime or at night, while the citizen worker was without restriction. +The alien would be cut off from advancement in every trade in which he +did not by overwhelming numbers dominate the situation, he would be kept +to lower grade processes, he would receive much lower pay than the +unprotected worker. + +What common sense would lead us to expect in the hypothetical case of an +alien man, has happened for the woman worker. Oddly enough she has not +herself asked for this protection, but it has been urged very largely by +women not of the industrial class. Women teachers, doctors, lawyers, +women of leisure are the advocates of special legislation for industrial +women. And yet in their own case they are entirely reasonable, and ask +no favors. The woman teacher, and quite truly, insists that she works as +hard and as long hours as the man in her grade of service, and on that +sound foundation she builds her just demand for equal pay. Women doctors +and lawyers have never asked for other than a square deal in their +professions. + +It would be well, perhaps, if industrial women were permitted to guide +their own ship. They have knowledge enough to reach a safe harbor. There +was a hint that they were about to assume the helm when the rank and +file of union workers voted down at the conference of the Women's Trade +Union League the resolution proposing a law to forbid women acting as +conductors. It was also suggestive when a woman rose and asked of the +speaker on dangerous trades, whether "men did not suffer from exposure +to fumes, acids and dust." + +Women have so long been urging that they are people, that they have +forgotten, perchance, that men are people also. Men respond to rest and +recreation as do human beings of the opposite sex. All workers need, and +both sexes should have, protection. But if only one sex in industrial +life can have bulwarks thrown up about it, men should be the favored +ones just now. They are few, they are precious, they should be wrapped +in cotton wool. + +The industrial woman should stand unqualifiedly for the exclusion of +children from gainful pursuits. Many years ago the British government +had Miss Collett, one of the Labor Correspondents of the Board of +Trade, make a special study of the influence of the employment of +married women on infant mortality. The object was to prove that there +was direct cause and effect. The investigator, after an exhaustive study +covering many industrial centers, brought back the report, "Not proven." +But the statistics showed one most interesting relation. In districts +where the prevailing custom permitted the employment of children as +early as the law allowed, infant mortality was high, and in districts +where few children were employed, infant mortality was low. No +explanation of this striking revelation was made in the report, but many +who commented on the tables, pointed out that the wide-spread employment +of the population in its early years sapped the vitality of the +community to such an extent that its offspring were weakened. In other +words, the employment of the immature child, more than the employment of +that child when grown and married, works harm to the race. + +The woman with a pay envelope must not, then, be willing to swell the +family budget by turning her children into the wage market. For if she +does, she creates a dangerous competitor for herself, and puts in +certain jeopardy the virility of her nation. But in this war time women +have secured more than new and larger pay envelopes, for each +belligerent has reckoned up the woman's worth as mother in coin of the +realm. It is enough to turn Eve's head--pay and pensions accorded her +all at once. + +Allowances to dependents are more, however, than financial expedients. +They are part of the psychological stage-setting of the Great War. The +fighting man must be more than well-fed, well-clothed, well-equipped, +more than assured of care if ill or wounded; he must have his mind +undisturbed by conditions at home. Governments now know that there must +be no just cause for complaint in the family at the rear, if the man at +the front is to be fully effective. In the interest of the fighting +line, governments dare not leave the home to the haphazard care +of charity. + +And so the great belligerents have adopted systems for an uninterrupted +flow of money aid to the hearthstone. The wife feels dependence on the +nation for which she and her man are making sacrifices, the soldier has +a sense of closer relationship with the country's cause for which he +fights. Content at home and sense of gratitude in the trenches build up +loyalty everywhere. The state allowance answers an economic want and a +psychological necessity. + +It is part of our national lack of technique that we were slow to make +provision for the dependents of enlisted men, and even then were not +whole hearted. It may have been our inherited distrust of the conscript +that led us to feel that only by his volunteering something will a +precious antidote be administered to the spirit of the drafted man. To +protect his individualism from taint, the United States soldier must +bear part of the financial burden. Europe, on the other hand, is working +on a basis of reciprocity. The nation exacts service from the man and +gives complete service to his dependents. In America the man is bound to +serve the community, but the community is not bound to serve him. And +yet in our case there is peculiar need of this even exchange of +obligations. The care of parents in the United States falls directly +upon their children, while some of our allies had, even before the war, +carefully devised laws regulating pensions to the aged. + +But first let us get the simple skeleton of the various allowance laws +in mind. The scale of the allowance in different countries adapts itself +to national standards and varying cost of living. The Canadian allowance +seems the most generous. At least one-half of the soldier's pay is +given directly to his dependents. The government gives an additional +twenty dollars and the donations of the Patriotic Fund bring up the +monthly allowance of a wife with three children to sixty dollars. The +allowance, as might be expected, is low in Italy. The soldier's wife +gets eight-tenths of a lira a day, each child four-tenths lira, and +either a father or mother alone eight-tenths lira, or if both are +living, one and three-tenths lire together. The British allowance is +much higher, the wife getting twelve shillings and sixpence a week. If +she has one child, the weekly allowance rises to nineteen and sixpence; +if two children, to twenty-four and sixpence; if three, to twenty-eight +shillings; and if there are four or more children, the mother receives +three shillings a week for each extra child. + +Between the extremes of Italy and England stands France, the wife +receiving one franc twenty-five centimes a day, each child under sixteen +years of age twenty-five centimes, and a dependent parent seventy-five +centimes. Japan grants no government allowance. A Japanese official, in +response to my inquiry, wrote, "Relations the first and friends the next +try to help the dependents as far as possible, but if they have neither +relatives nor friends who have sufficient means to help them, then the +association consisting of ladies or the municipal officials afford +subvention to them." + +Under the law passed by Congress in October, 1917, an American private +receiving thirty-three dollars a month when on service abroad must allot +fifteen dollars a month to his wife, and the government adds to this +twenty-five dollars, and if there is one child, an additional ten +dollars, with five dollars for each additional child. A man can secure +an allowance from the government of ten dollars a month to a dependent +parent, if he allots five dollars a month. Such are the bare bones of +the allowance schemes of the Allies on the western front. + +In the United States the general policy of exemption boards, as +suggested by the central authorities, is most disciplinary as regards +women. Their capacity for self-support is rigidly inquired into. Our men +are definitely urging women to a position of economic independence. The +aim is, while securing soldiers for the army, to relieve the government +of the expense of dependency on the part of women. There is no doubt +that our men at least are faced toward the future. No less indicative +is it of a new world that the allowance laws of all the western +belligerents recognize common-law marriages. In our own law, marriage is +"presumed if the man and woman have lived together in the openly +acknowledged relation of husband and wife during two years immediately +preceding the date of the declaration of war." And the illegitimate +child stands equal with the legitimate provided the father acknowledges +the child or has been "judicially ordered or decreed to contribute" to +the child's support. + +Men are feminists. Their hearts have softened even towards the wife's +relatives, for the word "parent" is not only broad enough to cover the +father, mother, grandparents or stepfather and mother of the man, but +"of the spouse" also. Thus passeth the curse of the mother-in-law. + +One need not be endowed with the spirit of prophecy to foretell that +"allowances" in war time will broaden out into motherhood pensions in +peace times. It would be an ordinary human reaction should the woman +enjoying a pension refuse to give up, on the day peace is declared, her +quickly acquired habit of holding the purse strings. That would be +accepting international calm at the expense of domestic differences. +The social value of encouraging the mother's natural feeling of +responsibility toward her child by putting into her hands a state +pension is being, let us note, widely tested, and may demonstrate the +wisdom and economy of devoting public funds to mothers rather than to +crêches and juvenile asylums. + +The allowance laws may prove the charter of woman's liberties; +her pay envelope may become her contract securing the right of +self-determination. + + + + +VIII + +POOLING BRAINS + + +"Employ them." This was the advice given to a large conference of women +met to discuss business opportunities for their sex. The advice was +vouchsafed by a young lawyer after the problem of opening wider fields +to women in the legal profession had been looked at from every angle, +only to end in the question, "What can we do to increase their +practice?" She spoke with animation, as if she had found the key to the +situation, "Employ them." Perhaps more self-accusation than +determination to mend their ways was roused by the short and +pointed remark. + +The advice has wider application. Taking thirty names of women at +random, I learned in response to an inquiry that only four had women +physicians, two had women lawyers, and only one, a woman dentist. +Twenty-five women of large real estate holdings had never even for the +most unimportant work secured the services of an architect of their own +sex. Further inquiry brought out the fact that of a long list of +women's clubs and associations which have built or altered property for +their purposes, only one had engaged a woman architect. + +Perhaps it is indicative of a lack of nothing more serious than a sense +of humor, that we women unite and, apparently without embarrassment, +demand that masculine presidents, governors, mayors and legislatures +shall appoint women to office. This unabashed faith in the good will of +men seems not misplaced, for not only do public men show some confidence +in the official capacity of women, but to my inquiry as to whom was due +their opportunities to "get on," business women invariably replied, +"To men." + +However, the loyalty of women to women is increasing, and their +solidarity on sound lines of service is a thing of steady growth. +Thoughtful women, for instance, do not wish a woman put in a position of +responsibility simply because she is a woman, but they are even more +opposed to having a candidate of peculiar fitness overlooked merely +because she is not a man. While the conscientious and poised women are +not willing to urge any and every woman for a given office, they do +tenaciously hold that there are positions which cry aloud for women and +for which the right women should he found. In conquering a fair field, +women will have to pool their brains even more effectively than they +have in the past. + +Our efforts at combination are a mere mushroom growth compared with the +generations of training our big brothers have had in pooling brains. War +and the chase gave them their first lessons in cooperation, nor has war +been a bad teacher for women. + +Just as the Crimean War and our Civil War put Florence Nightingale and +Clara Barton and the trained nurse on the map, this war is bringing the +medical woman to the fore. Women surgeons and doctors, unlike many other +groups, offer themselves fully trained for service. They know they have +something to give, and they know the soldiers' need. + +According to an official statement, the emergency call of the army for +men physicians and surgeons fell two thousand short of being answered. +The necessity of the soldier and the skill of the women will no doubt in +the end be brought effectively together; for although the government of +the United States, like Great Britain in the early days of the war, has +left to ever farseeing France the honor of extending hospitality to +American women doctors, their strong national organization, with a +membership of four thousand, will in time, no doubt, persuade Uncle Sam +to take his plucky women doctors over the top under the Stars and +Stripes! Organization crystallized about an unselfish desire and skilled +ability to serve is irresistible. + +The pooling of the brains of women that has been going on on a +country-wide scale for more than a half-century bears analyzing. These +associations have almost invariably centered about a service to be +rendered. Even the first petition for political enfranchisement urged it +as the "duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves the +elective franchise." Unselfishness draws numbers as a magnet draws steel +filings. The spirit of service lying at the heart of the great national +organizations made possible quick response to new duties immediately +upon our entrance into the war. The suffragists said, We wish to serve +and we are ready for service. The government used their wide-spread net +of local centers for purposes of registrations and war appeals. + +Naturally there were many efforts more foolish than effective in the +universal rush to help. America was not peculiar in this, nor for the +matter of that, were women. War!--it does make the blood course through +the veins. Every generous citizen cries aloud, "What can I do?" Perhaps +men are a little more voluble than women, their emotions not finding +such immediate and approved vent along clicking needles and tangled +skeins of wool. On the whole, the initiative and organizing ability of +women has stood out supremely. + +Of the two departments of the Red Cross which are still left in the +command of women, the Bureau of Nursing, with Miss Delano at its head, +mobilized immediately three thousand of the fourteen thousand nurses +enrolled. The first Red Cross Medical Unit with its full quota of +sixty-five nurses completely equipped stood on European soil before an +American soldier was there. Of the forty-nine units ready for service, +twelve, with from sixty-five to one hundred nurses each, are now in +France. Two of the five units organized for the navy, each with its +forty active nurses and twenty reserves, are established abroad, and two +hundred and thirty nurses are already in active naval service here. Miss +Delano holds constantly in reserve fifteen hundred nurses as emergency +detachments, a reservoir from which some eight hundred have been drawn +for cantonment hospitals. An inflow of nearly one thousand nurses each +month keeps the reservoir ready to meet the drain. + +The Chapter work-rooms sprang up at a call in the night. No one can help +admiring their well-ordered functioning. There may be criticism, +grumbling, but the work-room is moving irresistibly, like a well-oiled +machine. And women are the motive power from start to finish. The +Chapters, with their five million members joined in three thousand units +over the United States, are so many monuments to the ability of women +for detail. Once mobilized, the women have thus far been able to serve +two thousand war hospitals with surgical dressings, and to send abroad +thirteen million separate articles packed carefully, boxed, labelled and +accounted for on their books. + +Not only does this directing of manual work stand to the credit of the +Chapters, but they have given courses of lectures in home nursing and +dietetics to thirty-four thousand women, and in first aid; ten thousand +classes have been held and seventy-five thousand certificates issued to +the proficient. Certainly one object of the Red Cross, "to stimulate the +volunteer work of women," has been accomplished. + +It is difficult to understand why, with such examples of women's +efficiency before it, the Red Cross, founded by Clara Barton, places +merely two bureaus in the hands of a woman, has chosen no woman as an +officer, has put but one woman on its central and executive committee, +and not a single woman on its present controlling body, the War Council. +It may be that the protest against the centralization of all volunteer +effort in the Red Cross, in spite of President Wilson's appeal, was due +to the fact that women feared that their energies, running to other +lines than nursing and surgical dressings, would be entirely +sidetracked. + +The honor of the splendid war work of the Young Women's Christian +Association belongs to women. The War Work Council of the National Board +of Young Women's Christian Associations shows an example of how +immediately efficient an established organization can be in an +emergency. As one sees its great War Fund roll up, one exclaims, "What +money raisers women are!" The immediate demands upon the fund are for +Hostess Houses at cantonments where soldiers can meet their women +visitors, dormitories providing emergency housing for women employees at +certain army centers, the strengthening of club work among the younger +girls of the nation, profoundly affected by war conditions, and the +sending of experienced organizers to coöperate with the women leaders +of France and Russia and to install nurses' huts at the base hospitals +of France. It makes one's heart beat high to think of women spending +millions splendidly, they who have always been told to save pennies +frugally! Well, those hard days were times of training; women learned +not to waste. + +A very worthy pooling of brains, because springing up with no tradition +behind it, was the National League for Woman's Service. In six months it +drew to itself two hundred thousand members and built organizations in +thirty-nine States, established classes to train women for the new work +opening to them, opened recreation centers and canteens at which were +entertained on a single Sunday, at one center, eighteen hundred soldiers +and sailors. So excellent was its Bureau of Registration and Information +for women workers that the United States Department of Labor took over +not only the files and methods of the Woman's League for Service, but +the entire staff with Miss Obenauer at its head. If imitation is the +sincerest flattery, what shall we say of complete adoption of work and +workers, with an honorable "by your leave" and outspoken praise! And +nothing could show a finer spirit of service than this yielding up of +work initiated by a civil society and the willing passing of it into +government hands. + +Not only the Labor Department has established a special women's division +with a woman at its head, but the Ordnance Office of the War Department +has opened in its Industrial Service Section a woman's division, putting +Miss Mary Van Kleeck in charge. + +But still our government lags behind our Allies in mobilizing woman's +power of initiative and her organizing faculty. The Woman's Committee +of the Council of National Defense, appointed soon after the outbreak of +war, still has no administrative power. As one member of the Committee +says, "We are not allowed to do anything without the consent of the +Council of National Defense. There is no appropriation for the Woman's +Committee. We are furnished with headquarters, stationery, some printing +and two stenographers, but nothing more. It is essential that we raise +money to carry on the other expenses. The great trouble is that now, as +always, men want women to do the work while they do the overseeing." + +[Illustration: The women of the Motor Corps of the National League for +Woman's Service refuting the traditions that women have neither strength +nor endurance.] + +Perhaps holding the helm has become second nature to men simply because +they have held the helm so long, but I am inclined to think they have a +very definite desire to have women help steer the ship. Surely the +readiness with which they are sharing their political power with women, +would seem to indicate their wish for cooperation on a plan of +perfect equality. + +In any case, it is not necessary to hang on the skirts of government. +America has always shown evidence of greater gift in private enterprise +than state action. Perhaps women will demonstrate the national +characteristic. It was farsightedness and enterprise that led the +Intercollegiate Bureaus of Occupations, societies run for women by +women, to strike out in this crisis and open up new callings for their +clients, and still better, to persuade colleges and schools to modify +curricula to meet the changed demands. + +Women are often passed over because they are not prepared. + +The Bureaus have found the demand for women in industrial chemistry and +physics, for instance, to be greater than the supply because the +graduates of women's colleges have not been carried far enough in +mathematics, and in chemistry have been kept too much to theoretical +text-book work. For example, the head of a certain industry was willing +to give the position of chemist at his works to a woman. He needed some +one to suggest changes in process from time to time, and to watch waste. +He set down eight simple problems such as might arise any day in his +factory for the candidates to answer. Some of the women, all college +graduates, who had specialized in chemistry, could not answer a single +problem, and none showed that grip of the science which would enable +them to give other than rule of thumb solutions. He engaged a man. + +In answering the questionnaire which the New York Bureau of Occupations +sent to one hundred and twenty-five industrial plants, the manager in +almost every case replied, in regard to the possibility of employing +women in such positions as research or control chemists, that applicants +were "badly prepared." As hand workers, too, women are handicapped by +lack of knowledge of machinery. In this tool age, high school girls are +cut off from technical education, although they are destined to carry on +in large measure our skilled trades. I am told that in Germany many +factories had to close because only women were available as managers, +and they had not been fitted by business and technical schools for +the task. + +If women individually are looking for a soft place, if they are afraid, +as one manager expressed it, "to put on overalls and go into a vat," +even when their country is so in need of their service, it is futile for +them to ask collectively for equal opportunity and equal pay; if they +individually fail to prepare as for a life work, regarding themselves as +but temporarily in business or a profession, their collective demand +upon the world for a fair field and no favor will be as ineffective as +illogical. + +The doors stand wide open. It rests with women themselves as to whether +they shall enter in. + +To the steady appeals of the employment bureaus, backed by the stern +facts of life, the colleges are yielding. On examination I found that +curricula are already being modified. None but the sorriest pessimist +could doubt the nature of the final outcome, on realizing the pooling of +brains which is going on in such associations as the Intercollegiate +Bureau of Occupations and the League for Business Opportunities. They +work to the end of having young women not only soundly prepared for the +new openings, but sensitive to the demands of a world set towards +stern duty. + +Not only is there call for a pooling of brains to look after the timid +and unready, but there is need of combination to open the gates for the +prepared and brave. Few who cheered the Red Cross nurses as they made +their stirring march on Fifth Avenue, knew that those devoted women +would, on entering the Military Nurse Corps, find themselves the only +nurses among the Allies without a position of honor. The humiliation to +our nurses in placing them below the orderlies in the hospitals is not +only a blow to their esprit de corps, but a definite handicap to their +efficiency. A nurse who was at the head of the nursing staff in a state +hospital wrote from the front: "There is one thing the Nursing Committee +needs to work for, and work hard, too, and that is, to make for nurses +the rank of lieutenant. The Canadians have it, why not the Americans? +You will find that it will make a tremendous difference. You see, there +are no officers in our nursing personnel. One of our staff says we are +the hired extras! It is really a great mistake." Uncle Sam may merely be +waiting for a concentrated drive of public opinion against his tardy +representatives. + +[Illustration: Down the street they come, beginning their pilgrimage of +alleviation and succor on the battlefields of France.] + +And why should it be necessary to urge that while scores of young men +are dashing to death in endeavors to learn to fly, there are women +unmobilized who know how to soar aloft in safety? They have never, it is +true, been submitted to laboratory tests in twirlings and twistings, but +they reach the zenith. Two carried off the records in long distance +flights, but both have been refused admission to the Flying Corps. Will +it need a campaign to secure for our army this efficient service? Must +women pool their brains to have Ruth Law spread her protecting wings +over our boys in France? + +To any one who realizes the significance of the military situation as it +stands, and who is cognizant of the contrast between Germany's use of +her entire people in her national effort, and the slow mobilization of +woman-power among the Allies and entire lack of anything worthy the name +of mobilization of the labor-power of women in the United States, there +will come a determination to bury every jealousy between woman and +woman, all prejudice in men, to cut red tape in government, with the one +object of combining all resources. + +The full power of our men must be thrown into military effort. And, +then, if as a nation we have brains to pool, we will not stand niggling, +but will throw women doctors in to render their service, grant to the +nurse corps what it needs to ensure efficiency, throw open the technical +schools to girls as well as to boys, modify the college course to meet +the facts of life. Each woman unprepared is a national handicap, each +prejudice blocking the use of woman-power is treachery to our cause. + +As to the final outcome of united thought and group action among women, +no one can doubt. Contacts will rub off angles, capable service will +break down sex prejudice and overcome government opposition. But there +is not time to wait for the slow development of "final outcomes." + +Women must pool their brains against their own shortcomings, and in +favor of their own ability to back up their country now and here. + + + + +IX + +"BUSINESS AS USUAL" + + +It is a platitude to say that America is the most extravagant nation on +earth. The whole world tells us so, and we do not deny it, being, +indeed, a bit proud of the fact. Who is there among us who does not +respond with sympathetic understanding to the defense of the bride +reprimanded for extravagance by her mother-in-law (women have +mothers-in-law), "John and I find we can do without the necessities of +life. It's the luxuries we must have." One of the obstacles to complete +mobilization of our country is extravagance. And at the center of this +national failing sits the American woman enthroned. + +Europe found it could not allow old-time luxury trades to go on, if the +war was to be won. "Business as usual" is not in harmony with victory. + +I remember the first time I heard the slogan, and how it carried me and +everyone else away. The Zeppelins had visited London the night before. +A house in Red Lion Mews was crushed down into its cellar, a heap of +ruins. Every pane of glass was shattered in the hospitals surrounding +Queen's Square, and ploughed deep, making a great basin in the center of +the grass, lay the remnants of the bomb that had buried itself in the +heart of England. The shops along Theobald's Road were wrecked, but in +the heaps of broken glass in each show window were improvised signs such +as, "Don't sympathize with us, buy something." The sign which was +displayed oftenest read, "Business as usual." + +The first I noticed was in the window of a print shop, the owner a +woman. I talked to her through the frame of the shattered glass. She +looked very pale and her face was cut, but she and everyone else was +calm. And no one was doing business as usual more composedly than a wee +tot trudging along to school with a nasty scratch from a glass splinter +on her chubby cheek. + +"Business as usual" expressed the fine spirit, the courage, the +determination of a people. As the sporting motto of an indomitable race, +it was very splendid. But war is not a sport, it is a cold, hard +science, demanding every energy of the nation for its successful +pursuit. In proportion as our indulgence in luxury has been greater +than that of any European nation, our challenge to every business must +be the more insistent. There must be a straight answer to two questions: +Does this enterprise render direct war service, or, if not, is it +essential to the well-being of our citizens? + +But the discipline will not come from the gods. Nor will our government +readily turn taskmaster. The effort must come largely as +self-discipline, growing into group determination to win the war and the +conviction that it is impossible to achieve victory and conserve the +virility of our people, if any considerable part of the community +devotes its time, energy and money to creating useless things. A nation +can make good in this cataclysm only if it centers its whole power on +the two objects in view: military victory, and husbanding of life and +resources at home. + +Let me hasten to add that the act of creating a thing does not include +only the processes of industry. The act of buying is creative. The riot +of luxury trades in the United States will not end so long as the +American woman remains a steady buyer of luxuries. The mobilization of +women as workers is no more essential to the triumph of our cause, than +the mobilization of women for thrift. The beginning and end of saving +in America rests almost entirely in the hands of women. They are the +buyers in the working class and in the professional class. Among the +wealthy they set the standard of living. + +Practically every appeal for thrift has been addressed to the rich. I am +not referring to the supply of channels into which to pour savings, but +to appeals to make the economies which will furnish the means to buy +stamps or bonds. Those appeals are addressed almost wholly to the +well-to-do, as for example, suggestions as to reducing courses at dinner +or cutting out "that fourth meal." + +Self-denial, no doubt, is supposed to be good for the millionaire soul, +but to such it is chiefly recommended, I think, as an example sure of +imitation. What the rich do, other women will follow, is the idea. But +the steady insistence that we fight in this war for democracy has put +into the minds of the people very definite demands for independence and +for freedom. + +In such a democratic world the newly adopted habits of the wealthy will +not prove widely convincing. Economy needs other than an +aristocratic stimulus. + +[Illustration: How can business be "as usual" when in Paris there are +about 1800 of these small workshops where a woman dips Bengal Fire and +grenades into a bath of paraffin!] + +I do not mean to under-estimate the value of economy in the well-to-do +class. There is no doubt that shop windows on Fifth Avenue are a severe +commentary upon our present intelligence and earnestness of purpose. No +one, I think, would deny that it would be a service if the woman of +fashion ceased to drape fur here, there and everywhere on her gowns +except where she might really need the thick pelt to keep her warm, and +instead saved the price of the garment which serves no purpose but that +of display, and gave the money in Liberty Bonds to buy a fur-lined coat +for some soldier, or food for a starving baby abroad. And overburdened +as the railways are with freight and ordinary passenger traffic, I am +sure the general public will not fail to appreciate to the full a +self-denial which leads patrons of private cars, Pullman and dining +coaches to abandon their self-indulgence. + +Undoubtedly economy among the rich is of value. I presume few would +gainsay that it would have been well for America if the use of private +automobiles had long since ceased, and the labor and plants used in +their making turned to manufacturing much-needed trucks and ambulances. +But while not inclined to belittle the work of any possible saving and +self-sacrifice on the part of those of wealth, it seems to me that the +most fruitful field for war economy lies among simple people. Thrift +waits for democratization. + +We of limited means hug some of the most extravagant of habits. The +average working-class family enjoys none of the fruits of coöperation We +keep each to our isolated family group, while the richer a person is the +more does she gather under her roof representatives of other families. +Her cook may come from the Berri family, the waitress may be an +Andersen, the nurse an O'Hara. + +The poor might well practice the economy of fellowship. + +The better-off live in apartment houses where the economy of central +heating is practised, while the majority of the poor occupy tenements +where the extravagance of the individual stove is indulged in. The +saving of coal is urged, but the authorities do not seek to secure for +the poor the comfort of the true method of fuel saving. + +The richer a family is, the more it saves by the use of skilled service. +The poor, clinging to their prejudices and refusing to trust one +another, do not profit by coöperative buying, or by central kitchens run +by experts. Money is wasted by amateurish selection of food and +clothing, and nutritive values are squandered by poor cooking. + +Unfortunately Uncle Sam does not suggest how many War Saving Stamps +could be bought as a result of economy along these lines. + +The woman with the pay envelope may democratize thrift. She knows how +hard it is to earn money, and has learned to make her wages reach a long +way. Then, too, she has it brought home to her each pay day that health +is capital. She finds that it is economy to keep well, for lost time +brings a light pay envelope. Every woman who keeps herself in condition +is making a war saving. There has been no propaganda as yet appealing to +women to value dress according to durability and comfort rather than +according to its prettiness, to bow to no fashion which means the +lessening of power. To corset herself as fashion dictates, to prop +herself on high heels, means to a woman just so much lost efficiency, +and even the most thoughtless, if appealed to for national saving, might +learn to turn by preference in dress, in habits, in recreation, to the +simple things. + +The Japanese, I am told, make a ceremony of going out from the city to +enjoy the beauties of a moonlight night. We go to a stuffy theatre and +applaud a night "set." Nature gives her children the one, and the +producer charges his patrons for the other. A propaganda of democratic +war economy would teach us to delight in the beauties of nature. + +In making the change from business as usual to economy, Europe suffered +hardship, because although the retrenchments suggested were fairly +democratic it had not created channels into which savings might be +thrown with certainty of their flowing on to safe expenditures. Europe +was not ready with its great thrift schemes, nor had the adjustments +been made which would enable a shop to turn out a needed uniform, let us +say, in place of a useless dress. + +Definite use of savings has been provided for in the United States. The +government needs goods of every kind to make our military effort +successful. Camps must be built for training the soldiers, uniforms, +guns and ammunition supplied. Transportation on land and sea is called +for. The government needs money to carry on the industries essential to +winning the war. + +If a plucky girl who works in a button factory refuses to buy an +ornament which she at first thought of getting to decorate her belt, and +puts that twenty-five cents into a War Saving Stamp, all in the spirit +of backing up her man at the front, she will not find herself thrown +out of employment; instead, while demands for unnecessary ornamental +fastenings will gradually cease, she will be kept busy on +government orders. + +Profiting by the errors of those nations who had to blaze out new paths, +the United States knit into law, a few months after the declaration of +war, not only the quick drafting of its man-power for military service, +but methods of absorbing the people's savings. If we neither waste nor +hoard, we will not suffer as did Europe from wide-spread unemployment. +There is more work to be done than our available labor-power can meet. + +There is nothing to fear from the curtailment of luxury; our danger lies +in lack of a sound definition of extravagance. Uncle Sam could get more +by appeals to simple folk than by homilies preached to the rich. The +Great War is a conflict between the ideals of the peoples. 'Tis a +people's war, and with women as half the people. The savings made to +support the war must needs, then, be made by the people, for the people. + +There has been no compelling propaganda to that end. The suggestion of +mere "cutting down" may be a valuable goal to set for the well-to-do, +but it is not a mark to be hit by those already down to bed rock. The +only saving possible to those living on narrow margins is by +coöperation, civil or state. + +It is a mad extravagance, for instance, to kill with autos children at +play in the streets. A saving of life could easily be achieved through +group action, by securing children's attendants, by opening play-grounds +on the roofs of churches and public buildings, by shutting off streets +dedicated to the sacred right of children to play. This would be a war +saving touching the heart and the enthusiasm of the people. + +Central municipal heating is not a wild dream, but a recognized economy +in many places. Municipal kitchens are not vague surmisings, but facts +achieved in the towns of Europe. They are forms of war thrift. In +America no such converting examples of economy are as yet given, and not +an appeal has been made to women to save through solidarity. + +Uncle Sam has been commendably quick and wise in offering a reservoir to +hold the tiny savings, but slow in starting a democratic propaganda +suggesting ways of saving the pennies. + +If business as usual is a poor motto, so is life as usual, habits as +usual. + + + + +X + +"AS MOTHER USED TO DO" + + +Man's admiration for things as mother used to do them is as great an +obstacle as business as usual in the path of winning the war and +husbanding the race. The glamour surrounding the economic feats of +mother in the past hides the shortcomings of today. + +I once saw one of her old fortresses, a manor home where in bygone days +she had reigned supreme. In the court yard was the smoke house where she +cured meat and fish. In the cellar were the caldrons and vats where long +ago she tried tallow and brewed beer. And there were all the utensils +for dealing with flax. In the garret I saw the spindles for spinning +cotton and wool, and the hand looms for weaving the homespun. In her +day, mother was a great creator of wealth. + +But then an economic earthquake came. Foundations were shaken, the roof +was torn off her domestic workshop. Steam and machinery, like cyclones, +carried away her industries, and nothing was left to her but odds and +ends of occupations. + +Toiling in the family circle from the days of the cave dwellers, mother +had become so intimately associated in the tribal mind with the +hearthstone that the home was called her sphere. Around this segregation +accumulated accretions of opinion, layer on layer emanating from the +mind of her mate. Let us call the accretions the Adamistic Theory. Its +authors happened to be the government and could use the public treasury +in furtherance of publicity for their ideas set forth in hieroglyphics +cut in stone, or written in plain English and printed on the front page +of an American daily. + +One of the few occupations left to mother after the disruption of her +sphere at the end of the eighteenth century was the preparation of food. +In the minds of men, food, from its seed sowing up to its mastication, +has always been associated with woman. Mention food and the average man +thinks of mother. That is the Adam in him. And so, quite naturally, one +must first consider this relation of women to food in the +Adamistic Theory. + +[Illustration: Countess de Berkaim and her canteen in the Gare de St. +Lazarre, Paris.] + +When the world under war conditions asked to be fed, Adam, running true +to his theory, pointed to mother as the source of supply, and declared +with an emphasis that came of implicit faith, that the universe need +want for nothing, if each woman would eliminate waste in her kitchen and +become a voluntary and obedient reflector of the decisions of state and +national food authorities. This solution presupposed a highly developed +sense of community devotion in women running hand in hand with entire +lack of gift for community action. Woman, it was expected, would display +more than her proverbial lack of logic by embracing with enthusiasm +state direction and at the same time remain an exemplar of +individualistic performance. The Adamistic scheme seems still further to +demand for its smooth working that the feminine group show +self-abnegation and agree that it is not itself suited to reason out +general plans. + +It is within the range of possibility, however, that no comprehensive +scheme of food conservation or effective saving in any line can be +imposed on women without consulting them. The negro who agreed "dat de +colored folk should keep in dar places," touched a fundamental note in +human nature, over-running sex as well as racial boundaries, when he +added, "and de colored folk must do de placin'." It might seem to run +counter to this bit of wisdom for women to be told that the welfare of +the world depends upon them, and then for no woman to be given +administrative power to mobilize the group. + +But the contest between man's devotion to the habits of his ancestry in +the female line, and the ideas of his very living women folk, is as +trying to him as it is interesting to the outside observer. The +conflicting forces illustrate a universal fact. It is always true that +the ruling class, when a discipline and a sacrifice are recognized as +necessary, endeavors to make it appear that the new obligation should be +shouldered by the less powerful. For instance, to take an illustration +quite outside the domestic circle, when America first became convinced +that military preparation was incumbent upon us, the ruling class would +scarcely discuss conscription, much less adopt universal service. That +is, it vetoed self-discipline. In many States, laws were passed putting +off upon children in the schools the training which the voting adults +knew the nation needed. + +In the same way, when food falls short and the victualing of the world +becomes a pressing duty, the governing class adopts a thesis that a +politically less-favored group can, by saving in small and painful ways, +accumulate the extra food necessary to keep the world from starving. +The ruling class seeks cover in primitive ideas, accuses Eve of +introducing sin into the world, and calls upon her to mend her +wasteful ways. + +Men, of course, know intellectually that much food is a factory product +in these days, but emotionally they have a picture of mother, still +supplying the family in a complete, secret, and silent manner. + +This Adamistic emotion takes command at the crisis, for when human +beings are suddenly faced with a new and agitating situation, primitive +ideas seize them. Mother, it is true, did create the goods for immediate +consumption, and so the sons of Adam, in a spirit of admiration, doffing +their helmets, so to speak, to the primitive woman, turn in this time of +stress and call confidently upon Eve's daughters to create and save. The +confidence is touching, but perhaps the feminine reaction will not be, +and perchance ought not to be just such as Adam expects. + +Women have passed in aspiration, and to some extent in action, out of +the ultra-individualistic stage of civilization. + +The food propaganda reflects the hiatus in Adam's thought. I have looked +over hundreds of publications issued by the agricultural departments +and colleges of the various States. They tell housewives what to "put +into the garbage pail," what to "keep out of the garbage pail," what to +substitute for wheat, how to make soap, but, with a single exception, +not a word issued suggests to women any saving through group action. + +This exception, which stood out as a beacon light in an ocean of +literature worthy of the Stone Age, was a small pamphlet issued by the +Michigan Agricultural College on luncheons in rural schools. Sound +doctrine was preached on the need of the children for substantial and +warm noon meals, and the comparative ease and economy with which such +luncheons could be provided at the school house. Children can of course +be better and more cheaply fed as a group than as isolated units +supplied with a cold home-prepared lunch box. And yet with the whole +machinery of the state in his hands, Adam's commissions, backed by the +people's money, goad mother on to isolated endeavor. She plants and +weeds and harvests. She dries and cans, preserves and pickles. Then she +calculates and perchance finds that her finished product is not always +of the best and has often cost more than if purchased in the +open market. + +It may be the truest devotion to our Allies to challenge the +individualistic rôle recommended by Adam to mother, for it will hinder, +not help, the feeding of the world to put women back under eighteenth +century conditions. Food is short and expensive because labor is short. +And even when the harvest is ripe, the saving of food cannot be set as a +separate and commendable goal, and the choice as to where labor shall be +expended as negligible. It is a prejudiced devotion to mother and her +ways which leads Adam in his food pamphlets to advise that a woman shall +sit in her chimney corner and spend time peeling a peach "very thin," +when hundreds of bushels of peaches rot in the orchards for lack of +hands to pick them. + +Just how wide Adam's Eve has opened the gate of Eden and looked out into +the big world is not entirely clear, but probably wide enough to glimpse +the fact that all the advice Adam has recently given to her runs counter +to man's method of achievement. Men have preached to one another for a +hundred years and more and practiced so successfully the concentration +in industry of unlimited machinery with a few hands, that even mother +knows some of the truths in regard to the creation of wealth in the +business world, and she is probably not incapable of drawing a +conclusion from her own experience in the transfer of work from the +home to the factory. + +If they are city dwellers, women have seen bread and preserves +transferred; if farm dwellers, they have seen the curing of meat and +fish transferred, the making of butter and cheese. They know that +because of this transfer the home is cleaner and quieter, more people +better fed and clothed, and the hours of the factory worker made shorter +than those "mother used to work." With half an eye women cannot fail to +note that the labor which used to be occupied in the home in +interminable hours of spinning, baking and preserving, has come to +occupy itself for regulated periods in the school, in business, in +factory or cannery. And lo, Eve finds herself with a pay envelope able +to help support the quieter, cleaner home! + +All this is a commonplace to the business man, who knows that the +evolution has gone so far that ten percent of the married women of +America are in gainful pursuits, and that capital ventured on apartment +hotels brings a tempting return. + +But the Adamistic theory is based on the dream that women are +contentedly and efficiently conducting in their flats many occupations, +and longing to receive back into the life around the gas-log all those +industries which in years gone by were drawn from the fireside and +established as money making projects in mill or work-shop. And so Adam +addresses an exhortation to his Eve: "Don't buy bread, bake it; don't +buy flour, grind your own; don't buy soap, make it; don't buy canned, +preserved, or dried food, carry on the processes yourself; don't buy +fruits and vegetables, raise them." + +Not a doubt seems to exist in Adam's mind as to the efficiency of +functioning woman-power in this way. According to the Adamistic theory, +work as mother used to do it is unqualifiedly perfect. This flattering +faith is naturally balm to women's hearts, and yet there are skeptics +among them. When quite by themselves women speculate as to how much of +the fruit and vegetables now put up in the home will "work." + +They smile when the hope is expressed that the quality will rise above +the old-time domestic standard. The home of the past was a beehive in +which women drudged, and little children were weary toilers, and the +result was not of a high grade. Statistics have shown that seventy-five +percent of the home-made bread of America was a poor product. I lived as +a child in the days of home-made bread. Once in so often the batch of +bread "went sour," and there seemed to be an unfailing supply of stale +bread which "must be eaten first." Those who cry out against a city of +bakers' bread, have never lived in a country of the home-made loaf. It +is the Adamistic philosophy, so complimentary to Eve, that leads us to +expect that all housewives can turn out a product as good as that of an +expert who has specialized to the one end of making bread, and who is +supplied with expensive equipment beyond the reach of the individual to +possess. But there are rebellious consumers who point out that the baker +is under the law, while the housewife is a law unto herself. Against the +baker's shortcomings such brave doubters assure us we have redress, we +can refuse to patronize him; against the housewife there is no appeal, +her family must swallow her product to the detriment of digestion. + +It may be the brutal truth, taking bread as the index, that only a +quarter of the processes carried on in the home turn out satisfactorily, +while of the other three-quarters, a just verdict may show that mother +gets a "little too much lye" in the soap, cooks the preserves a "little +too hard," "candies the fruit just a little bit," and grinds the flour +in the mill "not quite fine enough." + +But perhaps even more than the quality of the product does the question +of the economical disposition of labor-power agitate some women. They +are asking, since labor is very scarce, whether the extreme +individualistic direction of their labor-power is permissible. The vast +majority of American homes are without servants. In those homes are the +women working such short hours that they can, without dropping important +obligations, take over preserving, canning, dehydrating, the making of +bread, soap, and butter substitute? Has the tenement-house dweller +accommodation suitable for introducing these industrial processes into +her home? Would the woman in the small ménage in the country be wise in +cutting down time given, for instance, to the care of her baby and to +reading to the older children, and using the precious moments +laboriously to grind wheat to flour? My observation convinces me that +conscientious housewives in servantless or one-servant households, with +work adjusted to a given end, with relative values already determined +upon, are not prepared by acceptance of the Adamistic theory to return +to primitive occupations. + +But even if business and home life could respond to the change without +strain, even if both could easily turn back on the road they have come +during the last hundred years, commerce yielding up and the home +re-adopting certain occupations, we should carefully weigh the economic +value of a reversion to primitive methods. + +The Adamistic attitude is influenced, perhaps unconsciously but no less +certainly, by the fact that the housewife is an unpaid worker. If an +unpaid person volunteers to do a thing, it is readily assumed that the +particular effort is worth while. "We get the labor for nothing" puts to +rout all thought of valuation. No doubt Adam will have to give over +thinking in this loose way. Labor-power, whether it is paid for or not, +must be used wisely or we shall not be able to maintain the structure of +our civilization. + +Then, too, the Adamistic theory weighs and values the housewife's time +as little as it questions the quality of the home product. Any careful +reader of the various "Hints to Housewives" which have appeared, will +note that the "simplifying of meals" recommended would require nearly +double the time to prepare. The simplification takes into consideration +only the question of food substitutions, price and waste. Mother is +supposed to be wholly or largely unemployed and longing for unpaid +toil. Should any housewife conscientiously follow the advice given her +by state and municipal authorities she would be the drudge at the center +of a home quite medieval in development. + +Let us take a concrete example:--In a recently published and widely +applauded cookbook put out by a whole committee of Adamistic +philosophers, it is stated that the object of the book is to give +practical hints as to the various ways in which "economies can be +effected and waste saved;" and yet no saving of the woman's time, nerves +and muscles is referred to from cover to cover. The housewife is told, +for instance, to "insist upon getting the meat trimmings." The fat "can +be rendered." And then follows the process in soap-making. Mother is to +place the scraps of fat on the back of the stove. If she "watches it +carefully" and does not allow it to get hot enough to smoke there will +be no odor. No doubt if she removes her watchful eye and turns to bathe +her baby, her tenement will reek with smoking fat. She is to pursue this +trying of fat and nerves day by day until she has six pounds of grease. +Next, she is to "stir it well," cool it, melt it again; she is then to +pour in the lye, "slowly stirring all the time." Add ammonia. Then +"stir the mixture constantly for twenty minutes or half an hour." + +In contrast to all this primeval elaboration is the simple, common-sense +rule: Do not buy the trimmings, make the butcher trim meat before +weighing, insist that soap-making shall not be brought back to defile +the home, but remain where it belongs, a trade in which the workers can +be protected by law, and its malodorousness brought under regulation. + +In the same spirit the Adamistic suggestion to Eve to save coal by a +"heatless day" is met by the cold challenge of the riotous extravagance +of cooking in twelve separate tenements, twelve separate potatoes, on +twelve separate fires. + +The Adamistic theory, through its emphasis on the relation of food to +Eve, and the almost religious necessity of its manipulation at the altar +of the home cook-stove, has drawn thought away from the nutritive side +of what we eat. While the child in the streets is tossing about such +words as calories and carbohydrates with a glibness that comes of much +hearing, physiology and food values are destined to remain as far away +as ever from the average family breakfast table. Segregating a sex in +the home, it is true, centralizes it in a given place, but it does not +necessarily train the individual to function efficiently. Mother, as she +"used to do," cooks by rule of thumb; in fact, how could she do +otherwise, since she must keep one eye on her approving Adam while the +other eye glances at the oven. The Adamistic theory requires +individualistic action, and disapproves specialization in Eve. + +The theory also demands economic dependence in the home builder. +Mother's labor is not her own, she lives under the truck system, so to +speak. She is paid in kind for her work. Influenced by the Adamistic +theory, the human animal is the only species in which sex and economic +relations are closely linked, the only one in which the female depends +upon the male for sustenance. Mother must give personal service to those +about her, and in return the law ensures her keep according to the +station of her husband, that is, not according to her ability or +usefulness, but according to the man's earning capacity. + +The close association of mother with home in the philosophy of her mate, +has circumscribed her most natural and modest attempts at relaxation. +Mother's holiday is a thing to draw tears from those who contemplate it. +The summer outing means carrying the family from one spot to another, +and making the best of new surroundings for the old group. The "day off" +means a concentration of the usual toil into a few hours, followed by a +hazy passing show that she is too weary to enjoy. The kindly farmer +takes his wife this year to the county fair. She's up at four to "get +on" with the work. She serves breakfast, gives the children an extra +polish in honor of the day, puts on the clean frocks and suits with an +admonition "not to get all mussed up" before the start. The farmer +cheerily counsels haste in order that "we may have a good long day of +it." He does not say what "it" is, but the wife knows. At last the house +is ready to be left, and the wife and her brood are ready to settle down +in the farm wagon. + +The fair grounds are reached. Adam has prepared the setting. It has no +relation to mother's needs. It was a most thrilling innovation when in +the summer of 1914 the Women's Political Union first set up big tents at +county fairs, fitted with comfortable chairs for mother, and cots and +toys, nurses and companions for the children. The farmer's wife for the +first time was relieved of care, and could go off to see the sights with +her mind at rest, if she desired anything more active than rocking +lazily with the delicious sensation of having nothing to do. + +Women must not blame Adam for lack of thoughtfulness. He cannot put +himself in mother's place. She must do her own thinking or let women who +are capable of thought do it for her. + +Men are relieved when mother is independent and happy. The farmer +approved the crèche tent at the county fairs. It convinced him that +women have ideas to contribute to the well-being of the community. The +venture proved the greatest of vote getters for the suffrage referendum. + +In fact, men themselves are the chief opponents of the Adamistic theory +to-day. The majority want women to organize the home and it is only a +small minority who place obstacles in the way of the wider functioning +of women. It is Eve herself who likes to exaggerate the necessity of her +personal service. I have seen many a primitive housewife grow hot at the +suggestion that her methods need modifying. It seemed like severing the +silken cords by which she held her mate, to challenge her pumpkin pie. + +But women are slowly overcoming Eve. Take the item of the care of +children in city parks. The old way is for fifty women to look after +fifty separate children, and thus waste the time of some thirty of them +in keeping fifty miserable children in segregation. The new way, now +successfully initiated, is to form play groups of happy children under +the leadership of capable young women trained for such work. + +Salvaging New York City's food waste was a very splendid bit of +coöperative action on the part of women. Mrs. William H. Lough of the +Women's University Club found on investigation that thousands of tons of +good food are lost by a condemnation, necessarily rough and ready, by +the Board of Health. She secured permission to have the sound and +unsound fruits and vegetables separated and with a large committee of +women saved the food for consumption by the community by dehydrating and +other preserving processes. + +This was not as mother used to do. + +Mother's ways are being investigated and discarded the whole world +round. At last accounts half the population of Hamburg was being fed +through municipal kitchens and in Great Britain an order has been issued +by Lord Rhondda, the Food Controller, authorizing local authorities to +open kitchens as food distributing centers. The central government is to +bear twenty-five percent of the cost of equipment and lend another +twenty-five percent to start the enterprise. + +Mother's cook stove cannot bear the strain of war economies. + +Dropping their old segregation, women are going forth in fellowship with +men to meet in new ways the pressing problems of a new world. + + + + +XI + +A LAND ARMY + + +Great Britain, France and Germany have mobilized a land army of women; +will the United States do less? Not if the farmer can be brought to have +as much faith in American women as the women have in themselves. And why +should they not have faith; the farm has already tested them out, and +they have not been found wanting. In face of this fine accomplishment +the minds of some men still entertain doubt, or worse, obliviousness, to +the possible contribution of women to land service. + +The farmer knows his need and has made clear statement of the national +dilemma in the form of a memorial to the President of the United States. +In part, it is as follows: + +"If food is to win the war, as we are assured on every side, the farmers +of America must produce more food in 1918 than they did in 1917. Under +existing conditions we cannot equal the production of 1917, much less +surpass it, and this for reasons over which the farmers have no control. + +"The chief causes which will inevitably bring about a smaller crop next +year, unless promptly removed by national action, are six in number, of +which the first is the shortage of farm labor. + +"Since the war began in 1914 and before the first draft was made there +is reason to believe that more farm workers had left farms than there +are men in our army and navy together. Those men were drawn away by the +high wages paid in munition plants and other war industries, and their +places remain unfilled. In spite of the new classification, future +drafts will still further reduce the farm labor supply." + +With a million and a half men drawn out of the country and ten billion +dollars to be expended on war material, making every ammunition factory +a labor magnet, it seems like the smooth deceptions of prestidigitation +to answer the cry of the farmer with suggestion that men rejected by the +draft or high school boys be paroled to meet the exigency. The farm +can't be run with decrepit men or larking boys, nor the war won with +less than its full quota of soldiers. Legislators, government officials +and farm associations by sudden shifting of labor battalions cannot +camouflage the fact that the front line trenches of the fighting army +and labor force are undermanned. + +Women can and will be the substitutes if the experiments already made +are signs of the times. + +Groups of women from colleges and seasonal trades have ploughed and +harrowed, sowed and planted, weeded and cultivated, mowed and harvested, +milked and churned, at Vassar, Bryn Mawr and Mount Holyoke, at Newburg +and Milton, at Bedford Hills and Mahwah. It has been demonstrated that +our girls from college and city trade can do farm work, and do it with a +will. And still better, at the end of the season their health wins high +approval from the doctors and their work golden opinions from +the farmers. + +Twelve crusaders were chosen from the thirty-three students who +volunteered for dangerous service during a summer vacation on the Vassar +College farm. The twelve ventured out on a new enterprise that meant +aching muscles, sunburn and blisters, but not one of the twelve "ever +lost a day" in their eight hours at hard labor, beginning at four-thirty +each morning for eight weeks during one of our hottest summers. They +ploughed with horses, they ploughed with tractors, they sowed the seed, +they thinned and weeded the plants, they reaped, they raked, they +pitched the hay, they did fencing and milking. The Vassar farm had +bumper crops on its seven hundred and forty acres, and its +superintendent, Mr. Louis P. Gillespie, said, "A very great amount of +the work necessary for the large production was done by our students. +They hoed and cultivated sixteen acres of field corn, ten acres of +ensilage corn, five acres of beans, five acres of potatoes; carried +sheaves of rye and wheat to the shocks and shocked them; and two of the +students milked seven cows at each milking time. In the garden they laid +out a strawberry bed of two thousand plants, helped to plant corn and +beans, picked beans and other vegetables. They took great interest in +the work and did the work just as well as the average man and made good +far beyond the most sanguine expectations." + +At first the students were paid twenty-five cents an hour, the same rate +as the male farm hands. The men objected, saying that the young women +were beginners, but by the end of the summer the critics realized that +"brains tell" and said the girls were worth the higher wage, though they +had only been getting, in order to appease the masculine prejudice, +seventeen and a half cents an hour. There is no pleasing some people! If +women are paid less, they are unfair competitors, if they are paid +equally they are being petted--in short, fair competitors. + +Mt. Holyoke and Bryn Mawr have made experiments, and, like Vassar, +demonstrated not only that women can, and that satisfactorily, work on +the land, but that they will, and that cheerfully. The groups were happy +and they comprehended that they were doing transcendently important +work, were rendering a patriotic service by filling up the places left +vacant by the drafted men. + +The Women's Agricultural Camp, known popularly as the "Bedford Unit," +proved an experiment rich in practical suggestion. Barnard students, +graduates of the Manhattan Trade School, and girls from seasonal trades +formed the backbone of the group. They were housed in an old farmhouse, +chaperoned by one of the Barnard professors, fed by student dietitians +from the Household Arts Department of Teachers College, transported from +farm to farm by seven chauffeurs, and coached in the arts of Ceres by an +agricultural expert. The "day laborers" as well as the experts were +all women. + +[Illustration: An agricultural unit, in the uniform approved by the Woman's +Land Army of America.] + +In founding the camp Mrs. Charles W. Short, Jr., had three definite +ideas in mind. First, she was convinced that young women could without +ill-effect on their health, and should as a patriotic service, do all +sorts of agricultural work. Second, that in the present crisis the +opening up of new land with women as farm managers is not called for, +but rather the supply of the labor-power on farms already under +cultivation is the need. Third, that the women laborers must, in groups, +have comfortable living conditions without being a burden on the +farmer's wife, must have adequate pay, and must have regulated hours +of work. + +With these sound ideas as its foundation the camp opened at Mt. Kisco, +backed by the Committee on Agriculture of the Mayor's Committee of Women +on National Defense of New York City, under the chairmanship of Virginia +Gildersleeve, Dean of Barnard College. + +At its greatest enrolment the unit had seventy-three members. When the +prejudice of the fanners was overcome, the demand for workers was +greater than the camp could supply. Practically the same processes were +carried through as at Vassar, and the verdict of the farmer on his new +helpers was that "while less strong than men, they more than made up for +this by superior conscientiousness and quickness." Proof of the +genuineness of his estimate was shown in his willingness to pay the +management of the camp the regulation two dollars for an eight hour +working day. And it indicated entire satisfaction with the experiment, +rather than abstract faith in woman, that each farmer anxiously urged +the captain of the group at the end of his first trial to "please bring +the same young ladies tomorrow." He was sure no others so good existed. + +The unit plan seems a heaven-born solution of many of the knotty +problems of the farm. In the first place, the farmer gets cheerful and +handy helpers, and his over-worked wife does not find her domestic cares +added to in the hot summer season. The new hands house and feed +themselves. From the point of view of the worker, the advantage is that +her food at the camp is prepared by trained hands and the proverbial +farm isolation gives way to congenial companionship. + +These separate experiments growing out of the need of food production +and the shortage of labor have brought new blood to the farm, have +turned the college girl on vacation and, what is more important, being a +solution of an industrial problem, the unemployed in seasonal trades, +into recruits for an agricultural army. And by concentrating workers in +well-run camps there has been attracted to the land a higher order +of helper. + +One obstacle in the way of the immediate success of putting such women +on the land is a wholly mistaken idea in the minds of many persons of +influence in agricultural matters that the new labor can be diverted to +domestic work in the farm house. This view is urged in the following +letter to me from the head of one of our best agricultural colleges: +"The farm labor shortage is much more acute than is generally understood +and I have much confidence in the possibility of a great amount of +useful work in food production being done by women who are physically +strong enough and who can secure sufficient preliminary training to do +this with some degree of efficiency. Probably the larger measure of +service could be done by relieving women now on the farms of this State +from the double burden of indoor work and the attempt to assist in farm +operations and chores. If farm women would get satisfactory domestic +assistance within the house they could add much to the success of field +husbandry. Women who know farm conditions and who could largely take the +place of men in the management of outdoor affairs can accomplish much +more than will ever be possible by drafting city-bred women directly +into garden or other forms of field work." + +The opinions expressed in this letter are as generally held as they are +mistaken. In the first place, the theory that the country-bred woman in +America is stronger and healthier than the city-bred has long since been +exploded. The assumption cannot stand up under the facts. Statistics +show that the death rate in the United States is lower in city than in +farm communities, and if any added proof were needed to indicate that +the stamina of city populations overbalances the country it was +furnished by the draft records. Any group of college and Manhattan Trade +School girls could be pitted against a group of women from the farms and +win the laurels in staying powers. Nor must it be overlooked that we are +not dealing here with uncertainties; the mettle of the girls has +been proved. + +In any case the fact must be faced that these agricultural units will +not do domestic work. Nine-tenths of the farm houses in America are +without modern conveniences. The well-appointed barn may have running +water, but the house has not. To undertake work as a domestic helper on +the average farm is to step back into quite primitive conditions. The +farmer's wife can attract no one from city life, where so much +cooperation is enjoyed, to her extreme individualistic surroundings. + +A second obstacle to the employment of this new labor-force is due to +the government's failure to see the possibility of saving most valuable +labor-power and achieving an economic gain by dovetailing the idle +months of young women in industrial life into the rush time of +agriculture. + +One department suggests excusing farm labor from the draft, as if we had +already fulfilled our obligation in man-power to the battlefront of our +Allies. The United States Senate discusses bringing in coolie and +contract labor, as if we had not demonstrated our unfitness to deal with +less advanced peoples, and as if a republic could live comfortably with +a class of disfranchised workers. The Labor Department declares it will +mobilize for the farm an army of a million boys, as if the wise saw, +"boys will be boys," did not apply with peculiar sharpness of flavor to +the American vintage, God bless them, and as if it were not our plain +duty at this world crisis to spur up rather than check civilizing +agencies and keep our boys in school for the full term. + +Refusing to be in the least crushed by government neglect, far-seeing +women determined to organize widely and carefully their solution of the +farm-labor problem. To this end the Women's National Farm and Garden +Association, the Garden Clubs of America, the Young Women's Christian +Association, the Woman's Suffrage Party, the New York Women's University +Club, and the Committee of the Women's Agricultural Camp, met with +representatives of the Grange, of the Cornell Agricultural College, and +of the Farmingdale State School of Agriculture, and formed an advisory +council, the object of which is to "stimulate the formation of a Land +Army of Women to take the places on the farms of the men who are being +drafted for active service." This is to be on a nationwide scale. + +The Council has put lecturers in the Granges to bring to the farmer by +the spoken word and lantern slides the value of the labor of women, and +is appealing to colleges, seasonal trades and village communities to +form units for the Land Army. It is asking the coöperation of the labor +bureaus to act as media through which units may be placed where labor is +most needed. + +This mobilization of woman-power is not yet large or striking. The +effort is entirely civil. But all the more is it praiseworthy. It shows +on the part of women, clear-eyed recognition of facts as they exist and +vision as to the future. + +The mobilization of this fresh labor-power should of course be taken in +hand by the government. Not only that, it should be led by women as in +Great Britain and Germany. But the spirit in America today is the same +as in England the first year of the war,--a disposition to exclude women +from full service. + +But facts remain facts in spite of prejudice, and the Woman's Land Army, +with faith and enthusiasm in lieu of a national treasury, are +endeavoring to bring woman-power and the untilled fields together. The +proved achievement of the individual worker will win the employer, the +unit plan with its solution of housing conditions and dreary isolation +will overcome not only the opposition of the farmer's wife, but that of +the intelligent worker. When the seed time of the movement has been +lived through by anxious and inspired women, the government may step in +to reap the harvest of a nation's gratitude. + +The mobilization of woman-power on the farm is the need of the hour, and +the wise and devoted women who are trying to answer the need, deserve an +all-hail from the people of the United States and her Allies. + + + + +XII + +WOMAN'S PART IN SAVING CIVILIZATION + + +Men have played--all honor to them--the major part in the actual +conflict of the war. Women will mobilize for the major part of binding +up the wounds and conserving civilization. + +The spirit of the world might almost be supposed to have been looking +forward to this day and clearly seeing its needs, so well are women +being prepared to receive and carry steadily the burden which will be +laid on their shoulders. For three-quarters of a century schools and +colleges have given to women what they had to confer in the way of +discipline. Gainful pursuits were opened up to them, adding training in +ordered occupation and self-support. Lastly has come the Great War, with +its drill in sacrifice and economy, its larger opportunities to function +and achieve, its ideals of democracy which have directly and quickly led +to the political enfranchisement of women in countries widely separated. + +Fate has prepared women to share fully in the saving of civilization. + +Whether victory be ours in the immediate future, or whether the dangers +rising so clearly on the horizon develop into fresh alignments leading +to years of war, civilization stands in jeopardy. Political ideals and +ultimate social aims may remain intact, but the immediate, practical +maintenance of those standards of life which are necessary to ensure +strong and fruitful reactions are in danger of being swept away. + +We have been destroying the life, the wealth and beauty of the world. +The nobility of our aim in the war must not blind us to the awfulness +and the magnitude of the destruction. In the fighting forces there are +at least thirty-eight million men involved in international or civil +conflict. Over four million men have fallen, and three million have been +maimed for life. Disease has taken its toll of fighting strength and +economic power. In addition to all this human depletion, we have the +loss of life and the destruction of health and initiative in harried +peoples madly flying across their borders from invading armies. + +Starvation has swept across wide areas, and steady underfeeding rules in +every country in Europe and in the cities of America, letting loose +malnutrition, that hidden enemy whose ambushes are more serious than the +attacks of an open foe. The world is sick. + +And the world is poor. The nations have spent over a hundred billions on +the war, and that is but part of the wealth which has gone down in the +catastrophe. Thousands of square miles are plowed so deep with shot and +shell and trench that the fertile soil lies buried beneath unyielding +clay. Orchards and forests are gone. Villages are wiped out, cities are +but skeletons of themselves. In the face of all the need of +reconstruction we must admit, however much we would wish to cover the +fact,--the world is poor. + +[Illustration: A useful blending of Allied women. Miss Kathleen Burke +(Scotch) exhibiting the X-ray ambulance equipped by Mrs. Ayrlon +(English) and Madame Curie (French).] + +And still, as in no other war, the will to guard human welfare has +remained dominant. The country rose to a woman in most spirited fashion +to combat the plan to lower the standards of labor conditions in the +supposed interest of war needs. With but few exceptions the States have +strengthened their labor laws. In its summary the American Association +for Labor Legislation says: + +"Eleven States strengthened their child labor laws, by raising age +limits, extending restrictions to new employments, or shortening hours. +Texas passed a new general statute setting a fifteen-year minimum age +for factories and Vermont provided for regulations in conformity with +those of the Federal Child Labor Act. Kansas and New Hampshire +legislated on factory safeguards, Texas on fire escapes, New Jersey on +scaffolds, Montana on electrical apparatus, Delaware on sanitary +equipment, and West Virginia on mines. New Jersey forbade the +manufacture of articles of food or children's wear in tenements. + +"Workmen's compensation laws were enacted in Delaware, Idaho, New +Mexico, South Dakota, and Utah, making forty States and Territories +which now have such laws, in addition to the Federal Government's +compensation law, for its own half-million civilian employees. In more +than twenty additional States existing acts were amended, the changes +being marked by a tendency to extend the scope, shorten the working +period, and increase provision for medical care." + +The Great War, far from checking the movement for social welfare, has +quickened the public sense of responsibility. That fact opens the widest +field to women for work in which they are best prepared by nature +and training. + +Many keen thinkers are concerned over the question of population. One of +our most distinguished professors has thrown out a hint of a possibility +that considering the greater proportion of women to men some form of +plurality of wives may become necessary. The disturbed balance of the +sexes is a thing that will right itself in one generation. Need of +population will be best answered by efforts to salvage the race. The +United States loses each year five hundred thousand babies under twelve +months of age from preventable causes. An effort to save them would seem +more reasonable than a demand for more children to neglect. Life will be +so full of drive and interest, that the woman who has given no hostages +to fortune will find ample scope for her powers outside of motherhood. +The "old maid" of tomorrow will have a mission more honored and +important than was hers in the past. + +But whatever the conclusions as to the wisest method of building up +population, there is no doubt that government and individuals will make +strict valuation of the essentials and non-essentials in national life. +In our poverty we will test all things in the light of their benefit to +the race and hold fast that which is good. + +The opinions of women will weigh in this national accounting. There will +be no money to squander, and women to a unit will stand behind those men +who think a recreation field is of more value than a race track. It will +be the woman's view, there being but one choice, that it is better to +encourage fleetness and skill in boys and girls than in horses. If we +have just so much money to spend and the question arises as to whether +there shall be corner saloons or municipal kitchens, public sentiment, +made in good measure by women, will eschew the saloon. + +The things that lend themselves to the husbanding of the race will draw +as a magnet those who have borne the race. The tired world will need for +its rejuvenation a broadened and deepened medical science. Women are too +wise to permit sanitation and research to fall to a low level. On the +contrary, they will wish them to be more thorough. There will be economy +along the less essential lines to meet the cost. + +The flagging spirit needs the inspiration of art and music. To secure +them in the future, state and municipal effort will be demanded. Women +are born economizers. They have been trained to pinch each penny. With +their advent into political life, roads and public buildings will cost +less. Through careful saving, funds will be made available for the +things of the spirit. + +One of the men conductors on the New York street railways somewhat +reproachfully remarked to me, "No one ever came to look at the +recreation room and restaurant at the car barns until women were taken +on. Men don't seem to count." Is the reproach deserved? Have women been +narrow in sympathy? Perhaps we have assumed that men can look out for +themselves. They could, but in private life they never do. Women have to +do the mothering. A trade-unionist is ready enough to regulate wages and +hours, but he gives not a thought to surroundings in factory +and workshop. + +An act of protection generally starts with solicitude about a woman or +child. Factory legislation took root in their needs. There was no mercy +for the man worker. His only chance of getting better conditions was +when women entered his occupation, and the regulation meant for her +benefit indirectly served his interest. + +"Men suffer more than women in certain dangerous trades, but I did not +suppose you were generous enough to care anything about them," came in +answer to an inquiry at a labor conference at the end of a most +admirable paper on women in dangerous trades, given by one of the +doctors in the New York City Department of Health. He was speaking to an +audience of working women. I doubt if his hearers had given a thought to +men workers. + +Perhaps this is natural, since there has been going on at the same time +with the development of factory legislation in America a strong +propaganda directed especially at political freedom for women. We have +been laying stress on the wrongs of woman and demanding very +persistently and convincingly her rights. The industrial needs and +rights of the man have been overlooked. + +With increasing numbers of women entering the industrial world, with +ever widening extension of the vote to women, and the consequent +quickening of public responsibility, together with the recent experience +of Europe demonstrating the importance of care for all workers, both men +and women, there is ground for hope that even the United States, where +protective legislation is so retarded in development, will enter upon +wide and fundamental plans for conservation of all our human resources. + +Protection of the worker, housing conditions, the feeding of factory +employees and school children, play grounds and recreation centers, will +challenge the world for first consideration. These are the social +processes which command most surely the hearts and minds of women. The +churning which the war has given humanity has roused in women a +realization that upon them rests at least half the burden of saving +civilization from wreck. Here is the world, with such and such needs +for food, clothing, shelter, with such and such needs for sanitation, +hospitals, and above all, for education, for science, for the arts, if +it is not to fall back into the conditions of the Middle Ages. How can +women aid in making secure the national position? Certainly not by +idleness, inefficiency, an easy policy of laissez faire. They must +labor, economize, and pool their brains. + +Women can save civilization only by the broadest coöperative action, by +daring to think, by daring to be themselves. The world is entering an +heroic age calling for heroic women. + + + + +APPENDIX + +DOCUMENTS USED IN WOMEN'S WAR-WORK IN +ENGLAND AND FRANCE + + + + +WAAC + +WOMEN'S ARMY +AUXILIARY +CORPS + + + + +CONFIDENTIAL. Reference No: J.W. 21 [o.] + +Joint Woman's V.A.D. Department. + +DEVONSHIRE HOUSE. PICCADILLY, LONDON. W.I. + +_Return to Secretary, +V.A.D Department. +Devonshire House, +Piccadilly, S.W.I._ + +Territorial Force Associations, +British Red Cross Society. +Order of St. John of Jerusalem. + +Telegrams [unreadable] +Telephone Mayfair 4707 + +_B.R.C.S. or Order of St. John ..._ + +Sir, + +Will you kindly fill up the following form of Medical Certificate, +returning it to the address given above. + +Your communication will be received as strictly confidential. + +It is urgently requested that Members' +names and detachment numbers should +be filled in legibly. + +Yours faithfully, + +MARGARET HEMPHILL + + +MEDICAL CERTIFICATE + + 1. Name + + 2. County No. of Detachment + + 3. How long have you been acquainted with her? + + 4. Have you attended her professionally? + + 5. For what complaint? + + 6. Is she intelligent and of active habits? + + 7. General health? + + 8. Has she flat feet, hammer-toe, or any other defect? + + 9. Is her vision good in each eye? + +10. Is her hearing perfect? + +11. Has she sound teeth, and if not, have they been properly + attended to by a Dentist lately? + +12. Has she shown any tendency to Rheumatism, Anaemia, + Tuberculosis, or other illness? + +13. When? + +14. What? + +15. Has she ever had influenza? + +16. Does she suffer from headaches? + +17. Any form of fits? + +18. Heart disease or varicose veins? + +19. Is she subject to any functional disturbance? + + * * * * * + +I have on the day of 191 seen and +examined and +hereby certify that she is apparently in good health, that she +is not labouring under any deformity, and is, in my opinion, +both physically and mentally competent to undertake duty in +a Military Hospital, and is [*]A. Fit for General Service. + B. Fit for Home Service only. + C. Unfit. + +_Date (Signed) + Address_ + +[Footnote *: Kindly delete categories which do not apply.] + + + + + * * * * * + + +Reference No.: J.W. 19c. + +JOINT WOMEN'S V.A.D. DEPARTMENT. +Territorial Forces Association. British Red Cross Society. Order of St. +John of Jerusalem. +DEVONSHIRE HOUSE, PICCADILLY, LONDON. W1. + + + + * * * * * + +QUALIFICATIONS +of Members of Women's Voluntary Aid Detachments for Nursing Service or +General Service. + + * * * * * + +1. (a) Name in full (_Mrs. or Miss_). + (b) If Married state Maiden Name. + +2. Permanent Postal Address. + Present Postal Address. + +3. Telephone No. + +4. Telegraphic Address. + +5. Detachment County and No. + B.R.C.S. + St. John Brigade. + St. John Association. + +6. Name and Address of Commandant of Detachment. + +7. Rank in Detachment. + +8. Time of Service in Detachment. + +9. Age and Date of Birth. + +10. Place and Country of Birth. + +11. Nationality at Birth. + +12. Present Nationality. + +13. Height. + +14. Weight. + +15. Where Educated. + +16. At what age did you leave school? + +17. Whether Single, Married, or Widow. + +18. If not Single, state Nationality of Husband. + +19. Name and Address of Next-of-Kin or Nearest Relation + residing in the British Isles. + +20. Father's Nationality at Birth. + +21. Mother's Nationality at Birth. + +22. Father's Profession. + +23. Religion. + +24. (a) If you volunteer for nursing duties state what experience + you have had in wards. + + (b) Name and address of hospital. + + (c) Date. + +25. Certificates held. + +26. (a) Nursing. (f) Motor Driver. + (b) Kitchen. (g) Laboratory Attendant. + (c) Clerical. (h) X-Ray Attendant. + (d) Storekeeping. (i) House Work. + (e) Dispenser. (j) Pantry Work. + +27. State what experience and qualifications you have had + for Categories in No. 26. + +28. Have you been inoculated against Enteric Fever? + If so, what date? + If not, are you willing to be? + + Have you been vaccinated? + It so, what date? + If not, are you willing to be? + +29. Your usual Occupation or Profession? + Your present Occupation or Profession? + +30. Give the Names and Addresses of two British Householders with + permanent addresses in the British Isles who have known applicant for + two or more years, but are not related to applicant, to act as + References, having previously obtained their permission to use + their names. + + (a) (Mayor, Magistrate, Justice of the Peace, Minister of Religion, + Barrister, Physician, Solicitor or Notary Public). + Acquaintance dating from year ________ + (b) Lady. + Acquaintance dating from year _______ + +31. Name and Address of Head of College or School, recent Business + Employer, Head of Government Department, Secretary of Society or some + other person who can be referred to for a report on your + qualifications for the work selected. (The Quartermaster of your + V.A.D. could be given if you have worked in her department.) + + In what capacity employed? + + How long employed? + Year? + +32. Are you willing to serve at home or abroad? + +33. Are you willing to serve in Civil Hospitals from which + personnel have been withdrawn for War Service? + +34. Are you willing to serve:-- + + (a) With pay, + (b) For expenses only, + on the terms of service laid down in our terms of service? + + N. B.--Members who can afford to work for their expenses only are + urgently needed. + +35. Date after which you will be available for duty. + +36. (a) Are you pledged to serve in any other organisation? + (b) If so, what? + +37. (a) Have you served with the Women's Legion or any + similar organisation? + (b) If so, what? + +I hereby declare that the above statements are complete and correct to +the best of my knowledge and belief. + +Date .......... Usual Signature .......... + +_For Office Purposes_, please add your full Christian Names and Surname +legibly written. + +I certify that the above declaration is, to the best of my knowledge and +belief, true; and that M ............ is a fit and proper person to be +employed by the Joint V.A.D. Committee. + +REMARKS:-- + +Date .......... Signed .................... + _Commandant_. + +Date .......... Countersigned .................... + _County Director_. + +NOTE.--Commandants are held responsible for all statements on this form +being accurate so far as it is possible for them to find out, also for +the fact that the member who signs it is a British subject, and in every +way suitable for appointment by the Joint V.A.D. Committee. + +This form must be signed by the Commandant, who should then send it to +the County Director for counter signature and forwarding to +Headquarters. + + + + +_Application No._ + +_For Official use only_. + +CONFIDENTIAL. + +WOMEN'S ARMY AUXILIARY CORPS +FORM OF APPLICATION + +N.B.--No woman need apply who is not prepared to offer her services for +the duration of the war and to take up work wherever she is required. + +1. Name in Full (Mrs. or Miss). + +2. Permanent Postal Address. + +2a. State nearest Railway Station. + +3. Surname at birth, if different. + +4. For what work do you offer your services? State your + qualifications for this work. (The occupations for which women are + required are set out in the accompanying leaflet.) + +5. Are you willing to serve:-- + (a) At Home and Abroad as may be required. + (b) At Home only. + +6. If selected and enrolled how many days' notice will you require before + your services are available? + +7. Age and date of birth. + +8. Place and Country of Birth. + +9. Nationality at Birth. + +10. Present Nationality + (if naturalised give date). + +11. Whether single, married or widow. + If married state number of children, + (a) under 12 years old. + (b) " 5 " " + +12. If not single state Nationality of Husband. + (a) Is your husband serving with the Forces? + (b) If so, where? + +13. Father's Nationality at Birth. + +14. Mother's Nationality at Birth. + +15. Father's Occupation. + +16. State school or college where educated. + At what age did you leave School? + +17. Particulars of any other Training, stating Certificates held. + +18. (a) Name and Address of your present employer + (_see Note on other side_). + + N.B.--(The employer will not be referred to unless he is given as a + reference under paragraph 20 below.) + + (b) Nature of his business. + + (c) Capacity in which you are employed. + + (d) Length of your service with him. + + (e) Salary which you are now receiving. + +19. Previous business experience (if any) giving dates, salaries + received, and names of Employers. + +20. Give below for purposes of reference the names of two or more + British householders with their permanent addresses, one of whom + should be, if possible, your present or previous Employer, a Teacher, + a Town Councillor, Mayor or Provost, Justice of Peace, Minister of + Religion, Doctor or Solicitor, who has known you for two or more + years, but is not related to you. One of the references must be + a woman. + + (a) Name. + Profession or Occupation. + Address. + + (b) Name. + Profession or Occupation. + Address. + + (c) Name. + Profession or Occupation. + Address. + +An offer of Service can in no way be regarded as a final enrolment. + +_I hereby declare that the above statements are complete and correct to +the best of my knowledge and belief_. + +_Date_ ___________ _Usual Signature_ ____________ + +This Form should be filled in by the Applicant and returned +to:--Employment Exchange _________________________ + + * * * * * + +NOTE. + +Women who are already engaged in any of the following occupations will +not be accepted unless they bring with them a letter from their Employer +or Head of Department stating that they have permission to volunteer:-- + +(i) Government Service. + +(ii) Munition work. + +(iii) Work in a Controlled Establishment. + +(iv) Full-time work in an establishment engaged on contract + work for a Government Department. + +(v) V.A.D. Military Hospitals and Red Cross Hospitals. + +(vi) School Teaching. + +(vii) Local Government Service. + +No woman who is a National Service Volunteer or is employed in +Agriculture will be accepted. + +N.B.--Applicants are urged not to give up any present employment until +they are called upon to do so. + + + + +(Part of the application form used in England by the +Women's Land Army.) + + * * * * * + +WOMEN'S LAND ARMY + + * * * * * + +CONDITIONS AND TERMS. + +There are three Sections of the Women's Land Army. + +(1). AGRICULTURE. + +(2). TIMBER CUTTING. + +(3). FORAGE. + +If you sign on for A YEAR and are prepared to go wherever you are sent, +you can join which Section you like. + + +YOU PROMISE:-- + +1. To sign on in the Land Army for ONE YEAR. + +2. To come to a Selection Board when summoned. + +3. To be medically examined, free of cost. + +4. To be prepared if PASSED by the Selection Board to take up work + after due notice. + +5. TO BE WILLING TO GO TO WHATEVER PART OF THE COUNTRY YOU ARE SENT. + + + +THE GOVERNMENT PROMISES:-- + +1. A MINIMUM WAGE to workers of 18/- a week. After they have passed + an efficiency test the wages given are £1 a week and upwards. + +2. A short course of FREE INSTRUCTION if necessary. + +3. FREE UNIFORM. + +4. FREE MAINTENANCE in a Depôt for a term not exceeding 4 weeks if + the worker is OUT OF EMPLOYMENT through no fault of her own. + +5. FREE RAILWAY travelling, when taking up or changing Employment. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOBILIZING WOMAN-POWER*** + + +******* This file should be named 10080-8.txt or 10080-8.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/0/8/10080 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre> +<p>Title: Mobilizing Woman-Power</p> +<p>Author: Harriot Stanton Blatch</p> +<p>Release Date: November 14, 2003 [eBook #10080]</p> +<p>Language: English</p> +<p>Chatacter set encoding: iso-8859-1</p> +<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOBILIZING WOMAN-POWER***</p> +<br> +<br> +<center><h3>E-text prepared by Debra Storr and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders</h3></center> +<br> +<br> +<hr> +<center> +<h1> +MOBILIZING WOMAN-POWER</h1></center> + +<center><i>By</i></center> + +<center> +<h1> +HARRIOT STANTON BLATCH</h1></center> + +<center> +<hr style="width: 100%;"><img SRC="images/006.gif" ALT="Jeanne d'Arc.--the spirit of the women of the Allies." height=436 width=258></center> + +<center> +<h4> +Jeanne d'Arc.--the spirit of the women of the Allies.</h4></center> + +<center> +<h1> +MOBILIZING WOMAN-POWER</h1></center> + +<center>BY</center> + +<center> +<h1> +HARRIOT STANTON BLATCH</h1></center> + +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<h3> +TO THE ABLE AND DEVOTED WOMEN OF GREAT BRITAIN AND FRANCE</h3> +Who have stood behind the armies of the Allies through the years of the +Great War as an unswerving second line of defense against an onslaught +upon the liberty and civilization of the world, I dedicate this volume. +<p>HARRIOT STANTON BLATCH +<h2> +<a NAME="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2> +<a href="#FOREWORD">FOREWORD BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT</a> +<p><a href="#I">I. OUR FOE</a> +<p><a href="#II">II. WINNING THE WAR</a> +<p><a href="#III">III. MOBILIZING WOMEN IN GREAT BRITAIN</a> +<p><a href="#IV">IV. MOBILIZING WOMEN IN FRANCE</a> +<p><a href="#V">V. MOBILIZING WOMEN IN GERMANY</a> +<p><a href="#VI">VI. WOMEN OVER THE TOP IN AMERICA</a> +<p><a href="#VII">VII. EVE'S PAY ENVELOPE</a> +<p><a href="#VIII">VIII. POOLING BRAINS</a> +<p><a href="#IX">IX. "BUSINESS AS USUAL"</a> +<p><a href="#X">X. "AS MOTHER USED TO DO"</a> +<p><a href="#XI">XI. A LAND ARMY</a> +<p><a href="#XII">XII. WOMAN'S PART IN SAVING CIVILIZATION</a> +<br> +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<h2> +ILLUSTRATIONS</h2> +Jeanne d'Arc--the spirit of the women of the Allies +<p>They wear the uniforms of the Edinburgh trams and the New York City +subway and trolley guards, with pride and purpose +<p>Then--the offered service of the Women's Reserve Ambulance Corps in +England was spurned. Now--they wear shrapnel helmets while working during +the Zeppelin raids +<p>The French poilu on furlough is put to work harrowing +<p>Has there ever been anything impossible to French women since the time +of Jeanne d'Arc? The fields must be harrowed--they have no horses +<p>The daily round in the Erie Railroad workshops +<p>In the well-lighted factory of the Briggs and Stratton Company, Milwaukee, +the girls are comfortably and becomingly garbed for work +<p>The women of the Motor Corps of the National League for Woman's Service +refuting the traditions that women have neither strength nor endurance +<p>Down the street they come, beginning their pilgrimage of alleviation +and succor on the battlefields of France. +<p>How can business be "as usual" when in Paris there are about 1800 of +these small workshops where a woman dips Bengal Fire and grenades into +a bath of paraffin! +<p>Countess de Berkaim and her canteen in the Gare de St. Lazarre, Paris. +<p>An agricultural unit in the uniform approved by the Woman's Land Army +of America. +<p>A useful blending of Allied women. Miss Kathleen Burke (Scotch) exhibiting +the X-ray ambulance equipped by Mrs. Ayrton (English) and Madame Curie +(French). +<br> +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<h2> +<a NAME="FOREWORD"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">FOREWORD</a></h2> +It is a real pleasure to write this foreword to the book which Mrs. Harriot +Stanton Blatch dedicates to the women of Great Britain and France; to the +women who through the years of the great war have stood as the second line +of defense against the German horror which menaces the liberty and civilization +of the entire world. +<p>There could be no more timely book. Mrs. Blatch's aim is to stir the +women of this country to the knowledge that this is their war, and also +to make all our people feel that we, and especially our government, should +welcome the service of women, and make use of it to the utmost. In other +words, the appeal of Mrs. Blatch is essentially an appeal for service. +No one has more vividly realized that service benefits the one who serves +precisely as it benefits the one who is served. I join with her in the +appeal that the women shall back the men with service, and that the men +in their turn shall frankly and eagerly welcome the rendering of such service +<i>on +the basis of service by equals for a common end</i>. +<p>Mrs. Blatch makes her appeal primarily because of the war needs of the +moment. But she has in view no less the great tasks of the future. I welcome +her book as an answer to the cry that the admission of women to an equal +share in the right of self government will tend to soften the body politic. +Most certainly I will ever set my face like flint against any unhealthy +softening of our civilization, and as an answer in advance to hyper-criticism +I explain that I do not mean softness in the sense of tender-heartedness; +I mean the softness which, extends to the head and to the moral fibre, +I mean the softness which manifests itself either in unhealthy sentimentality +or in a materialism which may be either thoughtless and pleasure-loving +or sordid and money-getting. I believe that the best women, when thoroughly +aroused, and when the right appeal is made to them, will offer our surest +means of resisting this unhealthy softening. +<p>No man who is not blind can fail to see that we have entered a new day +in the great epic march of the ages. For good or for evil the old days +have passed; and it rests with us, the men and women now alive, to decide +whether in the new days the world is to be a better or a worse place to +live in, for our descendants. +<p>In this new world women are to stand on an equal footing with men, in +ways and to an extent never hitherto dreamed of. In this country they are +on the eve of securing, and in much of the country have already secured, +their full political rights. It is imperative that they should understand, +exactly as it is imperative that men should understand, that such rights +are of worse than no avail, unless the will for the performance of duty +goes hand in hand with the acquirement of the privilege. +<p>If the women in this country reinforce the elements that tend to a softening +of the moral fibre, to a weakening of the will, and unwillingness to look +ahead or to face hardship and labor and danger for a high ideal--then all +of us alike, men and women, will suffer. But if they show, under the new +conditions, the will to develop strength, and the high idealism and the +iron resolution which under less favorable circumstances were shown by +the women of the Revolution and of the Civil War, then our nation has before +it a career of greatness never hitherto equaled. This book is fundamentally +an appeal, not that woman shall enjoy any privilege unearned, but that +hers shall be the right to do more than she has ever yet done, and to do +it on terms of self-respecting partnership with men. Equality of right +does not mean identity of function; but it does necessarily imply identity +of purpose in the performance of duty. +<p>Mrs. Blatch shows why every woman who inherits the womanly virtues of +the past, and who has grasped the ideal of the added womanly virtues of +the present and the future, should support this war with all her strength +and soul. She testifies from personal knowledge to the hideous brutalities +shown toward women and children by the Germany of to-day; and she adds +the fine sentence: "Women fight for a place in the sun for those who hold +right above might." +<p>She shows why women must unstintedly give their labor in order to win +this war; and why the labor of the women must be used to back up both the +labor and the fighting work of the men, for the fighting men leave gaps +in the labor world which must be filled by the work of women. She says +in another sentence worth remembering, "The man behind the counter should +of course be moved to a muscular employment; but we must not interpret +his dalliance with tapes and ribbons as a proof of a superfluity of men." +<p>Particularly valuable is her description of the mobilization of women +in Great Britain and France. From these facts she draws the conclusion +as to America's needs along this very line. She paints as vividly as I +have ever known painted, the truth as to why it is a merit that women should +be forced to work, a merit that <i>every one</i> should be forced to work! +It is just as good for women as for men that they should have to use body +and mind, that they should not be idlers. As she puts it, "Active mothers +insure a virile race. The peaceful nation, if its women fall victims to +the luxury which rapidly increasing wealth brings, will decay." "Man power +must give itself unreservedly at the front. Woman power must show not only +eagerness but fitness to substitute for man power." +<p>I commend especially the chapter containing the sentence, "This war +may prove to us the wisdom and economy of devoting public funds to mothers +rather than to crèches and juvenile asylums;" and also the chapter +in which the author tells women that if they are merely looking for a soft +place in life their collective demand for a fair field and no favor will +be wholly ineffective. The doors for service now stand open, and it rests +with the women themselves to say whether they will enter in! +<p>The last chapter is itself an unconscious justification of woman's right +to a share in the great governmental decisions which to-day are vital. +No statesman or publicist could set forth more clearly than Mrs. Blatch +the need of winning this war, in order to prevent either endless and ruinous +wars in the future, or else a world despotism which would mean the atrophy +of everything that really tends to the elevation of mankind. +<p>Mrs. Blatch has herself rendered a very real service by this appeal +that women should serve, and that men should let them serve. +<p>Theodore Roosevelt +<br> +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<h2> +<a NAME="I"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">I<br> +OUR FOE</a></h2> +The nations in which women have influenced national aims face the nation +that glorifies brute force. America opposes the exaltation of the glittering +sword; opposes the determination of one nation to dominate the world; opposes +the claim that the head of one ruling family is the direct and only representative +of the Creator; and, above all, America opposes the idea that might makes +right. +<p>Let us admit the full weight of the paradox that a people in the name +of peace turns to force of arms. The tragedy for us lay in there being +no choice of ways, since pacific groups had failed to create machinery +to adjust vital international differences, and since the Allies each in +turn, we the last, had been struck by a foe determined to settle disagreements +by force. +<p>Never did a nation make a crusade more just than this of ours. We were +patient, too long patient, perhaps, with challenges. We seek no conquest. +We fight to protect the freedom of our citizens. On America's standard +is written democracy, on that of Germany autocracy. Without reservation +women can give their all to attain our end. +<p>There may be a cleavage between the German people and the ruling class. +It may be that our foe is merely the military caste, though I am inclined +to believe that we have the entire German nation on our hands. The supremacy +of might may be a doctrine merely instilled in the minds of the people +by its rulers. Perhaps the weed is not indigenous, but it flourishes, nevertheless. +Rabbits did not belong in Australia, nor pondweed in England, but there +they are, and dominating the situation. Arrogance of the strong towards +the weak, of the better placed towards the less well placed, is part of +the government teaching in Germany. The peasant woman harries the dog that +strains at the market cart, her husband harries her as she helps the cow +drag the plough, the petty officer harries the peasant when he is a raw +recruit, and the young lieutenant harries the petty officer, and so it +goes up to the highest,--a well-planned system on the part of the superior +to bring the inferior to a high point of material efficiency. The propelling +spirit is devotion to the Fatherland: each believes himself a cog in the +machine chosen of God to achieve His purposes on earth. The world hears +of the Kaiser's "Ich und Gott," of his mailed fist beating down his enemies, +but those who have lived in Germany know that exactly the same spirit reigns +in every class. The strong in chastizing his inferior has the conviction +that since might makes right he is the direct representative of Deity on +the particular occasion. +<p>The overbearing spirit of the Prussian military caste has drilled a +race to worship might; men are overbearing towards women, women towards +children, and the laws reflect the cruelties of the strong towards the +weak. +<p>As the recent petition of German suffragists to the Reichstag states, +their country stands "in the lowest rank of nations as regards women's +rights." It is a platitude just now worth repeating that the civilization +of a people is indicated by the position accorded to its women. On that +head, then, the Teutonic Kultur stands challenged. +<p>An English friend of mine threw down the gauntlet thirty years ago. +She had married a German officer. After living at army posts all over the +Empire, she declared, "What we foreigners take as simple childlikeness +in the Germans is merely lack of civilization." This keen analysis came +from a woman trained as an investigator, and equipped with perfect command +of the language of her adopted country. +<p>"Lack of civilization,"--perhaps that explains my having seen again +and again officers striking the soldiers they were drilling, and journeys +made torture through witnessing slapping and brow-beating of children by +their parents. The memory of a father's conduct towards his little son +will never be wiped out. He twisted the child's arm, struck him savagely +from time to time, and for no reason but that the child did not sit bolt +upright and keep absolutely motionless. The witnesses of the brutality +smiled approvingly at the man, and scowled at the child. My own protest +being met with amazed silence and in no way regarded, I left the compartment. +I was near Eisenach, and I wished some good fairy would put in my hand +that inkpot which Luther threw at the devil. Severity towards children +is the rule. The child for weal or woe is in the complete control of its +parents, and corporal punishment is allowed in the schools. The grim saying, +"Saure Wochen, frohe Feste," seems to express the pedagogic philosophy. +The only trouble is that nature does not give this attitude her sanction, +for Germany reveals to us that figure, the most pathetic in life, the child +suicide. +<p>The man responding to his stern upbringing is in turn cruel to his inferiors, +and full of subterfuge in dealing with equals. He is at home in the intrigues +which have startled the world. In such a society the frank and gentle go +to the wall, or--get into trouble and emigrate. We have profited--let us +not forget it--by the plucky German immigrants who threw off the yoke, +and who now have the satisfaction of finding themselves fighting shoulder +to shoulder with the men of their adopted country to free the Fatherland +of the taskmaster. +<p>The philosophy of might quite naturally reflects itself in the education +of girls. Once when I visited a Höhere Töchter Schule, the principal +had a class in geometry recite for my edification. I soon saw that the +young girl who had been chosen as the star pupil to wrestle with the pons +asinorum was giving an exhibition of memorizing and not of mathematical +reasoning. I asked the principal if my surmise were correct. He replied +without hesitation, "Yes, it was entirely a feat in memory. Females have +only low reasoning power." I urged that if this were so, it would be well +to train the faculty, but he countered with the assertion, "We Germans +do not think so. Women are happier and more useful without logic." +<p>It would be difficult to surpass in its subtle cruelty the etiquette +at a military function. The lieutenant and his wife come early,--this is +expected of them. For a few moments they play the role of honored guests. +The wife is shown by her hostess to the sofa and is seated there as a mark +of distinction. Then arrive the captain and his wife. They are immediately +the distinguished guests. The wife is shown to the sofa and the lieutenant's +little Frau must get herself out of the way as best she can. +<p>My speculation, often indulged in, as to what would happen if the major's +wife did not move from the sofa when the colonel's wife appeared, ended +in assurance that a severe punishment would be meted out to her, when I +heard from an officer the story of the way his regiment dealt with a woman +who ignored another bit of military etiquette. A débutant, once +honored by being asked to dance with an officer at a ball, must never, +it seems, demean herself by accepting a civilian partner. But in a town +where my friend's regiment was stationed a very pretty and popular young +girl who had been taken, so to speak, to the bosom of the regiment, danced +one night at the Kurhaus early in the summer season with a civilian, distinguished, +undeniably, but unmistakably civilian. The officers of the regiment met, +weighed the mighty question of the girl's offense, and solemnly resolved +never again to ask the culprit for a dance. I protested at the cruelty +of a body of men deliberately turning a pretty young thing into a wall-flower +for an entire season. The officer took my protest as an added reason for +congratulation upon their conduct. They meant to be cruel. My words proved +how well they had succeeded. +<p>Another little straw showing the set of the wind: we were sitting, four +Americans, one lovely early summer day, in a restaurant at Swinemünde. +We had the window open, looking out over the sea. At the next table were +some officers, one of whom with an "Es zieht," but not with a "by your +leave," came over to our table and shut the window with a bang. The gentleman +with us asked if we wanted the window closed, and on being assured we did +not, quietly rose and opened it again. No one who does not know Prussia +can imagine the threatening atmosphere which filled that café. +<p>We met the officers the same night at the Kurhaus dance. They were introduced, +and almost immediately one of them brought up the window incident and said +most impressively that if ladies had not been at the table, our escort +would have been "called out." We could see they regarded us as unworthy +of being even transient participants of Kultur when we opined that no American +man would accept a challenge, and if so unwise as to do so, his womenfolk +would lock him up until he reached a sounder judgment! The swords rattled +in their sabres when the frivolous member of our party said with a tone +of finality, "You see we wouldn't like our men's faces to look as if they +had got into their mothers' chopping bowls!" +<p>Although I had often lived months on end with all these petty tyrannies +of the mailed fist, and although life had taught me later that peoples +grow by what they feed upon, yet when I read the Bryce report,<a NAME="FNanchor1"></a><sup><a href="#Footnote_1">[1]</a></sup> +German frightfulness seemed too inhuman for belief. While still holding +my judgment in reserve, I met an intimate friend, a Prussian officer. He +happened to mention letters he had received from his relatives in Berlin +and at the front, and when I expressed a wish to hear them, kindly asked +whether he should translate them or read them in German as they stood. +Laughingly I ventured on the German, saying I would at least find out how +much I had forgotten. So I sat and listened with ears pricked up. Some +of the letters were from women folk and told of war conditions in the capital. +They were interesting at the time but not worth repeating now. Then came +a letter from a nephew, a lieutenant. He gave his experience in crossing +Belgium, told how in one village his men asked a young woman with her tiny +baby on her arm for water, how she answered resentfully, and then, how +he shot her--and her baby. I exclaimed, thinking I had lost the thread +of the letter, "Not the baby?" And the man I supposed I knew as civilized, +replied with a cruel smile, "Yes--discipline!" That was frank, frank as +a child would have been, with no realization of the self-revelation of +it. The young officer did the deed, wrote of it to his uncle, and the uncle, +without vision and understanding, perverted by his training, did not feel +shame and bury the secret in his own heart, but treasured the evidence +against his own nephew, and laid it open before an American woman. +<p>I believed the Bryce report--every word of it! +<p>And I hate the system that has so bent and crippled a great race. Revenge +we must not feel, that would be to innoculate ourselves with the enemy's +virus. But let us be awake to the fact that might making right cuts athwart +our ideals. German Kultur, through worship of efficiency, cramps originality +and initiative, while our aim--why not be frank about it!--is the protection +of inefficiency, which means sympathy with childhood, and opportunity for +the spirit of art. German Kultur fixes an inflexible limit to the aspirations +of women, while our goal is complete freedom for the mothers of men. +<p>The women of the Allies can fight for all that their men fight for--for +national self-respect, for protection of citizens, for the sacredness of +international agreements, for the rights of small nations, for the security +of democracy, and then our women can be inspired by one thing more--the +safety and development of all those things which they have won for human +welfare in a long and bloodless battle. +<p>Women fight for a place in the sun for those who hold right above might. +<p><a NAME="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor1">[1] </a> Report of +the Committee on Alleged German Outrages appointed by his Britannic Majesty's +Government. 1915. Macmillan Company, New York. +<blockquote>Evidence and Documents laid before the Committee on Alleged +German Outrages. Ballantyne, Hanson & Co., London. 1915. +<p> +<hr WIDTH="100%"></blockquote> + +<h2> +<a NAME="II"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">II<br> +WINNING THE WAR</a></h2> +The group of nations that can make the greatest savings, will be victorious, +counsels one; the group that can produce the most food and nourish the +populations best, will win the war, urges another; but whatever the prophecy, +whatever the advice, all paths to victory lie through labor-power. +<p>Needs are not answered in our day by manna dropping from heaven. Whether +it is food or big guns that are wanted, ships or coal, we can only get +our heart's desire by toil. Where are the workers who will win the war? +<p>We are a bit spoiled in the United States. We have been accustomed to +rub our Aladdin's lamp of opportunity and the good genii have sent us workers. +But suddenly, no matter how great our efforts, no one answers our appeal. +The reservoir of immigrant labor has run dry. We are in sorry plight, for +we have suffered from emigration, too. Thousands of alien workers have +been called back to serve in the armies of the Allies. In my own little +village on Long Island the industrious Italian colony was broken up by +the call to return to the colors in Piedmont. +<p>Then, too, while Europe suffers loss of labor, as do we, when men are +mobilized, our situation is peculiarly poignant, for when our armies are +gone they are gone. At first this was true in Europe. Men entered the army +and were employed as soldiers only. After a time it was realized that the +war would not be short, that fields must not lie untilled for years, nor +men undergo the deteriorating effects of trench warfare continuously. The +fallow field and the stale soldier were brought together. +<p>We have all chanced on photographs of European soldiers helping the +women plough in springtime, and reap the harvest in the autumn. Perhaps +we have regarded the scene as a mere pastoral episode in a happy leave +from the battle front, instead of realizing that it is a snapshot illustrating +a well organized plan of securing labor. The soldiers are given a furlough +and are sent where the agricultural need is pressing. But the American +soldier will not be able to lend his skill in giving the home fields a +rich seed time and harvest. The two needs, the field for the touch of the +human hand, and the soldier for labor under calm skies, cannot in our case +be coördinated. +<p>Scarcity of labor is not only certain to grow, but the demands upon +the United States for service are increasing by leaps and bounds. America +must throw man-power into the trenches, must feed herself, must contribute +more and ever more food to the hungry populations of Europe, must meet +the old industrial obligations, and respond to a whole range of new business +requirements. And she is called upon for this effort at a time when national +prosperity is already making full use of man-power. +<p>When Europe went to war, the world had been suffering from depression +a year and more. Immediately on the outbreak of hostilities whole lines +of business shut down. Unemployment became serious. There were idle hands +everywhere. Germany, of all the belligerents, rallied most quickly to meet +war conditions. Unemployment gave place to a shortage of labor sooner there +than elsewhere. Great Britain did not begin to get the pace until the middle +of 1915. +<p>The business situation in the United States upon its entrance into the +war was the antithesis of this. For over a year, depression had been superseded +by increased industry, high wages, and greater demand for labor. The country +as measured by the ordinary financial signs, by its commerce, by its labor +market, was more prosperous than it had been for years. Tremendous requisitions +were being made upon us by Europe, and to the limit of available labor +we were answering them. Then into our economic life, with industrial forces +already working at high pressure, were injected the new demands arising +from changing the United States from a people as unprepared for effective +hostilities as a baby in its cradle, into a nation equipped for war. There +was no unemployment, but on the contrary, shortage of labor. +<p>The country calls for everything, and all at once, like the spoiled +child on suddenly waking. It must have, and without delay, ships, coal, +cars, cantonments, uniforms, rules, and food, food, food. How can the needs +be supplied and with a million and a half of men dropping work besides? +By woman-power or coolie labor. Those are the horns of the dilemma presented +to puzzled America. The Senate of the United States directs its Committee +of Agriculture to ponder well the coolie problem, for men hesitate to have +women put their shoulder to the wheel. Trade unionists are right in urging +that a republic has no place for a disfranchised class of imported toilers. +Equally true is it that as a nation we have shown no gift for dealing with +less developed races. And yet labor we must have. Will American women supply +it, will they, loving ease, favor contract labor from the outside, or will +they accept the optimistic view that lack of labor is not acute? +<p>The procrastinator queries, "Cannot American man-power meet the demand?" +It can, for a time perhaps, if the draft for the army goes as slowly in +the future as it has in the past. +<p>However, at any moment a full realization may come to us of the significance +of the fact that while the United States is putting only three percent +of its workers into the fighting forces, Great Britain has put twenty-five +percent, and is now combing its industrial army over to find an additional +five hundred thousand men to throw on the French front. It is probable +that it will be felt by this country in the near future that such a contrast +of fulfillment of obligation cannot continue without serious reflection +on our national honor. Roughly speaking, Great Britain has twenty million +persons in gainful pursuits. Of these, five million have already been taken +for the army. The contribution of France is still greater. Her military +force has reached the appalling proportion of one-fifth of her entire population. +But we who have thirty-five million in gainful occupations are giving a +paltry one million, five hundred thousand in service with our Allies. The +situation is not creditable to us, and one of the things which stands in +the way of the United States reaching a more worthy position is reluctance +to see its women shouldering economic burdens. +<center> +<p><img SRC="images/035.gif" ALT="They wear the uniforms of the Edinburgh trams and the New York City subway and trolley guards, with pride and purpose." height=451 width=600></center> + +<h4> +They wear the uniforms of the Edinburgh trams and the New York City subway +and trolley guards, with pride and purpose.</h4> +While it is quite true that shifting of man-power is needed, mere shuffling +of the cards, as labor leaders suggest, won't give a bigger pack. Fifty-two +cards it remains, though the Jack may be put into a more suitable position. +The man behind the counter should of course be moved to a muscular employment, +but we must not interpret his dalliance with tapes and ribbons as proof +of a superfluity of men. +<p>The latest reports of the New York State Department of Labor reflect +the meagerness of the supply. Here are some dull figures to prove it:--comparing +the situation with a year ago, we find in a corresponding month, only one +percent more employees this year, with a wage advance of seventeen percent. +Drawing the comparison between this year and two years ago, there is an +advance of "fifteen percent in employees and fifty-one percent in wages;" +and an increase of "thirty percent in employees and eighty-seven percent +in wages," if this year is compared with the conditions when the world +was suffering from industrial depression. The State employment offices +report eight thousand three hundred and seventy-six requests for workers +against seven thousand, six hundred and fifty applicants for employment, +and of the latter only seventy-three percent were fitted for the grades +of work open to them, and were placed in situations. +<p>The last records of conditions in the Wilkes-Barre coal regions confirm +the fact of labor scarcity. There are one hundred and fifty-two thousand +men and boys at work today in the anthracite fields, twenty-five thousand +less than the number employed in 1916. These miners, owing to the prod +of the highest wages ever received--the skilled man earning from forty +dollars to seventy-five dollars a week--and to appeals to their patriotism, +are individually producing a larger output than ever before. It is considered +that production, with the present labor force, is at its maximum, and if +a yield of coal commensurate with the world's need is to be attained, at +least seventy percent more men must be supplied. +<p>This is a call for man-power in addition to that suggested by the Fuel +Administrator to the effect that lack of coal is partly lack of cars and +that "back of the transportation shortage lies labor shortage." An order +was sent out by the Director General of Railways, soon after his appointment, +that mechanics from the repair shops of the west were to be shifted to +the east to supply the call for help on the Atlantic border. +<p>Suggestive of the cause of all this shortage, float the service flags +of the mining and railway companies, the hundreds of glowing stars telling +their tale of men gone to the front, and of just so many stars torn from +the standards of the industrial army at home. +<p>The Shipping Board recently called for two hundred and fifty thousand +men to be gradually recruited as a skilled army for work in shipyards. +At the same time the Congress passed an appropriation of fifty million +dollars for building houses to accommodate ship labor. Six months ago only +fifty thousand men were employed in ship-building, today there are one +hundred and forty-five thousand. This rapid drawing of men to new centers +creates a housing problem so huge that it must he met by the government; +and it need hardly be pointed out, shelter can be built only by human hands. +<p>One state official, prompted no doubt by a wise hostility to coolie +labor, and dread of woman labor, has gone so far as to declare publicly +that any employer who will pay "adequate wages can get all the labor he +requires." This view suggests that we may soon have to adopt the methods +of other belligerents and stop employers by law from stealing a neighbor's +working force. I know of a shipyard with a normal pay-roll of five hundred +hands, which in one year engaged and lost to nearby munition factories +thirteen thousand laborers. Such "shifting," hiding as it does shortage +of manpower, leads to serious loss in our productive efficiency and should +not be allowed to go unchecked. +<p>The manager of one of the New York City street railways met with complete +denial the easy optimism that adequate remuneration will command a sufficient +supply of men. He told me that he had introduced women at the same wage +as male conductors, not because he wanted women, but because he now had +only five applications by fit men to thirty or forty formerly. There were +men to be had, he said, and at lower wages than his company was paying; +but they were "not of the class capable of fulfilling the requirements +of the position." +<p>The Labor Administration announced on its creation that its "policy +would be to prevent woman labor in positions for which men are available," +and one of the deputy commissioners of the Industrial Commission of the +State of New York declared quite frankly at a labor conference that "if +he could, he would exclude women from industry altogether." +<p>We may try to prevent the oncoming tide of the economic independence +of women, but it will not be possible to force the business world to accept +permanently the service of the inefficient in place of that of the alert +and intelligent. To carry on the economic life of a nation with its labor +flotsam and jetsam is loss at any time; in time of storm and stress it +is suicide. +<p>Man-power is short, seriously so. The farm is always the best barometer +to give warning of scarcity of labor. The land has been drained of its +workers. A fair wage would keep them on the farm--this is the philosophy +of laissez faire. Without stopping to inquire as to what the munition works +would then do, we can still see that it is doubtful whether the farm can +act as magnet. Even men, let us venture the suggestion, like change for +the mere sake of change. A middle-aged man, who had taken up work at Bridgeport, +said to me, "I've mulled around on the farm all my days. I grabbed the +first chance to get away." And then there's a finer spirit prompting the +desertion of the hoe. A man of thirty-three gave me the point of view. +"My brother is 'over there,' and I feel as if I were backing him up by +making guns." +<p>The only thing that can change the idea that farming is "mulling around," +and making a gun "backs up" the man at the front more thoroughly than raising +turnips, is to bring to the farm new workers who realize the vital part +played by food in the winning of the war. As the modern industrial system +has developed with its marvels of specialized machinery, its army of employees +gathered and dispersed on the stroke of the clock, and strong organizations +created to protect the interests of the worker, the calm and quiet processes +of agriculture have in comparison grown colorless. The average farmhand +has never found push and drive and group action on the farm, but only individualism +to the extreme of isolation. And now in war time, when in addition to its +usual life of stirring contacts, the factory takes on an intimate and striking +relation to the intense experience of the battle front, the work of the +farm seems as flat as it is likely to be unprofitable. The man in the furrow +has no idea that he is "backing up" the boy in the trench. +<p>The farmer in his turn does not find himself part of the wider relations +that attract and support the manufacturer. Crops are not grown on order. +The marketing is as uncertain as the weather. The farmer could by higher +wages attract more labor, but as the selling of the harvest remains a haphazard +matter, the venture might mean ruin all the more certain and serious were +wage outlay large. In response to a call for food and an appeal to his +patriotism, the farmer has repeatedly made unusual efforts to bring his +land to the maximum fertility, only to find his crops often a dead loss, +as he could not secure the labor to harvest them. I saw, one summer, acres +of garden truck at its prime ploughed under in Connecticut because of a +shortage of labor. I saw fruit left rotting by the bushel in the orchards +near Rochester because of scarcity of pickers and a doubt of the reliability +of the market. The industry which means more than any other to the well-being +of humanity at this crisis, is the sport of methods outgrown and of servants +who lack understanding and inspiration. The war may furnish the spark for +the needed revolution. Man-power is not available, woman-power is at hand. +A new labor force always brings ideas and ideals peculiar to itself. May +not women as fresh recruits in a land army stamp their likes and dislikes +on farm life? Their enthusiasm may put staleness to rout, and the group +system of women land workers, already tested in the crucible of experience, +may bring to the farm the needed antidote to isolation. +<p>To win the war we must have man-power in the trenches sufficient to +win it with. To win, every soldier, every sailor, must be well fed, well +clothed, well equipped. To win, behind the armed forces must stand determined +peoples. To win, the people of America and her Allies must be heartened +by care and food. +<p>The sun shines on the fertile land, the earth teems with forests, with +coal, with every necessary mineral and food, but labor, labor alone can +transform all to meet our necessities. Man-power unaided cannot supply +the demand. Women in America must shoulder as nobly as have the women of +Europe, this duty. They must answer their country's call. Let them see +clearly that the desire of their men to shield them from possible injury +exposes the nation and the world to actual danger. +<p>Our winning of the war depends upon the full use of the energy of our +entire people. Every muscle, every brain, must be mobilized if the national +aim is to be achieved. +<br> +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<h2> +<a NAME="III"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">III<br> +MOBILIZING WOMEN IN GREAT BRITAIN</a> <a NAME="FNanchor2"></a><sup><a href="#Footnote_2">[2]</a></sup></h2> +In no country have women reached a mobilization so complete and systematized +as in Great Britain. This mobilization covers the whole field of war service--in +industry, business and professional life, and in government administration. +Women serve on the Ministry of Food and are included in the membership +of twenty-five of the important government committees, not auxiliary or +advisory, but administrative committees, such as those on War Pensions, +on Disabled Officers and Men, on Education after the War, and the Labor +Commission to Deal with Industrial Unrest. +<p>In short, the women of Great Britain are working side by side with men +in the initiation and execution of plans to solve the problems which confront +the nation. +<p>Four committees, as for instance those making investigations and recommendations +on Women's Wages and Drink Among Women, are entirely composed of women, +and great departments, such as the Women's Land Army, the Women's Army +Auxiliary Corps, are officered throughout by them. Hospitals under the +War Office have been placed in complete control of medical women; they +take rank with medical men in the army and receive the pay going with their +commissions. +<p>When Great Britain recognized that the war could not be won by merely +sending splendid fighters to the front and meeting the wastage by steady +drafts upon the manhood of the country, she began to build an efficient +organization of industry at home. +<p>To the call for labor-power British women gave instant response. In +munitions a million are mobilized, in the Land Army there have been drafted +and actually placed on the farms over three hundred thousand, and in the +Women's Army Auxiliary Corps fourteen thousand women are working in direct +connection with the fighting force, and an additional ten thousand are +being called out for service each month. In the clerical force of the government +departments, some of which had never seen women before in their sacred +precincts, over one hundred and ninety-eight thousand are now working. +And the women civil servants are not only engaged in indoor service, but +outside too, most of the carrying of mail being in their hands. +<p>Women are dock-laborers, some seven thousand strong. Four thousand act +as patrols and police, forty thousand are in banks and various financial +houses. It is said that there are in Great Britain scarce a million women--and +they are mostly occupied as housewives--who could render greater service +to their country than that which they are now giving. +<p>The wide inclusion of women in government administration is very striking +to us in America. But we must not forget that the contrast between the +two countries in the participation of women in political life and public +service has always been great. The women of the United Kingdom have enjoyed +the municipal and county franchise for years. For a long time large numbers +of women have been called to administrative positions. They have had thorough +training in government as Poor Law Guardians, District and County Councilors, +members of School Boards. No women, the whole world over, are equipped +as those of Great Britain for service to the state. +<p>In the glamor of the extremely striking government service of British +women, we must not overlook their non-official organizations. Perhaps these +offer the most valuable suggestions for America. They are near enough to +our experience to be quite understandable. +<p>The mother country is not under regimentation. Originality and initiative +have full play. Perhaps it was well that the government failed to appreciate +what women could do, and neglected them so long. Most of the effective +work was started in volunteer societies and had proved a success before +there was an official laying on of hands. Anglo-Saxons--it is our strong +point--always work from below, up. +<p>A glance at any account of the mobilization of woman-power in Great +Britain, Miss Fraser's admirable "Women and War Work," for instance, will +reveal the printed page dotted thick with the names of volunteer associations. +A woman with sympathy sees a need, she gets an idea and calls others about +her. Quickly, there being no red tape, the need begins to be met. What +more admirable service could have been performed than that inaugurated +in the early months of the war under the Queen's Work for Women Fund, when +work was secured for the women in luxury trades which were collapsing under +war pressure? A hundred and thirty firms employing women were kept running. +<p>What more thrilling example of courage and forethought has been shown +than by the Scottish Women's Hospitals in putting on the western front +the first X-ray car to move from point to point near the lines? It but +adds to the appeal of the work that those great scientists, Mrs. Ayrton +and Madame Curie, selected the equipment. +<p>It was a non-official body, the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, +which opened before the war was two weeks old the Women's Service Bureau, +and soon placed forty thousand women as paid and volunteer workers. It +was this bureau that furnished the government with its supervisors for +the arsenals. The Women's Farm and Garden Union was the fore-runner of +the official Land Army, and to it still is left the important work of enrolling +those women who, while willing to undertake agricultural work, are disinclined +to sign up for service "for the duration of the war." +<p>Not only have unnumbered voluntary associations achieved miracles in +necessary work, but many of them have gained untold discipline in the ridicule +they have had to endure from a doubting public. I remember hunting in vain +all about Oxford Circus for the tucked-away office of the Women's Signalling +Corps. My inquiries only made the London bobbies grin. Everyone laughed +at the idea of women signalling, but to-day the members are recognized +officially, one holding an important appointment in the college of wireless +telegraphy. +<p>How Scotland Yard smiled, at first, at Miss Damer Dawson and her Women +Police Service! But now the metropolitan police are calling for the help +of her splendidly trained and reliable force. +<p>And the Women's Reserve Ambulance Corps--I climbed and climbed to an +attic to visit their headquarters! There was the commandant in her khaki, +very gracious, but very upstanding, and maintaining the strictest discipline. +No member of the corps entered or left her office without clapping heels +together and saluting. The ambulance about which the corps revolved, I +often met in the streets--empty. But those women had vision. They saw that +England would need them some day. They had faith in their ability to serve. +So on and on they went, training themselves to higher efficiency in body +and mind. And to-day--well, theirs is always the first ambulance on the +spot to care for the injured in the air-raids. The scoffers have remained +to pray. +<p>If Britain has a lesson for us it is an all-hail to non-official societies, +an encouragement to every idea, a blessing on every effort which has behind +it honesty of purpose. Great Britain's activities are as refreshingly diversified +as her talents. They are not all under one hat. +<p>In the training for new industrial openings this same spirit of non-official +service showed itself. In munitions, for instance, private employers were +the first to recognize that they had in women-workers a labor force worth +the cost of training. The best of the skilled men in many cases were told +off to give the necessary instruction. The will to do was in the learner; +she soon mastered even complex processes, and at the end of a few weeks +was doing even better than men in the light work, and achieving commendable +output in the heavy. The suffrage organizations, whenever a new line of +skilled work was opened to women, established well-equipped centers to +give the necessary teaching. Not until it became apparent that the new +labor-power only needed training to reach a high grade of proficiency, +did County Councils establish, at government expense, technical classes +for girls and women. +<center> +<p><img SRC="images/052.gif" ALT="Then--the offered service of the Women's Reserve Ambulance Corps in England was spurned. Now--they wear shrapnel helmets while working during Zepplin raids" height=306 width=500></center> + +<h4> +Then--the offered service of the Women's Reserve Ambulance Corps in England +was spurned. Now--they wear shrapnel helmets while working during the Zeppelin +raids.</h4> +Equipment of the army was obviously the first and pressing obligation. +Fields might lie fallow, for food in the early days could easily be brought +from abroad, but men had to be registered, soldiers clothed and equipped. +It was natural, then, that the new workers were principally used in registration +work and in making military supplies. +<p>But in the second year of the war came the conviction that the contest +was not soon to be ended, and that the matter of raising food at home must +be met. Women were again appealed to. A Land Army mobilized by women was +created. At first this work was carried on under a centralized division +of the National Service Department, but there has been decentralization +and the Land Army is now a department of the Board of Agriculture. It is +headed by Miss M. Talbot as director. Under this central body are Women's +Agricultural Committees in each county, with an organizing secretary whose +duty it is to secure full-time recruits. +<p>The part-time workers in a locality are obtained by the wife of the +squire or vicar acting as a volunteer registrar. Many of these part-time +workers register to do the domestic work of the lusty young village housewife +or mother while she is absent from home performing her allotted task on +a nearby farm. The full-time recruits are not only secured by the organizers, +but through registrations at every post office. Any woman can ask for a +registration card and fill it out, and the postmaster then forwards the +application to the committee. The next step is that likely applicants are +called to the nearest center for examination and presentation of credentials. +When finally accepted they are usually sent for six weeks' or three months' +training to a farm belonging to some large estate. The landlord contributes +the training, and the government gives the recruit her uniform and fifteen +shillings a week to cover her board and lodging. At the end of her course +she receives an armlet signifying her rank in the Land Army and is ready +to go wherever the authorities send her. +<p>The farmer in Great Britain no longer needs to be converted to the value +of the new workers. He knows they can do every kind of farm work as well +as men, and are more reliable and conscientious than boys, and he is ready, +therefore, to pay the required minimum wage of eighteen shillings a week, +or above that amount if the rate ruling in the district is higher. +<p>Equally well organized is the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, familiarly +known as the Waacs. The director is Mrs. Chalmers Watson. A would-be Waac +goes to the center in her county for examination, and then is assigned +to work at home or "somewhere in France" according to training and capacity. +She may be fitted as a cook, a storekeeper, a telephone or telegraph operator, +or for signalling or salvage work. Let us not say she will supplant a man, +but rather set a man free for fuller service. +<p>My niece, a slip of a girl, felt the call of duty at the beginning of +the war. Her brothers were early volunteers in Kitchener's Army. They were +in the trenches and she longed for the sensation of bearing a burden of +hard work. She went to Woolwich Arsenal and toiled twelve hours a day. +She broke under the strain, recuperated, and took up munition work again. +She became expert, and was in time an overseer told off to train other +women. But she was never satisfied, and always anxious to be nearer the +great struggle. She broke away one day and went to Southampton for a Waac +examination, and found herself one of a group of a hundred and fifty gentlewomen +all anxious to enter active service and all prepared for some definite +work. They stood their tests, and Dolly--that's the little niece's pet +name, given to her because she is so tiny--is now working as an "engine +fitter" just behind the fighting lines. Dainty Dolly, whom we have always +treated as a fragile bit of Sèvres china, clad in breeches and puttees, +under the booming of the great guns, is fitting patiently, part to part, +the beating engine which will lift on wings some English boy in his flight +through the blue skies of France. +<p>But it must not be supposed that the magnificent service of British +women, devoted, efficient and well-organized from top to bottom, realized +itself without friction, any more than it will here. There were certainly +two wars going on in Great Britain for a long time, and the internal strife +was little less bitter than the international conflict. The most active +center of this contest of which we have heard so little was in industry, +and the combatants were the government, trade unions and women. The unions +were doing battle because of fear of unskilled workers, especially when +intelligent and easily trained; the government, in sore need of munition +hands, was bargaining with the unskilled for long hours and low pay. Finally +the government and the unions reluctantly agreed that women must be employed; +both wanted them to be skillful, but not too skillful, and above all, to +remain amenable. It has been made clear, too, that women enter their new +positions "for the war only." At the end of hostilities--international +hostilities--women are to hand over their work and wages to men and go +home and be content. Will the program be fulfilled? +<p>The wishes of women themselves may play some part. How do they feel? +Obviously, every day the war lasts they get wider experience of the sorrows +and pleasures of financial independence. Women are called the practical +sex, and I certainly found them in England facing the fact that peace will +mean an insufficient number of breadwinners to go around and that a maimed +man may have low earning power. The women I met were not dejected at the +prospect; they showed, on the contrary, a spirit not far removed from elation +in finding new opportunities of service. After I had sat and listened to +speech after speech at the annual conference of the National Union of Women +Workers, with delegates from all parts of the country, presided over by +Mrs. Creighton, widow of the late Bishop of London, there was no doubt +in my mind that British women desired to enter paid fields of work, and +regarded as permanent the great increase in their employment. No regrets +or hesitations were expressed in a single speech, and the solutions of +the problems inherent in the new situation all lay in the direction of +equality of preparation and equality of pay with men. +<p>The strongest element in the women's trade unions takes the same stand. +The great rise in the employment of women is not regarded as a "war measure," +and all the suggestions made to meet the hardships of readjustment, such +as a "minimum wage for all unskilled workers, men as well as women," are +based on the idea of the new workers being permanent factors in the labor +market. +<p>The same conclusion was reached in the report presented to the British +Association by the committee appointed to investigate the "Replacement +of Male by Female Labor." The committee found itself in entire disagreement +with the opinion that the increased employment of women was a passing phase, +and made recommendations bearing on such measures as improved technical +training for girls as well as for boys, a minimum wage for unskilled men +as well as women, equal pay for equal work, and the abolition of "half-timers." +But while it was obvious that the greatest asset of belligerent nations +is the labor of women, while learned societies and organizations of women +laid down rules for their safe and permanent employment, the British Government +showed marked opposition to the new workers. If the Cabinet did not believe +the war would be brief, it certainly acted as if Great Britain alone among +the belligerents would have no shortage of male industrial hands. At a +time when Germany had five hundred thousand women in munition factories, +England had but ten thousand. +<p>There is no doubt that the country was at first organized merely for +a spurt. Boys and girls were pressed into service, wages were cut down +for women, hours lengthened for men. Government reports read like the Shaftesbury +attacks on the conditions of early factory days. We hear again of beds +that are never cold, the occupant of one shift succeeding the occupant +of the next, of the boy sleeping in the same bed with two men, and three +girls in a cot in the same room. Labor unrest was met at first by the Munitions +War Act prohibiting strikes and lockouts, establishing compulsory arbitration +and suspending all trade-union rules which might "hamper production." Under +the law a "voluntary army of workers" signed up as ready to go anywhere +their labor was needed, and local munition committees became labor courts +endowed with power to change wage rates, to inflict fines on slackers, +and on those who broke the agreements of the "voluntary army." +<p>To meet the threatening rebellion, a Health of Munition Workers Committee +under the Ministry of Munitions was appointed to "consider and advise on +questions of industrial fatigue, hours of labor and other matters affecting +the physical health and physical efficiency of workers in munition factories +and workshops." On this committee there were distinguished medical men, +labor experts, members of parliament and two women, Miss R.E. Squire of +the Factory Department and Mrs. H.J. Tennant. +<p>The committee was guided by a desire to have immense quantities of munitions +turned out, and faced squarely the probability that the war would be of +long duration. Its findings, embodied in a series of memoranda, have lessons +for us, not only for war times, but for peace times, for all time. +<p>On a seven day week the verdict was that "if the maximum output is to +be secured and maintained for any length of time, a weekly period of rest +must be allowed." Overtime was advised against, a double or triple shift +being recommended. +<p>In July, 1916, the committee published a most interesting memorandum +on experiments in the relation of output to hours. In one case the output +was increased eight percent by reducing the weekly hours from sixty-eight +to fifty-nine, and it was found that a decrease to fifty-six hours per +week gave the same output as fifty-nine. It need hardly be said that there +was no change in machinery, tools, raw material or workers. All elements +except hours of work were identical. Twenty-seven workers doing very heavy +work increased their output ten percent by cutting weekly hours from sixty-one +to fifty-five. In a munition plant employing thirty-six thousand hands +it was found that the sick rate ranged from five to eight percent when +the employees were working overtime, and was only three percent when they +were on a double shift. +<p>The war has forced Great Britain to carry out the findings of this committee +and to consider more seriously than ever before, and for both men and women, +the problem of industrial fatigue, the relation of accidents to hours of +labor, industrial diseases, housing, transit, and industrial canteens. +The munition worker is as important as the soldier and must have the best +of care. +<p>While the friction in the ranks of industrial women workers was still +far from being adjusted, the government met its Waterloo in the contest +with medical women. The service which they freely offered their country +was at first sternly refused. Undaunted, they sought recognition outside +the mother country. They knew their skill and they knew the soldiers' need. +They turned to hospitable France, and received official recognition. On +December 14, 1914, the first hospital at the front under British medical +women was opened in Abbaye Royaumont, near Creil. It carries the official +designation, "Hôpital Auxiliaire 301." The doctors, the nurses, the +cooks, are all women. One of the capable chauffeurs I saw running the ambulance +when I was in Creil. She was getting the wounded as they came down from +the front. The French Government appreciated what the women were doing +and urged them to give more help. At Troyes another unit gave the French +army its first experience of nursing under canvas. +<p>After France had been profiting by the skill of British women for months, +Sir Alfred Keogh, Medical Director General, wisely insisted that the War +Office yield and place a hospital in the hands of women. The War Hospital +in Endell Street, London, is now under Dr. Flora Murray, and every office, +except that of gateman, is filled by women. From the doctors, who rank +as majors, down to the cooks, who rank as non-commissioned officers, every +one connected with Endell Street has military standing. It indicated the +long, hard road these women had traveled to secure official recognition +that the doctor who showed me over the hospital told me, as a matter for +congratulation, that at night the police brought in drunken soldiers to +be sobered. "Every war hospital must receive them," she explained, "and +we are glad we are not passed over, for that gives the stamp to our official +standing." +<p>It was a beautiful autumn day when I visited Endell Street. The great +court was full of convalescents, and the orderlies in khaki, with veils +floating back from their close-fitting toques, were carefully and skillfully +lifting the wounded from an ambulance. I spoke to one of the soldier boys +about the absence of men doctors and orderlies, and his quick query was, +"And what should we want men for?" It seems that they always take that +stand after a day or two. At first the patient is puzzled; he calls the +doctor "sister" and the orderly "nurse," but ends by being an enthusiastic +champion of the new order. Not a misogynist did I find. One poor fellow +who had been wounded again and again and had been in many hospitals, declared, +"I don't mean no flattery, but this place leaves nothink wanting." +<p>The first woman I met on my last visit to England upset my expectation +of finding that war pushed women back into primitive conditions of toil, +crushed them under the idea that physical force rules the world, and made +them subservient. I chanced upon her as she was acting as ticket-puncher +at the Yarmouth station. She was well set-up, alert, efficient, helpful +in giving information, and, above all, cheerful. There were two capable +young women at the bookstall, too. One had lost a brother at the front, +the other her lover. I felt that they regarded their loss as one item in +the big national accounting. They were heroically cheerful in "doing their +bit." +<p>Throughout my stay in England I searched for, but could not find, the +self-effacing spinster of former days. In her place was a capable woman, +bright-eyed, happy. She was occupied and bustled at her work. She jumped +on and off moving vehicles with the alertness, if not the unconsciousness, +of the expert male. She never let me stand in omnibus or subway, but quickly +gave me her seat, as indeed she insisted upon doing for elderly gentlemen +as well. The British woman had found herself and her muscles. England was +a world of women--women in uniforms; there was the army of nurses, and +then the messengers, porters, elevator hands, tram conductors, bank clerks, +bookkeepers, shop attendants. They each seemed to challenge the humble +stranger, "Superfluous? Not I, I'm a recruit for national service!" Even +a woman doing time-honored womanly work moved with an air of distinction; +she dusted a room for the good of her country. Just one glimpse was I given +of the old-time daughter of Eve, when a ticket-collector at Reading said: +"I can't punch your ticket. Don't you see I'm eating an apple!" +<p>One of the reactions of the wider functioning of brain and muscle which +struck me most forcibly was the increased joyfulness of women. They were +happy in their work, happy in the thought of rendering service, so happy +that the poignancy of individual loss was carried more easily. +<p>This cheerfulness is somewhat gruesomely voiced in a cartoon in <i>Punch</i> +touching on the allowance given to the soldier's wife. She remarks, "This +war is 'eaven--twenty-five shillings a week and no 'usband bothering about!" +We have always credited <i>Punch</i> with knowing England. Truth stands +revealed by a thrust, however cynical, when softened by challenging humor. +<p>There was no discipline in the pension system. No work was required. +The case of a girl I met in a country town was common. She was working +in a factory earning eleven shillings a week. A day or two later I saw +her, and she told me she had stopped work, as she had "married a soldier, +and 'e's gone to France, and I get twelve and six separation allowance +a week." Never did the strange English name, "separation allowance," seem +more appropriate for the wife's pension than in this girl's story. Little +wonder was it that in the early months of the war there was some riotous +living among soldiers' wives! +<p>And the comments of women of influence on the drunkenness and waste +of money on foolish finery were as striking to me as the sordid condition +itself. The woman chairman of a Board of Poor Law Guardians in the north +of England told me that when her fellow-members suggested that Parliament +ought to appoint committees to disburse the separation allowances, she +opposed them with the heroic philosophy that women can be trained in wisdom +only by freedom to err, that a sense of responsibility had never been cultivated +in them, and the country would have to bear the consequences. In reply +to my inquiry as to how the Guardians received these theories, I learned +that "they knew she was right and dropped their plan." +<p>The faith of leading women that experience would be the best teacher +for the soldier's wife has been justified. A labor leader in the Midlands +told me that an investigation by his trade union showed that only one hundred +women in the ten thousand cases inquired into were mis-spending their allowances. +And when I was visiting a board school in a poor district of London, and +remarked to the head teacher that the children looked well cared for, she +told me that never had they been so well fed and clothed. There seemed +no doubt in her mind that it was best to have the family budget in the +hands of the mother. In the sordid surroundings of the mean streets of +great cities, there is developing in women practical wisdom and a fine +sense of individual responsibility. +<p>Perhaps of greater significance than just how separation allowances +are being spent is the fact that women have discovered that their work +as housewives and mothers has a value recognized by governments in hard +cash. It makes one speculate as to whether wives in the warring nations +will step back without a murmur into the old-time dependence on one man, +or whether these simple women may contribute valuable ideas towards the +working out of sound schemes of motherhood pensions. +<p>The women of Great Britain are experiencing economic independence, they +are living in an atmosphere of recognition of the value of their work as +housewives and mothers. Women leaders in all classes give no indication +of regarding pensions or remuneration in gainful pursuits as other than +permanent factors in social development, and much of the best thought of +men as well as women is centered on group experiments in domestic coöperation, +in factory canteens, in municipal kitchens, which are a natural concomitant +to the wider functioning of women. +<p>Great Britain is not talking about feminism, it is living it. Perhaps +nothing better illustrates the national acceptance of the fact than the +widespread amusement touched with derision caused by the story of the choleric +gentlemen who, on being asked at the time of one of the government registrations +whether his wife was dependent upon him or not, roared in rage, "Well, +if my wife isn't dependent on me, I'd like to know what man she is dependent +on!" +<p>Only second to Britain's lesson for us in the self-reliance of its women, +and the thorough mobilization of their labor-power and executive ability, +is its lesson in protection for all industrial workers. It stands as one +people against the present enemy, and in its effort does not fail to give +thought to race conservation for the future. +<p><a NAME="Footnote_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor2">[2]</a> Through the courtesy +of the Editors of <i>The Outlook</i>, I am at liberty to use in this and +the following chapter, some of the material published in an article by +me in <i>The Outlook</i> of June 28, 1916. +<br> +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<h2> +<a NAME="IV"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">IV<br> +MOBILIZING WOMEN IN FRANCE</a></h2> +Compared with the friction in the mobilization of woman-power in Great +Britain, the readjustment in the lives of women in France was like the +opening out of some harmonious pageant in full accord with popular sympathy. +But who has not said, "France is different!" +<p>It is different, and in nothing more so than in its attitude toward +its women. Without discussion with organizations of men, without hindrance +from the government, women filled the gaps in the industrial army. It was +obvious that the new workers, being unskilled, would need training; the +government threw open the technical schools to them. A spirit of hospitality, +of helpfulness, of common sense, reigned. +<center> +<p><img SRC="images/071.gif" ALT="The French poilu on furlough is put to work harrowing." BORDER=1 height=273 width=500></center> + +<h4> +The French poilu on furlough is put to work harrowing.</h4> +And it was not only in industry that France showed herself wise. I found +that the government had coöperated unreservedly with all the philanthropic +work of women and had given them a wide sphere in which they could rise +above amateurish effort and carry out plans calling for administrative +ability. +<p>When the Conseil National des Femmes Françaises inaugurated its +work to bring together the scattered families of Belgium and northern France, +and when the Association pour l'Aide Fraternelle aux Évacués +Alsaciens-Lorrains began its work for the dispersed peoples of the provinces, +an order was issued by the government to every prefect to furnish lists +of all refugees in his district to the headquarters of the women's societies +in Paris. It was through this good will on the part of the central government +that these societies were able to bring together forty thousand Belgian +families, and to clothe and place in school, or at work, the entire dispersed +population of the reconquered districts of Alsace-Lorraine. +<p>Nor did these societies cease work with the completion of their initial +effort. They turned themselves into employment bureaus and with the aid +and sanction of the government found work for the thousands of women who +were thrown out of employment. They had the machinery to accomplish their +object, the Council being an old established society organized throughout +the country, and the Association to Aid the Refugees from Alsace-Lorraine +(a nonpartisan name adopted, by the way, at the request of the Minister +of the Interior to cover for the moment the patriotic work of the leading +suffrage society) had active units in every prefecture. +<p>One of the admirable private philanthropies was the canteen at the St. +Lazarre station in Paris. I am tempted to single it out because its organizer, +Countess de Berkaim, told me that in all the months she had been running +it--and it was open twenty-four hours of the day--not a single volunteer +had been five minutes late. The canteen was opened in February, 1915, with +a reading and rest room. Six hundred soldiers a day have been fed. The +two big rooms donated by the railway for the work were charming with their +blue and white checked curtains, dividing kitchen from restaurant and rest +room from reading room. The work is no small monument to the reliability +and organizing faculty of French women. +<p>It was in France, too, that I found the group of women who realized +that the permanent change which the war was making in the relation of women +to society needed fundamental handling. Mlle. Valentine Thomson, founder +of La Vie Féminine, held that not only was the war an economic struggle +and not only must the financial power of the combatants rest on the labor +of women, but the future of the nations will largely depend upon the attitude +which women take toward their new obligations. Realizing that business +education would be a determining factor in that attitude, Mlle. Thomson +persuaded her father, who was then Minister of Commerce, to send out an +official recommendation to the Chambers of Commerce to open the commercial +schools to girls. The advice was very generally followed, but as Paris +refused, a group of women, backed by the Ministry, founded a school in +which were given courses of instruction in the usual business subjects, +and lectures on finance, commercial law and international trade. +<p>Mlle. Thomson herself turned her business gifts to good use in a successful +effort to build up for the immediate benefit of artists and workers the +doll trade of which France was once supreme mistress. Exhibitions of the +art, old and new, were held in many cities in the United States, in South +America and in England. The dolls went to the hearts of lovers of beauty, +and what promised surer financial return, to the hearts of the children. +<p>To do something for France--that stood first in the minds of the initiators +of this commercial project. They knew her people must be employed. And +next, the desire to bring back charm to an old art prompted their effort. +Mlle. Thomson fully realizes just what "Made in Germany" signifies. The +peoples of the world have had their taste corrupted by floods of the cheap +and tawdry. Germany has been steadily educating us to demand quantity, +quantity mountains high. There is promise that the doll at least will be +rescued by France and made worth the child's devotion. +<p>In industry, as well as in all else, one feels that in France there +has not been so much a revolution as an orderly development. Women were +in munition factories even before the war, the number has merely swelled. +The women of the upper and lower bourgeois class always knew their husband's +business, the one could manage the shop, the other could bargain with the +best of them as to contracts and output. Women were trained as bookkeepers +and clerks under Napoleon I; he wanted men as soldiers, and so decreed +women should go into business. And the woman of the aristocratic class +has merely slipped out of her seclusion as if putting aside an old-fashioned +garment, and now carries on her philanthropies in more serious and coördinated +manner. We know the practical business experience possessed by French women, +and so are prepared to learn that many a big commercial enterprise, the +owner having gone to the front, is now directed by his capable wife. That +is but a development, too, is it not? For we had all heard long ago of +Mme. Duval, even if we had not eaten at her restaurants, and though we +had never bought a ribbon or a carpet at the Bon Marché, we had +heard of the woman who helped break through old merchant habits and gave +the world the department store. +<p>But nothing has been more significant in its growth during the war than +the small enterprises in which the husband and wife in the domestic munition +shop, laboring side by side with a little group of assistants, have been +turning out marvels of skill. The man is now in the trenches fighting for +France, and the woman takes command and leads the industrial battalion +to victory. She knows she fights for France. +<p>A word more about her business, for she is playing an economic part +that brings us up at attention. She may be solving the problem of adjustment +of home and work so puzzling to women. There are just such domestic shops +dotted all over the map of France; in the Paris district alone there are +over eighteen hundred of them. The conditions are so excellent and the +ruling wages so high, that the minimum wage law passed in 1915 applied +only to the sweated home workers in the clothing trade, and not to the +domestic munition shops. +<p>A commission which included in its membership a trade unionist, sent +by the British government in the darkest days to find why it was that France +could produce so much more ammunition than England, found these tiny workshops, +with their primitive equipment, performing miracles. The output was huge +and of the best. The woman, when at the head, seemed to turn out more than +the man, she worked with such undying energy. The commission said it was +the "spirit of France" that drove the workers forward and renewed the flagging +energies. But even the trade unionist referred to the absence of all opposition +to women on the part of organizations of men. Perhaps the spirit of France +is undying because in it is a spirit of unity and harmony. +<p>It seemed to me there was one very practical explanation of the unmistakable +energy of the French worker, both man and woman. The whole nation has the +wise custom of taking meal time with due seriousness. The break at noon +in the great manufactories, as well as in the family workshop, is long, +averaging one hour and a half, and reaching often to two hours. The French +never gobble. Because food is necessary to animal life, they do not on +that account take a puritanical view of it. They dare enjoy it, in spite +of its physiological bearing. They sit down to it, dwell upon it, get its +flavor, and after the meal they sit still and as a nation permit themselves +unabashed to enjoy the sensation of hunger appeased. That's the common +sense spirit of France. +<p>Of course the worker is renewed, hurls herself on the work again with +ardor, and losing no time through fatigue, throws off an enormous output. +<p>Wages perform their material share in spurring the worker. Louis Barthou +says that the woman's average is eight francs a day. Long ago--it seems +long ago--she could earn at best five francs in the Paris district. She +works on piece work now, getting the same rate as men. And think of it!--this +must indeed be because of the spirit of France--this woman does better +than men on the light munition work, and equals, yes, equals her menfolk +on the heavy shells. I do not say this, a commission of men says it, a +commission with a trade union member to boot. The coming of the woman-worker +with the spirit of win-the-war in her heart is the same in France as elsewhere, +only here her coming is more gracious. Twelve hundred easily take up work +on the Paris subway. They are the wives of mobilized employees. The offices +of the Post, the Telegraph and Telephone bristle with women, of course, +for eleven thousand have taken the places of men. Some seven thousand fill +up the empty positions on the railways, serving even as conductors on through +trains. Their number has swollen to a half million in munitions, and to +over half that number in powder mills and marine workshops; in civil establishments +over three hundred thousand render service; and even the conservative banking +world welcomes the help of some three thousand women. +<center> +<p><img SRC="images/080.gif" ALT="Has there ever been anything impossible to French women since the time of Jeanne d'Arc? The fields must be harrowed--they have no horses" height=308 width=500></center> + +<h4> +Has there ever been anything impossible to French women since the time +of Jeanne d'Arc? The fields must be harrowed--they have no horses.</h4> +Out on the land the tally is greatest of all. Every woman from the village +bends over the bosom of France, urging fertility. The government called +them in the first hours of the conflict. Viviani spoke the word:-- +<p>"The departure for the army of all those who can carry arms, leaves +the work in the fields undone; the harvest is not yet gathered in; the +vintage season is near. In the name of the entire nation united behind +it, I make an appeal to your courage, and to that of your children, whose +age alone and not their valour, keeps them from the war. +<p>"I ask you to keep on the work in the fields, to finish gathering in +the year's harvest, to prepare that of the coming year. You cannot render +your country a greater service. +<p>"It is not for you, but for her, that I appeal to your hearts. +<p>"You must safeguard your own living, the feeding of the urban populations +and especially the feeding of those who are defending the frontier, as +well as the independence of the country, civilization and justice. +<p>"Up, then, French women, young children, daughters and sons of the country! +Replace on the field of work those who are on the field of battle. Strive +to show them to-morrow the cultivated soil, the harvests all gathered in, +the fields sown. +<p>"In hours of stress like the present, there is no ignoble work. Everything +that helps the country is great. Up! Act! To work! To-morrow there will +be glory for everyone. +<p>"Long live the Republic! Long live France!" +<p>Women instantly responded to the proclamation. Only the old men were +left to help, only decrepit horses, rejected by the military requisition. +More than once I journeyed far into the country, but I never saw an able-bodied +man. What a gap to be filled!--but the French peasant woman filled it. +She harvested that first year, she has sowed and garnered season by season +ever since. Men, horses, machinery were lacking, the debit yawned, but +she piled up a credit to meet it by unflagging toil. +<p>With equal devotion and with initiative and power of organization the +woman of leisure has "carried on." The three great societies corresponding +with our Red Cross, the Société de Secours aux Blessés, +the Union des Femmes de France, and the Association des Dames Françaises, +have established fifteen hundred hospitals with one hundred and fifteen +thousand beds, and put forty-three thousand nurses in active service. Efficiency +has kept pace with this superb effort, as is testified to by many a war +cross, many a medal, and the cross of the Legion of Honor. +<p>Up to the level of her means France sets examples in works of human +salvage worthy the imitation of all nations. The mairie in each arrondissement +has become no less than a community center. The XIV arrondissement in Paris +is but the pattern for many. Here the wife of the mayor, Mme. Brunot, has +made the stiff old building a human place. The card catalogue carrying +information about every soldier from the district, gives its overwhelming +news each day gently to wife or mother, through the lips of Mme. Brunot +or her women assistants. The work of Les Amis des Orphelins de Guerre centers +here, the "adopted" child receiving from the good maire the gifts in money +and presents sent by the Americans who are generously filling the role +of parent. The widows of the soldiers gather here for comfort and advice. +<p>And the mairie holds a spirit of experiment. It houses not only courage +and sympathy, but progress. The "XIV" has ventured on a Cuisine Populaire +under Mme. Brunot's wholesome guidance. And so many other arrondissements +have followed suit that Paris may be regarded as making a great experiment +in the municipal feeding of her people. It is not charity, the food is +paid for. In the "XIV" fifteen hundred persons eat a meal or two at the +mairie each day. The charge is seventy-five centimes--fifteen cents, and +one gets a soup, meat and a vegetable, and fruit. +<p>The world seems to be counselling us that if we wish to be well and +cheaply fed we must go where there are experts to cook, where buying is +done in quantity, and where the manager knows about nutritive values. +<p>If a word of praise is extended to the maire of the XIV arrondissement +for his very splendid work, an example to all France, he quickly urges, +"Ah, but Mme. Brunot!" And so it is always, if you exclaim, "Oh, the spirit +of the men of France!" and a Frenchman's ears catch your words, he will +correct, "Ah, but the women!" +<p>And the women do stand above all other women, they have had such opportunity +for heroism. Whose heart does not beat the faster when the names Soisson +and Mme. Macherez are spoken! The mayor and the council gone, she assumes +the office and keeps order while German shells fall thick on the town. +And then the enemy enters, and asks for the mayor, and she replies, "Le +maire, c'est moi." And then do we women not like to think of Mlle. Deletete +staying at her post in the telegraph office in Houplines in spite of German +bombardments, and calmly facing tormentors, when they smashed her instruments +and threatened her with death. One-tenth of France in the enemy's hands, +and in each village and town some woman staying behind to nurse the sick +and wounded, to calm the population when panic threatens, to stand invincible +between the people and their conquerors! +<p>It is very splendid!--the French man holding steady at the front, the +French woman an unyielding second line of defense. But what of France? +Words of praise must not swallow our sense of obligation. Let us with our +hundred millions of people face the figures. The death rate in France, +not counting the military loss, is twenty per thousand, with a birth rate +of eight per thousand. In Paris for the year ending August, 1914, there +were forty-eight thousand nine hundred and seventeen births; in the year +ending in the same month, 1916, the births dropped to twenty-six thousand +one hundred and seventy-nine. The total deaths for that year in all France +were one million, one hundred thousand, and the births three hundred and +twelve thousand. +<p>France is profoundly, infinitely sad. She has cause. I shall never forget +looking into the very depths of her sorrow when I was at Creil. A great +drive was in progress, the wounded were being brought down from the front, +troops hurried forward. Four different regiments passed as I sat at déjeuner. +The restaurant, full of its noonday patrons, was a typical French café +giving on the street. We could have reached out and touched the soldiers. +They marched without music, without song or word, marched in silence. Some +of the men were from this very town; their little sons, with set faces, +too, walked beside them and had brought them bunches of flowers. The people +in the restaurant never spoke above a whisper, and when the troops passed +were as silent as death. There was no cheer, but just a long, wistful gaze, +the soldiers looking into their eyes, they into the soldiers'. +<p>But France can bear her burden, can solve her problem if we lift our +full share from her bent shoulders. Her women can save the children if +the older men, relieved by our young soldiers, come back from the trenches, +setting women free for the work of child saving. France can rebuild her +villages if her supreme architects, her skilled workers are replaced in +the trenches by our armies. France can renew her spirit and save her body +if her experts in science, if her poets and artists are sent back to her, +and our less great bare their breasts to the Huns. +<br> +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<h2> +<a NAME="V"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">V<br> +MOBILIZING WOMEN IN GERMANY</a></h2> +The military mobilization of Germany was no more immediate and effective +than the call to arms for women. On August 1, 1914, the summons went out, +and German women were at once part of the smooth running machine of efficiency. +<p>The world says the Kaiser has been preparing for war for forty years. +The world means that he has been preparing the fighting force. The sword +and guns were to be ready. But the military arm of the nation, the German +government believes, is but the first line of attack; the people are the +second line, and so they, too, in all their life activities, were not forgotten. +The military aristocracy has never neglected the function of women in the +state. The definition of their function may differ from ours, but that +there is a function is recognized, and it is related to the other vital +social organs. +<p>Slowly, through the last half of the nineteenth century, there had grown +up clubs among German women focusing on a definite bit of work, or crystallizing +about an idea. Germany even had suffrage societies. Politics, however, +were forbidden by the government; women were not allowed to hang on the +fringe of a meeting held to discuss men's politics. But the women of the +Fatherland were free to pool their ideas in philanthropic and hygienic +corners, and venture out at times on educational highways. The Froebel +societies had many a contest with the government, for to the military mind, +the gentle pedagogue's theories seemed subversive of discipline as enforced +by spurs and bayonets. +<p>These clubs, covering every trade and profession, every duty and every +aspiration of women, were dotted over the German Empire. At last they drew +together in a federation. The government looked on. It saw a machine created, +and believing in thorough organization, no doubt gave thought to the possibilities +of the Bund deutscher, Frauenvereine. At the outbreak of war, Dr. Gertrud +Baumer was president of the Bund. She was a leader of great ability, marshalling +half a million of women. No other organization was so widespread and well-knit, +except perhaps Der Vaterlandische Frauenverein with its two thousand one +hundred and fifty branches. It was evangelical and military. The Empress +was its patron. Its popular name is the "Armée der Kaiserin." +<p>There the two great national societies stood--one aristocratic, the +other democratic, one appealing to the ruling class, the other holding +in bonds of fellowship the rich and the poor, the urban and the rural, +the professional and the industrial woman. +<p>Every belligerent president or premier has faced exactly the same perplexity. +What woman, what society, is to be recognized as leader? The question has +brought beads of perspiration to the foreheads of statesmen. +<p>France solved the difficulty urbanely. It said "yes" to each and all. +It promised coöperation and kept the promise. By affably--always affably +and hospitably--accepting this service from one society, and suggesting +another pressing need to its competitor, it sorted out capabilities, and +warded off duplication. Perhaps this did not bring the fullest efficiency, +but the loss was more than made up, no doubt, by a free field for initiative. +Britain ignored all existing organizations of women, and after a year and +a half of puzzlement created a separate government department for their +mobilization. America struck out still another course. It took the heads +of several national societies, bound them in one committee, to which it +gave, perhaps with the idea of avoiding any danger of friction, neither +power nor funds. +<p>Germany faced the same critical moment for decision. The government +wanted efficient use of woman-power on the land, in the factory, in the +home, and that quickly. It made use of the best existing machinery. Dr. +Gertrud Baumer visited the Ministerium des Innern, and on August 1 she +issued a call for the mobilization of women for service to the Fatherland +in the Nationale Frauendienst. Under the aegis of the government, with +the national treasury behind her, Dr. Baumer summoned the women of the +Empire. By order, every woman and every organization of women was to fall +in line under the Frauendienst in each village and city for "the duration +of the war."<a NAME="FNanchor3"></a><sup><a href="#Footnote_3">[3]</a></sup> +<p>In each army district, the government appointed a woman as directress, +and by order to town and provincial authorities made the Frauendienst part +of local executive affairs. +<p>Among the immediate duties laid upon the Frauendienst by the authorities +was the task of registering all needy persons, of providing cheap eating +places, opening workrooms, and setting up nurseries for children, especially +for those who were motherless and those whose fathers had fallen at the +front and whose mothers were in some gainful pursuit. With these duties +went the administrative service of coöperating with the government +in "keeping up an even supply of foodstuffs, and controlling the buying +and selling of food." +<p>Germany anticipated as did no other belligerent the unemployment which +would follow a declaration of war, and prepared to meet the condition. +A great deal of army work, such as tent sewing, belts for cartridges, bread +sacks, and sheets for hospitals, was made immediately available for the +women thrown out of luxury trades. In the first month of the war the Frauendienst +opened work-rooms in all great centers; machinery was installed by magic +and through the six work-rooms in Berlin alone twenty-three thousand women +were given paid employment in one week. +<p>Such efforts could not, of course, absorb the surplus labor, for unemployment +was very great. Eighty percent of the women's hat-makers and milliners +were out of work, seventy-two percent of the workers in glass and fifty-eight +percent in china. The Frauendienst investigated two hundred and fifty-five +thousand needy cases, and in Berlin alone found sixty thousand women who +had lost their employment. Charity had to render help. Here, again, it +is an example of the alertness of the organization and its close connection +with the government that the Berlin magistracy deputed to twenty-three +Hilfscommissionen from the Frauendienst the work of giving advice and charity +relief to the unemployed. Knitting rooms were opened, clothing depots, +mending rooms, where donated clothing was repaired, and in one month fifty-six +thousand orders for milk, five hundred thousand for bread, and three hundred +thousand for meals were distributed for the city authorities. +<p>The adjustment to war requirements went on more quickly in Germany than +in any other country. Before a year had passed the surplus hands had been +absorbed, and a shortage of labor power was beginning to be felt. +<p>And now opens the war drama set with the same scene everywhere. Women +hurry forward to take up the burden laid down by men, and to assume the +new occupations made necessary by the organization of the world for military +conflict. To tell of Germany is merely to speak in bigger numbers. Women +in munitions? Of course, well over the million mark. Trolley conductors? +Of course, six hundred in Berlin alone before the first Christmas. Women +are making the fuses, fashioning the big shells, and at the same heavy +machines used by the men. That speaks volumes--the same heavy machines. +Great Britain and France have in every case introduced lighter machinery +for their women. But, whatever the conditions, in Germany the women are +handling high explosives, sewing heavy saddlery, operating the heaviest +drill machines. Women have been put on the "hardest jobs hitherto filled +by men." In the German-Luxemburg Mining and Furnace Company at Differdingen, +they are found doing work at the slag and blast furnaces which had always +required men of great endurance. They work on the same shifts as the men, +receive the same pay, but are not worked overtime "because they must go +home and perform their domestic duties." +<p>One feels the weight of the German system. Patient women shoulder double +burdens. They always did. +<p>In the Post and Telegraph department there is an army of fifty thousand +women. The telephone service is entirely in their hands, and running more +smoothly than formerly. Dr. Käthe Schirmacher declares comfortingly +in the <i>Kriegsfrau</i> that "one must not forget that these women know +many important bits of information--and keep silent." Women have learned +to keep a secret! +<p>One hundred and eighty nurses, experts with the X-ray, were in the front +line dressing stations in the early days of the war, and before a week +of conflict had passed women were in the Field Post, and Frau Reimer, organizer +of official chauffeurs, was on the western line of attack. +<p>Agriculture claims more women than any occupation in Germany. They were +always on the farm, perhaps they are happier there now since they themselves +are in command. It is said that "the peasants work in the boots and trousers +of their husbands and ride in the saddle." War has liberated German women +from the collar and put them on horseback! +<p>But strangest and most unexpected of all is the professional and administrative +use of women. The government has sent women architects and interior decorators +to East Prussia to plan and carry through reconstruction work. Over a hundred--to +be exact, one hundred and sixteen at last accounts--have taken the places +of men in administrative departments connected with the railways. Many +widows who have shown capacity have been put in government positions of +importance formerly held by their husbands. Women have become farm managers, +superintendents of dairy industries, and representatives of landed proprietors. +<p>The disseminating of all instruction and information for women on war +economies was delegated to the League of Women's Domestic Science Clubs. +The Berlin course was held in no less a place than the Abgeordnetenhaus, +and the Herrenhaus opened its doors wide on Rural Women's Day when Agricultural +Week was held at the capital. +<p>When the full history of the war comes to be written, no doubt one reason +for Germany's marvelous power to stand so long against the world will be +found in her use of every brain and muscle of the nation. This has been +for her no exclusive war. Her entire people to their last ounce of energy +have been engaged. +<p>And this supreme service on the part of German women seeks democratic +expression. From them comes the clearest, bravest word that has reached +us across the border. The most hopeful sign is this manifesto from the +suffrage organizations to the government: "Up to the present Germany has +stood in the lowest rank of nations as regards women's rights. In most +civilized lands women already have been given a large share in public affairs. +German women have been granted nothing except within the most insignificant +limits. In New Zealand, Australia and most American States, and even before +the war in Finland and Norway, they had been given political rights; to-day, +Sweden, Russia and many other countries give them a full or limited franchise. +The war has brought a full victory to the women of England, Canada, Russia +and Denmark, and large concessions are within sight in France, Holland +and Hungary. +<p>"Among us Germans not only the national but even the commercial franchise +is denied, and even a share in the industrial and commercial courts. In +the demand for the democratization of German public life our legislators +do not seem even to admit the existence of women. +<p>"But during the war the cooperation of women in public life has unostentatiously +grown from year to year until to-day the number of women engaged in various +callings in Germany exceeds the number of men. +<p>"The work they are doing includes all spheres of male activity; without +them it would no longer be possible to support the economic life of the +people. Women have done their full share in the work of the community. +<p>"Does not this performance of duty involve the right to share in the +building up and extension of the social order? +<p>"The women protest against this lack of political rights, in virtue +both of their work for the community and of their work as human beings. +They demand political equality with men. They demand the direct, equal +and secret franchise for all legislative bodies, full equality in the communes +and in legal representation of their interests. +<p>"This first joint pronouncement on women's demands will be followed +by others until the victory of our cause is won." +<p><a NAME="Footnote_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor3">[3]</a> "Die Frauenvereine +jeder Stadt verbinden sich für die Dauer des Krieges zur Organization +Nationaler Frauendienst die zu Berlin am 1ten August begründet wurde." +<br> +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<h2> +<a NAME="VI"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">VI<br> +WOMEN OVER THE TOP IN AMERICA</a></h2> +American women have begun to go over the top. They are going up the scaling-ladder +and out into All Man's Land. Perhaps love of adventure tempts them, perhaps +love of money, or a fine spirit of service, but whatever the propelling +motive, we are seeing them make the venture. +<p>There is nothing new in our day in a woman's being paid for her work--some +of it. But she has never before been seen in America employed, for instance, +as a section hand on a railway. The gangs are few and small as yet, but +there the women are big and strong specimens of foreign birth. They "trim" +the ballast and wield the heavy "tamping" tool with zest. They certainly +have muscles, and are tempted to use them vigorously at three dollars a +day. +<p>In the machine shops where more skill than strength is called for, the +American element with its quick wits and deft fingers predominates. Young +women are working at the lathe with so much precision and accuracy that +solicitude as to what would become of the world if all its men marched +off to war is in a measure assuaged. In the push and drive of the industrial +world, women are handling dangerous chemicals in making flash lights, and +T.N.T. for high explosive shells. The American college girl is not as yet +transmuting her prowess of the athletic field into work on the anvil, as +is the university woman in England, but she has demonstrated her manual +strength and skill on the farm with plough and harrow. +<p>Women and girls answer our call for messenger service, and their intelligence +and courtesy are an improvement upon the manners of the young barbarians +of the race. Women operate elevators, lifting us with safety to the seventh +heaven, or plunging us with precision to the depths. There were those at +first who refused to entrust their lives to such frail hands, and there +are still some who look concerned when they see a woman at the lever; but +on the whole the elevator "girl" has gained the confidence of her public, +and has gained it by skill, not by feminine wiles, for even men won't shoot +into space with a woman at the helm whose sole equipment is charm. With +need of less skill than the elevator operator, but more patience and tact +in managing human nature, the woman conductor is getting her patrons into +line. We are still a little embarrassed in her presence. We try not to +stare at the well-set-up woman in her sensible uniform, while she on her +part tries to look unconscious, and with much dignity accomplishes the +common aim much more successfully than do we. She is so attentive to her +duties, so courteous, and, withal, so calm and serious that I hope she +will abide with us longer than the "duration of the war." +<p>In short, America is witnessing the beginning of a great industrial +and social change, and even those who regard the situation as temporary +cannot doubt that the experience will have important reactions. The development +is more advanced than it was in Great Britain at a corresponding time, +for even before the United States entered the conflict women were being +recruited in war industries. They have opened up every line of service. +There is not an occupation in which a woman is not found. +<p>When men go a-warring, women go to work. +<p>A distinguished general at the end of the Cuban War, enlarging upon +the poet's idea of woman's weeping rôle in wartime, said in a public +speech: "When the country called, women put guns in the hands of their +soldier boys and bravely sent them away. After the good-byes were said +there was nothing for these women to do but to go back and wait, wait, +wait. The excitement of battle was not for them. It was simply a season +of anxiety and heartrending inactivity." Now the fact is, when a great +call to arms is sounded for the men of a nation, women enlist in the industrial +army. If women did indeed sit at home and weep, the enemy would soon conquer. +<p>The dull census tells the thrilling story. Before our Civil War women +were found in less than a hundred trades, at its close in over four hundred. +The census of 1860 gives two hundred and eighty-five thousand women in +gainful pursuits; that of 1870, one million, eight hundred and thirty-six +thousand. Of the Transvaal at war, this story was told to me by an English +officer. He led a small band of soldiers down into the Boer country, on +the north from Rhodesia, as far as he dared. He "did not see a man," even +boys as young as fifteen had joined the army. But at the post of economic +duty stood the Boer woman; she was tending the herds and carrying on all +the work of the farm. She was the base of supplies. That was why the British +finally put her in a concentration camp. Her man could not be beaten with +her at his back. +<p>War compels women to work. That is one of its merits. Women are forced +to use body and mind, they are not, cannot be idlers. Perhaps that is the +reason military nations hold sway so long; their reign continues, not because +they draw strength from the conquered nation, but because their women are +roused to exertion. Active mothers ensure a virile race. +<p>The peaceful nation, if its women fall victims to the luxury which rapidly +increasing wealth brings, will decay. If there come no spiritual awakening, +no sense of responsibility of service, then perhaps war alone can save +it. The routing of idleness and ease by compulsory labor is the good counterbalancing +some of the evil. +<p>The rapidly increasing employment of women to-day, then, is the usual, +and happy, accompaniment of war. But the development has its opponents, +and that is nothing new, either. Let us look them over one by one. The +most mischievous objector is the person, oftenest a woman, who says the +war will be short, and fundamental changes, therefore, should not be made. +This agreeable prophecy does not spring from a heartening belief in victory, +but only from the procrastinating attitude, "Why get ready?" To prepare +for anything less certain than death seems folly to many of the sex, over-trained +in patient waiting. +<p>Then there is the official who constantly sees the seamy side of industrial +life and who concludes--we can scarcely blame him--that "it would be well +if women were excluded entirely from factory life." The bad condition of +industrial surroundings bulks large in his mind, and the value of organized +work to us mortals bulks small. We are all too inclined to forget that +the need for work cannot be eliminated, but the unhealthy process in a +dangerous trade can. Clean up the factory, rather than clean out the women, +is a sound slogan. +<p>And then comes the objector who is exercised as to the effect of paid +work upon woman's charm. Solicitude on this score is often buried in a +woman's heart. It was a woman, the owner of a large estate, who when proposing +to employ women asked how many men she would have to hire in addition, +"to dig, plough and do all the hard work." On learning that the college +units do everything on a farm, she queried anxiously, "But how about their +corsets?" To the explanation, "They don't wear any," came the regret, "What +a pity to make themselves so unattractive!" +<p>I have heard fear expressed, too, lest sex attraction be lost through +work on army hats, the machinery being noisy and the operative, if she +talk, running the danger of acquiring a sharp, high voice. One could but +wonder if most American women work on army hats. +<p>Among the women actually employed, I have found without exception a +fine spirit of service. So many of them have a friend or brother "over +there," that backing up the boys makes a strong personal appeal. But some +of the women who have left factory life behind are adopting an attitude +towards the present industrial situation as lacking in vision as in patriotism. +Throughout a long discussion in which some of these women participated +I was able to follow and get their point of view. To them a woman acting +as a messenger, an elevator operator, or a trolley conductor, was anathema, +and the tempting of women into these employments seemed but the latest +vicious trick of the capitalist. The conductor in her becoming uniform +was most reprehensible, and her evident satisfaction in her job suggested +to her critics that she merely was trying to play a melodramatic part "as +a war hero." In any case, the conductor's occupation was one no woman should +be in, "crowded and pushed about as she is." It was puzzling to know why +it was regarded as right for a woman to pay five cents and be pushed, and +unbecoming for another woman to be paid eighteen dollars and ninety cents +a week and run the risk of a jolt when stepping outside her barrier. +<p>But the ideals of yesterday fail to make their appeal. It is not the +psychological moment to urge, on the ground of comfort, the woman's right +to protection. The contrast between the trenches and the street car or +factory is too striking. But it is, however, the exact moment to plead +for better care of workers, both women and men, because their health and +skill are as necessary in attaining the national aim as the soldiers' prowess +and well-being. It is the time to advocate the protection of the worker +from long hours, because the experience of Europe has proved that a greater +and better output is achieved when a short day is strictly adhered to, +when the weekly half-holiday is enjoyed, and Sunday rest respected. The +United States is behind other great industrial countries in legal protection +for the workers. War requirements may force us to see in the health of +the worker the greatest of national assets. Meantime, whether approved +or not, the American woman is going over the top. Four hundred and more +are busy on aeroplanes at the Curtiss works. The manager of a munition +shop where to-day but fifty women are employed, is putting up a dormitory +to accommodate five hundred. An index of expectation! Five thousand are +employed by the Remington Arms Company at Bridgeport. At the International +Arms and Fuse Company at Bloomfield, New Jersey, two thousand, eight hundred +are employed. The day I visited the place, in one of the largest shops +women had only just been put on the work, but it was expected that in less +than a month they would be found handling all of the twelve hundred machines +under that one roof alone. +<p>The skill of the women staggers one. After a week or two they master +the operations on the "turret," gauging and routing machines. The best +worker on the "facing" machine is a woman. She is a piece worker, as many +of the women are, and is paid at the same rate as men. This woman earned, +the day I saw her, five dollars and forty cents. She tossed about the fuse +parts, and played with that machine, as I would with a baby. Perhaps it +was in somewhat the same spirit--she seemed to love her toy. +<p>Most of the testers and inspectors are women. They measure the parts +step by step, and weigh the completed fuse, carrying off the palm for reliability. +The manager put it, "for inspection the women are more conscientious than +men. They don't measure or weigh just one piece, shoving along a half-dozen +untouched and let it go at that. They test each." That did not surprise +me, but I was not prepared to hear that the women do not have so many accidents +as men, or break the machines so often. In explanation, the manager threw +over an imaginary lever with vigor sufficient to shake the factory, "Men +put their whole strength on, women are more gentle and patient." +<p>Nor are the railways neglecting to fill up gaps in their working force +with women. The Pennsylvania road, it is said, has recruited some seven +hundred of them. In the Erie Railroad women are not only engaged as "work +classifiers" in the locomotive clerical department, but hardy Polish women +are employed in the car repair shops. They move great wheels as if possessed +of the strength of Hercules. And in the locomotive shops I found women +working on drill-press machines with ease and skill. Just as I came up +to one operator, she lifted an engine truck-box to the table and started +drilling out the studs. She had been at the work only a month, and explained +her skill by the information that she was Swedish, and had always worked +with her husband in their auto-repair shop. All the other drill-press hands +and the "shapers," too, were Americans whose husbands, old employees, were +now "over there." Not one seemed to have any sense of the unusual; even +the little blond check-clerk seated in her booth at the gates of the works +with her brass discs about her had in a few months' time changed a revolution +into an established custom. She and the discs seemed old friends. Women +are adaptable. +<center> +<p><img SRC="images/109.gif" ALT="The daily round in the Erie Railroad workshops." height=305 width=500></center> + +<h4> +<i>Copyright by Underwood and Underwood <br> +</i>The daily round in the Erie Railroad workshops.</h4> +But everywhere I gathered the impression that the men are a bit uneasy. +A foreman in one factory pointed out a man who "would not have voted for +suffrage" had he guessed that women were "to rush in and gobble everything +up." I tried to make him see that it wasn't the vote that gave the voracious +appetite, but necessity or desire to serve. And in any case, women do not +push men out, they push them up. In not a single instance did I hear of +a man being turned off to make a place for a woman. He had left his job +to go into the army, or was advanced to heavier or more skilled work. +<p>As to how many women have supplanted men, or poured into the new war +industries, no figures are available. One guess has put it at a million. +But that is merely a guess. I have seen them by the tens, the hundreds, +the thousands. The number is large and rapidly increasing. We may know +that something important is happening when even the government takes note. +The United States Labor Department has recognized the new-comers by establishing +a Division of Women's Work with branches in every State. It looks as if +these bureaus of employment would not be idle, with a showing of one thousand, +five hundred applicants the first week the New York office was opened. +It is to be hoped that this government effort will save the round pegs +from getting into the square holes. +<p>But even the round peg in the round hole brings difficulties. When Adam +Smith asserted that of all sorts of luggage man was the most difficult +to move, he forgot woman! The instant women are carried into a new industry, +they bring with them puzzling problems. Where shall we put their coats +and picture hats, how shall we cover up their hair, what shall we feed +them with? They must have lockers and rest rooms, caps and overalls, and +above all, canteens. The munition workers, the conductors, in fact, all +women in active work, get prodigiously hungry. They have made a regiment +of dietitians think about calories. Here is what one of the street railways +in New York City offered them on a given day:-- +<p>Tomato soup 10c. or with an order 5c. +<br>Roast leg of veal 16c. +<br>Beef 16c. +<br>Lamb fricassee 16c. +<br>Ham steak 16c. +<br>Liver and onions 16c. +<br>Sirloin steak 30c. +<br>Small steak 20c. +<br>Ham and eggs 20c. +<br>Ham omelet 20c. +<br><i>Regular dinner</i> Soup, meat, +<br> Vegetable, +<br> Dessert, coffee 25c. +<br>Rice pudding 5c. +<br>Pie 5c. +<br>Cake 5c. +<br>Banana or orange 5c. +<p>The canteen is open every hour of the twenty-four, and the women conductors +at the end of each run usually take a bite, and then have a substantial +meal during the long break of an hour and a half in the middle of the ten-hour +day. +<p>Another problem brought to us by women in industry is, how can we house +them? The war industries have drawn large numbers to new centers. The haphazard +accommodation which men win put up with, won't satisfy women. They demand +more, and get more. To attract the best type of women the munition plants +are putting up dormitories to accommodate hundreds of workers, and are +making their plants more attractive, with rest rooms and hospital accommodation. +Take, for instance, the Briggs and Stratton Company, which in order to +draw high grade workers built its new factory in one of the best sections +of Milwaukee. The workrooms are as clean as the proverbial Dutch woman's +doorstep. From the top of the benches to the ceiling the walls are glass +to ensure daylight in every corner, and by night the system of indirect +lighting gives such perfectly diffused light that not a heavy shadow falls +anywhere. And the hospital room and nurse--well, one would rejoice to have +an accident daily! +<p>The factory may become the exemplar for the home. The professional woman +is going over the top, and with a good opinion of herself. "I can do this +work better than any man," was the announcement made by a young woman from +the Pacific Coast as she descended upon the city hall in an eastern town, +credentials in her hand, and asked for the position of city chemist. There +was not a microbe she did not know to its undoing, or a deadly poison she +could not bring from its hiding place. The town had suffered from graft, +and the mayor, thinking a woman might scare the thieves as well as the +bacteria, appointed the chemist who believed in herself. And she is just +one of many who have been taking up such work. +<p>Formerly two-thirds of the positions filled by the New York Intercollegiate +Bureau of Occupations were secretarial or teaching positions; now three-fourths +of its applicants have been placed as physicists, chemists, office managers, +sanitary experts, exhibit secretaries, and the like. The temporary positions +used to outnumber the permanent placements; at present the reverse is true. +Of the women placed, four times as many as formerly get salaries ranging +above eighteen hundred dollars a year. +<p>The story told at the employment bureaus in connection with professional +societies and clubs such as the Chemists' Club is the same. Women are being +placed not merely as teachers of chemistry or as routine laboratory workers +in hospitals, but also as experimental and control chemists in industrial +plants. In the great rolling mills they are testing steel, at the copper +smelters they are found in the laboratories. The government has thrown +doors wide open to college-trained women. They are physicists and chemists +in the United States Bureaus of Standards, Mines, and Soils, sanitary experts +in military camps, research chemists in animal nutrition and fertilizers +at state experiment stations. +<p>But the industrial barrier is the one most recently scaled. Women are +now found as analytical, research or control chemists in the canneries, +in dye and electrical works, in flour and paper mills, in insecticide companies, +and cement works. They test the steel that will carry us safely on our +journeys, they pass upon the chemical composition of the flavor in our +cake, as heads of departments in metal refining companies they determine +the kind of copper battery we shall use, and they have a finger in our +liquid glues, household oils and polishes. +<p>And the awakened spirit of social responsibility has opened new callings. +The college woman not only is beginning to fill welfare positions inside +the factory, but is acting as protective officer in towns near military +camps. Perhaps one of the newest and most interesting positions is that +of "employment secretary." The losing of employees has become so serious +and general that big industries have engaged women who devote their time +to looking up absentees and finding out why each worker left. +<p>And so we see on all hands women breaking through the old accustomed +bounds. +<p>Not only as workers but as voters, the war has called women over the +top. Since that fateful August, 1914, four provinces of Canada and the +Dominion itself have raised the banner of votes for women. Nevada and Montana +declared for suffrage before the war was four months old, and Denmark enfranchised +its women before the year was out. And when America went forth to fight +for democracy abroad, Arkansas, Michigan, Vermont, Nebraska, North Dakota, +Rhode Island, began to lay the foundations of freedom at home, and New +York in no faltering voice proclaimed full liberty for all its people. +Lastly Great Britain has enfranchised its women, and surely the Congress +of the United States will not lag behind the Mother of Parliaments! +<p>The world is facing changes as great as the breaking up of the feudal +system. Causes as fundamental, more wide-spread, and more cataclysmic are +at work than at the end of the Middle Ages. Among the changes none is more +marked than the intensified development in what one may call, for lack +of a better term, the woman movement. The advance in political freedom +has moved steadily forward during the past quarter of a century, but in +the last three years progress has been intense and striking. +<p>The peculiarity in attainment of political democracy for women has lain +in the fact that while for men economic freedom invariably preceded political +enfranchisement, in the case of women the conferring of the vote in no +single case was related to the stage which the enfranchised group had attained +in the matter of economic independence. Nowhere were even those women who +were entirely lacking in economic freedom, excluded on that account from +any extension of suffrage. Even in discussions of the right of suffrage +no reference has ever been made, in dealing with women's claim, to the +relation, universally recognized in the case of men, of political enfranchisement +to economic status. Serfdom gave way to the wage system before democracy +developed for men, and the colored man was emancipated before he was enfranchised. +For this reason the coming of women as paid workers over the top may be +regarded as epoch-making. +<p>In any case, self-determination is certainly a strong element in attaining +any real political freedom. +<p>Complete service to their country in this crisis may lead women to that +economic freedom which will change a political possession into a political +power. But the requirement is readiness to do, and to do well, the task +which offers. Man-power must give itself unreservedly at the front. Women +must show not only eagerness but fitness to substitute for man-power. It +will hearten the nation, help to make the path clear, if individual women +declare that though the call to them has not yet come for a definite service, +the time of waiting will not be spent in complaint, nor yet in foolish +busy-ness, but in careful and conscientious training for useful work. +<p>Each woman must prepare so that when the nation's need arises, she can +stand at salute and say, "Here is your servant, trained and ready." Women +are not driven over the top. Through self-discipline, they go over it of +their own accord. +<br> +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<h2> +<a NAME="VII"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">VII<br> +EVE'S PAY ENVELOPE</a></h2> +No woman is a cross between an angel and a goose. She is a very human creature. +She has many of man's sins and some virtues of her own. +<p>Moving up from slavery through all the various forms of serfdom--attachment +to the soil, confinement to a given trade, exclusion from citizenship, +payment in kind, on to full economic freedom, men have shown definite reactions +at each step. Women respond to the same stimuli. +<p>The free man is a better worker than slave or serf. So is the free woman. +All the old gibes at her ineptitudes have broken their points against the +actualities of her ability as a wage worker. The free man is more alert +to obligation, more conscientious in performance, than the bond servant. +So is the free woman. With pay envelope, or pension, Eve is a better helpmate +and mother than ever before. +<p>The free man carries a lighter heart than the villain. So does the free +woman. Men have always borne personal grief more easily than women; observers +remarked the fact. The reason is the same. An absorbing occupation, ordered +and regarded as important, which brings a return allowing the recipient +to patronize what he or she thinks wise, that brings happiness, not boisterous, +but dignified. It may be a holocaust through which Eve gains that pay envelope, +but the material possession brings gratification nevertheless. It is a +tiny straw showing the set of the wind that leisure class British women, +however large their unearned bank account, show no reluctance to accept +pay for their work, and full responsibility in their new position of employee. +<p>Women are supposed to have liked to serve for mere love of service, +for love of child, love of husband. There is, of course, many a subtle +relation which can't be weighed and paid for; but toil, even for one's +very own hearthstone, can be valued in hard cash. The daughters of Eve, +no less than the sons of Adam, react happily to a recognition that expresses +itself in a fair wage. +<p>The verdict comes from all sides that women were never more content. +Of course they are content. The weight of suppression is being lifted. +For many their drudgery is for the first time paid for. Is not that invigorating? +The pay envelope is equal to that of men. Is not that a new experience +giving self-respect? Eve often finds her pay envelope heavier than that +of the man working at her side. Right there in her hand, then, she holds +proof that the old prejudice against her as an inferior worker is ill-founded. +<p>Women are finding themselves. Even America's Eve discovers that pains +and aches are not "woman's lot." She is under no curse in the twentieth +century. With eighteen dollars a week for ringing up fares, and a possible +thirty-five for "facing" fuse-parts, nothing can persuade her to be poor-spirited. +She radiates the atmosphere, "I am needed!" Doors fly open to her. She +is welcome everywhere. No one seems to be able to get too many of her kind. +Politicians compete for her favor, employers quarrel over her. It makes +her breathe deep to have the Secretary of the Navy summon her to the United +States arsenals, pay her for her work, and call her a patriot. +<center> +<p><img SRC="images/122.gif" ALT="In the well-lighted factory of the Briggs and Stratton Company, Milwaukee, the girls are comfortably and becomingly garbed for work." height=303 width=500></center> + +<h4> +In the well-lighted factory of the Briggs and Stratton Company, Milwaukee, +the girls are comfortably and becomingly garbed for work.</h4> +And with the pay envelope women remain clearly human. Their purchases often +reflect past denials, rather than present needs or even tastes. When set +free one always buys what the days of dependence deprived one of. One of +Boston's leading merchants told me that Selfridge in London was selling +more jaunty ready-to-wear dresses than ever before. It was part of John +Bull's discipline in ante-bellum dependent days to keep his women folk +dowdy. The Lancashire lass with head shawl and pattens, the wearer of the +universal sailor hat, in these days of independence and pounds, shillings +and pence, are taking note of the shop windows. And John is not turning +his eyes away from his women folk in their day of self-determination. +<p>But it is not to be concluded that it is all beer and skittles for Eve. +With a pay envelope and a vote come responsibilities. Public sympathy has +backed up laws cutting down long hours of work for women. The trade unions, +with a thought to possible competitors, have favored protecting them from +night work. Has Eve been a bit spoiled? Has she let herself too easily +be classed with children and allowed a line to be drawn between men and +women in industry? Is it a bit of woman's proverbial logic to demand special +protection, and at the same time insist upon "equal pay for equal work"? +<p>The hopelessness of attaining the promise of the slogan is well illustrated +in the case of a gray haired woman I once met in a London printing shop. +In her early days she had been one of the women taken on by the famous +printing firm of McCorquodale. That was before protective legislation applied +to women. She became a highly skilled printer, earning more than any man +in the shop. When there was pressure of work she was always one of the +group of experts chosen to carry through the rush order. That meant on +occasion overtime or night work. Then she went on to tell me how her skill +was checked in her very prime. Regulations as to women's labor were gradually +fixed in the law. All the printers in the shop, she said, favored the laws +limiting her freedom but not theirs. Soon her wages reflected the contrast. +Her employer called her to his office one day and explained, "I cannot +afford to pay you as much as the men any longer. You are not worth as much +to me, not being able to work Saturday afternoon, at night, or overtime." +She was put on lower grade work and her pay envelope grew slight. +<p>This woman was not discussing the value of shorter working hours, she +was pointing out that "equal pay" cannot rule for an entire group of workers +when restrictions apply to part of the group and not to the whole body. +We meet here, not a theory, but an incontrovertible fact. Pay is not equal, +and cannot be, where conditions are wholly unequal. Protection for the +woman worker means exactly what it would mean for the alien man if by law +he were forbidden to work Saturday afternoon, overtime or at night, while +the citizen worker was without restriction. The alien would be cut off +from advancement in every trade in which he did not by overwhelming numbers +dominate the situation, he would be kept to lower grade processes, he would +receive much lower pay than the unprotected worker. +<p>What common sense would lead us to expect in the hypothetical case of +an alien man, has happened for the woman worker. Oddly enough she has not +herself asked for this protection, but it has been urged very largely by +women not of the industrial class. Women teachers, doctors, lawyers, women +of leisure are the advocates of special legislation for industrial women. +And yet in their own case they are entirely reasonable, and ask no favors. +The woman teacher, and quite truly, insists that she works as hard and +as long hours as the man in her grade of service, and on that sound foundation +she builds her just demand for equal pay. Women doctors and lawyers have +never asked for other than a square deal in their professions. +<p>It would be well, perhaps, if industrial women were permitted to guide +their own ship. They have knowledge enough to reach a safe harbor. There +was a hint that they were about to assume the helm when the rank and file +of union workers voted down at the conference of the Women's Trade Union +League the resolution proposing a law to forbid women acting as conductors. +It was also suggestive when a woman rose and asked of the speaker on dangerous +trades, whether "men did not suffer from exposure to fumes, acids and dust." +<p>Women have so long been urging that they are people, that they have +forgotten, perchance, that men are people also. Men respond to rest and +recreation as do human beings of the opposite sex. All workers need, and +both sexes should have, protection. But if only one sex in industrial life +can have bulwarks thrown up about it, men should be the favored ones just +now. They are few, they are precious, they should be wrapped in cotton +wool. +<p>The industrial woman should stand unqualifiedly for the exclusion of +children from gainful pursuits. Many years ago the British government had +Miss Collett, one of the Labor Correspondents of the Board of Trade, make +a special study of the influence of the employment of married women on +infant mortality. The object was to prove that there was direct cause and +effect. The investigator, after an exhaustive study covering many industrial +centers, brought back the report, "Not proven." But the statistics showed +one most interesting relation. In districts where the prevailing custom +permitted the employment of children as early as the law allowed, infant +mortality was high, and in districts where few children were employed, +infant mortality was low. No explanation of this striking revelation was +made in the report, but many who commented on the tables, pointed out that +the wide-spread employment of the population in its early years sapped +the vitality of the community to such an extent that its offspring were +weakened. In other words, the employment of the immature child, more than +the employment of that child when grown and married, works harm to the +race. +<p>The woman with a pay envelope must not, then, be willing to swell the +family budget by turning her children into the wage market. For if she +does, she creates a dangerous competitor for herself, and puts in certain +jeopardy the virility of her nation. But in this war time women have secured +more than new and larger pay envelopes, for each belligerent has reckoned +up the woman's worth as mother in coin of the realm. It is enough to turn +Eve's head--pay and pensions accorded her all at once. +<p>Allowances to dependents are more, however, than financial expedients. +They are part of the psychological stage-setting of the Great War. The +fighting man must be more than well-fed, well-clothed, well-equipped, more +than assured of care if ill or wounded; he must have his mind undisturbed +by conditions at home. Governments now know that there must be no just +cause for complaint in the family at the rear, if the man at the front +is to be fully effective. In the interest of the fighting line, governments +dare not leave the home to the haphazard care of charity. +<p>And so the great belligerents have adopted systems for an uninterrupted +flow of money aid to the hearthstone. The wife feels dependence on the +nation for which she and her man are making sacrifices, the soldier has +a sense of closer relationship with the country's cause for which he fights. +Content at home and sense of gratitude in the trenches build up loyalty +everywhere. The state allowance answers an economic want and a psychological +necessity. +<p>It is part of our national lack of technique that we were slow to make +provision for the dependents of enlisted men, and even then were not whole +hearted. It may have been our inherited distrust of the conscript that +led us to feel that only by his volunteering something will a precious +antidote be administered to the spirit of the drafted man. To protect his +individualism from taint, the United States soldier must bear part of the +financial burden. Europe, on the other hand, is working on a basis of reciprocity. +The nation exacts service from the man and gives complete service to his +dependents. In America the man is bound to serve the community, but the +community is not bound to serve him. And yet in our case there is peculiar +need of this even exchange of obligations. The care of parents in the United +States falls directly upon their children, while some of our allies had, +even before the war, carefully devised laws regulating pensions to the +aged. +<p>But first let us get the simple skeleton of the various allowance laws +in mind. The scale of the allowance in different countries adapts itself +to national standards and varying cost of living. The Canadian allowance +seems the most generous. At least one-half of the soldier's pay is given +directly to his dependents. The government gives an additional twenty dollars +and the donations of the Patriotic Fund bring up the monthly allowance +of a wife with three children to sixty dollars. The allowance, as might +be expected, is low in Italy. The soldier's wife gets eight-tenths of a +lira a day, each child four-tenths lira, and either a father or mother +alone eight-tenths lira, or if both are living, one and three-tenths lire +together. The British allowance is much higher, the wife getting twelve +shillings and sixpence a week. If she has one child, the weekly allowance +rises to nineteen and sixpence; if two children, to twenty-four and sixpence; +if three, to twenty-eight shillings; and if there are four or more children, +the mother receives three shillings a week for each extra child. +<p>Between the extremes of Italy and England stands France, the wife receiving +one franc twenty-five centimes a day, each child under sixteen years of +age twenty-five centimes, and a dependent parent seventy-five centimes. +Japan grants no government allowance. A Japanese official, in response +to my inquiry, wrote, "Relations the first and friends the next try to +help the dependents as far as possible, but if they have neither relatives +nor friends who have sufficient means to help them, then the association +consisting of ladies or the municipal officials afford subvention to them." +<p>Under the law passed by Congress in October, 1917, an American private +receiving thirty-three dollars a month when on service abroad must allot +fifteen dollars a month to his wife, and the government adds to this twenty-five +dollars, and if there is one child, an additional ten dollars, with five +dollars for each additional child. A man can secure an allowance from the +government of ten dollars a month to a dependent parent, if he allots five +dollars a month. Such are the bare bones of the allowance schemes of the +Allies on the western front +<p>In the United States the general policy of exemption boards, as suggested +by the central authorities, is most disciplinary as regards women. Their +capacity for self-support is rigidly inquired into. Our men are definitely +urging women to a position of economic independence. The aim is, while +securing soldiers for the army, to relieve the government of the expense +of dependency on the part of women. There is no doubt that our men at least +are faced toward the future. No less indicative is it of a new world that +the allowance laws of all the western belligerents recognize common-law +marriages. In our own law, marriage is "presumed if the man and woman have +lived together in the openly acknowledged relation of husband and wife +during two years immediately preceding the date of the declaration of war." +And the illegitimate child stands equal with the legitimate provided the +father acknowledges the child or has been "judicially ordered or decreed +to contribute" to the child's support. +<p>Men are feminists. Their hearts have softened even towards the wife's +relatives, for the word "parent" is not only broad enough to cover the +father, mother, grandparents or step-father and mother of the man, but +"of the spouse" also. Thus passeth the curse of the mother-in-law. +<p>One need not be endowed with the spirit of prophecy to foretell that +"allowances" in war time will broaden out into motherhood pensions in peace +times. It would be an ordinary human reaction should the woman enjoying +a pension refuse to give up, on the day peace is declared, her quickly +acquired habit of holding the purse strings. That would be accepting international +calm at the expense of domestic differences. The social value of encouraging +the mother's natural feeling of responsibility toward her child by putting +into her hands a state pension is being, let us note, widely tested, and +may demonstrate the wisdom and economy of devoting public funds to mothers +rather than to crêches and juvenile asylums. +<p>The allowance laws may prove the charter of woman's liberties; her pay +envelope may become her contract securing the right of self-determination. +<br> +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<h2> +<a NAME="VIII"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">VIII<br> +POOLING BRAINS</a></h2> +"Employ them." This was the advice given to a large conference of women +met to discuss business opportunities for their sex. The advice was vouchsafed +by a young lawyer after the problem of opening wider fields to women in +the legal profession had been looked at from every angle, only to end in +the question, "What can we do to increase their practice?" She spoke with +animation, as if she had found the key to the situation, "Employ them." +Perhaps more self-accusation than determination to mend their ways was +roused by the short and pointed remark. +<p>The advice has wider application. Taking thirty names of women at random, +I learned in response to an inquiry that only four had women physicians, +two had women lawyers, and only one, a woman dentist. Twenty-five women +of large real estate holdings had never even for the most unimportant work +secured the services of an architect of their own sex. Further inquiry +brought out the fact that of a long list of women's clubs and associations +which have built or altered property for their purposes, only one had engaged +a woman architect. +<p>Perhaps it is indicative of a lack of nothing more serious than a sense +of humor, that we women unite and, apparently without embarrassment, demand +that masculine presidents, governors, mayors and legislatures shall appoint +women to office. This unabashed faith in the good will of men seems not +misplaced, for not only do public men show some confidence in the official +capacity of women, but to my inquiry as to whom was due their opportunities +to "get on," business women invariably replied, "To men." +<p>However, the loyalty of women to women is increasing, and their solidarity +on sound lines of service is a thing of steady growth. Thoughtful women, +for instance, do not wish a woman put in a position of responsibility simply +because she is a woman, but they are even more opposed to having a candidate +of peculiar fitness overlooked merely because she is not a man. While the +conscientious and poised women are not willing to urge any and every woman +for a given office, they do tenaciously hold that there are positions which +cry aloud for women and for which the right women should he found. In conquering +a fair field, women will have to pool their brains even more effectively +than they have in the past. +<p>Our efforts at combination are a mere mushroom growth compared with +the generations of training our big brothers have had in pooling brains. +War and the chase gave them their first lessons in cooperation, nor has +war been a bad teacher for women. +<p>Just as the Crimean War and our Civil War put Florence Nightingale and +Clara Barton and the trained nurse on the map, this war is bringing the +medical woman to the fore. Women surgeons and doctors, unlike many other +groups, offer themselves fully trained for service. They know they have +something to give, and they know the soldiers' need. +<p>According to an official statement, the emergency call of the army for +men physicians and surgeons fell two thousand short of being answered. +The necessity of the soldier and the skill of the women will no doubt in +the end be brought effectively together; for although the government of +the United States, like Great Britain in the early days of the war, has +left to ever farseeing France the honor of extending hospitality to American +women doctors, their strong national organization, with a membership of +four thousand, will in time, no doubt, persuade Uncle Sam to take his plucky +women doctors over the top under the Stars and Stripes! Organization crystallized +about an unselfish desire and skilled ability to serve is irresistible. +<p>The pooling of the brains of women that has been going on on a country-wide +scale for more than a half-century bears analyzing. These associations +have almost invariably centered about a service to be rendered. Even the +first petition for political enfranchisement urged it as the "duty of the +women of this country to secure to themselves the elective franchise." +Unselfishness draws numbers as a magnet draws steel filings. The spirit +of service lying at the heart of the great national organizations made +possible quick response to new duties immediately upon our entrance into +the war. The suffragists said, We wish to serve and we are ready for service. +The government used their wide-spread net of local centers for purposes +of registrations and war appeals. +<p>Naturally there were many efforts more foolish than effective in the +universal rush to help. America was not peculiar in this, nor for the matter +of that, were women. War!--it does make the blood course through the veins. +Every generous citizen cries aloud, "What can I do?" Perhaps men are a +little more voluble than women, their emotions not finding such immediate +and approved vent along clicking needles and tangled skeins of wool. On +the whole, the initiative and organizing ability of women has stood out +supremely. +<p>Of the two departments of the Red Cross which are still left in the +command of women, the Bureau of Nursing, with Miss Delano at its head, +mobilized immediately three thousand of the fourteen thousand nurses enrolled. +The first Red Cross Medical Unit with its full quota of sixty-five nurses +completely equipped stood on European soil before an American soldier was +there. Of the forty-nine units ready for service, twelve, with from sixty-five +to one hundred nurses each, are now in France. Two of the five units organized +for the navy, each with its forty active nurses and twenty reserves, are +established abroad, and two hundred and thirty nurses are already in active +naval service here. Miss Delano holds constantly in reserve fifteen hundred +nurses as emergency detachments, a reservoir from which some eight hundred +have been drawn for cantonment hospitals. An inflow of nearly one thousand +nurses each month keeps the reservoir ready to meet the drain. +<p>The Chapter work-rooms sprang up at a call in the night. No one can +help admiring their well-ordered functioning. There may be criticism, grumbling, +but the work-room is moving irresistibly, like a well-oiled machine. And +women are the motive power from start to finish. The Chapters, with their +five million members joined in three thousand units over the United States, +are so many monuments to the ability of women for detail. Once mobilized, +the women have thus far been able to serve two thousand war hospitals with +surgical dressings, and to send abroad thirteen million separate articles +packed carefully, boxed, labelled and accounted for on their books. +<p>Not only does this directing of manual work stand to the credit of the +Chapters, but they have given courses of lectures in home nursing and dietetics +to thirty-four thousand women, and in first aid; ten thousand classes have +been held and seventy-five thousand certificates issued to the proficient. +Certainly one object of the Red Cross, "to stimulate the volunteer work +of women," has been accomplished. +<p>It is difficult to understand why, with such examples of women's efficiency +before it, the Red Cross, founded by Clara Barton, places merely two bureaus +in the hands of a woman, has chosen no woman as an officer, has put but +one woman on its central and executive committee, and not a single woman +on its present controlling body, the War Council. It may be that the protest +against the centralization of all volunteer effort in the Red Cross, in +spite of President Wilson's appeal, was due to the fact that women feared +that their energies, running to other lines than nursing and surgical dressings, +would be entirely sidetracked. +<p>The honor of the splendid war work of the Young Women's Christian Association +belongs to women. The War Work Council of the National Board of Young Women's +Christian Associations shows an example of how immediately efficient an +established organization can be in an emergency. As one sees its great +War Fund roll up, one exclaims, "What money raisers women are!" The immediate +demands upon the fund are for Hostess Houses at cantonments where soldiers +can meet their women visitors, dormitories providing emergency housing +for women employees at certain army centers, the strengthening of club +work among the younger girls of the nation, profoundly affected by war +conditions, and the sending of experienced organizers to coöperate +with the women leaders of France and Russia and to install nurses' huts +at the base hospitals of France. It makes one's heart beat high to think +of women spending millions splendidly, they who have always been told to +save pennies frugally! Well, those hard days were times of training; women +learned not to waste. +<p>A very worthy pooling of brains, because springing up with no tradition +behind it, was the National League for Woman's Service. In six months it +drew to itself two hundred thousand members and built organizations in +thirty-nine States, established classes to train women for the new work +opening to them, opened recreation centers and canteens at which were entertained +on a single Sunday, at one center, eighteen hundred soldiers and sailors. +So excellent was its Bureau of Registration and Information for women workers +that the United States Department of Labor took over not only the files +and methods of the Woman's League for Service, but the entire staff with +Miss Obenauer at its head. If imitation is the sincerest flattery, what +shall we say of complete adoption of work and workers, with an honorable +"by your leave" and outspoken praise! And nothing could show a finer spirit +of service than this yielding up of work initiated by a civil society and +the willing passing of it into government hands. +<p>Not only the Labor Department has established a special women's division +with a woman at its head, but the Ordnance Office of the War Department +has opened in its Industrial Service Section a woman's division, putting +Miss Mary Van Kleeck in charge. +<p>But still our government lags behind our Allies in mobilizing woman's +power of initiative and her organizing faculty. The Woman's Committee +of the Council of National Defense, appointed soon after the outbreak of +war, still has no administrative power. As one member of the Committee +says, "We are not allowed to do anything without the consent of the Council +of National Defense. There is no appropriation for the Woman's Committee. +We are furnished with headquarters, stationery, some printing and two stenographers, +but nothing more. It is essential that we raise money to carry on the other +expenses. The great trouble is that now, as always, men want women to do +the work while they do the overseeing." +<center> +<p><img SRC="images/143.gif" ALT="The women of the Motor Corps of the National League for Woman's Service refuting the traditions that women have neither strength nor endurance." height=301 width=500></center> + +<h4> +The women of the Motor Corps of the National League for Woman's Service +refuting the traditions that women have neither strength nor endurance.</h4> +Perhaps holding the helm has become second nature to men simply because +they have held the helm so long, but I am inclined to think they have a +very definite desire to have women help steer the ship. Surely the readiness +with which they are sharing their political power with women, would seem +to indicate their wish for cooperation on a plan of perfect equality. +<p>In any case, it is not necessary to hang on the skirts of government. +America has always shown evidence of greater gift in private enterprise +than state action. Perhaps women will demonstrate the national characteristic. +It was farsightedness and enterprise that led the Intercollegiate Bureaus +of Occupations, societies run for women by women, to strike out in this +crisis and open up new callings for their clients, and still better, to +persuade colleges and schools to modify curricula to meet the changed demands. +<p>Women are often passed over because they are not prepared. +<p>The Bureaus have found the demand for women in industrial chemistry +and physics, for instance, to be greater than the supply because the graduates +of women's colleges have not been carried far enough in mathematics, and +in chemistry have been kept too much to theoretical text-book work. For +example, the head of a certain industry was willing to give the position +of chemist at his works to a woman. He needed some one to suggest changes +in process from time to time, and to watch waste. He set down eight simple +problems such as might arise any day in his factory for the candidates +to answer. Some of the women, all college graduates, who had specialized +in chemistry, could not answer a single problem, and none showed that grip +of the science which would enable them to give other than rule of thumb +solutions. He engaged a man. +<p>In answering the questionnaire which the New York Bureau of Occupations +sent to one hundred and twenty-five industrial plants, the manager in almost +every case replied, in regard to the possibility of employing women in +such positions as research or control chemists, that applicants were "badly +prepared." As hand workers, too, women are handicapped by lack of knowledge +of machinery. In this tool age, high school girls are cut off from technical +education, although they are destined to carry on in large measure our +skilled trades. I am told that in Germany many factories had to close because +only women were available as managers, and they had not been fitted by +business and technical schools for the task. +<p>If women individually are looking for a soft place, if they are afraid, +as one manager expressed it, "to put on overalls and go into a vat," even +when their country is so in need of their service, it is futile for them +to ask collectively for equal opportunity and equal pay; if they individually +fail to prepare as for a life work, regarding themselves as but temporarily +in business or a profession, their collective demand upon the world for +a fair field and no favor will be as ineffective as illogical. +<p>The doors stand wide open. It rests with women themselves as to whether +they shall enter in. +<p>To the steady appeals of the employment bureaus, backed by the stern +facts of life, the colleges are yielding. On examination I found that curricula +are already being modified. None but the sorriest pessimist could doubt +the nature of the final outcome, on realizing the pooling of brains which +is going on in such associations as the Intercollegiate Bureau of Occupations +and the League for Business Opportunities. They work to the end of having +young women not only soundly prepared for the new openings, but sensitive +to the demands of a world set towards stern duty. +<p>Not only is there call for a pooling of brains to look after the timid +and unready, but there is need of combination to open the gates for the +prepared and brave. Few who cheered the Red Cross nurses as they made their +stirring march on Fifth Avenue, knew that those devoted women would, on +entering the Military Nurse Corps, find themselves the only nurses among +the Allies without a position of honor. The humiliation to our nurses in +placing them below the orderlies in the hospitals is not only a blow to +their esprit de corps, but a definite handicap to their efficiency. A nurse +who was at the head of the nursing staff in a state hospital wrote from +the front: "There is one thing the Nursing Committee needs to work for, +and work hard, too, and that is, to make for nurses the rank of lieutenant. +The Canadians have it, why not the Americans? You will find that it will +make a tremendous difference. You see, there are no officers in our nursing +personnel. One of our staff says we are the hired extras! It is really +a great mistake." Uncle Sam may merely be waiting for a concentrated drive +of public opinion against his tardy representatives. +<center> +<p><img SRC="images/149.gif" ALT="Down the street they come, beginning their pilgrimage of alleviation and succor on the battlefields of France." height=302 width=500></center> + +<h4> +Down the street they come, beginning their pilgrimage of alleviation and +succor on the battlefields of France.</h4> +And why should it be necessary to urge that while scores of young men are +dashing to death in endeavors to learn to fly, there are women unmobilized +who know how to soar aloft in safety? They have never, it is true, been +submitted to laboratory tests in twirlings and twistings, but they reach +the zenith. Two carried off the records in long distance flights, but both +have been refused admission to the Flying Corps. Will it need a campaign +to secure for our army this efficient service? Must women pool their brains +to have Ruth Law spread her protecting wings over our boys in France? +<p>To any one who realizes the significance of the military situation as +it stands, and who is cognizant of the contrast between Germany's use of +her entire people in her national effort, and the slow mobilization of +woman-power among the Allies and entire lack of anything worthy the name +of mobilization of the labor-power of women in the United States, there +will come a determination to bury every jealousy between woman and woman, +all prejudice in men, to cut red tape in government, with the one object +of combining all resources. +<p>The full power of our men must be thrown into military effort. And, +then, if as a nation we have brains to pool, we will not stand niggling, +but will throw women doctors in to render their service, grant to the nurse +corps what it needs to ensure efficiency, throw open the technical schools +to girls as well as to boys, modify the college course to meet the facts +of life. Each woman unprepared is a national handicap, each prejudice blocking +the use of woman-power is treachery to our cause. +<p>As to the final outcome of united thought and group action among women, +no one can doubt. Contacts will rub off angles, capable service will break +down sex prejudice and overcome government opposition. But there is not +time to wait for the slow development of "final outcomes." +<p>Women must pool their brains against their own shortcomings, and in +favor of their own ability to back up their country now and here. +<br> +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<h2> +<a NAME="IX"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">IX<br> +"BUSINESS AS USUAL"</a></h2> +It is a platitude to say that America is the most extravagant nation on +earth. The whole world tells us so, and we do not deny it, being, indeed, +a bit proud of the fact. Who is there among us who does not respond with +sympathetic understanding to the defense of the bride reprimanded for extravagance +by her mother-in-law (women have mothers-in-law), "John and I find we can +do without the necessities of life. It's the luxuries we must have." One +of the obstacles to complete mobilization of our country is extravagance. +And at the center of this national failing sits the American woman enthroned. +<p>Europe found it could not allow old-time luxury trades to go on, if +the war was to be won. "Business as usual" is not in harmony with victory. +<p>I remember the first time I heard the slogan, and how it carried me +and everyone else away. The Zeppelins had visited London the night before. +A house in Red Lion Mews was crushed down into its cellar, a heap of ruins. +Every pane of glass was shattered in the hospitals surrounding Queen's +Square, and ploughed deep, making a great basin in the center of the grass, +lay the remnants of the bomb that had buried itself in the heart of England. +The shops along Theobald's Road were wrecked, but in the heaps of broken +glass in each show window were improvised signs such as, "Don't sympathize +with us, buy something." The sign which was displayed oftenest read, "Business +as usual." +<p>The first I noticed was in the window of a print shop, the owner a woman. +I talked to her through the frame of the shattered glass. She looked very +pale and her face was cut, but she and everyone else was calm. And no one +was doing business as usual more composedly than a wee tot trudging along +to school with a nasty scratch from a glass splinter on her chubby cheek. +<p>"Business as usual" expressed the fine spirit, the courage, the determination +of a people. As the sporting motto of an indomitable race, it was very +splendid. But war is not a sport, it is a cold, hard science, demanding +every energy of the nation for its successful pursuit. In proportion as +our indulgence in luxury has been greater than that of any European nation, +our challenge to every business must be the more insistent. There must +be a straight answer to two questions: Does this enterprise render direct +war service, or, if not, is it essential to the well-being of our citizens? +<p>But the discipline will not come from the gods. Nor will our government +readily turn taskmaster. The effort must come largely as self-discipline, +growing into group determination to win the war and the conviction that +it is impossible to achieve victory and conserve the virility of our people, +if any considerable part of the community devotes its time, energy and +money to creating useless things. A nation can make good in this cataclysm +only if it centers its whole power on the two objects in view: military +victory, and husbanding of life and resources at home. +<p>Let me hasten to add that the act of creating a thing does not include +only the processes of industry. The act of buying is creative. The riot +of luxury trades in the United States will not end so long as the American +woman remains a steady buyer of luxuries. The mobilization of women as +workers is no more essential to the triumph of our cause, than the mobilization +of women for thrift. The beginning and end of saving in America rests almost +entirely in the hands of women. They are the buyers in the working class +and in the professional class. Among the wealthy they set the standard +of living. +<p>Practically every appeal for thrift has been addressed to the rich. +I am not referring to the supply of channels into which to pour savings, +but to appeals to make the economies which will furnish the means to buy +stamps or bonds. Those appeals are addressed almost wholly to the well-to-do, +as for example, suggestions as to reducing courses at dinner or cutting +out "that fourth meal." +<p>Self-denial, no doubt, is supposed to be good for the millionaire soul, +but to such it is chiefly recommended, I think, as an example sure of imitation. +What the rich do, other women will follow, is the idea. But the steady +insistence that we fight in this war for democracy has put into the minds +of the people very definite demands for independence and for freedom. +<p>In such a democratic world the newly adopted habits of the wealthy will +not prove widely convincing. Economy needs other than an aristocratic stimulus. +<center> +<p><img SRC="images/156.gif" ALT="How can business be as usual when in Paris there are about 1800 of these small workshops where a woman dips Bengal Fire and grenades into a bath of paraffin!" height=306 width=500></center> + +<h4> +How can business be "as usual" when in Paris there are about 1800 of these +small workshops where a woman dips Bengal Fire and grenades into a bath +of paraffin!</h4> +I do not mean to under-estimate the value of economy in the well-to-do +class. There is no doubt that shop windows on Fifth Avenue are a severe +commentary upon our present intelligence and earnestness of purpose. No +one, I think, would deny that it would be a service if the woman of fashion +ceased to drape fur here, there and everywhere on her gowns except where +she might really need the thick pelt to keep her warm, and instead saved +the price of the garment which serves no purpose but that of display, and +gave the money in Liberty Bonds to buy a fur-lined coat for some soldier, +or food for a starving baby abroad. And overburdened as the railways are +with freight and ordinary passenger traffic, I am sure the general public +will not fail to appreciate to the full a self-denial which leads patrons +of private cars, Pullman and dining coaches to abandon their self-indulgence. +<p>Undoubtedly economy among the rich is of value. I presume few would +gainsay that it would have been well for America if the use of private +automobiles had long since ceased, and the labor and plants used in their +making turned to manufacturing much-needed trucks and ambulances. But while +not inclined to belittle the work of any possible saving and self-sacrifice +on the part of those of wealth, it seems to me that the most fruitful field +for war economy lies among simple people. Thrift waits for democratization. +<p>We of limited means hug some of the most extravagant of habits. The +average working-class family enjoys none of the fruits of coöperation +We keep each to our isolated family group, while the richer a person is +the more does she gather under her roof representatives of other families. +Her cook may come from the Berri family, the waitress may be an Andersen, +the nurse an O'Hara. +<p>The poor might well practice the economy of fellowship. +<p>The better-off live in apartment houses where the economy of central +heating is practised, while the majority of the poor occupy tenements where +the extravagance of the individual stove is indulged in. The saving of +coal is urged, but the authorities do not seek to secure for the poor the +comfort of the true method of fuel saving. +<p>The richer a family is, the more it saves by the use of skilled service. +The poor, clinging to their prejudices and refusing to trust one another, +do not profit by coöperative buying, or by central kitchens run by +experts. Money is wasted by amateurish selection of food and clothing, +and nutritive values are squandered by poor cooking. +<p>Unfortunately Uncle Sam does not suggest how many War Saving Stamps +could be bought as a result of economy along these lines. +<p>The woman with the pay envelope may democratize thrift. She knows how +hard it is to earn money, and has learned to make her wages reach a long +way. Then, too, she has it brought home to her each pay day that health +is capital. She finds that it is economy to keep well, for lost time brings +a light pay envelope. Every woman who keeps herself in condition is making +a war saving. There has been no propaganda as yet appealing to women to +value dress according to durability and comfort rather than according to +its prettiness, to bow to no fashion which means the lessening of power. +To corset herself as fashion dictates, to prop herself on high heels, means +to a woman just so much lost efficiency, and even the most thoughtless, +if appealed to for national saving, might learn to turn by preference in +dress, in habits, in recreation, to the simple things. +<p>The Japanese, I am told, make a ceremony of going out from the city +to enjoy the beauties of a moonlight night. We go to a stuffy theatre and +applaud a night "set." Nature gives her children the one, and the producer +charges his patrons for the other. A propaganda of democratic war economy +would teach us to delight in the beauties of nature. +<p>In making the change from business as usual to economy, Europe suffered +hardship, because although the retrenchments suggested were fairly democratic +it had not created channels into which savings might be thrown with certainty +of their flowing on to safe expenditures. Europe was not ready with its +great thrift schemes, nor had the adjustments been made which would enable +a shop to turn out a needed uniform, let us say, in place of a useless +dress. +<p>Definite use of savings has been provided for in the United States. +The government needs goods of every kind to make our military effort successful. +Camps must be built for training the soldiers, uniforms, guns and ammunition +supplied. Transportation on land and sea is called for. The government +needs money to carry on the industries essential to winning the war. +<p>If a plucky girl who works in a button factory refuses to buy an ornament +which she at first thought of getting to decorate her belt, and puts that +twenty-five cents into a War Saving Stamp, all in the spirit of backing +up her man at the front, she will not find herself thrown out of employment; +instead, while demands for unnecessary ornamental fastenings will gradually +cease, she will be kept busy on government orders. +<p>Profiting by the errors of those nations who had to blaze out new paths, +the United States knit into law, a few months after the declaration of +war, not only the quick drafting of its man-power for military service, +but methods of absorbing the people's savings. If we neither waste nor +hoard, we will not suffer as did Europe from wide-spread unemployment. +There is more work to be done than our available labor-power can meet. +<p>There is nothing to fear from the curtailment of luxury; our danger +lies in lack of a sound definition of extravagance. Uncle Sam could get +more by appeals to simple folk than by homilies preached to the rich. The +Great War is a conflict between the ideals of the peoples. 'Tis a people's +war, and with women as half the people. The savings made to support the +war must needs, then, be made by the people, for the people. +<p>There has been no compelling propaganda to that end. The suggestion +of mere "cutting down" may be a valuable goal to set for the well-to-do, +but it is not a mark to be hit by those already down to bed rock. The only +saving possible to those living on narrow margins is by coöperation, +civil or state. +<p>It is a mad extravagance, for instance, to kill with autos children +at play in the streets. A saving of life could easily be achieved through +group action, by securing children's attendants, by opening play-grounds +on the roofs of churches and public buildings, by shutting off streets +dedicated to the sacred right of children to play. This would be a war +saving touching the heart and the enthusiasm of the people. +<p>Central municipal heating is not a wild dream, but a recognized economy +in many places. Municipal kitchens are not vague surmisings, but facts +achieved in the towns of Europe. They are forms of war thrift. In America +no such converting examples of economy are as yet given, and not an appeal +has been made to women to save through solidarity. +<p>Uncle Sam has been commendably quick and wise in offering a reservoir +to hold the tiny savings, but slow in starting a democratic propaganda +suggesting ways of saving the pennies. +<p>If business as usual is a poor motto, so is life as usual, habits as +usual. +<br> +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<h2> +<a NAME="X"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">X<br> +"AS MOTHER USED TO DO"</a></h2> +Man's admiration for things as mother used to do them is as great an obstacle +as business as usual in the path of winning the war and husbanding the +race. The glamour surrounding the economic feats of mother in the past +hides the shortcomings of today. +<p>I once saw one of her old fortresses, a manor home where in bygone days +she had reigned supreme. In the court yard was the smoke house where she +cured meat and fish. In the cellar were the caldrons and vats where long +ago she tried tallow and brewed beer. And there were all the utensils for +dealing with flax. In the garret I saw the spindles for spinning cotton +and wool, and the hand looms for weaving the homespun. In her day, mother +was a great creator of wealth. +<p>But then an economic earthquake came. Foundations were shaken, the roof +was torn off her domestic workshop. Steam and machinery, like cyclones, +carried away her industries, and nothing was left to her but odds and ends +of occupations. +<p>Toiling in the family circle from the days of the cave dwellers, mother +had become so intimately associated in the tribal mind with the hearthstone +that the home was called her sphere. Around this segregation accumulated +accretions of opinion, layer on layer emanating from the mind of her mate. +Let us call the accretions the Adamistic Theory. Its authors happened to +be the government and could use the public treasury in furtherance of publicity +for their ideas set forth in hieroglyphics cut in stone, or written in +plain English and printed on the front page of an American daily. +<p>One of the few occupations left to mother after the disruption of her +sphere at the end of the eighteenth century was the preparation of food. +In the minds of men, food, from its seed sowing up to its mastication, +has always been associated with woman. Mention food and the average man +thinks of mother. That is the Adam in him. And so, quite naturally, one +must first consider this relation of women to food in the Adamistic Theory. +<center> +<p><img SRC="images/165.gif" ALT="Countess de Berkaim and her canteen in the Gare de St. Lazarre, Paris." height=303 width=500></center> + +<center> +<h4> +Countess de Berkaim and her canteen in the Gare de St. Lazarre, Paris.</h4></center> +When the world under war conditions asked to be fed, Adam, running true +to his theory, pointed to mother as the source of supply, and declared +with an emphasis that came of implicit faith, that the universe need want +for nothing, if each woman would eliminate waste in her kitchen and become +a voluntary and obedient reflector of the decisions of state and national +food authorities. This solution presupposed a highly developed sense of +community devotion in women running hand in hand with entire lack of gift +for community action. Woman, it was expected, would display more than her +proverbial lack of logic by embracing with enthusiasm state direction and +at the same time remain an exemplar of individualistic performance. The +Adamistic scheme seems still further to demand for its smooth working that +the feminine group show self-abnegation and agree that it is not itself +suited to reason out general plans. +<p>It is within the range of possibility, however, that no comprehensive +scheme of food conservation or effective saving in any line can be imposed +on women without consulting them. The negro who agreed "dat de colored +folk should keep in dar places," touched a fundamental note in human nature, +over-running sex as well as racial boundaries, when he added, "and de colored +folk must do de placin'." It might seem to run counter to this bit of wisdom +for women to be told that the welfare of the world depends upon them, and +then for no woman to be given administrative power to mobilize the group. +<p>But the contest between man's devotion to the habits of his ancestry +in the female line, and the ideas of his very living women folk, is as +trying to him as it is interesting to the outside observer. The conflicting +forces illustrate a universal fact. It is always true that the ruling class, +when a discipline and a sacrifice are recognized as necessary, endeavors +to make it appear that the new obligation should be shouldered by the less +powerful. For instance, to take an illustration quite outside the domestic +circle, when America first became convinced that military preparation was +incumbent upon us, the ruling class would scarcely discuss conscription, +much less adopt universal service. That is, it vetoed self-discipline. +In many States, laws were passed putting off upon children in the schools +the training which the voting adults knew the nation needed. +<p>In the same way, when food falls short and the victualing of the world +becomes a pressing duty, the governing class adopts a thesis that a politically +less-favored group can, by saving in small and painful ways, accumulate +the extra food necessary to keep the world from starving. The ruling class +seeks cover in primitive ideas, accuses Eve of introducing sin into the +world, and calls upon her to mend her wasteful ways. +<p>Men, of course, know intellectually that much food is a factory product +in these days, but emotionally they have a picture of mother, still supplying +the family in a complete, secret, and silent manner. +<p>This Adamistic emotion takes command at the crisis, for when human beings +are suddenly faced with a new and agitating situation, primitive ideas +seize them. Mother, it is true, did create the goods for immediate consumption, +and so the sons of Adam, in a spirit of admiration, doffing their helmets, +so to speak, to the primitive woman, turn in this time of stress and call +confidently upon Eve's daughters to create and save. The confidence is +touching, but perhaps the feminine reaction will not be, and perchance +ought not to be just such as Adam expects. +<p>Women have passed in aspiration, and to some extent in action, out of +the ultra-individualistic stage of civilization. +<p>The food propaganda reflects the hiatus in Adam's thought. I have looked +over hundreds of publications issued by the agricultural departments and +colleges of the various States. They tell housewives what to "put into +the garbage pail," what to "keep out of the garbage pail," what to substitute +for wheat, how to make soap, but, with a single exception, not a word issued +suggests to women any saving through group action. +<p>This exception, which stood out as a beacon light in an ocean of literature +worthy of the Stone Age, was a small pamphlet issued by the Michigan Agricultural +College on luncheons in rural schools. Sound doctrine was preached on the +need of the children for substantial and warm noon meals, and the comparative +ease and economy with which such luncheons could be provided at the school +house. Children can of course be better and more cheaply fed as a group +than as isolated units supplied with a cold home-prepared lunch box. And +yet with the whole machinery of the state in his hands, Adam's commissions, +backed by the people's money, goad mother on to isolated endeavor. She +plants and weeds and harvests. She dries and cans, preserves and pickles. +Then she calculates and perchance finds that her finished product is not +always of the best and has often cost more than if purchased in the open +market. +<p>It may be the truest devotion to our Allies to challenge the individualistic +rôle recommended by Adam to mother, for it will hinder, not help, +the feeding of the world to put women back under eighteenth century conditions. +Food is short and expensive because labor is short. And even when the harvest +is ripe, the saving of food cannot be set as a separate and commendable +goal, and the choice as to where labor shall be expended as negligible. +It is a prejudiced devotion to mother and her ways which leads Adam in +his food pamphlets to advise that a woman shall sit in her chimney corner +and spend time peeling a peach "very thin," when hundreds of bushels of +peaches rot in the orchards for lack of hands to pick them. +<p>Just how wide Adam's Eve has opened the gate of Eden and looked out +into the big world is not entirely clear, but probably wide enough to glimpse +the fact that all the advice Adam has recently given to her runs counter +to man's method of achievement. Men have preached to one another for a +hundred years and more and practiced so successfully the concentration +in industry of unlimited machinery with a few hands, that even mother knows +some of the truths in regard to the creation of wealth in the business +world, and she is probably not incapable of drawing a conclusion from her +own experience in the transfer of work from the home to the factory. +<p>If they are city dwellers, women have seen bread and preserves transferred; +if farm dwellers, they have seen the curing of meat and fish transferred, +the making of butter and cheese. They know that because of this transfer +the home is cleaner and quieter, more people better fed and clothed, and +the hours of the factory worker made shorter than those "mother used to +work." With half an eye women cannot fail to note that the labor which +used to be occupied in the home in interminable hours of spinning, baking +and preserving, has come to occupy itself for regulated periods in the +school, in business, in factory or cannery. And lo, Eve finds herself with +a pay envelope able to help support the quieter, cleaner home! +<p>All this is a commonplace to the business man, who knows that the evolution +has gone so far that ten percent of the married women of America are in +gainful pursuits, and that capital ventured on apartment hotels brings +a tempting return. +<p>But the Adamistic theory is based on the dream that women are contentedly +and efficiently conducting in their flats many occupations, and longing +to receive back into the life around the gas-log all those industries which +in years gone by were drawn from the fireside and established as money +making projects in mill or work-shop. And so Adam addresses an exhortation +to his Eve: "Don't buy bread, bake it; don't buy flour, grind your own; +don't buy soap, make it; don't buy canned, preserved, or dried food, carry +on the processes yourself; don't buy fruits and vegetables, raise them." +<p>Not a doubt seems to exist in Adam's mind as to the efficiency of functioning +woman-power in this way. According to the Adamistic theory, work as mother +used to do it is unqualifiedly perfect. This flattering faith is naturally +balm to women's hearts, and yet there are skeptics among them. When quite +by themselves women speculate as to how much of the fruit and vegetables +now put up in the home will "work." +<p>They smile when the hope is expressed that the quality will rise above +the old-time domestic standard. The home of the past was a beehive in which +women drudged, and little children were weary toilers, and the result was +not of a high grade. Statistics have shown that seventy-five percent of +the home-made bread of America was a poor product. I lived as a child in +the days of home-made bread. Once in so often the batch of bread "went +sour," and there seemed to be an unfailing supply of stale bread which +"must be eaten first." Those who cry out against a city of bakers' bread, +have never lived in a country of the home-made loaf. It is the Adamistic +philosophy, so complimentary to Eve, that leads us to expect that all housewives +can turn out a product as good as that of an expert who has specialized +to the one end of making bread, and who is supplied with expensive equipment +beyond the reach of the individual to possess. But there are rebellious +consumers who point out that the baker is under the law, while the housewife +is a law unto herself. Against the baker's shortcomings such brave doubters +assure us we have redress, we can refuse to patronize him; against the +housewife there is no appeal, her family must swallow her product to the +detriment of digestion. +<p>It may be the brutal truth, taking bread as the index, that only a quarter +of the processes carried on in the home turn out satisfactorily, while +of the other three-quarters, a just verdict may show that mother gets a +"little too much lye" in the soap, cooks the preserves a "little too hard," +"candies the fruit just a little bit," and grinds the flour in the mill +"not quite fine enough." +<p>But perhaps even more than the quality of the product does the question +of the economical disposition of labor-power agitate some women. They are +asking, since labor is very scarce, whether the extreme individualistic +direction of their labor-power is permissible. The vast majority of American +homes are without servants. In those homes are the women working such short +hours that they can, without dropping important obligations, take over +preserving, canning, dehydrating, the making of bread, soap, and butter +substitute? Has the tenement-house dweller accommodation suitable for introducing +these industrial processes into her home? Would the woman in the small +ménage in the country be wise in cutting down time given, for instance, +to the care of her baby and to reading to the older children, and using +the precious moments laboriously to grind wheat to flour? My observation +convinces me that conscientious housewives in servantless or one-servant +households, with work adjusted to a given end, with relative values already +determined upon, are not prepared by acceptance of the Adamistic theory +to return to primitive occupations. +<p>But even if business and home life could respond to the change without +strain, even if both could easily turn back on the road they have come +during the last hundred years, commerce yielding up and the home re-adopting +certain occupations, we should carefully weigh the economic value of a +reversion to primitive methods. +<p>The Adamistic attitude is influenced, perhaps unconsciously but no less +certainly, by the fact that the housewife is an unpaid worker. If an unpaid +person volunteers to do a thing, it is readily assumed that the particular +effort is worth while. "We get the labor for nothing" puts to rout all +thought of valuation. No doubt Adam will have to give over thinking in +this loose way. Labor-power, whether it is paid for or not, must be used +wisely or we shall not be able to maintain the structure of our civilization. +<p>Then, too, the Adamistic theory weighs and values the housewife's time +as little as it questions the quality of the home product. Any careful +reader of the various "Hints to Housewives" which have appeared, will note +that the "simplifying of meals" recommended would require nearly double +the time to prepare. The simplification takes into consideration only the +question of food substitutions, price and waste. Mother is supposed to +be wholly or largely unemployed and longing for unpaid toil. Should any +housewife conscientiously follow the advice given her by state and municipal +authorities she would be the drudge at the center of a home quite medieval +in development. +<p>Let us take a concrete example:--In a recently published and widely +applauded cookbook put out by a whole committee of Adamistic philosophers, +it is stated that the object of the book is to give practical hints as +to the various ways in which "economies can be effected and waste saved;" +and yet no saving of the woman's time, nerves and muscles is referred to +from cover to cover. The housewife is told, for instance, to "insist upon +getting the meat trimmings." The fat "can be rendered." And then follows +the process in soap-making. Mother is to place the scraps of fat on the +back of the stove. If she "watches it carefully" and does not allow it +to get hot enough to smoke there will be no odor. No doubt if she removes +her watchful eye and turns to bathe her baby, her tenement will reek with +smoking fat. She is to pursue this trying of fat and nerves day by day +until she has six pounds of grease. Next, she is to "stir it well," cool +it, melt it again; she is then to pour in the lye, "slowly stirring all +the time." Add ammonia. Then "stir the mixture constantly for twenty minutes +or half an hour." +<p>In contrast to all this primeval elaboration is the simple, common-sense +rule: Do not buy the trimmings, make the butcher trim meat before weighing, +insist that soap-making shall not be brought back to defile the home, but +remain where it belongs, a trade in which the workers can be protected +by law, and its malodorousness brought under regulation. +<p>In the same spirit the Adamistic suggestion to Eve to save coal by a +"heatless day" is met by the cold challenge of the riotous extravagance +of cooking in twelve separate tenements, twelve separate potatoes, on twelve +separate fires. +<p>The Adamistic theory, through its emphasis on the relation of food to +Eve, and the almost religious necessity of its manipulation at the altar +of the home cook-stove, has drawn thought away from the nutritive side +of what we eat. While the child in the streets is tossing about such words +as calories and carbohydrates with a glibness that comes of much hearing, +physiology and food values are destined to remain as far away as ever from +the average family breakfast table. Segregating a sex in the home, it is +true, centralizes it in a given place, but it does not necessarily train +the individual to function efficiently. Mother, as she "used to do," cooks +by rule of thumb; in fact, how could she do otherwise, since she must keep +one eye on her approving Adam while the other eye glances at the oven. +The Adamistic theory requires individualistic action, and disapproves specialization +in Eve. +<p>The theory also demands economic dependence in the home builder. Mother's +labor is not her own, she lives under the truck system, so to speak. She +is paid in kind for her work. Influenced by the Adamistic theory, the human +animal is the only species in which sex and economic relations are closely +linked, the only one in which the female depends upon the male for sustenance. +Mother must give personal service to those about her, and in return the +law ensures her keep according to the station of her husband, that is, +not according to her ability or usefulness, but according to the man's +earning capacity. +<p>The close association of mother with home in the philosophy of her mate, +has circumscribed her most natural and modest attempts at relaxation. Mother's +holiday is a thing to draw tears from those who contemplate it. The summer +outing means carrying the family from one spot to another, and making the +best of new surroundings for the old group. The "day off" means a concentration +of the usual toil into a few hours, followed by a hazy passing show that +she is too weary to enjoy. The kindly farmer takes his wife this year to +the county fair. She's up at four to "get on" with the work. She serves +breakfast, gives the children an extra polish in honor of the day, puts +on the clean frocks and suits with an admonition "not to get all mussed +up" before the start. The farmer cheerily counsels haste in order that +"we may have a good long day of it." He does not say what "it" is, but +the wife knows. At last the house is ready to be left, and the wife and +her brood are ready to settle down in the farm wagon. +<p>The fair grounds are reached. Adam has prepared the setting. It has +no relation to mother's needs. It was a most thrilling innovation when +in the summer of 1914 the Women's Political Union first set up big tents +at county fairs, fitted with comfortable chairs for mother, and cots and +toys, nurses and companions for the children. The farmer's wife for the +first time was relieved of care, and could go off to see the sights with +her mind at rest, if she desired anything more active than rocking lazily +with the delicious sensation of having nothing to do. +<p>Women must not blame Adam for lack of thoughtfulness. He cannot put +himself in mother's place. She must do her own thinking or let women who +are capable of thought do it for her. +<p>Men are relieved when mother is independent and happy. The farmer approved +the crèche tent at the county fairs. It convinced him that women +have ideas to contribute to the well-being of the community. The venture +proved the greatest of vote getters for the suffrage referendum. +<p>In fact, men themselves are the chief opponents of the Adamistic theory +to-day. The majority want women to organize the home and it is only a small +minority who place obstacles in the way of the wider functioning of women. +It is Eve herself who likes to exaggerate the necessity of her personal +service. I have seen many a primitive housewife grow hot at the suggestion +that her methods need modifying. It seemed like severing the silken cords +by which she held her mate, to challenge her pumpkin pie. +<p>But women are slowly overcoming Eve. Take the item of the care of children +in city parks. The old way is for fifty women to look after fifty separate +children, and thus waste the time of some thirty of them in keeping fifty +miserable children in segregation. The new way, now successfully initiated, +is to form play groups of happy children under the leadership of capable +young women trained for such work. +<p>Salvaging New York City's food waste was a very splendid bit of coöperative +action on the part of women. Mrs. William H. Lough of the Women's University +Club found on investigation that thousands of tons of good food are lost +by a condemnation, necessarily rough and ready, by the Board of Health. +She secured permission to have the sound and unsound fruits and vegetables +separated and with a large committee of women saved the food for consumption +by the community by dehydrating and other preserving processes. +<p>This was not as mother used to do. +<p>Mother's ways are being investigated and discarded the whole world round. +At last accounts half the population of Hamburg was being fed through municipal +kitchens and in Great Britain an order has been issued by Lord Rhondda, +the Food Controller, authorizing local authorities to open kitchens as +food distributing centers. The central government is to bear twenty-five +percent of the cost of equipment and lend another twenty-five percent to +start the enterprise. +<p>Mother's cook stove cannot bear the strain of war economies. +<p>Dropping their old segregation, women are going forth in fellowship +with men to meet in new ways the pressing problems of a new world. +<br> +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<h2> +<a NAME="XI"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">XI<br> +A LAND ARMY</a></h2> +Great Britain, France and Germany have mobilized a land army of women; +will the United States do less? Not if the farmer can be brought to have +as much faith in American women as the women have in themselves. And why +should they not have faith; the farm has already tested them out, and they +have not been found wanting. In face of this fine accomplishment the minds +of some men still entertain doubt, or worse, obliviousness, to the possible +contribution of women to land service. +<p>The farmer knows his need and has made clear statement of the national +dilemma in the form of a memorial to the President of the United States. +In part, it is as follows: +<p>"If food is to win the war, as we are assured on every side, the farmers +of America must produce more food in 1918 than they did in 1917. Under +existing conditions we cannot equal the production of 1917, much less surpass +it, and this for reasons over which the farmers have no control. "The chief +causes which will inevitably bring about a smaller crop next year, unless +promptly removed by national action, are six in number, of which the first +is the shortage of farm labor. +<p>"Since the war began in 1914 and before the first draft was made there +is reason to believe that more farm workers had left farms than there are +men in our army and navy together. Those men were drawn away by the high +wages paid in munition plants and other war industries, and their places +remain unfilled. In spite of the new classification, future drafts will +still further reduce the farm labor supply." +<p>With a million and a half men drawn out of the country and ten billion +dollars to be expended on war material, making every ammunition factory +a labor magnet, it seems like the smooth deceptions of prestidigitation +to answer the cry of the farmer with suggestion that men rejected by the +draft or high school boys be paroled to meet the exigency. The farm can't +be run with decrepit men or larking boys, nor the war won with less than +its full quota of soldiers. Legislators, government officials and farm +associations by sudden shifting of labor battalions cannot camouflage the +fact that the front line trenches of the fighting army and labor force +are undermanned. +<p>Women can and will be the substitutes if the experiments already made +are signs of the times. +<p>Groups of women from colleges and seasonal trades have ploughed and +harrowed, sowed and planted, weeded and cultivated, mowed and harvested, +milked and churned, at Vassar, Bryn Mawr and Mount Holyoke, at Newburg +and Milton, at Bedford Hills and Mahwah. It has been demonstrated that +our girls from college and city trade can do farm work, and do it with +a will. And still better, at the end of the season their health wins high +approval from the doctors and their work golden opinions from the farmers. +<p>Twelve crusaders were chosen from the thirty-three students who volunteered +for dangerous service during a summer vacation on the Vassar College farm. +The twelve ventured out on a new enterprise that meant aching muscles, +sunburn and blisters, but not one of the twelve "ever lost a day" in their +eight hours at hard labor, beginning at four-thirty each morning for eight +weeks during one of our hottest summers. They ploughed with horses, they +ploughed with tractors, they sowed the seed, they thinned and weeded the +plants, they reaped, they raked, they pitched the hay, they did fencing +and milking. The Vassar farm had bumper crops on its seven hundred and +forty acres, and its superintendent, Mr. Louis P. Gillespie, said, "A very +great amount of the work necessary for the large production was done by +our students. They hoed and cultivated sixteen acres of field corn, ten +acres of ensilage corn, five acres of beans, five acres of potatoes; carried +sheaves of rye and wheat to the shocks and shocked them; and two of the +students milked seven cows at each milking time. In the garden they laid +out a strawberry bed of two thousand plants, helped to plant corn and beans, +picked beans and other vegetables. They took great interest in the work +and did the work just as well as the average man and made good far beyond +the most sanguine expectations." +<p>At first the students were paid twenty-five cents an hour, the same +rate as the male farm hands. The men objected, saying that the young women +were beginners, but by the end of the summer the critics realized that +"brains tell" and said the girls were worth the higher wage, though they +had only been getting, in order to appease the masculine prejudice, seventeen +and a half cents an hour. There is no pleasing some people! If women are +paid less, they are unfair competitors, if they are paid equally they are +being petted--in short, fair competitors. +<p>Mt. Holyoke and Bryn Mawr have made experiments, and, like Vassar, demonstrated +not only that women can, and that satisfactorily, work on the land, but +that they will, and that cheerfully. The groups were happy and they comprehended +that they were doing transcendently important work, were rendering a patriotic +service by filling up the places left vacant by the drafted men. +<p>The Women's Agricultural Camp, known popularly as the "Bedford Unit," +proved an experiment rich in practical suggestion. Barnard students, graduates +of the Manhattan Trade School, and girls from seasonal trades formed the +backbone of the group. They were housed in an old farmhouse, chaperoned +by one of the Barnard professors, fed by student dietitians from the Household +Arts Department of Teachers College, transported from farm to farm by seven +chauffeurs, and coached in the arts of Ceres by an agricultural expert. +The "day laborers" as well as the experts were all women. +<center> +<p><img SRC="images/188.gif" ALT="An agricultural unit, in the uniform approved by the Woman's Land Army of America." height=387 width=500></center> + +<center> +<h4> +An agricultural unit, in the uniform approved by the Woman's Land Army +of America.</h4></center> +In founding the camp Mrs. Charles W. Short, Jr., had three definite ideas +in mind. First, she was convinced that young women could without ill-effect +on their health, and should as a patriotic service, do all sorts of agricultural +work. Second, that in the present crisis the opening up of new land with +women as farm managers is not called for, but rather the supply of the +labor-power on farms already under cultivation is the need. Third, that +the women laborers must, in groups, have comfortable living conditions +without being a burden on the farmer's wife, must have adequate pay, and +must have regulated hours of work. +<p>With these sound ideas as its foundation the camp opened at Mt. Kisco, +backed by the Committee on Agriculture of the Mayor's Committee of Women +on National Defense of New York City, under the chairmanship of Virginia +Gildersleeve, Dean of Barnard College. +<p>At its greatest enrolment the unit had seventy-three members. When the +prejudice of the fanners was overcome, the demand for workers was greater +than the camp could supply. Practically the same processes were carried +through as at Vassar, and the verdict of the farmer on his new helpers +was that "while less strong than men, they more than made up for this by +superior conscientiousness and quickness." Proof of the genuineness of +his estimate was shown in his willingness to pay the management of the +camp the regulation two dollars for an eight hour working day. And it indicated +entire satisfaction with the experiment, rather than abstract faith in +woman, that each farmer anxiously urged the captain of the group at the +end of his first trial to "please bring the same young ladies tomorrow." +He was sure no others so good existed. +<p>The unit plan seems a heaven-born solution of many of the knotty problems +of the farm. In the first place, the farmer gets cheerful and handy helpers, +and his over-worked wife does not find her domestic cares added to in the +hot summer season. The new hands house and feed themselves. From the point +of view of the worker, the advantage is that her food at the camp is prepared +by trained hands and the proverbial farm isolation gives way to congenial +companionship. +<p>These separate experiments growing out of the need of food production +and the shortage of labor have brought new blood to the farm, have turned +the college girl on vacation and, what is more important, being a solution +of an industrial problem, the unemployed in seasonal trades, into recruits +for an agricultural army. And by concentrating workers in well-run camps +there has been attracted to the land a higher order of helper. +<p>One obstacle in the way of the immediate success of putting such women +on the land is a wholly mistaken idea in the minds of many persons of influence +in agricultural matters that the new labor can be diverted to domestic +work in the farm house. This view is urged in the following letter to me +from the head of one of our best agricultural colleges: "The farm labor +shortage is much more acute than is generally understood and I have much +confidence in the possibility of a great amount of useful work in food +production being done by women who are physically strong enough and who +can secure sufficient preliminary training to do this with some degree +of efficiency. Probably the larger measure of service could be done by +relieving women now on the farms of this State from the double burden of +indoor work and the attempt to assist in farm operations and chores. If +farm women would get satisfactory domestic assistance within the house +they could add much to the success of field husbandry. Women who know farm +conditions and who could largely take the place of men in the management +of outdoor affairs can accomplish much more than will ever be possible +by drafting city-bred women directly into garden or other forms of field +work." +<p>The opinions expressed in this letter are as generally held as they +are mistaken. In the first place, the theory that the country-bred woman +in America is stronger and healthier than the city-bred has long since +been exploded. The assumption cannot stand up under the facts. Statistics +show that the death rate in the United States is lower in city than in +farm communities, and if any added proof were needed to indicate that the +stamina of city populations overbalances the country it was furnished by +the draft records. Any group of college and Manhattan Trade School girls +could be pitted against a group of women from the farms and win the laurels +in staying powers. Nor must it be overlooked that we are not dealing here +with uncertainties; the mettle of the girls has been proved. +<p>In any case the fact must be faced that these agricultural units will +not do domestic work. Nine-tenths of the farm houses in America are without +modern conveniences. The well-appointed barn may have running water, but +the house has not. To undertake work as a domestic helper on the average +farm is to step back into quite primitive conditions. The farmer's wife +can attract no one from city life, where so much cooperation is enjoyed, +to her extreme individualistic surroundings. +<p>A second obstacle to the employment of this new labor-force is due to +the government's failure to see the possibility of saving most valuable +labor-power and achieving an economic gain by dovetailing the idle months +of young women in industrial life into the rush time of agriculture. +<p>One department suggests excusing farm labor from the draft, as if we +had already fulfilled our obligation in man-power to the battlefront of +our Allies. The United States Senate discusses bringing in coolie and contract +labor, as if we had not demonstrated our unfitness to deal with less advanced +peoples, and as if a republic could live comfortably with a class of disfranchised +workers. The Labor Department declares it will mobilize for the farm an +army of a million boys, as if the wise saw, "boys will be boys," did not +apply with peculiar sharpness of flavor to the American vintage, God bless +them, and as if it were not our plain duty at this world crisis to spur +up rather than check civilizing agencies and keep our boys in school for +the full term. +<p>Refusing to be in the least crushed by government neglect, far-seeing +women determined to organize widely and carefully their solution of the +farm-labor problem. To this end the Women's National Farm and Garden Association, +the Garden Clubs of America, the Young Women's Christian Association, the +Woman's Suffrage Party, the New York Women's University Club, and the Committee +of the Women's Agricultural Camp, met with representatives of the Grange, +of the Cornell Agricultural College, and of the Farmingdale State School +of Agriculture, and formed an advisory council, the object of which is +to "stimulate the formation of a Land Army of Women to take the places +on the farms of the men who are being drafted for active service." This +is to be on a nationwide scale. +<p>The Council has put lecturers in the Granges to bring to the farmer +by the spoken word and lantern slides the value of the labor of women, +and is appealing to colleges, seasonal trades and village communities to +form units for the Land Army. It is asking the coöperation of the +labor bureaus to act as media through which units may be placed where labor +is most needed. +<p>This mobilization of woman-power is not yet large or striking. The effort +is entirely civil. But all the more is it praiseworthy. It shows on the +part of women, clear-eyed recognition of facts as they exist and vision +as to the future. +<p>The mobilization of this fresh labor-power should of course be taken +in hand by the government. Not only that, it should be led by women as +in Great Britain and Germany. But the spirit in America today is the same +as in England the first year of the war,--a disposition to exclude women +from full service. +<p>But facts remain facts in spite of prejudice, and the Woman's Land Army, +with faith and enthusiasm in lieu of a national treasury, are endeavoring +to bring woman-power and the untilled fields together. The proved achievement +of the individual worker will win the employer, the unit plan with its +solution of housing conditions and dreary isolation will overcome not only +the opposition of the farmer's wife, but that of the intelligent worker. +When the seed time of the movement has been lived through by anxious and +inspired women, the government may step in to reap the harvest of a nation's +gratitude. +<p>The mobilization of woman-power on the farm is the need of the hour, +and the wise and devoted women who are trying to answer the need, deserve +an all-hail from the people of the United States and her Allies. +<br> +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<h2> +<a NAME="XII"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">XII<br> +WOMAN'S PART IN SAVING CIVILIZATION</a></h2> +Men have played--all honor to them--the major part in the actual conflict +of the war. Women will mobilize for the major part of binding up the wounds +and conserving civilization. +<p>The spirit of the world might almost be supposed to have been looking +forward to this day and clearly seeing its needs, so well are women being +prepared to receive and carry steadily the burden which will be laid on +their shoulders. For three-quarters of a century schools and colleges have +given to women what they had to confer in the way of discipline. Gainful +pursuits were opened up to them, adding training in ordered occupation +and self-support. Lastly has come the Great War, with its drill in sacrifice +and economy, its larger opportunities to function and achieve, its ideals +of democracy which have directly and quickly led to the political enfranchisement +of women in countries widely separated. +<p>Fate has prepared women to share fully in the saving of civilization. +<p>Whether victory be ours in the immediate future, or whether the dangers +rising so clearly on the horizon develop into fresh alignments leading +to years of war, civilization stands in jeopardy. Political ideals and +ultimate social aims may remain intact, but the immediate, practical maintenance +of those standards of life which are necessary to ensure strong and fruitful +reactions are in danger of being swept away. +<p>We have been destroying the life, the wealth and beauty of the world. +The nobility of our aim in the war must not blind us to the awfulness and +the magnitude of the destruction. In the fighting forces there are at least +thirty-eight million men involved in international or civil conflict. Over +four million men have fallen, and three million have been maimed for life. +Disease has taken its toll of fighting strength and economic power. In +addition to all this human depletion, we have the loss of life and the +destruction of health and initiative in harried peoples madly flying across +their borders from invading armies. +<p>Starvation has swept across wide areas, and steady underfeeding rules +in every country in Europe and in the cities of America, letting loose +malnutrition, that hidden enemy whose ambushes are more serious than the +attacks of an open foe. The world is sick. +<p>And the world is poor. The nations have spent over a hundred billions +on the war, and that is but part of the wealth which has gone down in the +catastrophe. Thousands of square miles are plowed so deep with shot and +shell and trench that the fertile soil lies buried beneath unyielding clay. +Orchards and forests are gone. Villages are wiped out, cities are but skeletons +of themselves. In the face of all the need of reconstruction we must admit, +however much we would wish to cover the fact,--the world is poor. +<br> +<center> +<h4> +.<img SRC="images/199.gif" ALT="A useful blending of Allied women. Miss Kathleen Burke (Scotch) exhibiting the X-ray ambulance equipped by Mrs. Ayrlon (English) and Madame Curie (French)." height=306 width=500></h4></center> + +<h4> +A useful blending of Allied women. Miss Kathleen Burke (Scotch) exhibiting +the X-ray ambulance equipped by Mrs. Ayrlon (English) and Madame Curie +(French)</h4> +And still, as in no other war, the will to guard human welfare has remained +dominant. The country rose to a woman in most spirited fashion to combat +the plan to lower the standards of labor conditions in the supposed interest +of war needs. With but few exceptions the States have strengthened their +labor laws. In its summary the American Association for Labor Legislation +says: +<p>"Eleven States strengthened their child labor laws, by raising age limits, +extending restrictions to new employments, or shortening hours. Texas passed +a new general statute setting a fifteen-year minimum age for factories +and Vermont provided for regulations in conformity with those of the Federal +Child Labor Act. Kansas and New Hampshire legislated on factory safeguards, +Texas on fire escapes, New Jersey on scaffolds, Montana on electrical apparatus, +Delaware on sanitary equipment, and West Virginia on mines. New Jersey +forbade the manufacture of articles of food or children's wear in tenements. +<p>"Workmen's compensation laws were enacted in Delaware, Idaho, New Mexico, +South Dakota, and Utah, making forty States and Territories which now have +such laws, in addition to the Federal Government's compensation law, for +its own half-million civilian employees. In more than twenty additional +States existing acts were amended, the changes being marked by a tendency +to extend the scope, shorten the working period, and increase provision +for medical care." +<p>The Great War, far from checking the movement for social welfare, has +quickened the public sense of responsibility. That fact opens the widest +field to women for work in which they are best prepared by nature and training. +<p>Many keen thinkers are concerned over the question of population. One +of our most distinguished professors has thrown out a hint of a possibility +that considering the greater proportion of women to men some form of plurality +of wives may become necessary. The disturbed balance of the sexes is a +thing that will right itself in one generation. Need of population will +be best answered by efforts to salvage the race. The United States loses +each year five hundred thousand babies under twelve months of age from +preventable causes. An effort to save them would seem more reasonable than +a demand for more children to neglect. Life will be so full of drive and +interest, that the woman who has given no hostages to fortune will find +ample scope for her powers outside of motherhood. The "old maid" of tomorrow +will have a mission more honored and important than was hers in the past. +<p>But whatever the conclusions as to the wisest method of building up +population, there is no doubt that government and individuals will make +strict valuation of the essentials and non-essentials in national life. +In our poverty we will test all things in the light of their benefit to +the race and hold fast that which is good. +<p>The opinions of women will weigh in this national accounting. There +will be no money to squander, and women to a unit will stand behind those +men who think a recreation field is of more value than a race track. It +will be the woman's view, there being but one choice, that it is better +to encourage fleetness and skill in boys and girls than in horses. If we +have just so much money to spend and the question arises as to whether +there shall be corner saloons or municipal kitchens, public sentiment, +made in good measure by women, will eschew the saloon. +<p>The things that lend themselves to the husbanding of the race will draw +as a magnet those who have borne the race. The tired world will need for +its rejuvenation a broadened and deepened medical science. Women are too +wise to permit sanitation and research to fall to a low level. On the contrary, +they will wish them to be more thorough. There will be economy along the +less essential lines to meet the cost. +<p>The flagging spirit needs the inspiration of art and music. To secure +them in the future, state and municipal effort will be demanded. Women +are born economizers. They have been trained to pinch each penny. With +their advent into political life, roads and public buildings will cost +less. Through careful saving, funds will be made available for the things +of the spirit. +<p>One of the men conductors on the New York street railways somewhat reproachfully +remarked to me, "No one ever came to look at the recreation room and restaurant +at the car barns until women were taken on. Men don't seem to count." Is +the reproach deserved? Have women been narrow in sympathy? Perhaps we have +assumed that men can look out for themselves. They could, but in private +life they never do. Women have to do the mothering. A trade-unionist is +ready enough to regulate wages and hours, but he gives not a thought to +surroundings in factory and workshop. +<p>An act of protection generally starts with solicitude about a woman +or child. Factory legislation took root in their needs. There was no mercy +for the man worker. His only chance of getting better conditions was when +women entered his occupation, and the regulation meant for her benefit +indirectly served his interest. +<p>"Men suffer more than women in certain dangerous trades, but I did not +suppose you were generous enough to care anything about them," came in +answer to an inquiry at a labor conference at the end of a most admirable +paper on women in dangerous trades, given by one of the doctors in the +New York City Department of Health. He was speaking to an audience of working +women. I doubt if his hearers had given a thought to men workers. +<p>Perhaps this is natural, since there has been going on at the same time +with the development of factory legislation in America a strong propaganda +directed especially at political freedom for women. We have been laying +stress on the wrongs of woman and demanding very persistently and convincingly +her rights. The industrial needs and rights of the man have been overlooked. +<p>With increasing numbers of women entering the industrial world, with +ever widening extension of the vote to women, and the consequent quickening +of public responsibility, together with the recent experience of Europe +demonstrating the importance of care for all workers, both men and women, +there is ground for hope that even the United States, where protective +legislation is so retarded in development, will enter upon wide and fundamental +plans for conservation of all our human resources. +<p>Protection of the worker, housing conditions, the feeding of factory +employees and school children, play grounds and recreation centers, will +challenge the world for first consideration. These are the social processes +which command most surely the hearts and minds of women. The churning which +the war has given humanity has roused in women a realization that upon +them rests at least half the burden of saving civilization from wreck. +Here is the world, with such and such needs for food, clothing, shelter, +with such and such needs for sanitation, hospitals, and above all, for +education, for science, for the arts, if it is not to fall back into the +conditions of the Middle Ages. How can women aid in making secure the national +position? Certainly not by idleness, inefficiency, an easy policy of laissez +faire. They must labor, economize, and pool their brains. +<p>Women can save civilization only by the broadest coöperative action, +by daring to think, by daring to be themselves. The world is entering an +heroic age calling for heroic women. +<br> +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<h2> +<a NAME="APPENDIX"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">APPENDIX</a></h2> + +<h3> +DOCUMENTS USED IN WOMEN'S WAR-WORK IN ENGLAND AND FRANCE</h3> + +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<center><img SRC="images/208.gif" ALT="Women's Army Auxillary Corps" height=530 width=316></center> + +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<br>CONFIDENTIAL. Reference No: J.W. 21 [o.] +<p>Joint Woman's V.A.D. Department. +<p>DEVONSHIRE HOUSE. PICCADILLY, LONDON. W.I. +<p><i>Return to Secretary, V.A.D Department. Devonshire House, Piccadilly, +S.W.I.</i> +<p>Territorial Force Associations, British Red Cross Society. Order of +St. John of Jerusalem. +<p>Telegrams [unreadable] Telephone Mayfair 4707 +<p><i>B.R.C.S. or Order of St. John ...</i> +<p>Sir, +<p>Will you kindly fill up the following form of Medical Certificate, returning +it to the address given above. +<p>Your communication will be received as strictly confidential. +<p>It is urgently requested that Members' names and detachment numbers +should be filled in legibly. +<p>Yours faithfully, +<p>MARGARET HEMPHILL +<h2> +MEDICAL CERTIFICATE</h2> + 1. Name +<p> 2. County +No. of Detachment +<p> 3. How long have you been acquainted with her? +<p> 4. Have you attended her professionally? +<p> 5. For what complaint? +<p> 6. Is she intelligent and of active habits? +<p> 7. General health? +<p> 8. Has she flat feet, hammer-toe, or any other defect? +<p> 9. Is her vision good in each eye? +<p>10. Is her hearing perfect? +<p>11. Has she sound teeth, and if not, have they been properly attended +to by a Dentist lately? +<p>12. Has she shown any tendency to Rheumatism, Anaemia, Tuberculosis, +or other illness? +<p>13. When? +<p>14. What? +<p>15. Has she ever had influenza? +<p>16. Does she suffer from headaches? +<p>17. Any form of fits? +<p>18. Heart disease or varicose veins? +<p>19. Is she subject to any functional disturbance? +<br> +<hr style="width: 25%;"> +<p>I have on the ................................. day of 191.... seen +and examined ....................................... and hereby certify +that she is apparently in good health, that she is not labouring under +any deformity, and is, in my opinion, both physically and mentally competent +to undertake duty in a Military Hospital, and is +<br><a NAME="FNanchor*"></a><sup><a href="#Footnote_*">[*]</a></sup>A. +Fit for General Service. +<br> B. Fit for Home Service only. +<br> C. Unfit. +<p><i>Date (Signed) +Address</i> +<p><a NAME="Footnote_*"></a><a href="#FNanchor*">[*]</a> Kindly delete +categories which do not apply. +<br> +<hr style="width: 25%;"> +<p>Reference No.: J.W. 19c. +<h3> +JOINT WOMEN'S V.A.D. DEPARTMENT. Territorial Forces Association. British +Red Cross Society. Order of St. John of Jerusalem. DEVONSHIRE HOUSE, PICCADILLY, +LONDON. W1.</h3> + +<hr style="width: 25%;"> +<h3> +QUALIFICATIONS of Members of Women's Voluntary Aid Detachments for Nursing +Service or General Service.</h3> + +<hr style="width: 25%;"> +<p>1. (a) Name in full (<i>Mrs. or Miss</i>). (b) If +Married state Maiden Name. +<p>2. Permanent Postal Address. Present Postal Address. +<p>3. Telephone No. +<p>4. Telegraphic Address. +<p>5. Detachment County and No. B.R.C.S. +<br> St. John Brigade. +<br> St. John Association. +<p>6. Name and Address of Commandant of Detachment. +<p>7. Rank in Detachment. +<p>8. Time of Service in Detachment. +<p>9. Age and Date of Birth. +<p>10. Place and Country of Birth. +<p>11. Nationality at Birth. +<p>12. Present Nationality. +<p>13. Height. +<p>14. Weight. +<p>15. Where Educated. +<p>16. At what age did you leave school? +<p>17. Whether Single, Married, or Widow. +<p>18. If not Single, state Nationality of Husband. +<p>19. Name and Address of Next-of-Kin or Nearest Relation residing in +the British Isles. +<p>20. Father's Nationality at Birth. +<p>21. Mother's Nationality at Birth. +<p>22. Father's Profession. +<p>23. Religion. +<p>24. (a) If you volunteer for nursing duties state what experience you +have had in wards. +<br> (b) Name and address of hospital. +<br> (c) Date. +<p>25. Certificates held. +<p>26. (a) Nursing. +(f) Motor Driver. +<br> (b) Kitchen. +(g) Laboratory Attendant. +<br> (c) Clerical. +(h) X-Ray Attendant. +<br> (d) Storekeeping. +(i) House Work. +<br> (e) Dispenser. +(j) Pantry Work. +<p>27. State what experience and qualifications you have had +for Categories in No. 26. +<p>28. Have you been inoculated against Enteric Fever? +If so, what date? +<br> If not, are you willing to be? +<br> Have you been vaccinated? +<br> It so, what date? +<br> If not, are you willing to be? +<p>29. Your usual Occupation or Profession? +<br> Your present Occupation or Profession? +<p>30. Give the Names and Addresses of two British Householders with permanent +addresses in the British Isles who have known applicant for two or more +years, but are not related to applicant, to act as References, having previously +obtained their permission to use their names. +<p> (a) (Mayor, Magistrate, Justice of the Peace, Minister +of Religion, +<br> Barrister, Physician, Solicitor +or Notary Public). +<br> Acquaintance dating from +year ________ +<p> (b) Lady. +<br> Acquaintance dating from +year _______ +<p>31. Name and Address of Head of College or School, recent Business +Employer, Head of Government Department, Secretary of Society or some other +person who can be referred to for a report on your qualifications for the +work selected. (The Quartermaster of your V.A.D. could be given if you +have worked in her department.) +<br> In what capacity employed? +<br> How long employed? +<br> Year? +<p>32. Are you willing to serve at home or abroad? +<p>33. Are you willing to serve in Civil Hospitals from which +personnel have been withdrawn for War Service? +<p>34. Are you willing to serve:-- +<br> (a) With pay, +<br> (b) For expenses only, +<br> on the terms of service laid down in our terms of service? +<br> N. B.--Members who can afford to work for their expenses +only are urgently needed. +<p>35. Date after which you will be available for duty. +<p>36. (a) Are you pledged to serve in any other organisation? +(b) If so, what? +<p>37. (a) Have you served with the Women's Legion or any +similar organisation? +<br> (b) If so, what? +<p>I hereby declare that the above statements are complete and correct +to the best of my knowledge and belief. +<p>Date .......... Usual Signature .......... +<p><i>For Office Purposes</i>, please add your full Christian Names and +Surname legibly written. +<p>I certify that the above declaration is, to the best of my knowledge +and belief, true; and that M ............ is a fit and proper person to +be employed by the Joint V.A.D. Committee. +<p>REMARKS:-- +<p>Date .......... Signed .................... + +<i>Commandant</i>. +<p>Date .......... Countersigned .................... + +<i>County Director</i>. +<p>NOTE.--Commandants are held responsible for all statements on this form +being accurate so far as it is possible for them to find out, also for +the fact that the member who signs it is a British subject, and in every +way suitable for appointment by the Joint V.A.D. Committee. +<p>This form must be signed by the Commandant, who should then send it +to the County Director for counter signature and forwarding to Headquarters. +<br> +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<p><i>Application No.</i> +<p><i>For Official use only</i>. +<p>CONFIDENTIAL. +<h2> +WOMEN'S ARMY AUXILIARY CORPS FORM OF APPLICATION</h2> +N.B.--No woman need apply who is not prepared to offer her services for +the duration of the war and to take up work wherever she is required. +<p>1. Name in Full (Mrs. or Miss). +<p>2. Permanent Postal Address. +<p>2a. State nearest Railway Station. +<p>3. Surname at birth, if different. +<p>4. For what work do you offer your services? State your +qualifications for this work. (The occupations for which women are +<br> required are set out in the accompanying leaflet.) +<p>5. Are you willing to serve:-- +<br> (a) At Home and Abroad as may be required. +<br> (b) At Home only. +<p>6. If selected and enrolled how many days' notice will you require before +your services are available? +<p>7. Age and date of birth. +<p>8. Place and Country of Birth. +<p>9. Nationality at Birth. +<p>10. Present Nationality (if naturalised give +date). +<p>11. Whether single, married or widow. If married +state number of children, +<br> (a) under 12 years old. +<br> (b) " +5 " " +<p>12. If not single state Nationality of Husband. +(a) Is your husband serving with the Forces? +<br> (b) If so, where? +<p>13. Father's Nationality at Birth. +<p>14. Mother's Nationality at Birth. +<p>15. Father's Occupation. +<p>16. State school or college where educated. +At what age did you leave School? +<p>17. Particulars of any other Training, stating Certificates held. +<p>18. (a) Name and Address of your present employer +(<i>see Note on other side</i>). +<br> N.B.--(The employer will not be referred to unless +he is given as a +<br> reference under paragraph 20 below.) +<br> (b) Nature of his business. +<br> (c) Capacity in which you are employed. +<p> (d) Length of your service with him. +<p> (e) Salary which you are now receiving. +<p>19. Previous business experience (if any) giving dates, salaries +received, and names of Employers. +<p>20. Give below for purposes of reference the names of two or more British +householders with their permanent addresses, one of whom should be, if +possible, your present or previous Employer, a Teacher, a Town Councillor, +Mayor or Provost, Justice of Peace, Minister of Religion, Doctor or Solicitor, +who has known you for two or more years, but is not related to you. One +of the references must be a woman. +<p> (a) Name. +<br> Profession or Occupation. +<br> Address. +<br> (b) Name. +<br> Profession or Occupation. +<br> Address. +<br> (c) Name. +<br> Profession or Occupation. +<br> Address. +<p>An offer of Service can in no way be regarded as a final enrolment. +<p><i>I hereby declare that the above statements are complete and correct +to the best of my knowledge and belief</i>. +<p><i>Date</i> ___________ <i>Usual Signature</i> ____________ +<p>This Form should be filled in by the Applicant and returned to:--Employment +Exchange _________________________ +<br> +<hr style="width: 25%;"> +<p>NOTE. +<p>Women who are already engaged in any of the following occupations will +not be accepted unless they bring with them a letter from their Employer +or Head of Department stating that they have permission to volunteer:-- +<p>(i) Government Service. +<p>(ii) Munition work. +<p>(iii) Work in a Controlled Establishment. +<p>(iv) Full-time work in an establishment engaged on contract +work for a Government Department. +<p>(v) V.A.D. Military Hospitals and Red Cross Hospitals. +<p>(vi) School Teaching. +<p>(vii) Local Government Service. +<p>No woman who is a National Service Volunteer or is employed in Agriculture +will be accepted. +<p>N.B.--Applicants are urged not to give up any present employment until +they are called upon to do so. +<br> +<hr style="width: 100%;"> +<h3> +(Part of the application form used in England by the Women's Land Army.)</h3> + +<hr style="width: 25%;"> +<h2> +WOMEN'S LAND ARMY</h2> + +<hr style="width: 25%;"> +<p>CONDITIONS AND TERMS. +<p>There are three Sections of the Women's Land Army. +<p>(1). AGRICULTURE. +<p>(2). TIMBER CUTTING. +<p>(3). FORAGE. +<p>If you sign on for A YEAR and are prepared to go wherever you are sent, +you can join which Section you like. +<p><b>YOU PROMISE</b>:-- +<p>1. To sign on in the Land Army for ONE YEAR. +<p>2. To come to a Selection Board when summoned. +<p>3. To be medically examined, free of cost. +<p>4. To be prepared if PASSED by the Selection Board to take up work +after due notice. +<p>5. TO BE WILLING TO GO TO WHATEVER PART OF THE COUNTRY YOU ARE SENT. +<p> +<hr style="width: 35%;"> +<br> +<h3> +<b>THE GOVERNMENT PROMISES</b>:--</h3> +1. A MINIMUM WAGE to workers of 18/- a week. After they have passed +an efficiency test the wages given are £1 a week and upwards. +<p>2. A short course of FREE INSTRUCTION if necessary. +<p>3. FREE UNIFORM. +<p>4. FREE MAINTENANCE in a Depôt for a term not exceeding 4 weeks +if the worker is OUT OF EMPLOYMENT through no fault of +her own. +<p>5. FREE RAILWAY travelling, when taking up or changing Employment. +<br> +<br> +<br> +<hr> +<br> +<br> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOBILIZING WOMAN-POWER***</p> +<p>******* This file should be named 10080-h.txt or 10080-h.zip *******</p> +<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> +<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/0/8/10080">https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/0/8/10080</a></p> +<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed.</p> + +<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Mobilizing Woman-Power + +Author: Harriot Stanton Blatch + +Release Date: November 14, 2003 [eBook #10080] + +Language: English + +Chatacter set encoding: US-ASCII + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOBILIZING WOMAN-POWER*** + + +E-text prepared by Debra Storr and Project Gutenberg Distributed +Proofreaders + + + +MOBILIZING WOMAN-POWER + +By HARRIOT STANTON BLATCH + +1918 + + + + + + + +[Illustration: Jeanne d'Arc.--the spirit of the women of the Allies.] + + + + +TO THE ABLE AND DEVOTED WOMEN OF GREAT BRITAIN AND FRANCE + +Who have stood behind the armies of the Allies through the years of the +Great War as an unswerving second line of defense against an onslaught +upon the liberty and civilization of the world, I dedicate this volume. + +HARRIOT STANTON BLATCH + + + + +CONTENTS + +FOREWORD BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT + + I. OUR FOE + + II. WINNING THE WAR + + III. MOBILIZING WOMEN IN GREAT BRITAIN + + IV. MOBILIZING WOMEN IN FRANCE + + V. MOBILIZING WOMEN IN GERMANY + + VI. WOMEN OVER THE TOP IN AMERICA + + VII. EVE'S PAY ENVELOPE + +VIII. POOLING BRAINS + + IX. "BUSINESS AS USUAL" + + X. "AS MOTHER USED TO DO" + + XI. A LAND ARMY + + XII. WOMAN'S PART IN SAVING CIVILIZATION + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + +Jeanne d'Arc--the spirit of the women of the Allies + +They wear the uniforms of the Edinburgh trams and the New York City +subway and trolley guards, with pride and purpose. + +Then--the offered service of the Women's Reserve Ambulance Corps in +England was spurned. Now--they wear shrapnel helmets while working +during the Zeppelin raids. + +The French poilu on furlough is put to work harrowing. + +Has there ever been anything impossible to French women since the time +of Jeanne d'Arc? The fields must be harrowed--they have no horses. + +The daily round in the Erie Railroad workshops. + +In the well-lighted factory of the Briggs and Stratton Company, +Milwaukee, the girls are comfortably and becomingly garbed for work. + +The women of the Motor Corps of the National League for Woman's Service +refuting the traditions that women have neither strength nor endurance. + +Down the street they come, beginning their pilgrimage of alleviation and +succor on the battlefields of France. + +How can business be "as usual" when in Paris there are about 1800 of +these small workshops where a woman dips Bengal Fire and grenades into a +bath of paraffin! + +Countess de Berkaim and her canteen in the Gare de St. Lazarre, Paris. + +An agricultural unit in the uniform approved by the Woman's Land Army of +America. + +A useful blending of Allied women. Miss Kathleen Burke (Scotch) +exhibiting the X-ray ambulance equipped by Mrs. Ayrton (English) and +Madame Curie (French). + + + + +FOREWORD + + +It is a real pleasure to write this foreword to the book which Mrs. +Harriot Stanton Blatch dedicates to the women of Great Britain and +France; to the women who through the years of the great war have stood +as the second line of defense against the German horror which menaces +the liberty and civilization of the entire world. + +There could be no more timely book. Mrs. Blatch's aim is to stir the +women of this country to the knowledge that this is their war, and also +to make all our people feel that we, and especially our government, +should welcome the service of women, and make use of it to the utmost. +In other words, the appeal of Mrs. Blatch is essentially an appeal for +service. No one has more vividly realized that service benefits the one +who serves precisely as it benefits the one who is served. I join with +her in the appeal that the women shall back the men with service, and +that the men in their turn shall frankly and eagerly welcome the +rendering of such service _on the basis of service by equals for a +common end_. + +Mrs. Blatch makes her appeal primarily because of the war needs of the +moment. But she has in view no less the great tasks of the future. I +welcome her book as an answer to the cry that the admission of women to +an equal share in the right of self government will tend to soften the +body politic. Most certainly I will ever set my face like flint against +any unhealthy softening of our civilization, and as an answer in advance +to hyper-criticism I explain that I do not mean softness in the sense of +tender-heartedness; I mean the softness which, extends to the head and +to the moral fibre, I mean the softness which manifests itself either in +unhealthy sentimentality or in a materialism which may be either +thoughtless and pleasure-loving or sordid and money-getting. I believe +that the best women, when thoroughly aroused, and when the right appeal +is made to them, will offer our surest means of resisting this unhealthy +softening. + +No man who is not blind can fail to see that we have entered a new day +in the great epic march of the ages. For good or for evil the old days +have passed; and it rests with us, the men and women now alive, to +decide whether in the new days the world is to be a better or a worse +place to live in, for our descendants. + +In this new world women are to stand on an equal footing with men, in +ways and to an extent never hitherto dreamed of. In this country they +are on the eve of securing, and in much of the country have already +secured, their full political rights. It is imperative that they should +understand, exactly as it is imperative that men should understand, that +such rights are of worse than no avail, unless the will for the +performance of duty goes hand in hand with the acquirement of the +privilege. + +If the women in this country reinforce the elements that tend to a +softening of the moral fibre, to a weakening of the will, and +unwillingness to look ahead or to face hardship and labor and danger for +a high ideal--then all of us alike, men and women, will suffer. But if +they show, under the new conditions, the will to develop strength, and +the high idealism and the iron resolution which under less favorable +circumstances were shown by the women of the Revolution and of the Civil +War, then our nation has before it a career of greatness never hitherto +equaled. This book is fundamentally an appeal, not that woman shall +enjoy any privilege unearned, but that hers shall be the right to do +more than she has ever yet done, and to do it on terms of +self-respecting partnership with men. Equality of right does not mean +identity of function; but it does necessarily imply identity of purpose +in the performance of duty. + +Mrs. Blatch shows why every woman who inherits the womanly virtues of +the past, and who has grasped the ideal of the added womanly virtues of +the present and the future, should support this war with all her +strength and soul. She testifies from personal knowledge to the hideous +brutalities shown toward women and children by the Germany of to-day; +and she adds the fine sentence: "Women fight for a place in the sun for +those who hold right above might." + +She shows why women must unstintedly give their labor in order to win +this war; and why the labor of the women must be used to back up both +the labor and the fighting work of the men, for the fighting men leave +gaps in the labor world which must be filled by the work of women. She +says in another sentence worth remembering, "The man behind the counter +should of course be moved to a muscular employment; but we must not +interpret his dalliance with tapes and ribbons as a proof of a +superfluity of men." + +Particularly valuable is her description of the mobilization of women in +Great Britain and France. From these facts she draws the conclusion as +to America's needs along this very line. She paints as vividly as I have +ever known painted, the truth as to why it is a merit that women should +be forced to work, a merit that _every one_ should be forced to work! It +is just as good for women as for men that they should have to use body +and mind, that they should not be idlers. As she puts it, "Active +mothers insure a virile race. The peaceful nation, if its women fall +victims to the luxury which rapidly increasing wealth brings, will +decay." "Man power must give itself unreservedly at the front. Woman +power must show not only eagerness but fitness to substitute for +man power." + +I commend especially the chapter containing the sentence, "This war may +prove to us the wisdom and economy of devoting public funds to mothers +rather than to creches and juvenile asylums;" and also the chapter in +which the author tells women that if they are merely looking for a soft +place in life their collective demand for a fair field and no favor will +be wholly ineffective. The doors for service now stand open, and it +rests with the women themselves to say whether they will enter in! + +The last chapter is itself an unconscious justification of woman's right +to a share in the great governmental decisions which to-day are vital. +No statesman or publicist could set forth more clearly than Mrs. Blatch +the need of winning this war, in order to prevent either endless and +ruinous wars in the future, or else a world despotism which would mean +the atrophy of everything that really tends to the elevation of mankind. + +Mrs. Blatch has herself rendered a very real service by this appeal that +women should serve, and that men should let them serve. + +Theodore Roosevelt + + + + +I + +OUR FOE + + +The nations in which women have influenced national aims face the nation +that glorifies brute force. America opposes the exaltation of the +glittering sword; opposes the determination of one nation to dominate +the world; opposes the claim that the head of one ruling family is the +direct and only representative of the Creator; and, above all, America +opposes the idea that might makes right. + +Let us admit the full weight of the paradox that a people in the name of +peace turns to force of arms. The tragedy for us lay in there being no +choice of ways, since pacific groups had failed to create machinery to +adjust vital international differences, and since the Allies each in +turn, we the last, had been struck by a foe determined to settle +disagreements by force. + +Never did a nation make a crusade more just than this of ours. We were +patient, too long patient, perhaps, with challenges. We seek no +conquest. We fight to protect the freedom of our citizens. On America's +standard is written democracy, on that of Germany autocracy. Without +reservation women can give their all to attain our end. + +There may be a cleavage between the German people and the ruling class. +It may be that our foe is merely the military caste, though I am +inclined to believe that we have the entire German nation on our hands. +The supremacy of might may be a doctrine merely instilled in the minds +of the people by its rulers. Perhaps the weed is not indigenous, but it +flourishes, nevertheless. Rabbits did not belong in Australia, nor +pondweed in England, but there they are, and dominating the situation. +Arrogance of the strong towards the weak, of the better placed towards +the less well placed, is part of the government teaching in Germany. The +peasant woman harries the dog that strains at the market cart, her +husband harries her as she helps the cow drag the plough, the petty +officer harries the peasant when he is a raw recruit, and the young +lieutenant harries the petty officer, and so it goes up to the +highest,--a well-planned system on the part of the superior to bring the +inferior to a high point of material efficiency. The propelling spirit +is devotion to the Fatherland: each believes himself a cog in the +machine chosen of God to achieve His purposes on earth. The world hears +of the Kaiser's "Ich und Gott," of his mailed fist beating down his +enemies, but those who have lived in Germany know that exactly the same +spirit reigns in every class. The strong in chastizing his inferior has +the conviction that since might makes right he is the direct +representative of Deity on the particular occasion. + +The overbearing spirit of the Prussian military caste has drilled a race +to worship might; men are overbearing towards women, women towards +children, and the laws reflect the cruelties of the strong towards +the weak. + +As the recent petition of German suffragists to the Reichstag states, +their country stands "in the lowest rank of nations as regards women's +rights." It is a platitude just now worth repeating that the +civilization of a people is indicated by the position accorded to its +women. On that head, then, the Teutonic Kultur stands challenged. + +An English friend of mine threw down the gauntlet thirty years ago. She +had married a German officer. After living at army posts all over the +Empire, she declared, "What we foreigners take as simple childlikeness +in the Germans is merely lack of civilization." This keen analysis came +from a woman trained as an investigator, and equipped with perfect +command of the language of her adopted country. + +"Lack of civilization,"--perhaps that explains my having seen again and +again officers striking the soldiers they were drilling, and journeys +made torture through witnessing slapping and brow-beating of children by +their parents. The memory of a father's conduct towards his little son +will never be wiped out. He twisted the child's arm, struck him savagely +from time to time, and for no reason but that the child did not sit bolt +upright and keep absolutely motionless. The witnesses of the brutality +smiled approvingly at the man, and scowled at the child. My own protest +being met with amazed silence and in no way regarded, I left the +compartment. I was near Eisenach, and I wished some good fairy would put +in my hand that inkpot which Luther threw at the devil. Severity towards +children is the rule. The child for weal or woe is in the complete +control of its parents, and corporal punishment is allowed in the +schools. The grim saying, "Saure Wochen, frohe Feste," seems to express +the pedagogic philosophy. The only trouble is that nature does not give +this attitude her sanction, for Germany reveals to us that figure, the +most pathetic in life, the child suicide. + +The man responding to his stern upbringing is in turn cruel to his +inferiors, and full of subterfuge in dealing with equals. He is at home +in the intrigues which have startled the world. In such a society the +frank and gentle go to the wall, or--get into trouble and emigrate. We +have profited--let us not forget it--by the plucky German immigrants who +threw off the yoke, and who now have the satisfaction of finding +themselves fighting shoulder to shoulder with the men of their adopted +country to free the Fatherland of the taskmaster. + +The philosophy of might quite naturally reflects itself in the education +of girls. Once when I visited a Hoehere Toechter Schule, the principal had +a class in geometry recite for my edification. I soon saw that the young +girl who had been chosen as the star pupil to wrestle with the pons +asinorum was giving an exhibition of memorizing and not of mathematical +reasoning. I asked the principal if my surmise were correct. He replied +without hesitation, "Yes, it was entirely a feat in memory. Females have +only low reasoning power." I urged that if this were so, it would be +well to train the faculty, but he countered with the assertion, "We +Germans do not think so. Women are happier and more useful +without logic." + +It would be difficult to surpass in its subtle cruelty the etiquette at +a military function. The lieutenant and his wife come early,--this is +expected of them. For a few moments they play the role of honored +guests. The wife is shown by her hostess to the sofa and is seated there +as a mark of distinction. Then arrive the captain and his wife. They are +immediately the distinguished guests. The wife is shown to the sofa and +the lieutenant's little Frau must get herself out of the way as best +she can. + +My speculation, often indulged in, as to what would happen if the +major's wife did not move from the sofa when the colonel's wife +appeared, ended in assurance that a severe punishment would be meted out +to her, when I heard from an officer the story of the way his regiment +dealt with a woman who ignored another bit of military etiquette. A +debutant, once honored by being asked to dance with an officer at a +ball, must never, it seems, demean herself by accepting a civilian +partner. But in a town where my friend's regiment was stationed a very +pretty and popular young girl who had been taken, so to speak, to the +bosom of the regiment, danced one night at the Kurhaus early in the +summer season with a civilian, distinguished, undeniably, but +unmistakably civilian. The officers of the regiment met, weighed the +mighty question of the girl's offense, and solemnly resolved never again +to ask the culprit for a dance. I protested at the cruelty of a body of +men deliberately turning a pretty young thing into a wall-flower for an +entire season. The officer took my protest as an added reason for +congratulation upon their conduct. They meant to be cruel. My words +proved how well they had succeeded. + +Another little straw showing the set of the wind: we were sitting, four +Americans, one lovely early summer day, in a restaurant at Swinemuende. +We had the window open, looking out over the sea. At the next table were +some officers, one of whom with an "Es zieht," but not with a "by your +leave," came over to our table and shut the window with a bang. The +gentleman with us asked if we wanted the window closed, and on being +assured we did not, quietly rose and opened it again. No one who does +not know Prussia can imagine the threatening atmosphere which filled +that cafe. + +We met the officers the same night at the Kurhaus dance. They were +introduced, and almost immediately one of them brought up the window +incident and said most impressively that if ladies had not been at the +table, our escort would have been "called out." We could see they +regarded us as unworthy of being even transient participants of Kultur +when we opined that no American man would accept a challenge, and if so +unwise as to do so, his womenfolk would lock him up until he reached a +sounder judgment! The swords rattled in their sabres when the frivolous +member of our party said with a tone of finality, "You see we wouldn't +like our men's faces to look as if they had got into their mothers' +chopping bowls!" + +Although I had often lived months on end with all these petty tyrannies +of the mailed fist, and although life had taught me later that peoples +grow by what they feed upon, yet when I read the Bryce report,[1] German +frightfulness seemed too inhuman for belief. While still holding my +judgment in reserve, I met an intimate friend, a Prussian officer. He +happened to mention letters he had received from his relatives in Berlin +and at the front, and when I expressed a wish to hear them, kindly asked +whether he should translate them or read them in German as they stood. +Laughingly I ventured on the German, saying I would at least find out +how much I had forgotten. So I sat and listened with ears pricked up. +Some of the letters were from women folk and told of war conditions in +the capital. They were interesting at the time but not worth repeating +now. Then came a letter from a nephew, a lieutenant. He gave his +experience in crossing Belgium, told how in one village his men asked a +young woman with her tiny baby on her arm for water, how she answered +resentfully, and then, how he shot her--and her baby. I exclaimed, +thinking I had lost the thread of the letter, "Not the baby?" And the +man I supposed I knew as civilized, replied with a cruel smile, +"Yes--discipline!" That was frank, frank as a child would have been, +with no realization of the self-revelation of it. The young officer did +the deed, wrote of it to his uncle, and the uncle, without vision and +understanding, perverted by his training, did not feel shame and bury +the secret in his own heart, but treasured the evidence against his own +nephew, and laid it open before an American woman. + +I believed the Bryce report--every word of it! + +And I hate the system that has so bent and crippled a great race. +Revenge we must not feel, that would be to innoculate ourselves with the +enemy's virus. But let us be awake to the fact that might making right +cuts athwart our ideals. German Kultur, through worship of efficiency, +cramps originality and initiative, while our aim--why not be frank about +it!--is the protection of inefficiency, which means sympathy with +childhood, and opportunity for the spirit of art. German Kultur fixes an +inflexible limit to the aspirations of women, while our goal is complete +freedom for the mothers of men. + +The women of the Allies can fight for all that their men fight for--for +national self-respect, for protection of citizens, for the sacredness of +international agreements, for the rights of small nations, for the +security of democracy, and then our women can be inspired by one thing +more--the safety and development of all those things which they have +won for human welfare in a long and bloodless battle. + +Women fight for a place in the sun for those who hold right above might. + + +[Footnote 1: Report of the Committee on Alleged German Outrages +appointed by his Britannic Majesty's Government, 1915. Macmillan +Company, New York. + +Evidence and Documents laid before the Committee on Alleged German +Outrages. Ballantyne, Hanson & Co., London. 1915.] + + + + +II + +WINNING THE WAR + + +The group of nations that can make the greatest savings, will be +victorious, counsels one; the group that can produce the most food and +nourish the populations best, will win the war, urges another; but +whatever the prophecy, whatever the advice, all paths to victory lie +through labor-power. + +Needs are not answered in our day by manna dropping from heaven. Whether +it is food or big guns that are wanted, ships or coal, we can only get +our heart's desire by toil. Where are the workers who will win the war? + +We are a bit spoiled in the United States. We have been accustomed to +rub our Aladdin's lamp of opportunity and the good genii have sent us +workers. But suddenly, no matter how great our efforts, no one answers +our appeal. The reservoir of immigrant labor has run dry. We are in +sorry plight, for we have suffered from emigration, too. Thousands of +alien workers have been called back to serve in the armies of the +Allies. In my own little village on Long Island the industrious Italian +colony was broken up by the call to return to the colors in Piedmont. + +Then, too, while Europe suffers loss of labor, as do we, when men are +mobilized, our situation is peculiarly poignant, for when our armies are +gone they are gone. At first this was true in Europe. Men entered the +army and were employed as soldiers only. After a time it was realized +that the war would not be short, that fields must not lie untilled for +years, nor men undergo the deteriorating effects of trench warfare +continuously. The fallow field and the stale soldier were +brought together. + +We have all chanced on photographs of European soldiers helping the +women plough in springtime, and reap the harvest in the autumn. Perhaps +we have regarded the scene as a mere pastoral episode in a happy leave +from the battle front, instead of realizing that it is a snapshot +illustrating a well organized plan of securing labor. The soldiers are +given a furlough and are sent where the agricultural need is pressing. +But the American soldier will not be able to lend his skill in giving +the home fields a rich seed time and harvest. The two needs, the field +for the touch of the human hand, and the soldier for labor under calm +skies, cannot in our case be cooerdinated. + +Scarcity of labor is not only certain to grow, but the demands upon the +United States for service are increasing by leaps and bounds. America +must throw man-power into the trenches, must feed herself, must +contribute more and ever more food to the hungry populations of Europe, +must meet the old industrial obligations, and respond to a whole range +of new business requirements. And she is called upon for this effort at +a time when national prosperity is already making full use of man-power. + +When Europe went to war, the world had been suffering from depression a +year and more. Immediately on the outbreak of hostilities whole lines of +business shut down. Unemployment became serious. There were idle hands +everywhere. Germany, of all the belligerents, rallied most quickly to +meet war conditions. Unemployment gave place to a shortage of labor +sooner there than elsewhere. Great Britain did not begin to get the pace +until the middle of 1915. + +The business situation in the United States upon its entrance into the +war was the antithesis of this. For over a year, depression had been +superseded by increased industry, high wages, and greater demand for +labor. The country as measured by the ordinary financial signs, by its +commerce, by its labor market, was more prosperous than it had been for +years. Tremendous requisitions were being made upon us by Europe, and to +the limit of available labor we were answering them. Then into our +economic life, with industrial forces already working at high pressure, +were injected the new demands arising from changing the United States +from a people as unprepared for effective hostilities as a baby in its +cradle, into a nation equipped for war. There was no unemployment, but +on the contrary, shortage of labor. + +The country calls for everything, and all at once, like the spoiled +child on suddenly waking. It must have, and without delay, ships, coal, +cars, cantonments, uniforms, rules, and food, food, food. How can the +needs be supplied and with a million and a half of men dropping work +besides? By woman-power or coolie labor. Those are the horns of the +dilemma presented to puzzled America. The Senate of the United States +directs its Committee of Agriculture to ponder well the coolie problem, +for men hesitate to have women put their shoulder to the wheel. Trade +unionists are right in urging that a republic has no place for a +disfranchised class of imported toilers. Equally true is it that as a +nation we have shown no gift for dealing with less developed races. And +yet labor we must have. Will American women supply it, will they, loving +ease, favor contract labor from the outside, or will they accept the +optimistic view that lack of labor is not acute? + +The procrastinator queries, "Cannot American man-power meet the demand?" +It can, for a time perhaps, if the draft for the army goes as slowly in +the future as it has in the past. + +However, at any moment a full realization may come to us of the +significance of the fact that while the United States is putting only +three percent of its workers into the fighting forces, Great Britain has +put twenty-five percent, and is now combing its industrial army over to +find an additional five hundred thousand men to throw on the French +front. It is probable that it will be felt by this country in the near +future that such a contrast of fulfillment of obligation cannot continue +without serious reflection on our national honor. Roughly speaking, +Great Britain has twenty million persons in gainful pursuits. Of these, +five million have already been taken for the army. The contribution of +France is still greater. Her military force has reached the appalling +proportion of one-fifth of her entire population. But we who have +thirty-five million in gainful occupations are giving a paltry one +million, five hundred thousand in service with our Allies. The situation +is not creditable to us, and one of the things which stands in the way +of the United States reaching a more worthy position is reluctance to +see its women shouldering economic burdens. + +[Illustration: They wear the uniforms of the Edinburgh trams and the +New York City subway and trolley guards, with pride and purpose.] + +While it is quite true that shifting of man-power is needed, mere +shuffling of the cards, as labor leaders suggest, won't give a bigger +pack. Fifty-two cards it remains, though the Jack may be put into a more +suitable position. The man behind the counter should of course be moved +to a muscular employment, but we must not interpret his dalliance with +tapes and ribbons as proof of a superfluity of men. + +The latest reports of the New York State Department of Labor reflect the +meagerness of the supply. Here are some dull figures to prove +it:--comparing the situation with a year ago, we find in a corresponding +month, only one percent more employees this year, with a wage advance of +seventeen percent. Drawing the comparison between this year and two +years ago, there is an advance of "fifteen percent in employees and +fifty-one percent in wages;" and an increase of "thirty percent in +employees and eighty-seven percent in wages," if this year is compared +with the conditions when the world was suffering from industrial +depression. The State employment offices report eight thousand three +hundred and seventy-six requests for workers against seven thousand, six +hundred and fifty applicants for employment, and of the latter only +seventy-three percent were fitted for the grades of work open to them, +and were placed in situations. + +The last records of conditions in the Wilkes-Barre coal regions confirm +the fact of labor scarcity. There are one hundred and fifty-two thousand +men and boys at work today in the anthracite fields, twenty-five +thousand less than the number employed in 1916. These miners, owing to +the prod of the highest wages ever received--the skilled man earning +from forty dollars to seventy-five dollars a week--and to appeals to +their patriotism, are individually producing a larger output than ever +before. It is considered that production, with the present labor force, +is at its maximum, and if a yield of coal commensurate with the world's +need is to be attained, at least seventy percent more men must +be supplied. + +This is a call for man-power in addition to that suggested by the Fuel +Administrator to the effect that lack of coal is partly lack of cars and +that "back of the transportation shortage lies labor shortage." An order +was sent out by the Director General of Railways, soon after his +appointment, that mechanics from the repair shops of the west were to be +shifted to the east to supply the call for help on the Atlantic border. + +Suggestive of the cause of all this shortage, float the service flags of +the mining and railway companies, the hundreds of glowing stars telling +their tale of men gone to the front, and of just so many stars torn from +the standards of the industrial army at home. + +The Shipping Board recently called for two hundred and fifty thousand +men to be gradually recruited as a skilled army for work in shipyards. +At the same time the Congress passed an appropriation of fifty million +dollars for building houses to accommodate ship labor. Six months ago +only fifty thousand men were employed in ship-building, today there are +one hundred and forty-five thousand. This rapid drawing of men to new +centers creates a housing problem so huge that it must he met by the +government; and it need hardly be pointed out, shelter can be built only +by human hands. + +One state official, prompted no doubt by a wise hostility to coolie +labor, and dread of woman labor, has gone so far as to declare publicly +that any employer who will pay "adequate wages can get all the labor he +requires." This view suggests that we may soon have to adopt the methods +of other belligerents and stop employers by law from stealing a +neighbor's working force. I know of a shipyard with a normal pay-roll of +five hundred hands, which in one year engaged and lost to nearby +munition factories thirteen thousand laborers. Such "shifting," hiding +as it does shortage of manpower, leads to serious loss in our productive +efficiency and should not be allowed to go unchecked. + +The manager of one of the New York City street railways met with +complete denial the easy optimism that adequate remuneration will +command a sufficient supply of men. He told me that he had introduced +women at the same wage as male conductors, not because he wanted women, +but because he now had only five applications by fit men to thirty or +forty formerly. There were men to be had, he said, and at lower wages +than his company was paying; but they were "not of the class capable of +fulfilling the requirements of the position." + +The Labor Administration announced on its creation that its "policy +would be to prevent woman labor in positions for which men are +available," and one of the deputy commissioners of the Industrial +Commission of the State of New York declared quite frankly at a labor +conference that "if he could, he would exclude women from industry +altogether." + +We may try to prevent the oncoming tide of the economic independence of +women, but it will not be possible to force the business world to accept +permanently the service of the inefficient in place of that of the alert +and intelligent. To carry on the economic life of a nation with its +labor flotsam and jetsam is loss at any time; in time of storm and +stress it is suicide. + +Man-power is short, seriously so. The farm is always the best barometer +to give warning of scarcity of labor. The land has been drained of its +workers. A fair wage would keep them on the farm--this is the philosophy +of laissez faire. Without stopping to inquire as to what the munition +works would then do, we can still see that it is doubtful whether the +farm can act as magnet. Even men, let us venture the suggestion, like +change for the mere sake of change. A middle-aged man, who had taken up +work at Bridgeport, said to me, "I've mulled around on the farm all my +days. I grabbed the first chance to get away." And then there's a finer +spirit prompting the desertion of the hoe. A man of thirty-three gave me +the point of view. "My brother is 'over there,' and I feel as if I were +backing him up by making guns." + +The only thing that can change the idea that farming is "mulling +around," and making a gun "backs up" the man at the front more +thoroughly than raising turnips, is to bring to the farm new workers who +realize the vital part played by food in the winning of the war. As the +modern industrial system has developed with its marvels of specialized +machinery, its army of employees gathered and dispersed on the stroke of +the clock, and strong organizations created to protect the interests of +the worker, the calm and quiet processes of agriculture have in +comparison grown colorless. The average farmhand has never found push +and drive and group action on the farm, but only individualism to the +extreme of isolation. And now in war time, when in addition to its usual +life of stirring contacts, the factory takes on an intimate and striking +relation to the intense experience of the battle front, the work of the +farm seems as flat as it is likely to be unprofitable. The man in the +furrow has no idea that he is "backing up" the boy in the trench. + +The farmer in his turn does not find himself part of the wider relations +that attract and support the manufacturer. Crops are not grown on order. +The marketing is as uncertain as the weather. The farmer could by higher +wages attract more labor, but as the selling of the harvest remains a +haphazard matter, the venture might mean ruin all the more certain and +serious were wage outlay large. In response to a call for food and an +appeal to his patriotism, the farmer has repeatedly made unusual efforts +to bring his land to the maximum fertility, only to find his crops often +a dead loss, as he could not secure the labor to harvest them. I saw, +one summer, acres of garden truck at its prime ploughed under in +Connecticut because of a shortage of labor. I saw fruit left rotting by +the bushel in the orchards near Rochester because of scarcity of pickers +and a doubt of the reliability of the market. The industry which means +more than any other to the well-being of humanity at this crisis, is the +sport of methods outgrown and of servants who lack understanding and +inspiration. The war may furnish the spark for the needed revolution. +Man-power is not available, woman-power is at hand. A new labor force +always brings ideas and ideals peculiar to itself. May not women as +fresh recruits in a land army stamp their likes and dislikes on farm +life? Their enthusiasm may put staleness to rout, and the group system +of women land workers, already tested in the crucible of experience, may +bring to the farm the needed antidote to isolation. + +To win the war we must have man-power in the trenches sufficient to win +it with. To win, every soldier, every sailor, must be well fed, well +clothed, well equipped. To win, behind the armed forces must stand +determined peoples. To win, the people of America and her Allies must be +heartened by care and food. + +The sun shines on the fertile land, the earth teems with forests, with +coal, with every necessary mineral and food, but labor, labor alone can +transform all to meet our necessities. Man-power unaided cannot supply +the demand. Women in America must shoulder as nobly as have the women of +Europe, this duty. They must answer their country's call. Let them see +clearly that the desire of their men to shield them from possible injury +exposes the nation and the world to actual danger. + +Our winning of the war depends upon the full use of the energy of our +entire people. Every muscle, every brain, must be mobilized if the +national aim is to be achieved. + + + + +III + +MOBILIZING WOMEN IN GREAT BRITAIN [2] + + +In no country have women reached a mobilization so complete and +systematized as in Great Britain. This mobilization covers the whole +field of war service--in industry, business and professional life, and +in government administration. Women serve on the Ministry of Food and +are included in the membership of twenty-five of the important +government committees, not auxiliary or advisory, but administrative +committees, such as those on War Pensions, on Disabled Officers and Men, +on Education after the War, and the Labor Commission to Deal with +Industrial Unrest. + +In short, the women of Great Britain are working side by side with men +in the initiation and execution of plans to solve the problems which +confront the nation. + +Four committees, as for instance those making investigations and +recommendations on Women's Wages and Drink Among Women, are entirely +composed of women, and great departments, such as the Women's Land Army, +the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, are officered throughout by them. +Hospitals under the War Office have been placed in complete control of +medical women; they take rank with medical men in the army and receive +the pay going with their commissions. + +When Great Britain recognized that the war could not be won by merely +sending splendid fighters to the front and meeting the wastage by steady +drafts upon the manhood of the country, she began to build an efficient +organization of industry at home. + +To the call for labor-power British women gave instant response. In +munitions a million are mobilized, in the Land Army there have been +drafted and actually placed on the farms over three hundred thousand, +and in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps fourteen thousand women are +working in direct connection with the fighting force, and an additional +ten thousand are being called out for service each month. In the +clerical force of the government departments, some of which had never +seen women before in their sacred precincts, over one hundred and +ninety-eight thousand are now working. And the women civil servants are +not only engaged in indoor service, but outside too, most of the +carrying of mail being in their hands. + +Women are dock-laborers, some seven thousand strong. Four thousand act +as patrols and police, forty thousand are in banks and various financial +houses. It is said that there are in Great Britain scarce a million +women--and they are mostly occupied as housewives--who could render +greater service to their country than that which they are now giving. + +The wide inclusion of women in government administration is very +striking to us in America. But we must not forget that the contrast +between the two countries in the participation of women in political +life and public service has always been great. The women of the United +Kingdom have enjoyed the municipal and county franchise for years. For a +long time large numbers of women have been called to administrative +positions. They have had thorough training in government as Poor Law +Guardians, District and County Councilors, members of School Boards. No +women, the whole world over, are equipped as those of Great Britain for +service to the state. + +In the glamor of the extremely striking government service of British +women, we must not overlook their non-official organizations. Perhaps +these offer the most valuable suggestions for America. They are near +enough to our experience to be quite understandable. + +The mother country is not under regimentation. Originality and +initiative have full play. Perhaps it was well that the government +failed to appreciate what women could do, and neglected them so long. +Most of the effective work was started in volunteer societies and had +proved a success before there was an official laying on of hands. +Anglo-Saxons--it is our strong point--always work from below, up. + +A glance at any account of the mobilization of woman-power in Great +Britain, Miss Fraser's admirable "Women and War Work," for instance, +will reveal the printed page dotted thick with the names of volunteer +associations. A woman with sympathy sees a need, she gets an idea and +calls others about her. Quickly, there being no red tape, the need +begins to be met. What more admirable service could have been performed +than that inaugurated in the early months of the war under the Queen's +Work for Women Fund, when work was secured for the women in luxury +trades which were collapsing under war pressure? A hundred and thirty +firms employing women were kept running. + +What more thrilling example of courage and forethought has been shown +than by the Scottish Women's Hospitals in putting on the western front +the first X-ray car to move from point to point near the lines? It but +adds to the appeal of the work that those great scientists, Mrs. Ayrton +and Madame Curie, selected the equipment. + +It was a non-official body, the National Union of Women's Suffrage +Societies, which opened before the war was two weeks old the Women's +Service Bureau, and soon placed forty thousand women as paid and +volunteer workers. It was this bureau that furnished the government with +its supervisors for the arsenals. The Women's Farm and Garden Union was +the fore-runner of the official Land Army, and to it still is left the +important work of enrolling those women who, while willing to undertake +agricultural work, are disinclined to sign up for service "for the +duration of the war." + +Not only have unnumbered voluntary associations achieved miracles in +necessary work, but many of them have gained untold discipline in the +ridicule they have had to endure from a doubting public. I remember +hunting in vain all about Oxford Circus for the tucked-away office of +the Women's Signalling Corps. My inquiries only made the London bobbies +grin. Everyone laughed at the idea of women signalling, but to-day the +members are recognized officially, one holding an important appointment +in the college of wireless telegraphy. + +How Scotland Yard smiled, at first, at Miss Damer Dawson and her Women +Police Service! But now the metropolitan police are calling for the help +of her splendidly trained and reliable force. + +And the Women's Reserve Ambulance Corps--I climbed and climbed to an +attic to visit their headquarters! There was the commandant in her +khaki, very gracious, but very upstanding, and maintaining the strictest +discipline. No member of the corps entered or left her office without +clapping heels together and saluting. The ambulance about which the +corps revolved, I often met in the streets--empty. But those women had +vision. They saw that England would need them some day. They had faith +in their ability to serve. So on and on they went, training themselves +to higher efficiency in body and mind. And to-day--well, theirs is +always the first ambulance on the spot to care for the injured in the +air-raids. The scoffers have remained to pray. + +If Britain has a lesson for us it is an all-hail to non-official +societies, an encouragement to every idea, a blessing on every effort +which has behind it honesty of purpose. Great Britain's activities are +as refreshingly diversified as her talents. They are not all under +one hat. + +In the training for new industrial openings this same spirit of +non-official service showed itself. In munitions, for instance, private +employers were the first to recognize that they had in women-workers a +labor force worth the cost of training. The best of the skilled men in +many cases were told off to give the necessary instruction. The will to +do was in the learner; she soon mastered even complex processes, and at +the end of a few weeks was doing even better than men in the light work, +and achieving commendable output in the heavy. The suffrage +organizations, whenever a new line of skilled work was opened to women, +established well-equipped centers to give the necessary teaching. Not +until it became apparent that the new labor-power only needed training +to reach a high grade of proficiency, did County Councils establish, at +government expense, technical classes for girls and women. + +[Illustration: Then--the offered service of the Women's Reserve +Ambulance Corps in England was spurned. Now--they wear shrapnel helmets +while working during the Zeppelin raids.] + +Equipment of the army was obviously the first and pressing obligation. +Fields might lie fallow, for food in the early days could easily be +brought from abroad, but men had to be registered, soldiers clothed and +equipped. It was natural, then, that the new workers were principally +used in registration work and in making military supplies. + +But in the second year of the war came the conviction that the contest +was not soon to be ended, and that the matter of raising food at home +must be met. Women were again appealed to. A Land Army mobilized by +women was created. At first this work was carried on under a centralized +division of the National Service Department, but there has been +decentralization and the Land Army is now a department of the Board of +Agriculture. It is headed by Miss M. Talbot as director. Under this +central body are Women's Agricultural Committees in each county, with an +organizing secretary whose duty it is to secure full-time recruits. + +The part-time workers in a locality are obtained by the wife of the +squire or vicar acting as a volunteer registrar. Many of these +part-time workers register to do the domestic work of the lusty young +village housewife or mother while she is absent from home performing her +allotted task on a nearby farm. The full-time recruits are not only +secured by the organizers, but through registrations at every post +office. Any woman can ask for a registration card and fill it out, and +the postmaster then forwards the application to the committee. The next +step is that likely applicants are called to the nearest center for +examination and presentation of credentials. When finally accepted they +are usually sent for six weeks' or three months' training to a farm +belonging to some large estate. The landlord contributes the training, +and the government gives the recruit her uniform and fifteen shillings a +week to cover her board and lodging. At the end of her course she +receives an armlet signifying her rank in the Land Army and is ready to +go wherever the authorities send her. + +The farmer in Great Britain no longer needs to be converted to the value +of the new workers. He knows they can do every kind of farm work as well +as men, and are more reliable and conscientious than boys, and he is +ready, therefore, to pay the required minimum wage of eighteen +shillings a week, or above that amount if the rate ruling in the +district is higher. + +Equally well organized is the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, familiarly +known as the Waacs. The director is Mrs. Chalmers Watson. A would-be +Waac goes to the center in her county for examination, and then is +assigned to work at home or "somewhere in France" according to training +and capacity. She may be fitted as a cook, a storekeeper, a telephone or +telegraph operator, or for signalling or salvage work. Let us not say +she will supplant a man, but rather set a man free for fuller service. + +My niece, a slip of a girl, felt the call of duty at the beginning of +the war. Her brothers were early volunteers in Kitchener's Army. They +were in the trenches and she longed for the sensation of bearing a +burden of hard work. She went to Woolwich Arsenal and toiled twelve +hours a day. She broke under the strain, recuperated, and took up +munition work again. She became expert, and was in time an overseer told +off to train other women. But she was never satisfied, and always +anxious to be nearer the great struggle. She broke away one day and went +to Southampton for a Waac examination, and found herself one of a group +of a hundred and fifty gentlewomen all anxious to enter active service +and all prepared for some definite work. They stood their tests, and +Dolly--that's the little niece's pet name, given to her because she is +so tiny--is now working as an "engine fitter" just behind the fighting +lines. Dainty Dolly, whom we have always treated as a fragile bit of +Sevres china, clad in breeches and puttees, under the booming of the +great guns, is fitting patiently, part to part, the beating engine which +will lift on wings some English boy in his flight through the blue skies +of France. + +But it must not be supposed that the magnificent service of British +women, devoted, efficient and well-organized from top to bottom, +realized itself without friction, any more than it will here. There were +certainly two wars going on in Great Britain for a long time, and the +internal strife was little less bitter than the international conflict. +The most active center of this contest of which we have heard so little +was in industry, and the combatants were the government, trade unions +and women. The unions were doing battle because of fear of unskilled +workers, especially when intelligent and easily trained; the government, +in sore need of munition hands, was bargaining with the unskilled for +long hours and low pay. Finally the government and the unions +reluctantly agreed that women must be employed; both wanted them to be +skillful, but not too skillful, and above all, to remain amenable. It +has been made clear, too, that women enter their new positions "for the +war only." At the end of hostilities--international hostilities--women +are to hand over their work and wages to men and go home and be content. +Will the program be fulfilled? + +The wishes of women themselves may play some part. How do they feel? +Obviously, every day the war lasts they get wider experience of the +sorrows and pleasures of financial independence. Women are called the +practical sex, and I certainly found them in England facing the fact +that peace will mean an insufficient number of breadwinners to go around +and that a maimed man may have low earning power. The women I met were +not dejected at the prospect; they showed, on the contrary, a spirit not +far removed from elation in finding new opportunities of service. After +I had sat and listened to speech after speech at the annual conference +of the National Union of Women Workers, with delegates from all parts of +the country, presided over by Mrs. Creighton, widow of the late Bishop +of London, there was no doubt in my mind that British women desired to +enter paid fields of work, and regarded as permanent the great increase +in their employment. No regrets or hesitations were expressed in a +single speech, and the solutions of the problems inherent in the new +situation all lay in the direction of equality of preparation and +equality of pay with men. + +The strongest element in the women's trade unions takes the same stand. +The great rise in the employment of women is not regarded as a "war +measure," and all the suggestions made to meet the hardships of +readjustment, such as a "minimum wage for all unskilled workers, men as +well as women," are based on the idea of the new workers being permanent +factors in the labor market. + +The same conclusion was reached in the report presented to the British +Association by the committee appointed to investigate the "Replacement +of Male by Female Labor." The committee found itself in entire +disagreement with the opinion that the increased employment of women was +a passing phase, and made recommendations bearing on such measures as +improved technical training for girls as well as for boys, a minimum +wage for unskilled men as well as women, equal pay for equal work, and +the abolition of "half-timers." But while it was obvious that the +greatest asset of belligerent nations is the labor of women, while +learned societies and organizations of women laid down rules for their +safe and permanent employment, the British Government showed marked +opposition to the new workers. If the Cabinet did not believe the war +would be brief, it certainly acted as if Great Britain alone among the +belligerents would have no shortage of male industrial hands. At a time +when Germany had five hundred thousand women in munition factories, +England had but ten thousand. + +There is no doubt that the country was at first organized merely for a +spurt. Boys and girls were pressed into service, wages were cut down for +women, hours lengthened for men. Government reports read like the +Shaftesbury attacks on the conditions of early factory days. We hear +again of beds that are never cold, the occupant of one shift succeeding +the occupant of the next, of the boy sleeping in the same bed with two +men, and three girls in a cot in the same room. Labor unrest was met at +first by the Munitions War Act prohibiting strikes and lockouts, +establishing compulsory arbitration and suspending all trade-union rules +which might "hamper production." Under the law a "voluntary army of +workers" signed up as ready to go anywhere their labor was needed, and +local munition committees became labor courts endowed with power to +change wage rates, to inflict fines on slackers, and on those who broke +the agreements of the "voluntary army." + +To meet the threatening rebellion, a Health of Munition Workers +Committee under the Ministry of Munitions was appointed to "consider and +advise on questions of industrial fatigue, hours of labor and other +matters affecting the physical health and physical efficiency of workers +in munition factories and workshops." On this committee there were +distinguished medical men, labor experts, members of parliament and two +women, Miss R.E. Squire of the Factory Department and Mrs. H.J. Tennant. + +The committee was guided by a desire to have immense quantities of +munitions turned out, and faced squarely the probability that the war +would be of long duration. Its findings, embodied in a series of +memoranda, have lessons for us, not only for war times, but for peace +times, for all time. + +On a seven day week the verdict was that "if the maximum output is to be +secured and maintained for any length of time, a weekly period of rest +must be allowed." Overtime was advised against, a double or triple shift +being recommended. + +In July, 1916, the committee published a most interesting memorandum on +experiments in the relation of output to hours. In one case the output +was increased eight percent by reducing the weekly hours from +sixty-eight to fifty-nine, and it was found that a decrease to fifty-six +hours per week gave the same output as fifty-nine. It need hardly be +said that there was no change in machinery, tools, raw material or +workers. All elements except hours of work were identical. Twenty-seven +workers doing very heavy work increased their output ten percent by +cutting weekly hours from sixty-one to fifty-five. In a munition plant +employing thirty-six thousand hands it was found that the sick rate +ranged from five to eight percent when the employees were working +overtime, and was only three percent when they were on a double shift. + +The war has forced Great Britain to carry out the findings of this +committee and to consider more seriously than ever before, and for both +men and women, the problem of industrial fatigue, the relation of +accidents to hours of labor, industrial diseases, housing, transit, and +industrial canteens. The munition worker is as important as the soldier +and must have the best of care. + +While the friction in the ranks of industrial women workers was still +far from being adjusted, the government met its Waterloo in the contest +with medical women. The service which they freely offered their country +was at first sternly refused. Undaunted, they sought recognition outside +the mother country. They knew their skill and they knew the soldiers' +need. They turned to hospitable France, and received official +recognition. On December 14, 1914, the first hospital at the front under +British medical women was opened in Abbaye Royaumont, near Creil. It +carries the official designation, "Hopital Auxiliaire 301." The doctors, +the nurses, the cooks, are all women. One of the capable chauffeurs I +saw running the ambulance when I was in Creil. She was getting the +wounded as they came down from the front. The French Government +appreciated what the women were doing and urged them to give more help. +At Troyes another unit gave the French army its first experience of +nursing under canvas. + +After France had been profiting by the skill of British women for +months, Sir Alfred Keogh, Medical Director General, wisely insisted that +the War Office yield and place a hospital in the hands of women. The +War Hospital in Endell Street, London, is now under Dr. Flora Murray, +and every office, except that of gateman, is filled by women. From the +doctors, who rank as majors, down to the cooks, who rank as +non-commissioned officers, every one connected with Endell Street has +military standing. It indicated the long, hard road these women had +traveled to secure official recognition that the doctor who showed me +over the hospital told me, as a matter for congratulation, that at night +the police brought in drunken soldiers to be sobered. "Every war +hospital must receive them," she explained, "and we are glad we are not +passed over, for that gives the stamp to our official standing." + +It was a beautiful autumn day when I visited Endell Street. The great +court was full of convalescents, and the orderlies in khaki, with veils +floating back from their close-fitting toques, were carefully and +skillfully lifting the wounded from an ambulance. I spoke to one of the +soldier boys about the absence of men doctors and orderlies, and his +quick query was, "And what should we want men for?" It seems that they +always take that stand after a day or two. At first the patient is +puzzled; he calls the doctor "sister" and the orderly "nurse," but ends +by being an enthusiastic champion of the new order. Not a misogynist did +I find. One poor fellow who had been wounded again and again and had +been in many hospitals, declared, "I don't mean no flattery, but this +place leaves nothink wanting." + +The first woman I met on my last visit to England upset my expectation +of finding that war pushed women back into primitive conditions of toil, +crushed them under the idea that physical force rules the world, and +made them subservient. I chanced upon her as she was acting as +ticket-puncher at the Yarmouth station. She was well set-up, alert, +efficient, helpful in giving information, and, above all, cheerful. +There were two capable young women at the bookstall, too. One had lost a +brother at the front, the other her lover. I felt that they regarded +their loss as one item in the big national accounting. They were +heroically cheerful in "doing their bit." + +Throughout my stay in England I searched for, but could not find, the +self-effacing spinster of former days. In her place was a capable woman, +bright-eyed, happy. She was occupied and bustled at her work. She jumped +on and off moving vehicles with the alertness, if not the +unconsciousness, of the expert male. She never let me stand in omnibus +or subway, but quickly gave me her seat, as indeed she insisted upon +doing for elderly gentlemen as well. The British woman had found herself +and her muscles. England was a world of women--women in uniforms; there +was the army of nurses, and then the messengers, porters, elevator +hands, tram conductors, bank clerks, bookkeepers, shop attendants. They +each seemed to challenge the humble stranger, "Superfluous? Not I, I'm a +recruit for national service!" Even a woman doing time-honored womanly +work moved with an air of distinction; she dusted a room for the good of +her country. Just one glimpse was I given of the old-time daughter of +Eve, when a ticket-collector at Reading said: "I can't punch your +ticket. Don't you see I'm eating an apple!" + +One of the reactions of the wider functioning of brain and muscle which +struck me most forcibly was the increased joyfulness of women. They were +happy in their work, happy in the thought of rendering service, so happy +that the poignancy of individual loss was carried more easily. + +This cheerfulness is somewhat gruesomely voiced in a cartoon in _Punch_ +touching on the allowance given to the soldier's wife. She remarks, +"This war is 'eaven--twenty-five shillings a week and no 'usband +bothering about!" We have always credited _Punch_ with knowing England. +Truth stands revealed by a thrust, however cynical, when softened by +challenging humor. + +There was no discipline in the pension system. No work was required. The +case of a girl I met in a country town was common. She was working in a +factory earning eleven shillings a week. A day or two later I saw her, +and she told me she had stopped work, as she had "married a soldier, and +'e's gone to France, and I get twelve and six separation allowance a +week." Never did the strange English name, "separation allowance," seem +more appropriate for the wife's pension than in this girl's story. +Little wonder was it that in the early months of the war there was some +riotous living among soldiers' wives! + +And the comments of women of influence on the drunkenness and waste of +money on foolish finery were as striking to me as the sordid condition +itself. The woman chairman of a Board of Poor Law Guardians in the north +of England told me that when her fellow-members suggested that +Parliament ought to appoint committees to disburse the separation +allowances, she opposed them with the heroic philosophy that women can +be trained in wisdom only by freedom to err, that a sense of +responsibility had never been cultivated in them, and the country would +have to bear the consequences. In reply to my inquiry as to how the +Guardians received these theories, I learned that "they knew she was +right and dropped their plan." + +The faith of leading women that experience would be the best teacher for +the soldier's wife has been justified. A labor leader in the Midlands +told me that an investigation by his trade union showed that only one +hundred women in the ten thousand cases inquired into were mis-spending +their allowances. And when I was visiting a board school in a poor +district of London, and remarked to the head teacher that the children +looked well cared for, she told me that never had they been so well fed +and clothed. There seemed no doubt in her mind that it was best to have +the family budget in the hands of the mother. In the sordid surroundings +of the mean streets of great cities, there is developing in women +practical wisdom and a fine sense of individual responsibility. + +Perhaps of greater significance than just how separation allowances are +being spent is the fact that women have discovered that their work as +housewives and mothers has a value recognized by governments in hard +cash. It makes one speculate as to whether wives in the warring nations +will step back without a murmur into the old-time dependence on one man, +or whether these simple women may contribute valuable ideas towards the +working out of sound schemes of motherhood pensions. + +The women of Great Britain are experiencing economic independence, they +are living in an atmosphere of recognition of the value of their work as +housewives and mothers. Women leaders in all classes give no indication +of regarding pensions or remuneration in gainful pursuits as other than +permanent factors in social development, and much of the best thought of +men as well as women is centered on group experiments in domestic +cooeperation, in factory canteens, in municipal kitchens, which are a +natural concomitant to the wider functioning of women. + +Great Britain is not talking about feminism, it is living it. Perhaps +nothing better illustrates the national acceptance of the fact than the +widespread amusement touched with derision caused by the story of the +choleric gentlemen who, on being asked at the time of one of the +government registrations whether his wife was dependent upon him or not, +roared in rage, "Well, if my wife isn't dependent on me, I'd like to +know what man she is dependent on!" + +Only second to Britain's lesson for us in the self-reliance of its +women, and the thorough mobilization of their labor-power and executive +ability, is its lesson in protection for all industrial workers. It +stands as one people against the present enemy, and in its effort does +not fail to give thought to race conservation for the future. + + +[Footnote 2: Through the courtesy of the Editors of _The Outlook_, I am +at liberty to use in this and the following chapter, some of the +material published in an article by me in _The Outlook_ of June +28, 1916.] + + + + +IV + +MOBILIZING WOMEN IN FRANCE + + +Compared with the friction in the mobilization of woman-power in Great +Britain, the readjustment in the lives of women in France was like the +opening out of some harmonious pageant in full accord with popular +sympathy. But who has not said, "France is different!" + +It is different, and in nothing more so than in its attitude toward its +women. Without discussion with organizations of men, without hindrance +from the government, women filled the gaps in the industrial army. It +was obvious that the new workers, being unskilled, would need training; +the government threw open the technical schools to them. A spirit of +hospitality, of helpfulness, of common sense, reigned. + +[Illustration: The French poilu on furlough is put to work harrowing.] + +And it was not only in industry that France showed herself wise. I found +that the government had cooeperated unreservedly with all the +philanthropic work of women and had given them a wide sphere in which +they could rise above amateurish effort and carry out plans calling for +administrative ability. + +When the Conseil National des Femmes Francaises inaugurated its work to +bring together the scattered families of Belgium and northern France, +and when the Association pour l'Aide Fraternelle aux Evacues +Alsaciens-Lorrains began its work for the dispersed peoples of the +provinces, an order was issued by the government to every prefect to +furnish lists of all refugees in his district to the headquarters of the +women's societies in Paris. It was through this good will on the part of +the central government that these societies were able to bring together +forty thousand Belgian families, and to clothe and place in school, or +at work, the entire dispersed population of the reconquered districts of +Alsace-Lorraine. + +Nor did these societies cease work with the completion of their initial +effort. They turned themselves into employment bureaus and with the aid +and sanction of the government found work for the thousands of women who +were thrown out of employment. They had the machinery to accomplish +their object, the Council being an old established society organized +throughout the country, and the Association to Aid the Refugees from +Alsace-Lorraine (a nonpartisan name adopted, by the way, at the request +of the Minister of the Interior to cover for the moment the patriotic +work of the leading suffrage society) had active units in every +prefecture. + +One of the admirable private philanthropies was the canteen at the St. +Lazarre station in Paris. I am tempted to single it out because its +organizer, Countess de Berkaim, told me that in all the months she had +been running it--and it was open twenty-four hours of the day--not a +single volunteer had been five minutes late. The canteen was opened in +February, 1915, with a reading and rest room. Six hundred soldiers a day +have been fed. The two big rooms donated by the railway for the work +were charming with their blue and white checked curtains, dividing +kitchen from restaurant and rest room from reading room. The work is no +small monument to the reliability and organizing faculty of +French women. + +It was in France, too, that I found the group of women who realized that +the permanent change which the war was making in the relation of women +to society needed fundamental handling. Mlle. Valentine Thomson, founder +of La Vie Feminine, held that not only was the war an economic struggle +and not only must the financial power of the combatants rest on the +labor of women, but the future of the nations will largely depend upon +the attitude which women take toward their new obligations. Realizing +that business education would be a determining factor in that attitude, +Mlle. Thomson persuaded her father, who was then Minister of Commerce, +to send out an official recommendation to the Chambers of Commerce to +open the commercial schools to girls. The advice was very generally +followed, but as Paris refused, a group of women, backed by the +Ministry, founded a school in which were given courses of instruction in +the usual business subjects, and lectures on finance, commercial law and +international trade. + +Mlle. Thomson herself turned her business gifts to good use in a +successful effort to build up for the immediate benefit of artists and +workers the doll trade of which France was once supreme mistress. +Exhibitions of the art, old and new, were held in many cities in the +United States, in South America and in England. The dolls went to the +hearts of lovers of beauty, and what promised surer financial return, to +the hearts of the children. + +To do something for France--that stood first in the minds of the +initiators of this commercial project. They knew her people must be +employed. And next, the desire to bring back charm to an old art +prompted their effort. Mlle. Thomson fully realizes just what "Made in +Germany" signifies. The peoples of the world have had their taste +corrupted by floods of the cheap and tawdry. Germany has been steadily +educating us to demand quantity, quantity mountains high. There is +promise that the doll at least will be rescued by France and made worth +the child's devotion. + +In industry, as well as in all else, one feels that in France there has +not been so much a revolution as an orderly development. Women were in +munition factories even before the war, the number has merely swelled. +The women of the upper and lower bourgeois class always knew their +husband's business, the one could manage the shop, the other could +bargain with the best of them as to contracts and output. Women were +trained as bookkeepers and clerks under Napoleon I; he wanted men as +soldiers, and so decreed women should go into business. And the woman of +the aristocratic class has merely slipped out of her seclusion as if +putting aside an old-fashioned garment, and now carries on her +philanthropies in more serious and cooerdinated manner. We know the +practical business experience possessed by French women, and so are +prepared to learn that many a big commercial enterprise, the owner +having gone to the front, is now directed by his capable wife. That is +but a development, too, is it not? For we had all heard long ago of Mme. +Duval, even if we had not eaten at her restaurants, and though we had +never bought a ribbon or a carpet at the Bon Marche, we had heard of the +woman who helped break through old merchant habits and gave the world +the department store. + +But nothing has been more significant in its growth during the war than +the small enterprises in which the husband and wife in the domestic +munition shop, laboring side by side with a little group of assistants, +have been turning out marvels of skill. The man is now in the trenches +fighting for France, and the woman takes command and leads the +industrial battalion to victory. She knows she fights for France. + +A word more about her business, for she is playing an economic part that +brings us up at attention. She may be solving the problem of adjustment +of home and work so puzzling to women. There are just such domestic +shops dotted all over the map of France; in the Paris district alone +there are over eighteen hundred of them. The conditions are so +excellent and the ruling wages so high, that the minimum wage law passed +in 1915 applied only to the sweated home workers in the clothing trade, +and not to the domestic munition shops. + +A commission which included in its membership a trade unionist, sent by +the British government in the darkest days to find why it was that +France could produce so much more ammunition than England, found these +tiny workshops, with their primitive equipment, performing miracles. The +output was huge and of the best. The woman, when at the head, seemed to +turn out more than the man, she worked with such undying energy. The +commission said it was the "spirit of France" that drove the workers +forward and renewed the flagging energies. But even the trade unionist +referred to the absence of all opposition to women on the part of +organizations of men. Perhaps the spirit of France is undying because in +it is a spirit of unity and harmony. + +It seemed to me there was one very practical explanation of the +unmistakable energy of the French worker, both man and woman. The whole +nation has the wise custom of taking meal time with due seriousness. The +break at noon in the great manufactories, as well as in the family +workshop, is long, averaging one hour and a half, and reaching often to +two hours. The French never gobble. Because food is necessary to animal +life, they do not on that account take a puritanical view of it. They +dare enjoy it, in spite of its physiological bearing. They sit down to +it, dwell upon it, get its flavor, and after the meal they sit still and +as a nation permit themselves unabashed to enjoy the sensation of hunger +appeased. That's the common sense spirit of France. + +Of course the worker is renewed, hurls herself on the work again with +ardor, and losing no time through fatigue, throws off an +enormous output. + +Wages perform their material share in spurring the worker. Louis Barthou +says that the woman's average is eight francs a day. Long ago--it seems +long ago--she could earn at best five francs in the Paris district. She +works on piece work now, getting the same rate as men. And think of +it!--this must indeed be because of the spirit of France--this woman +does better than men on the light munition work, and equals, yes, equals +her menfolk on the heavy shells. I do not say this, a commission of men +says it, a commission with a trade union member to boot. The coming of +the woman-worker with the spirit of win-the-war in her heart is the same +in France as elsewhere, only here her coming is more gracious. Twelve +hundred easily take up work on the Paris subway. They are the wives of +mobilized employees. The offices of the Post, the Telegraph and +Telephone bristle with women, of course, for eleven thousand have taken +the places of men. Some seven thousand fill up the empty positions on +the railways, serving even as conductors on through trains. Their number +has swollen to a half million in munitions, and to over half that number +in powder mills and marine workshops; in civil establishments over three +hundred thousand render service; and even the conservative banking world +welcomes the help of some three thousand women. + +[Illustration: Has there ever been anything impossible to French women +since the time of Jeanne d'Arc? The fields must be harrowed--they have +no horses.] + +Out on the land the tally is greatest of all. Every woman from the +village bends over the bosom of France, urging fertility. The government +called them in the first hours of the conflict. Viviani spoke +the word:-- + +"The departure for the army of all those who can carry arms, leaves the +work in the fields undone; the harvest is not yet gathered in; the +vintage season is near. In the name of the entire nation united behind +it, I make an appeal to your courage, and to that of your children, +whose age alone and not their valour, keeps them from the war. + +"I ask you to keep on the work in the fields, to finish gathering in the +year's harvest, to prepare that of the coming year. You cannot render +your country a greater service. + +"It is not for you, but for her, that I appeal to your hearts. + +"You must safeguard your own living, the feeding of the urban +populations and especially the feeding of those who are defending the +frontier, as well as the independence of the country, civilization +and justice. + +"Up, then, French women, young children, daughters and sons of the +country! Replace on the field of work those who are on the field of +battle. Strive to show them to-morrow the cultivated soil, the harvests +all gathered in, the fields sown. + +"In hours of stress like the present, there is no ignoble work. +Everything that helps the country is great. Up! Act! To work! To-morrow +there will be glory for everyone. + +"Long live the Republic! Long live France!" + +Women instantly responded to the proclamation. Only the old men were +left to help, only decrepit horses, rejected by the military +requisition. More than once I journeyed far into the country, but I +never saw an able-bodied man. What a gap to be filled!--but the French +peasant woman filled it. She harvested that first year, she has sowed +and garnered season by season ever since. Men, horses, machinery were +lacking, the debit yawned, but she piled up a credit to meet it by +unflagging toil. + +With equal devotion and with initiative and power of organization the +woman of leisure has "carried on." The three great societies +corresponding with our Red Cross, the Societe de Secours aux Blesses, +the Union des Femmes de France, and the Association des Dames +Francaises, have established fifteen hundred hospitals with one hundred +and fifteen thousand beds, and put forty-three thousand nurses in active +service. Efficiency has kept pace with this superb effort, as is +testified to by many a war cross, many a medal, and the cross of the +Legion of Honor. + +Up to the level of her means France sets examples in works of human +salvage worthy the imitation of all nations. The mairie in each +arrondissement has become no less than a community center. The XIV +arrondissement in Paris is but the pattern for many. Here the wife of +the mayor, Mme. Brunot, has made the stiff old building a human place. +The card catalogue carrying information about every soldier from the +district, gives its overwhelming news each day gently to wife or mother, +through the lips of Mme. Brunot or her women assistants. The work of Les +Amis des Orphelins de Guerre centers here, the "adopted" child receiving +from the good maire the gifts in money and presents sent by the +Americans who are generously filling the role of parent. The widows of +the soldiers gather here for comfort and advice. + +And the mairie holds a spirit of experiment. It houses not only courage +and sympathy, but progress. The "XIV" has ventured on a Cuisine +Populaire under Mme. Brunot's wholesome guidance. And so many other +arrondissements have followed suit that Paris may be regarded as making +a great experiment in the municipal feeding of her people. It is not +charity, the food is paid for. In the "XIV" fifteen hundred persons eat +a meal or two at the mairie each day. The charge is seventy-five +centimes--fifteen cents, and one gets a soup, meat and a vegetable, +and fruit. + +The world seems to be counselling us that if we wish to be well and +cheaply fed we must go where there are experts to cook, where buying is +done in quantity, and where the manager knows about nutritive values. + +If a word of praise is extended to the maire of the XIV arrondissement +for his very splendid work, an example to all France, he quickly urges, +"Ah, but Mme. Brunot!" And so it is always, if you exclaim, "Oh, the +spirit of the men of France!" and a Frenchman's ears catch your words, +he will correct, "Ah, but the women!" + +And the women do stand above all other women, they have had such +opportunity for heroism. Whose heart does not beat the faster when the +names Soisson and Mme. Macherez are spoken! The mayor and the council +gone, she assumes the office and keeps order while German shells fall +thick on the town. And then the enemy enters, and asks for the mayor, +and she replies, "Le maire, c'est moi." And then do we women not like to +think of Mlle. Deletete staying at her post in the telegraph office in +Houplines in spite of German bombardments, and calmly facing tormentors, +when they smashed her instruments and threatened her with death. +One-tenth of France in the enemy's hands, and in each village and town +some woman staying behind to nurse the sick and wounded, to calm the +population when panic threatens, to stand invincible between the people +and their conquerors! + +It is very splendid!--the French man holding steady at the front, the +French woman an unyielding second line of defense. But what of France? +Words of praise must not swallow our sense of obligation. Let us with +our hundred millions of people face the figures. The death rate in +France, not counting the military loss, is twenty per thousand, with a +birth rate of eight per thousand. In Paris for the year ending August, +1914, there were forty-eight thousand nine hundred and seventeen births; +in the year ending in the same month, 1916, the births dropped to +twenty-six thousand one hundred and seventy-nine. The total deaths for +that year in all France were one million, one hundred thousand, and the +births three hundred and twelve thousand. + +France is profoundly, infinitely sad. She has cause. I shall never +forget looking into the very depths of her sorrow when I was at Creil. A +great drive was in progress, the wounded were being brought down from +the front, troops hurried forward. Four different regiments passed as I +sat at dejeuner. The restaurant, full of its noonday patrons, was a +typical French cafe giving on the street. We could have reached out and +touched the soldiers. They marched without music, without song or word, +marched in silence. Some of the men were from this very town; their +little sons, with set faces, too, walked beside them and had brought +them bunches of flowers. The people in the restaurant never spoke above +a whisper, and when the troops passed were as silent as death. There was +no cheer, but just a long, wistful gaze, the soldiers looking into their +eyes, they into the soldiers'. + +But France can bear her burden, can solve her problem if we lift our +full share from her bent shoulders. Her women can save the children if +the older men, relieved by our young soldiers, come back from the +trenches, setting women free for the work of child saving. France can +rebuild her villages if her supreme architects, her skilled workers are +replaced in the trenches by our armies. France can renew her spirit and +save her body if her experts in science, if her poets and artists are +sent back to her, and our less great bare their breasts to the Huns. + + + + +V + +MOBILIZING WOMEN IN GERMANY + + +The military mobilization of Germany was no more immediate and effective +than the call to arms for women. On August 1, 1914, the summons went +out, and German women were at once part of the smooth running machine of +efficiency. + +The world says the Kaiser has been preparing for war for forty years. +The world means that he has been preparing the fighting force. The sword +and guns were to be ready. But the military arm of the nation, the +German government believes, is but the first line of attack; the people +are the second line, and so they, too, in all their life activities, +were not forgotten. The military aristocracy has never neglected the +function of women in the state. The definition of their function may +differ from ours, but that there is a function is recognized, and it is +related to the other vital social organs. + +Slowly, through the last half of the nineteenth century, there had grown +up clubs among German women focusing on a definite bit of work, or +crystallizing about an idea. Germany even had suffrage societies. +Politics, however, were forbidden by the government; women were not +allowed to hang on the fringe of a meeting held to discuss men's +politics. But the women of the Fatherland were free to pool their ideas +in philanthropic and hygienic corners, and venture out at times on +educational highways. The Froebel societies had many a contest with the +government, for to the military mind, the gentle pedagogue's theories +seemed subversive of discipline as enforced by spurs and bayonets. + +These clubs, covering every trade and profession, every duty and every +aspiration of women, were dotted over the German Empire. At last they +drew together in a federation. The government looked on. It saw a +machine created, and believing in thorough organization, no doubt gave +thought to the possibilities of the Bund deutscher, Frauenvereine. At +the outbreak of war, Dr. Gertrud Baumer was president of the Bund. She +was a leader of great ability, marshalling half a million of women. No +other organization was so widespread and well-knit, except perhaps Der +Vaterlandische Frauenverein with its two thousand one hundred and fifty +branches. It was evangelical and military. The Empress was its patron. +Its popular name is the "Armee der Kaiserin." + +There the two great national societies stood--one aristocratic, the +other democratic, one appealing to the ruling class, the other holding +in bonds of fellowship the rich and the poor, the urban and the rural, +the professional and the industrial woman. + +Every belligerent president or premier has faced exactly the same +perplexity. What woman, what society, is to be recognized as leader? The +question has brought beads of perspiration to the foreheads of +statesmen. + +France solved the difficulty urbanely. It said "yes" to each and all. It +promised cooeperation and kept the promise. By affably--always affably +and hospitably--accepting this service from one society, and suggesting +another pressing need to its competitor, it sorted out capabilities, and +warded off duplication. Perhaps this did not bring the fullest +efficiency, but the loss was more than made up, no doubt, by a free +field for initiative. Britain ignored all existing organizations of +women, and after a year and a half of puzzlement created a separate +government department for their mobilization. America struck out still +another course. It took the heads of several national societies, bound +them in one committee, to which it gave, perhaps with the idea of +avoiding any danger of friction, neither power nor funds. + +Germany faced the same critical moment for decision. The government +wanted efficient use of woman-power on the land, in the factory, in the +home, and that quickly. It made use of the best existing machinery. Dr. +Gertrud Baumer visited the Ministerium des Innern, and on August 1 she +issued a call for the mobilization of women for service to the +Fatherland in the Nationale Frauendienst. Under the aegis of the +government, with the national treasury behind her, Dr. Baumer summoned +the women of the Empire. By order, every woman and every organization of +women was to fall in line under the Frauendienst in each village and +city for "the duration of the war." [3] + +In each army district, the government appointed a woman as directress, +and by order to town and provincial authorities made the Frauendienst +part of local executive affairs. + +Among the immediate duties laid upon the Frauendienst by the authorities +was the task of registering all needy persons, of providing cheap eating +places, opening workrooms, and setting up nurseries for children, +especially for those who were motherless and those whose fathers had +fallen at the front and whose mothers were in some gainful pursuit. With +these duties went the administrative service of cooeperating with the +government in "keeping up an even supply of foodstuffs, and controlling +the buying and selling of food." + +Germany anticipated as did no other belligerent the unemployment which +would follow a declaration of war, and prepared to meet the condition. A +great deal of army work, such as tent sewing, belts for cartridges, +bread sacks, and sheets for hospitals, was made immediately available +for the women thrown out of luxury trades. In the first month of the war +the Frauendienst opened work-rooms in all great centers; machinery was +installed by magic and through the six work-rooms in Berlin alone +twenty-three thousand women were given paid employment in one week. + +Such efforts could not, of course, absorb the surplus labor, for +unemployment was very great. Eighty percent of the women's hat-makers +and milliners were out of work, seventy-two percent of the workers in +glass and fifty-eight percent in china. The Frauendienst investigated +two hundred and fifty-five thousand needy cases, and in Berlin alone +found sixty thousand women who had lost their employment. Charity had to +render help. Here, again, it is an example of the alertness of the +organization and its close connection with the government that the +Berlin magistracy deputed to twenty-three Hilfscommissionen from the +Frauendienst the work of giving advice and charity relief to the +unemployed. Knitting rooms were opened, clothing depots, mending rooms, +where donated clothing was repaired, and in one month fifty-six thousand +orders for milk, five hundred thousand for bread, and three hundred +thousand for meals were distributed for the city authorities. + +The adjustment to war requirements went on more quickly in Germany than +in any other country. Before a year had passed the surplus hands had +been absorbed, and a shortage of labor power was beginning to be felt. + +And now opens the war drama set with the same scene everywhere. Women +hurry forward to take up the burden laid down by men, and to assume the +new occupations made necessary by the organization of the world for +military conflict. To tell of Germany is merely to speak in bigger +numbers. Women in munitions? Of course, well over the million mark. +Trolley conductors? Of course, six hundred in Berlin alone before the +first Christmas. Women are making the fuses, fashioning the big shells, +and at the same heavy machines used by the men. That speaks volumes--the +same heavy machines. Great Britain and France have in every case +introduced lighter machinery for their women. But, whatever the +conditions, in Germany the women are handling high explosives, sewing +heavy saddlery, operating the heaviest drill machines. Women have been +put on the "hardest jobs hitherto filled by men." In the +German-Luxemburg Mining and Furnace Company at Differdingen, they are +found doing work at the slag and blast furnaces which had always +required men of great endurance. They work on the same shifts as the +men, receive the same pay, but are not worked overtime "because they +must go home and perform their domestic duties." + +One feels the weight of the German system. Patient women shoulder double +burdens. They always did. + +In the Post and Telegraph department there is an army of fifty thousand +women. The telephone service is entirely in their hands, and running +more smoothly than formerly. Dr. Kaethe Schirmacher declares comfortingly +in the _Kriegsfrau_ that "one must not forget that these women know many +important bits of information--and keep silent." Women have learned to +keep a secret! + +One hundred and eighty nurses, experts with the X-ray, were in the front +line dressing stations in the early days of the war, and before a week +of conflict had passed women were in the Field Post, and Frau Reimer, +organizer of official chauffeurs, was on the western line of attack. + +Agriculture claims more women than any occupation in Germany. They were +always on the farm, perhaps they are happier there now since they +themselves are in command. It is said that "the peasants work in the +boots and trousers of their husbands and ride in the saddle." War has +liberated German women from the collar and put them on horseback! + +But strangest and most unexpected of all is the professional and +administrative use of women. The government has sent women architects +and interior decorators to East Prussia to plan and carry through +reconstruction work. Over a hundred--to be exact, one hundred and +sixteen at last accounts--have taken the places of men in +administrative departments connected with the railways. Many widows who +have shown capacity have been put in government positions of importance +formerly held by their husbands. Women have become farm managers, +superintendents of dairy industries, and representatives of landed +proprietors. + +The disseminating of all instruction and information for women on war +economies was delegated to the League of Women's Domestic Science Clubs. +The Berlin course was held in no less a place than the Abgeordnetenhaus, +and the Herrenhaus opened its doors wide on Rural Women's Day when +Agricultural Week was held at the capital. + +When the full history of the war comes to be written, no doubt one +reason for Germany's marvelous power to stand so long against the world +will be found in her use of every brain and muscle of the nation. This +has been for her no exclusive war. Her entire people to their last ounce +of energy have been engaged. + +And this supreme service on the part of German women seeks democratic +expression. From them comes the clearest, bravest word that has reached +us across the border. The most hopeful sign is this manifesto from the +suffrage organizations to the government: "Up to the present Germany +has stood in the lowest rank of nations as regards women's rights. In +most civilized lands women already have been given a large share in +public affairs. German women have been granted nothing except within the +most insignificant limits. In New Zealand, Australia and most American +States, and even before the war in Finland and Norway, they had been +given political rights; to-day, Sweden, Russia and many other countries +give them a full or limited franchise. The war has brought a full +victory to the women of England, Canada, Russia and Denmark, and large +concessions are within sight in France, Holland and Hungary. + +"Among us Germans not only the national but even the commercial +franchise is denied, and even a share in the industrial and commercial +courts. In the demand for the democratization of German public life our +legislators do not seem even to admit the existence of women. + +"But during the war the cooperation of women in public life has +unostentatiously grown from year to year until to-day the number of +women engaged in various callings in Germany exceeds the number of men. + +"The work they are doing includes all spheres of male activity; without +them it would no longer be possible to support the economic life of the +people. Women have done their full share in the work of the community. + +"Does not this performance of duty involve the right to share in the +building up and extension of the social order? + +"The women protest against this lack of political rights, in virtue both +of their work for the community and of their work as human beings. They +demand political equality with men. They demand the direct, equal and +secret franchise for all legislative bodies, full equality in the +communes and in legal representation of their interests. + +"This first joint pronouncement on women's demands will be followed by +others until the victory of our cause is won." + + +[Footnote 3: "Die Frauenvereine jeder Stadt verbinden sich fuer die Dauer +des Krieges zur Organization Nationaler Frauendienst die zu Berlin am +1ten August begruendet wurde."] + + + + +VI + +WOMEN OVER THE TOP IN AMERICA + + +American women have begun to go over the top. They are going up the +scaling-ladder and out into All Man's Land. Perhaps love of adventure +tempts them, perhaps love of money, or a fine spirit of service, but +whatever the propelling motive, we are seeing them make the venture. + +There is nothing new in our day in a woman's being paid for her +work--some of it. But she has never before been seen in America +employed, for instance, as a section hand on a railway. The gangs are +few and small as yet, but there the women are big and strong specimens +of foreign birth. They "trim" the ballast and wield the heavy "tamping" +tool with zest. They certainly have muscles, and are tempted to use them +vigorously at three dollars a day. + +In the machine shops where more skill than strength is called for, the +American element with its quick wits and deft fingers predominates. +Young women are working at the lathe with so much precision and accuracy +that solicitude as to what would become of the world if all its men +marched off to war is in a measure assuaged. In the push and drive of +the industrial world, women are handling dangerous chemicals in making +flash lights, and T.N.T. for high explosive shells. The American college +girl is not as yet transmuting her prowess of the athletic field into +work on the anvil, as is the university woman in England, but she has +demonstrated her manual strength and skill on the farm with plough +and harrow. + +Women and girls answer our call for messenger service, and their +intelligence and courtesy are an improvement upon the manners of the +young barbarians of the race. Women operate elevators, lifting us with +safety to the seventh heaven, or plunging us with precision to the +depths. There were those at first who refused to entrust their lives to +such frail hands, and there are still some who look concerned when they +see a woman at the lever; but on the whole the elevator "girl" has +gained the confidence of her public, and has gained it by skill, not by +feminine wiles, for even men won't shoot into space with a woman at the +helm whose sole equipment is charm. With need of less skill than the +elevator operator, but more patience and tact in managing human nature, +the woman conductor is getting her patrons into line. We are still a +little embarrassed in her presence. We try not to stare at the +well-set-up woman in her sensible uniform, while she on her part tries +to look unconscious, and with much dignity accomplishes the common aim +much more successfully than do we. She is so attentive to her duties, so +courteous, and, withal, so calm and serious that I hope she will abide +with us longer than the "duration of the war." + +In short, America is witnessing the beginning of a great industrial and +social change, and even those who regard the situation as temporary +cannot doubt that the experience will have important reactions. The +development is more advanced than it was in Great Britain at a +corresponding time, for even before the United States entered the +conflict women were being recruited in war industries. They have opened +up every line of service. There is not an occupation in which a woman is +not found. + +When men go a-warring, women go to work. + +A distinguished general at the end of the Cuban War, enlarging upon the +poet's idea of woman's weeping role in wartime, said in a public speech: +"When the country called, women put guns in the hands of their soldier +boys and bravely sent them away. After the good-byes were said there was +nothing for these women to do but to go back and wait, wait, wait. The +excitement of battle was not for them. It was simply a season of anxiety +and heartrending inactivity." Now the fact is, when a great call to arms +is sounded for the men of a nation, women enlist in the industrial army. +If women did indeed sit at home and weep, the enemy would soon conquer. + +The dull census tells the thrilling story. Before our Civil War women +were found in less than a hundred trades, at its close in over four +hundred. The census of 1860 gives two hundred and eighty-five thousand +women in gainful pursuits; that of 1870, one million, eight hundred and +thirty-six thousand. Of the Transvaal at war, this story was told to me +by an English officer. He led a small band of soldiers down into the +Boer country, on the north from Rhodesia, as far as he dared. He "did +not see a man," even boys as young as fifteen had joined the army. But +at the post of economic duty stood the Boer woman; she was tending the +herds and carrying on all the work of the farm. She was the base of +supplies. That was why the British finally put her in a concentration +camp. Her man could not be beaten with her at his back. + +War compels women to work. That is one of its merits. Women are forced +to use body and mind, they are not, cannot be idlers. Perhaps that is +the reason military nations hold sway so long; their reign continues, +not because they draw strength from the conquered nation, but because +their women are roused to exertion. Active mothers ensure a virile race. + +The peaceful nation, if its women fall victims to the luxury which +rapidly increasing wealth brings, will decay. If there come no spiritual +awakening, no sense of responsibility of service, then perhaps war alone +can save it. The routing of idleness and ease by compulsory labor is the +good counterbalancing some of the evil. + +The rapidly increasing employment of women to-day, then, is the usual, +and happy, accompaniment of war. But the development has its opponents, +and that is nothing new, either. Let us look them over one by one. The +most mischievous objector is the person, oftenest a woman, who says the +war will be short, and fundamental changes, therefore, should not be +made. This agreeable prophecy does not spring from a heartening belief +in victory, but only from the procrastinating attitude, "Why get ready?" +To prepare for anything less certain than death seems folly to many of +the sex, over-trained in patient waiting. + +Then there is the official who constantly sees the seamy side of +industrial life and who concludes--we can scarcely blame him--that "it +would be well if women were excluded entirely from factory life." The +bad condition of industrial surroundings bulks large in his mind, and +the value of organized work to us mortals bulks small. We are all too +inclined to forget that the need for work cannot be eliminated, but the +unhealthy process in a dangerous trade can. Clean up the factory, rather +than clean out the women, is a sound slogan. + +And then comes the objector who is exercised as to the effect of paid +work upon woman's charm. Solicitude on this score is often buried in a +woman's heart. It was a woman, the owner of a large estate, who when +proposing to employ women asked how many men she would have to hire in +addition, "to dig, plough and do all the hard work." On learning that +the college units do everything on a farm, she queried anxiously, "But +how about their corsets?" To the explanation, "They don't wear any," +came the regret, "What a pity to make themselves so unattractive!" + +I have heard fear expressed, too, lest sex attraction be lost through +work on army hats, the machinery being noisy and the operative, if she +talk, running the danger of acquiring a sharp, high voice. One could but +wonder if most American women work on army hats. + +Among the women actually employed, I have found without exception a fine +spirit of service. So many of them have a friend or brother "over +there," that backing up the boys makes a strong personal appeal. But +some of the women who have left factory life behind are adopting an +attitude towards the present industrial situation as lacking in vision +as in patriotism. Throughout a long discussion in which some of these +women participated I was able to follow and get their point of view. To +them a woman acting as a messenger, an elevator operator, or a trolley +conductor, was anathema, and the tempting of women into these +employments seemed but the latest vicious trick of the capitalist. The +conductor in her becoming uniform was most reprehensible, and her +evident satisfaction in her job suggested to her critics that she merely +was trying to play a melodramatic part "as a war hero." In any case, the +conductor's occupation was one no woman should be in, "crowded and +pushed about as she is." It was puzzling to know why it was regarded as +right for a woman to pay five cents and be pushed, and unbecoming for +another woman to be paid eighteen dollars and ninety cents a week and +run the risk of a jolt when stepping outside her barrier. + +But the ideals of yesterday fail to make their appeal. It is not the +psychological moment to urge, on the ground of comfort, the woman's +right to protection. The contrast between the trenches and the street +car or factory is too striking. But it is, however, the exact moment to +plead for better care of workers, both women and men, because their +health and skill are as necessary in attaining the national aim as the +soldiers' prowess and well-being. It is the time to advocate the +protection of the worker from long hours, because the experience of +Europe has proved that a greater and better output is achieved when a +short day is strictly adhered to, when the weekly half-holiday is +enjoyed, and Sunday rest respected. The United States is behind other +great industrial countries in legal protection for the workers. War +requirements may force us to see in the health of the worker the +greatest of national assets. Meantime, whether approved or not, the +American woman is going over the top. Four hundred and more are busy on +aeroplanes at the Curtiss works. The manager of a munition shop where +to-day but fifty women are employed, is putting up a dormitory to +accommodate five hundred. An index of expectation! Five thousand are +employed by the Remington Arms Company at Bridgeport. At the +International Arms and Fuse Company at Bloomfield, New Jersey, two +thousand, eight hundred are employed. The day I visited the place, in +one of the largest shops women had only just been put on the work, but +it was expected that in less than a month they would be found handling +all of the twelve hundred machines under that one roof alone. + +The skill of the women staggers one. After a week or two they master the +operations on the "turret," gauging and routing machines. The best +worker on the "facing" machine is a woman. She is a piece worker, as +many of the women are, and is paid at the same rate as men. This woman +earned, the day I saw her, five dollars and forty cents. She tossed +about the fuse parts, and played with that machine, as I would with a +baby. Perhaps it was in somewhat the same spirit--she seemed to +love her toy. + +Most of the testers and inspectors are women. They measure the parts +step by step, and weigh the completed fuse, carrying off the palm for +reliability. The manager put it, "for inspection the women are more +conscientious than men. They don't measure or weigh just one piece, +shoving along a half-dozen untouched and let it go at that. They test +each." That did not surprise me, but I was not prepared to hear that the +women do not have so many accidents as men, or break the machines so +often. In explanation, the manager threw over an imaginary lever with +vigor sufficient to shake the factory, "Men put their whole strength on, +women are more gentle and patient." + +Nor are the railways neglecting to fill up gaps in their working force +with women. The Pennsylvania road, it is said, has recruited some seven +hundred of them. In the Erie Railroad women are not only engaged as +"work classifiers" in the locomotive clerical department, but hardy +Polish women are employed in the car repair shops. They move great +wheels as if possessed of the strength of Hercules. And in the +locomotive shops I found women working on drill-press machines with +ease and skill. Just as I came up to one operator, she lifted an engine +truck-box to the table and started drilling out the studs. She had been +at the work only a month, and explained her skill by the information +that she was Swedish, and had always worked with her husband in their +auto-repair shop. All the other drill-press hands and the "shapers," +too, were Americans whose husbands, old employees, were now "over +there." Not one seemed to have any sense of the unusual; even the little +blond check-clerk seated in her booth at the gates of the works with her +brass discs about her had in a few months' time changed a revolution +into an established custom. She and the discs seemed old friends. Women +are adaptable. + +[Illustration: _Copyright by Underwood and Underwood_ +The daily round in the Erie Railroad workshops.] + +But everywhere I gathered the impression that the men are a bit uneasy. +A foreman in one factory pointed out a man who "would not have voted for +suffrage" had he guessed that women were "to rush in and gobble +everything up." I tried to make him see that it wasn't the vote that +gave the voracious appetite, but necessity or desire to serve. And in +any case, women do not push men out, they push them up. In not a single +instance did I hear of a man being turned off to make a place for a +woman. He had left his job to go into the army, or was advanced to +heavier or more skilled work. + +As to how many women have supplanted men, or poured into the new war +industries, no figures are available. One guess has put it at a million. +But that is merely a guess. I have seen them by the tens, the hundreds, +the thousands. The number is large and rapidly increasing. We may know +that something important is happening when even the government takes +note. The United States Labor Department has recognized the new-comers +by establishing a Division of Women's Work with branches in every State. +It looks as if these bureaus of employment would not be idle, with a +showing of one thousand, five hundred applicants the first week the New +York office was opened. It is to be hoped that this government effort +will save the round pegs from getting into the square holes. + +But even the round peg in the round hole brings difficulties. When Adam +Smith asserted that of all sorts of luggage man was the most difficult +to move, he forgot woman! The instant women are carried into a new +industry, they bring with them puzzling problems. Where shall we put +their coats and picture hats, how shall we cover up their hair, what +shall we feed them with? They must have lockers and rest rooms, caps +and overalls, and above all, canteens. The munition workers, the +conductors, in fact, all women in active work, get prodigiously hungry. +They have made a regiment of dietitians think about calories. Here is +what one of the street railways in New York City offered them on a +given day:-- + +Tomato soup 10c. or with an order 5c. +Roast leg of veal 16c. +Beef 16c. +Lamb fricassee 16c. +Ham steak 16c. +Liver and onions 16c. +Sirloin steak 30c. +Small steak 20c. +Ham and eggs 20c. +Ham omelet 20c. +_Regular dinner_ + Soup, meat, + Vegetable, + Dessert, coffee 25c. +Rice pudding 5c. +Pie 5c. +Cake 5c. +Banana or orange 5c. + +The canteen is open every hour of the twenty-four, and the women +conductors at the end of each run usually take a bite, and then have a +substantial meal during the long break of an hour and a half in the +middle of the ten-hour day. + +Another problem brought to us by women in industry is, how can we house +them? The war industries have drawn large numbers to new centers. The +haphazard accommodation which men win put up with, won't satisfy women. +They demand more, and get more. To attract the best type of women the +munition plants are putting up dormitories to accommodate hundreds of +workers, and are making their plants more attractive, with rest rooms +and hospital accommodation. Take, for instance, the Briggs and Stratton +Company, which in order to draw high grade workers built its new factory +in one of the best sections of Milwaukee. The workrooms are as clean as +the proverbial Dutch woman's doorstep. From the top of the benches to +the ceiling the walls are glass to ensure daylight in every corner, and +by night the system of indirect lighting gives such perfectly diffused +light that not a heavy shadow falls anywhere. And the hospital room and +nurse--well, one would rejoice to have an accident daily! + +The factory may become the exemplar for the home. The professional +woman is going over the top, and with a good opinion of herself. "I can +do this work better than any man," was the announcement made by a young +woman from the Pacific Coast as she descended upon the city hall in an +eastern town, credentials in her hand, and asked for the position of +city chemist. There was not a microbe she did not know to its undoing, +or a deadly poison she could not bring from its hiding place. The town +had suffered from graft, and the mayor, thinking a woman might scare the +thieves as well as the bacteria, appointed the chemist who believed in +herself. And she is just one of many who have been taking up such work. + +Formerly two-thirds of the positions filled by the New York +Intercollegiate Bureau of Occupations were secretarial or teaching +positions; now three-fourths of its applicants have been placed as +physicists, chemists, office managers, sanitary experts, exhibit +secretaries, and the like. The temporary positions used to outnumber the +permanent placements; at present the reverse is true. Of the women +placed, four times as many as formerly get salaries ranging above +eighteen hundred dollars a year. + +The story told at the employment bureaus in connection with professional +societies and clubs such as the Chemists' Club is the same. Women are +being placed not merely as teachers of chemistry or as routine +laboratory workers in hospitals, but also as experimental and control +chemists in industrial plants. In the great rolling mills they are +testing steel, at the copper smelters they are found in the +laboratories. The government has thrown doors wide open to +college-trained women. They are physicists and chemists in the United +States Bureaus of Standards, Mines, and Soils, sanitary experts in +military camps, research chemists in animal nutrition and fertilizers at +state experiment stations. + +But the industrial barrier is the one most recently scaled. Women are +now found as analytical, research or control chemists in the canneries, +in dye and electrical works, in flour and paper mills, in insecticide +companies, and cement works. They test the steel that will carry us +safely on our journeys, they pass upon the chemical composition of the +flavor in our cake, as heads of departments in metal refining companies +they determine the kind of copper battery we shall use, and they have a +finger in our liquid glues, household oils and polishes. + +And the awakened spirit of social responsibility has opened new +callings. The college woman not only is beginning to fill welfare +positions inside the factory, but is acting as protective officer in +towns near military camps. Perhaps one of the newest and most +interesting positions is that of "employment secretary." The losing of +employees has become so serious and general that big industries have +engaged women who devote their time to looking up absentees and finding +out why each worker left. + +And so we see on all hands women breaking through the old accustomed +bounds. + +Not only as workers but as voters, the war has called women over the +top. Since that fateful August, 1914, four provinces of Canada and the +Dominion itself have raised the banner of votes for women. Nevada and +Montana declared for suffrage before the war was four months old, and +Denmark enfranchised its women before the year was out. And when America +went forth to fight for democracy abroad, Arkansas, Michigan, Vermont, +Nebraska, North Dakota, Rhode Island, began to lay the foundations of +freedom at home, and New York in no faltering voice proclaimed full +liberty for all its people. Lastly Great Britain has enfranchised its +women, and surely the Congress of the United States will not lag behind +the Mother of Parliaments! + +The world is facing changes as great as the breaking up of the feudal +system. Causes as fundamental, more wide-spread, and more cataclysmic +are at work than at the end of the Middle Ages. Among the changes none +is more marked than the intensified development in what one may call, +for lack of a better term, the woman movement. The advance in political +freedom has moved steadily forward during the past quarter of a century, +but in the last three years progress has been intense and striking. + +The peculiarity in attainment of political democracy for women has lain +in the fact that while for men economic freedom invariably preceded +political enfranchisement, in the case of women the conferring of the +vote in no single case was related to the stage which the enfranchised +group had attained in the matter of economic independence. Nowhere were +even those women who were entirely lacking in economic freedom, excluded +on that account from any extension of suffrage. Even in discussions of +the right of suffrage no reference has ever been made, in dealing with +women's claim, to the relation, universally recognized in the case of +men, of political enfranchisement to economic status. Serfdom gave way +to the wage system before democracy developed for men, and the colored +man was emancipated before he was enfranchised. For this reason the +coming of women as paid workers over the top may be regarded as +epoch-making. + +In any case, self-determination is certainly a strong element in +attaining any real political freedom. + +Complete service to their country in this crisis may lead women to that +economic freedom which will change a political possession into a +political power. But the requirement is readiness to do, and to do well, +the task which offers. Man-power must give itself unreservedly at the +front. Women must show not only eagerness but fitness to substitute for +man-power. It will hearten the nation, help to make the path clear, if +individual women declare that though the call to them has not yet come +for a definite service, the time of waiting will not be spent in +complaint, nor yet in foolish busy-ness, but in careful and +conscientious training for useful work. + +Each woman must prepare so that when the nation's need arises, she can +stand at salute and say, "Here is your servant, trained and ready." +Women are not driven over the top. Through self-discipline, they go over +it of their own accord. + + + + +VII + +EVE'S PAY ENVELOPE + + +No woman is a cross between an angel and a goose. She is a very human +creature. She has many of man's sins and some virtues of her own. + +Moving up from slavery through all the various forms of +serfdom--attachment to the soil, confinement to a given trade, exclusion +from citizenship, payment in kind, on to full economic freedom, men have +shown definite reactions at each step. Women respond to the +same stimuli. + +The free man is a better worker than slave or serf. So is the free +woman. All the old gibes at her ineptitudes have broken their points +against the actualities of her ability as a wage worker. The free man is +more alert to obligation, more conscientious in performance, than the +bond servant. So is the free woman. With pay envelope, or pension, Eve +is a better helpmate and mother than ever before. + +The free man carries a lighter heart than the villain. So does the free +woman. Men have always borne personal grief more easily than women; +observers remarked the fact. The reason is the same. An absorbing +occupation, ordered and regarded as important, which brings a return +allowing the recipient to patronize what he or she thinks wise, that +brings happiness, not boisterous, but dignified. It may be a holocaust +through which Eve gains that pay envelope, but the material possession +brings gratification nevertheless. It is a tiny straw showing the set of +the wind that leisure class British women, however large their unearned +bank account, show no reluctance to accept pay for their work, and full +responsibility in their new position of employee. + +Women are supposed to have liked to serve for mere love of service, for +love of child, love of husband. There is, of course, many a subtle +relation which can't be weighed and paid for; but toil, even for one's +very own hearthstone, can be valued in hard cash. The daughters of Eve, +no less than the sons of Adam, react happily to a recognition that +expresses itself in a fair wage. + +The verdict comes from all sides that women were never more content. Of +course they are content. The weight of suppression is being lifted. For +many their drudgery is for the first time paid for. Is not that +invigorating? The pay envelope is equal to that of men. Is not that a +new experience giving self-respect? Eve often finds her pay envelope +heavier than that of the man working at her side. Right there in her +hand, then, she holds proof that the old prejudice against her as an +inferior worker is ill-founded. + +Women are finding themselves. Even America's Eve discovers that pains +and aches are not "woman's lot." She is under no curse in the twentieth +century. With eighteen dollars a week for ringing up fares, and a +possible thirty-five for "facing" fuse-parts, nothing can persuade her +to be poor-spirited. She radiates the atmosphere, "I am needed!" Doors +fly open to her. She is welcome everywhere. No one seems to be able to +get too many of her kind. Politicians compete for her favor, employers +quarrel over her. It makes her breathe deep to have the Secretary of the +Navy summon her to the United States arsenals, pay her for her work, and +call her a patriot. + +[Illustration: In the well-lighted factory of the Briggs and Stratton +Company, Milwaukee, the girls are comfortably and becomingly garbed +for work.] + +And with the pay envelope women remain clearly human. Their purchases +often reflect past denials, rather than present needs or even tastes. +When set free one always buys what the days of dependence deprived one +of. One of Boston's leading merchants told me that Selfridge in London +was selling more jaunty ready-to-wear dresses than ever before. It was +part of John Bull's discipline in ante-bellum dependent days to keep his +women folk dowdy. The Lancashire lass with head shawl and pattens, the +wearer of the universal sailor hat, in these days of independence and +pounds, shillings and pence, are taking note of the shop windows. And +John is not turning his eyes away from his women folk in their day of +self-determination. + +But it is not to be concluded that it is all beer and skittles for Eve. +With a pay envelope and a vote come responsibilities. Public sympathy +has backed up laws cutting down long hours of work for women. The trade +unions, with a thought to possible competitors, have favored protecting +them from night work. Has Eve been a bit spoiled? Has she let herself +too easily be classed with children and allowed a line to be drawn +between men and women in industry? Is it a bit of woman's proverbial +logic to demand special protection, and at the same time insist upon +"equal pay for equal work"? + +The hopelessness of attaining the promise of the slogan is well +illustrated in the case of a gray haired woman I once met in a London +printing shop. In her early days she had been one of the women taken on +by the famous printing firm of McCorquodale. That was before protective +legislation applied to women. She became a highly skilled printer, +earning more than any man in the shop. When there was pressure of work +she was always one of the group of experts chosen to carry through the +rush order. That meant on occasion overtime or night work. Then she went +on to tell me how her skill was checked in her very prime. Regulations +as to women's labor were gradually fixed in the law. All the printers in +the shop, she said, favored the laws limiting her freedom but not +theirs. Soon her wages reflected the contrast. Her employer called her +to his office one day and explained, "I cannot afford to pay you as much +as the men any longer. You are not worth as much to me, not being able +to work Saturday afternoon, at night, or overtime." She was put on lower +grade work and her pay envelope grew slight. + +This woman was not discussing the value of shorter working hours, she +was pointing out that "equal pay" cannot rule for an entire group of +workers when restrictions apply to part of the group and not to the +whole body. We meet here, not a theory, but an incontrovertible fact. +Pay is not equal, and cannot be, where conditions are wholly unequal. +Protection for the woman worker means exactly what it would mean for the +alien man if by law he were forbidden to work Saturday afternoon, +overtime or at night, while the citizen worker was without restriction. +The alien would be cut off from advancement in every trade in which he +did not by overwhelming numbers dominate the situation, he would be kept +to lower grade processes, he would receive much lower pay than the +unprotected worker. + +What common sense would lead us to expect in the hypothetical case of an +alien man, has happened for the woman worker. Oddly enough she has not +herself asked for this protection, but it has been urged very largely by +women not of the industrial class. Women teachers, doctors, lawyers, +women of leisure are the advocates of special legislation for industrial +women. And yet in their own case they are entirely reasonable, and ask +no favors. The woman teacher, and quite truly, insists that she works as +hard and as long hours as the man in her grade of service, and on that +sound foundation she builds her just demand for equal pay. Women doctors +and lawyers have never asked for other than a square deal in their +professions. + +It would be well, perhaps, if industrial women were permitted to guide +their own ship. They have knowledge enough to reach a safe harbor. There +was a hint that they were about to assume the helm when the rank and +file of union workers voted down at the conference of the Women's Trade +Union League the resolution proposing a law to forbid women acting as +conductors. It was also suggestive when a woman rose and asked of the +speaker on dangerous trades, whether "men did not suffer from exposure +to fumes, acids and dust." + +Women have so long been urging that they are people, that they have +forgotten, perchance, that men are people also. Men respond to rest and +recreation as do human beings of the opposite sex. All workers need, and +both sexes should have, protection. But if only one sex in industrial +life can have bulwarks thrown up about it, men should be the favored +ones just now. They are few, they are precious, they should be wrapped +in cotton wool. + +The industrial woman should stand unqualifiedly for the exclusion of +children from gainful pursuits. Many years ago the British government +had Miss Collett, one of the Labor Correspondents of the Board of +Trade, make a special study of the influence of the employment of +married women on infant mortality. The object was to prove that there +was direct cause and effect. The investigator, after an exhaustive study +covering many industrial centers, brought back the report, "Not proven." +But the statistics showed one most interesting relation. In districts +where the prevailing custom permitted the employment of children as +early as the law allowed, infant mortality was high, and in districts +where few children were employed, infant mortality was low. No +explanation of this striking revelation was made in the report, but many +who commented on the tables, pointed out that the wide-spread employment +of the population in its early years sapped the vitality of the +community to such an extent that its offspring were weakened. In other +words, the employment of the immature child, more than the employment of +that child when grown and married, works harm to the race. + +The woman with a pay envelope must not, then, be willing to swell the +family budget by turning her children into the wage market. For if she +does, she creates a dangerous competitor for herself, and puts in +certain jeopardy the virility of her nation. But in this war time women +have secured more than new and larger pay envelopes, for each +belligerent has reckoned up the woman's worth as mother in coin of the +realm. It is enough to turn Eve's head--pay and pensions accorded her +all at once. + +Allowances to dependents are more, however, than financial expedients. +They are part of the psychological stage-setting of the Great War. The +fighting man must be more than well-fed, well-clothed, well-equipped, +more than assured of care if ill or wounded; he must have his mind +undisturbed by conditions at home. Governments now know that there must +be no just cause for complaint in the family at the rear, if the man at +the front is to be fully effective. In the interest of the fighting +line, governments dare not leave the home to the haphazard care +of charity. + +And so the great belligerents have adopted systems for an uninterrupted +flow of money aid to the hearthstone. The wife feels dependence on the +nation for which she and her man are making sacrifices, the soldier has +a sense of closer relationship with the country's cause for which he +fights. Content at home and sense of gratitude in the trenches build up +loyalty everywhere. The state allowance answers an economic want and a +psychological necessity. + +It is part of our national lack of technique that we were slow to make +provision for the dependents of enlisted men, and even then were not +whole hearted. It may have been our inherited distrust of the conscript +that led us to feel that only by his volunteering something will a +precious antidote be administered to the spirit of the drafted man. To +protect his individualism from taint, the United States soldier must +bear part of the financial burden. Europe, on the other hand, is working +on a basis of reciprocity. The nation exacts service from the man and +gives complete service to his dependents. In America the man is bound to +serve the community, but the community is not bound to serve him. And +yet in our case there is peculiar need of this even exchange of +obligations. The care of parents in the United States falls directly +upon their children, while some of our allies had, even before the war, +carefully devised laws regulating pensions to the aged. + +But first let us get the simple skeleton of the various allowance laws +in mind. The scale of the allowance in different countries adapts itself +to national standards and varying cost of living. The Canadian allowance +seems the most generous. At least one-half of the soldier's pay is +given directly to his dependents. The government gives an additional +twenty dollars and the donations of the Patriotic Fund bring up the +monthly allowance of a wife with three children to sixty dollars. The +allowance, as might be expected, is low in Italy. The soldier's wife +gets eight-tenths of a lira a day, each child four-tenths lira, and +either a father or mother alone eight-tenths lira, or if both are +living, one and three-tenths lire together. The British allowance is +much higher, the wife getting twelve shillings and sixpence a week. If +she has one child, the weekly allowance rises to nineteen and sixpence; +if two children, to twenty-four and sixpence; if three, to twenty-eight +shillings; and if there are four or more children, the mother receives +three shillings a week for each extra child. + +Between the extremes of Italy and England stands France, the wife +receiving one franc twenty-five centimes a day, each child under sixteen +years of age twenty-five centimes, and a dependent parent seventy-five +centimes. Japan grants no government allowance. A Japanese official, in +response to my inquiry, wrote, "Relations the first and friends the next +try to help the dependents as far as possible, but if they have neither +relatives nor friends who have sufficient means to help them, then the +association consisting of ladies or the municipal officials afford +subvention to them." + +Under the law passed by Congress in October, 1917, an American private +receiving thirty-three dollars a month when on service abroad must allot +fifteen dollars a month to his wife, and the government adds to this +twenty-five dollars, and if there is one child, an additional ten +dollars, with five dollars for each additional child. A man can secure +an allowance from the government of ten dollars a month to a dependent +parent, if he allots five dollars a month. Such are the bare bones of +the allowance schemes of the Allies on the western front. + +In the United States the general policy of exemption boards, as +suggested by the central authorities, is most disciplinary as regards +women. Their capacity for self-support is rigidly inquired into. Our men +are definitely urging women to a position of economic independence. The +aim is, while securing soldiers for the army, to relieve the government +of the expense of dependency on the part of women. There is no doubt +that our men at least are faced toward the future. No less indicative +is it of a new world that the allowance laws of all the western +belligerents recognize common-law marriages. In our own law, marriage is +"presumed if the man and woman have lived together in the openly +acknowledged relation of husband and wife during two years immediately +preceding the date of the declaration of war." And the illegitimate +child stands equal with the legitimate provided the father acknowledges +the child or has been "judicially ordered or decreed to contribute" to +the child's support. + +Men are feminists. Their hearts have softened even towards the wife's +relatives, for the word "parent" is not only broad enough to cover the +father, mother, grandparents or stepfather and mother of the man, but +"of the spouse" also. Thus passeth the curse of the mother-in-law. + +One need not be endowed with the spirit of prophecy to foretell that +"allowances" in war time will broaden out into motherhood pensions in +peace times. It would be an ordinary human reaction should the woman +enjoying a pension refuse to give up, on the day peace is declared, her +quickly acquired habit of holding the purse strings. That would be +accepting international calm at the expense of domestic differences. +The social value of encouraging the mother's natural feeling of +responsibility toward her child by putting into her hands a state +pension is being, let us note, widely tested, and may demonstrate the +wisdom and economy of devoting public funds to mothers rather than to +creches and juvenile asylums. + +The allowance laws may prove the charter of woman's liberties; +her pay envelope may become her contract securing the right of +self-determination. + + + + +VIII + +POOLING BRAINS + + +"Employ them." This was the advice given to a large conference of women +met to discuss business opportunities for their sex. The advice was +vouchsafed by a young lawyer after the problem of opening wider fields +to women in the legal profession had been looked at from every angle, +only to end in the question, "What can we do to increase their +practice?" She spoke with animation, as if she had found the key to the +situation, "Employ them." Perhaps more self-accusation than +determination to mend their ways was roused by the short and +pointed remark. + +The advice has wider application. Taking thirty names of women at +random, I learned in response to an inquiry that only four had women +physicians, two had women lawyers, and only one, a woman dentist. +Twenty-five women of large real estate holdings had never even for the +most unimportant work secured the services of an architect of their own +sex. Further inquiry brought out the fact that of a long list of +women's clubs and associations which have built or altered property for +their purposes, only one had engaged a woman architect. + +Perhaps it is indicative of a lack of nothing more serious than a sense +of humor, that we women unite and, apparently without embarrassment, +demand that masculine presidents, governors, mayors and legislatures +shall appoint women to office. This unabashed faith in the good will of +men seems not misplaced, for not only do public men show some confidence +in the official capacity of women, but to my inquiry as to whom was due +their opportunities to "get on," business women invariably replied, +"To men." + +However, the loyalty of women to women is increasing, and their +solidarity on sound lines of service is a thing of steady growth. +Thoughtful women, for instance, do not wish a woman put in a position of +responsibility simply because she is a woman, but they are even more +opposed to having a candidate of peculiar fitness overlooked merely +because she is not a man. While the conscientious and poised women are +not willing to urge any and every woman for a given office, they do +tenaciously hold that there are positions which cry aloud for women and +for which the right women should he found. In conquering a fair field, +women will have to pool their brains even more effectively than they +have in the past. + +Our efforts at combination are a mere mushroom growth compared with the +generations of training our big brothers have had in pooling brains. War +and the chase gave them their first lessons in cooperation, nor has war +been a bad teacher for women. + +Just as the Crimean War and our Civil War put Florence Nightingale and +Clara Barton and the trained nurse on the map, this war is bringing the +medical woman to the fore. Women surgeons and doctors, unlike many other +groups, offer themselves fully trained for service. They know they have +something to give, and they know the soldiers' need. + +According to an official statement, the emergency call of the army for +men physicians and surgeons fell two thousand short of being answered. +The necessity of the soldier and the skill of the women will no doubt in +the end be brought effectively together; for although the government of +the United States, like Great Britain in the early days of the war, has +left to ever farseeing France the honor of extending hospitality to +American women doctors, their strong national organization, with a +membership of four thousand, will in time, no doubt, persuade Uncle Sam +to take his plucky women doctors over the top under the Stars and +Stripes! Organization crystallized about an unselfish desire and skilled +ability to serve is irresistible. + +The pooling of the brains of women that has been going on on a +country-wide scale for more than a half-century bears analyzing. These +associations have almost invariably centered about a service to be +rendered. Even the first petition for political enfranchisement urged it +as the "duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves the +elective franchise." Unselfishness draws numbers as a magnet draws steel +filings. The spirit of service lying at the heart of the great national +organizations made possible quick response to new duties immediately +upon our entrance into the war. The suffragists said, We wish to serve +and we are ready for service. The government used their wide-spread net +of local centers for purposes of registrations and war appeals. + +Naturally there were many efforts more foolish than effective in the +universal rush to help. America was not peculiar in this, nor for the +matter of that, were women. War!--it does make the blood course through +the veins. Every generous citizen cries aloud, "What can I do?" Perhaps +men are a little more voluble than women, their emotions not finding +such immediate and approved vent along clicking needles and tangled +skeins of wool. On the whole, the initiative and organizing ability of +women has stood out supremely. + +Of the two departments of the Red Cross which are still left in the +command of women, the Bureau of Nursing, with Miss Delano at its head, +mobilized immediately three thousand of the fourteen thousand nurses +enrolled. The first Red Cross Medical Unit with its full quota of +sixty-five nurses completely equipped stood on European soil before an +American soldier was there. Of the forty-nine units ready for service, +twelve, with from sixty-five to one hundred nurses each, are now in +France. Two of the five units organized for the navy, each with its +forty active nurses and twenty reserves, are established abroad, and two +hundred and thirty nurses are already in active naval service here. Miss +Delano holds constantly in reserve fifteen hundred nurses as emergency +detachments, a reservoir from which some eight hundred have been drawn +for cantonment hospitals. An inflow of nearly one thousand nurses each +month keeps the reservoir ready to meet the drain. + +The Chapter work-rooms sprang up at a call in the night. No one can help +admiring their well-ordered functioning. There may be criticism, +grumbling, but the work-room is moving irresistibly, like a well-oiled +machine. And women are the motive power from start to finish. The +Chapters, with their five million members joined in three thousand units +over the United States, are so many monuments to the ability of women +for detail. Once mobilized, the women have thus far been able to serve +two thousand war hospitals with surgical dressings, and to send abroad +thirteen million separate articles packed carefully, boxed, labelled and +accounted for on their books. + +Not only does this directing of manual work stand to the credit of the +Chapters, but they have given courses of lectures in home nursing and +dietetics to thirty-four thousand women, and in first aid; ten thousand +classes have been held and seventy-five thousand certificates issued to +the proficient. Certainly one object of the Red Cross, "to stimulate the +volunteer work of women," has been accomplished. + +It is difficult to understand why, with such examples of women's +efficiency before it, the Red Cross, founded by Clara Barton, places +merely two bureaus in the hands of a woman, has chosen no woman as an +officer, has put but one woman on its central and executive committee, +and not a single woman on its present controlling body, the War Council. +It may be that the protest against the centralization of all volunteer +effort in the Red Cross, in spite of President Wilson's appeal, was due +to the fact that women feared that their energies, running to other +lines than nursing and surgical dressings, would be entirely +sidetracked. + +The honor of the splendid war work of the Young Women's Christian +Association belongs to women. The War Work Council of the National Board +of Young Women's Christian Associations shows an example of how +immediately efficient an established organization can be in an +emergency. As one sees its great War Fund roll up, one exclaims, "What +money raisers women are!" The immediate demands upon the fund are for +Hostess Houses at cantonments where soldiers can meet their women +visitors, dormitories providing emergency housing for women employees at +certain army centers, the strengthening of club work among the younger +girls of the nation, profoundly affected by war conditions, and the +sending of experienced organizers to cooeperate with the women leaders +of France and Russia and to install nurses' huts at the base hospitals +of France. It makes one's heart beat high to think of women spending +millions splendidly, they who have always been told to save pennies +frugally! Well, those hard days were times of training; women learned +not to waste. + +A very worthy pooling of brains, because springing up with no tradition +behind it, was the National League for Woman's Service. In six months it +drew to itself two hundred thousand members and built organizations in +thirty-nine States, established classes to train women for the new work +opening to them, opened recreation centers and canteens at which were +entertained on a single Sunday, at one center, eighteen hundred soldiers +and sailors. So excellent was its Bureau of Registration and Information +for women workers that the United States Department of Labor took over +not only the files and methods of the Woman's League for Service, but +the entire staff with Miss Obenauer at its head. If imitation is the +sincerest flattery, what shall we say of complete adoption of work and +workers, with an honorable "by your leave" and outspoken praise! And +nothing could show a finer spirit of service than this yielding up of +work initiated by a civil society and the willing passing of it into +government hands. + +Not only the Labor Department has established a special women's division +with a woman at its head, but the Ordnance Office of the War Department +has opened in its Industrial Service Section a woman's division, putting +Miss Mary Van Kleeck in charge. + +But still our government lags behind our Allies in mobilizing woman's +power of initiative and her organizing faculty. The Woman's Committee +of the Council of National Defense, appointed soon after the outbreak of +war, still has no administrative power. As one member of the Committee +says, "We are not allowed to do anything without the consent of the +Council of National Defense. There is no appropriation for the Woman's +Committee. We are furnished with headquarters, stationery, some printing +and two stenographers, but nothing more. It is essential that we raise +money to carry on the other expenses. The great trouble is that now, as +always, men want women to do the work while they do the overseeing." + +[Illustration: The women of the Motor Corps of the National League for +Woman's Service refuting the traditions that women have neither strength +nor endurance.] + +Perhaps holding the helm has become second nature to men simply because +they have held the helm so long, but I am inclined to think they have a +very definite desire to have women help steer the ship. Surely the +readiness with which they are sharing their political power with women, +would seem to indicate their wish for cooperation on a plan of +perfect equality. + +In any case, it is not necessary to hang on the skirts of government. +America has always shown evidence of greater gift in private enterprise +than state action. Perhaps women will demonstrate the national +characteristic. It was farsightedness and enterprise that led the +Intercollegiate Bureaus of Occupations, societies run for women by +women, to strike out in this crisis and open up new callings for their +clients, and still better, to persuade colleges and schools to modify +curricula to meet the changed demands. + +Women are often passed over because they are not prepared. + +The Bureaus have found the demand for women in industrial chemistry and +physics, for instance, to be greater than the supply because the +graduates of women's colleges have not been carried far enough in +mathematics, and in chemistry have been kept too much to theoretical +text-book work. For example, the head of a certain industry was willing +to give the position of chemist at his works to a woman. He needed some +one to suggest changes in process from time to time, and to watch waste. +He set down eight simple problems such as might arise any day in his +factory for the candidates to answer. Some of the women, all college +graduates, who had specialized in chemistry, could not answer a single +problem, and none showed that grip of the science which would enable +them to give other than rule of thumb solutions. He engaged a man. + +In answering the questionnaire which the New York Bureau of Occupations +sent to one hundred and twenty-five industrial plants, the manager in +almost every case replied, in regard to the possibility of employing +women in such positions as research or control chemists, that applicants +were "badly prepared." As hand workers, too, women are handicapped by +lack of knowledge of machinery. In this tool age, high school girls are +cut off from technical education, although they are destined to carry on +in large measure our skilled trades. I am told that in Germany many +factories had to close because only women were available as managers, +and they had not been fitted by business and technical schools for +the task. + +If women individually are looking for a soft place, if they are afraid, +as one manager expressed it, "to put on overalls and go into a vat," +even when their country is so in need of their service, it is futile for +them to ask collectively for equal opportunity and equal pay; if they +individually fail to prepare as for a life work, regarding themselves as +but temporarily in business or a profession, their collective demand +upon the world for a fair field and no favor will be as ineffective as +illogical. + +The doors stand wide open. It rests with women themselves as to whether +they shall enter in. + +To the steady appeals of the employment bureaus, backed by the stern +facts of life, the colleges are yielding. On examination I found that +curricula are already being modified. None but the sorriest pessimist +could doubt the nature of the final outcome, on realizing the pooling of +brains which is going on in such associations as the Intercollegiate +Bureau of Occupations and the League for Business Opportunities. They +work to the end of having young women not only soundly prepared for the +new openings, but sensitive to the demands of a world set towards +stern duty. + +Not only is there call for a pooling of brains to look after the timid +and unready, but there is need of combination to open the gates for the +prepared and brave. Few who cheered the Red Cross nurses as they made +their stirring march on Fifth Avenue, knew that those devoted women +would, on entering the Military Nurse Corps, find themselves the only +nurses among the Allies without a position of honor. The humiliation to +our nurses in placing them below the orderlies in the hospitals is not +only a blow to their esprit de corps, but a definite handicap to their +efficiency. A nurse who was at the head of the nursing staff in a state +hospital wrote from the front: "There is one thing the Nursing Committee +needs to work for, and work hard, too, and that is, to make for nurses +the rank of lieutenant. The Canadians have it, why not the Americans? +You will find that it will make a tremendous difference. You see, there +are no officers in our nursing personnel. One of our staff says we are +the hired extras! It is really a great mistake." Uncle Sam may merely be +waiting for a concentrated drive of public opinion against his tardy +representatives. + +[Illustration: Down the street they come, beginning their pilgrimage of +alleviation and succor on the battlefields of France.] + +And why should it be necessary to urge that while scores of young men +are dashing to death in endeavors to learn to fly, there are women +unmobilized who know how to soar aloft in safety? They have never, it is +true, been submitted to laboratory tests in twirlings and twistings, but +they reach the zenith. Two carried off the records in long distance +flights, but both have been refused admission to the Flying Corps. Will +it need a campaign to secure for our army this efficient service? Must +women pool their brains to have Ruth Law spread her protecting wings +over our boys in France? + +To any one who realizes the significance of the military situation as it +stands, and who is cognizant of the contrast between Germany's use of +her entire people in her national effort, and the slow mobilization of +woman-power among the Allies and entire lack of anything worthy the name +of mobilization of the labor-power of women in the United States, there +will come a determination to bury every jealousy between woman and +woman, all prejudice in men, to cut red tape in government, with the one +object of combining all resources. + +The full power of our men must be thrown into military effort. And, +then, if as a nation we have brains to pool, we will not stand niggling, +but will throw women doctors in to render their service, grant to the +nurse corps what it needs to ensure efficiency, throw open the technical +schools to girls as well as to boys, modify the college course to meet +the facts of life. Each woman unprepared is a national handicap, each +prejudice blocking the use of woman-power is treachery to our cause. + +As to the final outcome of united thought and group action among women, +no one can doubt. Contacts will rub off angles, capable service will +break down sex prejudice and overcome government opposition. But there +is not time to wait for the slow development of "final outcomes." + +Women must pool their brains against their own shortcomings, and in +favor of their own ability to back up their country now and here. + + + + +IX + +"BUSINESS AS USUAL" + + +It is a platitude to say that America is the most extravagant nation on +earth. The whole world tells us so, and we do not deny it, being, +indeed, a bit proud of the fact. Who is there among us who does not +respond with sympathetic understanding to the defense of the bride +reprimanded for extravagance by her mother-in-law (women have +mothers-in-law), "John and I find we can do without the necessities of +life. It's the luxuries we must have." One of the obstacles to complete +mobilization of our country is extravagance. And at the center of this +national failing sits the American woman enthroned. + +Europe found it could not allow old-time luxury trades to go on, if the +war was to be won. "Business as usual" is not in harmony with victory. + +I remember the first time I heard the slogan, and how it carried me and +everyone else away. The Zeppelins had visited London the night before. +A house in Red Lion Mews was crushed down into its cellar, a heap of +ruins. Every pane of glass was shattered in the hospitals surrounding +Queen's Square, and ploughed deep, making a great basin in the center of +the grass, lay the remnants of the bomb that had buried itself in the +heart of England. The shops along Theobald's Road were wrecked, but in +the heaps of broken glass in each show window were improvised signs such +as, "Don't sympathize with us, buy something." The sign which was +displayed oftenest read, "Business as usual." + +The first I noticed was in the window of a print shop, the owner a +woman. I talked to her through the frame of the shattered glass. She +looked very pale and her face was cut, but she and everyone else was +calm. And no one was doing business as usual more composedly than a wee +tot trudging along to school with a nasty scratch from a glass splinter +on her chubby cheek. + +"Business as usual" expressed the fine spirit, the courage, the +determination of a people. As the sporting motto of an indomitable race, +it was very splendid. But war is not a sport, it is a cold, hard +science, demanding every energy of the nation for its successful +pursuit. In proportion as our indulgence in luxury has been greater +than that of any European nation, our challenge to every business must +be the more insistent. There must be a straight answer to two questions: +Does this enterprise render direct war service, or, if not, is it +essential to the well-being of our citizens? + +But the discipline will not come from the gods. Nor will our government +readily turn taskmaster. The effort must come largely as +self-discipline, growing into group determination to win the war and the +conviction that it is impossible to achieve victory and conserve the +virility of our people, if any considerable part of the community +devotes its time, energy and money to creating useless things. A nation +can make good in this cataclysm only if it centers its whole power on +the two objects in view: military victory, and husbanding of life and +resources at home. + +Let me hasten to add that the act of creating a thing does not include +only the processes of industry. The act of buying is creative. The riot +of luxury trades in the United States will not end so long as the +American woman remains a steady buyer of luxuries. The mobilization of +women as workers is no more essential to the triumph of our cause, than +the mobilization of women for thrift. The beginning and end of saving +in America rests almost entirely in the hands of women. They are the +buyers in the working class and in the professional class. Among the +wealthy they set the standard of living. + +Practically every appeal for thrift has been addressed to the rich. I am +not referring to the supply of channels into which to pour savings, but +to appeals to make the economies which will furnish the means to buy +stamps or bonds. Those appeals are addressed almost wholly to the +well-to-do, as for example, suggestions as to reducing courses at dinner +or cutting out "that fourth meal." + +Self-denial, no doubt, is supposed to be good for the millionaire soul, +but to such it is chiefly recommended, I think, as an example sure of +imitation. What the rich do, other women will follow, is the idea. But +the steady insistence that we fight in this war for democracy has put +into the minds of the people very definite demands for independence and +for freedom. + +In such a democratic world the newly adopted habits of the wealthy will +not prove widely convincing. Economy needs other than an +aristocratic stimulus. + +[Illustration: How can business be "as usual" when in Paris there are +about 1800 of these small workshops where a woman dips Bengal Fire and +grenades into a bath of paraffin!] + +I do not mean to under-estimate the value of economy in the well-to-do +class. There is no doubt that shop windows on Fifth Avenue are a severe +commentary upon our present intelligence and earnestness of purpose. No +one, I think, would deny that it would be a service if the woman of +fashion ceased to drape fur here, there and everywhere on her gowns +except where she might really need the thick pelt to keep her warm, and +instead saved the price of the garment which serves no purpose but that +of display, and gave the money in Liberty Bonds to buy a fur-lined coat +for some soldier, or food for a starving baby abroad. And overburdened +as the railways are with freight and ordinary passenger traffic, I am +sure the general public will not fail to appreciate to the full a +self-denial which leads patrons of private cars, Pullman and dining +coaches to abandon their self-indulgence. + +Undoubtedly economy among the rich is of value. I presume few would +gainsay that it would have been well for America if the use of private +automobiles had long since ceased, and the labor and plants used in +their making turned to manufacturing much-needed trucks and ambulances. +But while not inclined to belittle the work of any possible saving and +self-sacrifice on the part of those of wealth, it seems to me that the +most fruitful field for war economy lies among simple people. Thrift +waits for democratization. + +We of limited means hug some of the most extravagant of habits. The +average working-class family enjoys none of the fruits of cooeperation We +keep each to our isolated family group, while the richer a person is the +more does she gather under her roof representatives of other families. +Her cook may come from the Berri family, the waitress may be an +Andersen, the nurse an O'Hara. + +The poor might well practice the economy of fellowship. + +The better-off live in apartment houses where the economy of central +heating is practised, while the majority of the poor occupy tenements +where the extravagance of the individual stove is indulged in. The +saving of coal is urged, but the authorities do not seek to secure for +the poor the comfort of the true method of fuel saving. + +The richer a family is, the more it saves by the use of skilled service. +The poor, clinging to their prejudices and refusing to trust one +another, do not profit by cooeperative buying, or by central kitchens run +by experts. Money is wasted by amateurish selection of food and +clothing, and nutritive values are squandered by poor cooking. + +Unfortunately Uncle Sam does not suggest how many War Saving Stamps +could be bought as a result of economy along these lines. + +The woman with the pay envelope may democratize thrift. She knows how +hard it is to earn money, and has learned to make her wages reach a long +way. Then, too, she has it brought home to her each pay day that health +is capital. She finds that it is economy to keep well, for lost time +brings a light pay envelope. Every woman who keeps herself in condition +is making a war saving. There has been no propaganda as yet appealing to +women to value dress according to durability and comfort rather than +according to its prettiness, to bow to no fashion which means the +lessening of power. To corset herself as fashion dictates, to prop +herself on high heels, means to a woman just so much lost efficiency, +and even the most thoughtless, if appealed to for national saving, might +learn to turn by preference in dress, in habits, in recreation, to the +simple things. + +The Japanese, I am told, make a ceremony of going out from the city to +enjoy the beauties of a moonlight night. We go to a stuffy theatre and +applaud a night "set." Nature gives her children the one, and the +producer charges his patrons for the other. A propaganda of democratic +war economy would teach us to delight in the beauties of nature. + +In making the change from business as usual to economy, Europe suffered +hardship, because although the retrenchments suggested were fairly +democratic it had not created channels into which savings might be +thrown with certainty of their flowing on to safe expenditures. Europe +was not ready with its great thrift schemes, nor had the adjustments +been made which would enable a shop to turn out a needed uniform, let us +say, in place of a useless dress. + +Definite use of savings has been provided for in the United States. The +government needs goods of every kind to make our military effort +successful. Camps must be built for training the soldiers, uniforms, +guns and ammunition supplied. Transportation on land and sea is called +for. The government needs money to carry on the industries essential to +winning the war. + +If a plucky girl who works in a button factory refuses to buy an +ornament which she at first thought of getting to decorate her belt, and +puts that twenty-five cents into a War Saving Stamp, all in the spirit +of backing up her man at the front, she will not find herself thrown +out of employment; instead, while demands for unnecessary ornamental +fastenings will gradually cease, she will be kept busy on +government orders. + +Profiting by the errors of those nations who had to blaze out new paths, +the United States knit into law, a few months after the declaration of +war, not only the quick drafting of its man-power for military service, +but methods of absorbing the people's savings. If we neither waste nor +hoard, we will not suffer as did Europe from wide-spread unemployment. +There is more work to be done than our available labor-power can meet. + +There is nothing to fear from the curtailment of luxury; our danger lies +in lack of a sound definition of extravagance. Uncle Sam could get more +by appeals to simple folk than by homilies preached to the rich. The +Great War is a conflict between the ideals of the peoples. 'Tis a +people's war, and with women as half the people. The savings made to +support the war must needs, then, be made by the people, for the people. + +There has been no compelling propaganda to that end. The suggestion of +mere "cutting down" may be a valuable goal to set for the well-to-do, +but it is not a mark to be hit by those already down to bed rock. The +only saving possible to those living on narrow margins is by +cooeperation, civil or state. + +It is a mad extravagance, for instance, to kill with autos children at +play in the streets. A saving of life could easily be achieved through +group action, by securing children's attendants, by opening play-grounds +on the roofs of churches and public buildings, by shutting off streets +dedicated to the sacred right of children to play. This would be a war +saving touching the heart and the enthusiasm of the people. + +Central municipal heating is not a wild dream, but a recognized economy +in many places. Municipal kitchens are not vague surmisings, but facts +achieved in the towns of Europe. They are forms of war thrift. In +America no such converting examples of economy are as yet given, and not +an appeal has been made to women to save through solidarity. + +Uncle Sam has been commendably quick and wise in offering a reservoir to +hold the tiny savings, but slow in starting a democratic propaganda +suggesting ways of saving the pennies. + +If business as usual is a poor motto, so is life as usual, habits as +usual. + + + + +X + +"AS MOTHER USED TO DO" + + +Man's admiration for things as mother used to do them is as great an +obstacle as business as usual in the path of winning the war and +husbanding the race. The glamour surrounding the economic feats of +mother in the past hides the shortcomings of today. + +I once saw one of her old fortresses, a manor home where in bygone days +she had reigned supreme. In the court yard was the smoke house where she +cured meat and fish. In the cellar were the caldrons and vats where long +ago she tried tallow and brewed beer. And there were all the utensils +for dealing with flax. In the garret I saw the spindles for spinning +cotton and wool, and the hand looms for weaving the homespun. In her +day, mother was a great creator of wealth. + +But then an economic earthquake came. Foundations were shaken, the roof +was torn off her domestic workshop. Steam and machinery, like cyclones, +carried away her industries, and nothing was left to her but odds and +ends of occupations. + +Toiling in the family circle from the days of the cave dwellers, mother +had become so intimately associated in the tribal mind with the +hearthstone that the home was called her sphere. Around this segregation +accumulated accretions of opinion, layer on layer emanating from the +mind of her mate. Let us call the accretions the Adamistic Theory. Its +authors happened to be the government and could use the public treasury +in furtherance of publicity for their ideas set forth in hieroglyphics +cut in stone, or written in plain English and printed on the front page +of an American daily. + +One of the few occupations left to mother after the disruption of her +sphere at the end of the eighteenth century was the preparation of food. +In the minds of men, food, from its seed sowing up to its mastication, +has always been associated with woman. Mention food and the average man +thinks of mother. That is the Adam in him. And so, quite naturally, one +must first consider this relation of women to food in the +Adamistic Theory. + +[Illustration: Countess de Berkaim and her canteen in the Gare de St. +Lazarre, Paris.] + +When the world under war conditions asked to be fed, Adam, running true +to his theory, pointed to mother as the source of supply, and declared +with an emphasis that came of implicit faith, that the universe need +want for nothing, if each woman would eliminate waste in her kitchen and +become a voluntary and obedient reflector of the decisions of state and +national food authorities. This solution presupposed a highly developed +sense of community devotion in women running hand in hand with entire +lack of gift for community action. Woman, it was expected, would display +more than her proverbial lack of logic by embracing with enthusiasm +state direction and at the same time remain an exemplar of +individualistic performance. The Adamistic scheme seems still further to +demand for its smooth working that the feminine group show +self-abnegation and agree that it is not itself suited to reason out +general plans. + +It is within the range of possibility, however, that no comprehensive +scheme of food conservation or effective saving in any line can be +imposed on women without consulting them. The negro who agreed "dat de +colored folk should keep in dar places," touched a fundamental note in +human nature, over-running sex as well as racial boundaries, when he +added, "and de colored folk must do de placin'." It might seem to run +counter to this bit of wisdom for women to be told that the welfare of +the world depends upon them, and then for no woman to be given +administrative power to mobilize the group. + +But the contest between man's devotion to the habits of his ancestry in +the female line, and the ideas of his very living women folk, is as +trying to him as it is interesting to the outside observer. The +conflicting forces illustrate a universal fact. It is always true that +the ruling class, when a discipline and a sacrifice are recognized as +necessary, endeavors to make it appear that the new obligation should be +shouldered by the less powerful. For instance, to take an illustration +quite outside the domestic circle, when America first became convinced +that military preparation was incumbent upon us, the ruling class would +scarcely discuss conscription, much less adopt universal service. That +is, it vetoed self-discipline. In many States, laws were passed putting +off upon children in the schools the training which the voting adults +knew the nation needed. + +In the same way, when food falls short and the victualing of the world +becomes a pressing duty, the governing class adopts a thesis that a +politically less-favored group can, by saving in small and painful ways, +accumulate the extra food necessary to keep the world from starving. +The ruling class seeks cover in primitive ideas, accuses Eve of +introducing sin into the world, and calls upon her to mend her +wasteful ways. + +Men, of course, know intellectually that much food is a factory product +in these days, but emotionally they have a picture of mother, still +supplying the family in a complete, secret, and silent manner. + +This Adamistic emotion takes command at the crisis, for when human +beings are suddenly faced with a new and agitating situation, primitive +ideas seize them. Mother, it is true, did create the goods for immediate +consumption, and so the sons of Adam, in a spirit of admiration, doffing +their helmets, so to speak, to the primitive woman, turn in this time of +stress and call confidently upon Eve's daughters to create and save. The +confidence is touching, but perhaps the feminine reaction will not be, +and perchance ought not to be just such as Adam expects. + +Women have passed in aspiration, and to some extent in action, out of +the ultra-individualistic stage of civilization. + +The food propaganda reflects the hiatus in Adam's thought. I have looked +over hundreds of publications issued by the agricultural departments +and colleges of the various States. They tell housewives what to "put +into the garbage pail," what to "keep out of the garbage pail," what to +substitute for wheat, how to make soap, but, with a single exception, +not a word issued suggests to women any saving through group action. + +This exception, which stood out as a beacon light in an ocean of +literature worthy of the Stone Age, was a small pamphlet issued by the +Michigan Agricultural College on luncheons in rural schools. Sound +doctrine was preached on the need of the children for substantial and +warm noon meals, and the comparative ease and economy with which such +luncheons could be provided at the school house. Children can of course +be better and more cheaply fed as a group than as isolated units +supplied with a cold home-prepared lunch box. And yet with the whole +machinery of the state in his hands, Adam's commissions, backed by the +people's money, goad mother on to isolated endeavor. She plants and +weeds and harvests. She dries and cans, preserves and pickles. Then she +calculates and perchance finds that her finished product is not always +of the best and has often cost more than if purchased in the +open market. + +It may be the truest devotion to our Allies to challenge the +individualistic role recommended by Adam to mother, for it will hinder, +not help, the feeding of the world to put women back under eighteenth +century conditions. Food is short and expensive because labor is short. +And even when the harvest is ripe, the saving of food cannot be set as a +separate and commendable goal, and the choice as to where labor shall be +expended as negligible. It is a prejudiced devotion to mother and her +ways which leads Adam in his food pamphlets to advise that a woman shall +sit in her chimney corner and spend time peeling a peach "very thin," +when hundreds of bushels of peaches rot in the orchards for lack of +hands to pick them. + +Just how wide Adam's Eve has opened the gate of Eden and looked out into +the big world is not entirely clear, but probably wide enough to glimpse +the fact that all the advice Adam has recently given to her runs counter +to man's method of achievement. Men have preached to one another for a +hundred years and more and practiced so successfully the concentration +in industry of unlimited machinery with a few hands, that even mother +knows some of the truths in regard to the creation of wealth in the +business world, and she is probably not incapable of drawing a +conclusion from her own experience in the transfer of work from the +home to the factory. + +If they are city dwellers, women have seen bread and preserves +transferred; if farm dwellers, they have seen the curing of meat and +fish transferred, the making of butter and cheese. They know that +because of this transfer the home is cleaner and quieter, more people +better fed and clothed, and the hours of the factory worker made shorter +than those "mother used to work." With half an eye women cannot fail to +note that the labor which used to be occupied in the home in +interminable hours of spinning, baking and preserving, has come to +occupy itself for regulated periods in the school, in business, in +factory or cannery. And lo, Eve finds herself with a pay envelope able +to help support the quieter, cleaner home! + +All this is a commonplace to the business man, who knows that the +evolution has gone so far that ten percent of the married women of +America are in gainful pursuits, and that capital ventured on apartment +hotels brings a tempting return. + +But the Adamistic theory is based on the dream that women are +contentedly and efficiently conducting in their flats many occupations, +and longing to receive back into the life around the gas-log all those +industries which in years gone by were drawn from the fireside and +established as money making projects in mill or work-shop. And so Adam +addresses an exhortation to his Eve: "Don't buy bread, bake it; don't +buy flour, grind your own; don't buy soap, make it; don't buy canned, +preserved, or dried food, carry on the processes yourself; don't buy +fruits and vegetables, raise them." + +Not a doubt seems to exist in Adam's mind as to the efficiency of +functioning woman-power in this way. According to the Adamistic theory, +work as mother used to do it is unqualifiedly perfect. This flattering +faith is naturally balm to women's hearts, and yet there are skeptics +among them. When quite by themselves women speculate as to how much of +the fruit and vegetables now put up in the home will "work." + +They smile when the hope is expressed that the quality will rise above +the old-time domestic standard. The home of the past was a beehive in +which women drudged, and little children were weary toilers, and the +result was not of a high grade. Statistics have shown that seventy-five +percent of the home-made bread of America was a poor product. I lived as +a child in the days of home-made bread. Once in so often the batch of +bread "went sour," and there seemed to be an unfailing supply of stale +bread which "must be eaten first." Those who cry out against a city of +bakers' bread, have never lived in a country of the home-made loaf. It +is the Adamistic philosophy, so complimentary to Eve, that leads us to +expect that all housewives can turn out a product as good as that of an +expert who has specialized to the one end of making bread, and who is +supplied with expensive equipment beyond the reach of the individual to +possess. But there are rebellious consumers who point out that the baker +is under the law, while the housewife is a law unto herself. Against the +baker's shortcomings such brave doubters assure us we have redress, we +can refuse to patronize him; against the housewife there is no appeal, +her family must swallow her product to the detriment of digestion. + +It may be the brutal truth, taking bread as the index, that only a +quarter of the processes carried on in the home turn out satisfactorily, +while of the other three-quarters, a just verdict may show that mother +gets a "little too much lye" in the soap, cooks the preserves a "little +too hard," "candies the fruit just a little bit," and grinds the flour +in the mill "not quite fine enough." + +But perhaps even more than the quality of the product does the question +of the economical disposition of labor-power agitate some women. They +are asking, since labor is very scarce, whether the extreme +individualistic direction of their labor-power is permissible. The vast +majority of American homes are without servants. In those homes are the +women working such short hours that they can, without dropping important +obligations, take over preserving, canning, dehydrating, the making of +bread, soap, and butter substitute? Has the tenement-house dweller +accommodation suitable for introducing these industrial processes into +her home? Would the woman in the small menage in the country be wise in +cutting down time given, for instance, to the care of her baby and to +reading to the older children, and using the precious moments +laboriously to grind wheat to flour? My observation convinces me that +conscientious housewives in servantless or one-servant households, with +work adjusted to a given end, with relative values already determined +upon, are not prepared by acceptance of the Adamistic theory to return +to primitive occupations. + +But even if business and home life could respond to the change without +strain, even if both could easily turn back on the road they have come +during the last hundred years, commerce yielding up and the home +re-adopting certain occupations, we should carefully weigh the economic +value of a reversion to primitive methods. + +The Adamistic attitude is influenced, perhaps unconsciously but no less +certainly, by the fact that the housewife is an unpaid worker. If an +unpaid person volunteers to do a thing, it is readily assumed that the +particular effort is worth while. "We get the labor for nothing" puts to +rout all thought of valuation. No doubt Adam will have to give over +thinking in this loose way. Labor-power, whether it is paid for or not, +must be used wisely or we shall not be able to maintain the structure of +our civilization. + +Then, too, the Adamistic theory weighs and values the housewife's time +as little as it questions the quality of the home product. Any careful +reader of the various "Hints to Housewives" which have appeared, will +note that the "simplifying of meals" recommended would require nearly +double the time to prepare. The simplification takes into consideration +only the question of food substitutions, price and waste. Mother is +supposed to be wholly or largely unemployed and longing for unpaid +toil. Should any housewife conscientiously follow the advice given her +by state and municipal authorities she would be the drudge at the center +of a home quite medieval in development. + +Let us take a concrete example:--In a recently published and widely +applauded cookbook put out by a whole committee of Adamistic +philosophers, it is stated that the object of the book is to give +practical hints as to the various ways in which "economies can be +effected and waste saved;" and yet no saving of the woman's time, nerves +and muscles is referred to from cover to cover. The housewife is told, +for instance, to "insist upon getting the meat trimmings." The fat "can +be rendered." And then follows the process in soap-making. Mother is to +place the scraps of fat on the back of the stove. If she "watches it +carefully" and does not allow it to get hot enough to smoke there will +be no odor. No doubt if she removes her watchful eye and turns to bathe +her baby, her tenement will reek with smoking fat. She is to pursue this +trying of fat and nerves day by day until she has six pounds of grease. +Next, she is to "stir it well," cool it, melt it again; she is then to +pour in the lye, "slowly stirring all the time." Add ammonia. Then +"stir the mixture constantly for twenty minutes or half an hour." + +In contrast to all this primeval elaboration is the simple, common-sense +rule: Do not buy the trimmings, make the butcher trim meat before +weighing, insist that soap-making shall not be brought back to defile +the home, but remain where it belongs, a trade in which the workers can +be protected by law, and its malodorousness brought under regulation. + +In the same spirit the Adamistic suggestion to Eve to save coal by a +"heatless day" is met by the cold challenge of the riotous extravagance +of cooking in twelve separate tenements, twelve separate potatoes, on +twelve separate fires. + +The Adamistic theory, through its emphasis on the relation of food to +Eve, and the almost religious necessity of its manipulation at the altar +of the home cook-stove, has drawn thought away from the nutritive side +of what we eat. While the child in the streets is tossing about such +words as calories and carbohydrates with a glibness that comes of much +hearing, physiology and food values are destined to remain as far away +as ever from the average family breakfast table. Segregating a sex in +the home, it is true, centralizes it in a given place, but it does not +necessarily train the individual to function efficiently. Mother, as she +"used to do," cooks by rule of thumb; in fact, how could she do +otherwise, since she must keep one eye on her approving Adam while the +other eye glances at the oven. The Adamistic theory requires +individualistic action, and disapproves specialization in Eve. + +The theory also demands economic dependence in the home builder. +Mother's labor is not her own, she lives under the truck system, so to +speak. She is paid in kind for her work. Influenced by the Adamistic +theory, the human animal is the only species in which sex and economic +relations are closely linked, the only one in which the female depends +upon the male for sustenance. Mother must give personal service to those +about her, and in return the law ensures her keep according to the +station of her husband, that is, not according to her ability or +usefulness, but according to the man's earning capacity. + +The close association of mother with home in the philosophy of her mate, +has circumscribed her most natural and modest attempts at relaxation. +Mother's holiday is a thing to draw tears from those who contemplate it. +The summer outing means carrying the family from one spot to another, +and making the best of new surroundings for the old group. The "day off" +means a concentration of the usual toil into a few hours, followed by a +hazy passing show that she is too weary to enjoy. The kindly farmer +takes his wife this year to the county fair. She's up at four to "get +on" with the work. She serves breakfast, gives the children an extra +polish in honor of the day, puts on the clean frocks and suits with an +admonition "not to get all mussed up" before the start. The farmer +cheerily counsels haste in order that "we may have a good long day of +it." He does not say what "it" is, but the wife knows. At last the house +is ready to be left, and the wife and her brood are ready to settle down +in the farm wagon. + +The fair grounds are reached. Adam has prepared the setting. It has no +relation to mother's needs. It was a most thrilling innovation when in +the summer of 1914 the Women's Political Union first set up big tents at +county fairs, fitted with comfortable chairs for mother, and cots and +toys, nurses and companions for the children. The farmer's wife for the +first time was relieved of care, and could go off to see the sights with +her mind at rest, if she desired anything more active than rocking +lazily with the delicious sensation of having nothing to do. + +Women must not blame Adam for lack of thoughtfulness. He cannot put +himself in mother's place. She must do her own thinking or let women who +are capable of thought do it for her. + +Men are relieved when mother is independent and happy. The farmer +approved the creche tent at the county fairs. It convinced him that +women have ideas to contribute to the well-being of the community. The +venture proved the greatest of vote getters for the suffrage referendum. + +In fact, men themselves are the chief opponents of the Adamistic theory +to-day. The majority want women to organize the home and it is only a +small minority who place obstacles in the way of the wider functioning +of women. It is Eve herself who likes to exaggerate the necessity of her +personal service. I have seen many a primitive housewife grow hot at the +suggestion that her methods need modifying. It seemed like severing the +silken cords by which she held her mate, to challenge her pumpkin pie. + +But women are slowly overcoming Eve. Take the item of the care of +children in city parks. The old way is for fifty women to look after +fifty separate children, and thus waste the time of some thirty of them +in keeping fifty miserable children in segregation. The new way, now +successfully initiated, is to form play groups of happy children under +the leadership of capable young women trained for such work. + +Salvaging New York City's food waste was a very splendid bit of +cooeperative action on the part of women. Mrs. William H. Lough of the +Women's University Club found on investigation that thousands of tons of +good food are lost by a condemnation, necessarily rough and ready, by +the Board of Health. She secured permission to have the sound and +unsound fruits and vegetables separated and with a large committee of +women saved the food for consumption by the community by dehydrating and +other preserving processes. + +This was not as mother used to do. + +Mother's ways are being investigated and discarded the whole world +round. At last accounts half the population of Hamburg was being fed +through municipal kitchens and in Great Britain an order has been issued +by Lord Rhondda, the Food Controller, authorizing local authorities to +open kitchens as food distributing centers. The central government is to +bear twenty-five percent of the cost of equipment and lend another +twenty-five percent to start the enterprise. + +Mother's cook stove cannot bear the strain of war economies. + +Dropping their old segregation, women are going forth in fellowship with +men to meet in new ways the pressing problems of a new world. + + + + +XI + +A LAND ARMY + + +Great Britain, France and Germany have mobilized a land army of women; +will the United States do less? Not if the farmer can be brought to have +as much faith in American women as the women have in themselves. And why +should they not have faith; the farm has already tested them out, and +they have not been found wanting. In face of this fine accomplishment +the minds of some men still entertain doubt, or worse, obliviousness, to +the possible contribution of women to land service. + +The farmer knows his need and has made clear statement of the national +dilemma in the form of a memorial to the President of the United States. +In part, it is as follows: + +"If food is to win the war, as we are assured on every side, the farmers +of America must produce more food in 1918 than they did in 1917. Under +existing conditions we cannot equal the production of 1917, much less +surpass it, and this for reasons over which the farmers have no control. + +"The chief causes which will inevitably bring about a smaller crop next +year, unless promptly removed by national action, are six in number, of +which the first is the shortage of farm labor. + +"Since the war began in 1914 and before the first draft was made there +is reason to believe that more farm workers had left farms than there +are men in our army and navy together. Those men were drawn away by the +high wages paid in munition plants and other war industries, and their +places remain unfilled. In spite of the new classification, future +drafts will still further reduce the farm labor supply." + +With a million and a half men drawn out of the country and ten billion +dollars to be expended on war material, making every ammunition factory +a labor magnet, it seems like the smooth deceptions of prestidigitation +to answer the cry of the farmer with suggestion that men rejected by the +draft or high school boys be paroled to meet the exigency. The farm +can't be run with decrepit men or larking boys, nor the war won with +less than its full quota of soldiers. Legislators, government officials +and farm associations by sudden shifting of labor battalions cannot +camouflage the fact that the front line trenches of the fighting army +and labor force are undermanned. + +Women can and will be the substitutes if the experiments already made +are signs of the times. + +Groups of women from colleges and seasonal trades have ploughed and +harrowed, sowed and planted, weeded and cultivated, mowed and harvested, +milked and churned, at Vassar, Bryn Mawr and Mount Holyoke, at Newburg +and Milton, at Bedford Hills and Mahwah. It has been demonstrated that +our girls from college and city trade can do farm work, and do it with a +will. And still better, at the end of the season their health wins high +approval from the doctors and their work golden opinions from +the farmers. + +Twelve crusaders were chosen from the thirty-three students who +volunteered for dangerous service during a summer vacation on the Vassar +College farm. The twelve ventured out on a new enterprise that meant +aching muscles, sunburn and blisters, but not one of the twelve "ever +lost a day" in their eight hours at hard labor, beginning at four-thirty +each morning for eight weeks during one of our hottest summers. They +ploughed with horses, they ploughed with tractors, they sowed the seed, +they thinned and weeded the plants, they reaped, they raked, they +pitched the hay, they did fencing and milking. The Vassar farm had +bumper crops on its seven hundred and forty acres, and its +superintendent, Mr. Louis P. Gillespie, said, "A very great amount of +the work necessary for the large production was done by our students. +They hoed and cultivated sixteen acres of field corn, ten acres of +ensilage corn, five acres of beans, five acres of potatoes; carried +sheaves of rye and wheat to the shocks and shocked them; and two of the +students milked seven cows at each milking time. In the garden they laid +out a strawberry bed of two thousand plants, helped to plant corn and +beans, picked beans and other vegetables. They took great interest in +the work and did the work just as well as the average man and made good +far beyond the most sanguine expectations." + +At first the students were paid twenty-five cents an hour, the same rate +as the male farm hands. The men objected, saying that the young women +were beginners, but by the end of the summer the critics realized that +"brains tell" and said the girls were worth the higher wage, though they +had only been getting, in order to appease the masculine prejudice, +seventeen and a half cents an hour. There is no pleasing some people! If +women are paid less, they are unfair competitors, if they are paid +equally they are being petted--in short, fair competitors. + +Mt. Holyoke and Bryn Mawr have made experiments, and, like Vassar, +demonstrated not only that women can, and that satisfactorily, work on +the land, but that they will, and that cheerfully. The groups were happy +and they comprehended that they were doing transcendently important +work, were rendering a patriotic service by filling up the places left +vacant by the drafted men. + +The Women's Agricultural Camp, known popularly as the "Bedford Unit," +proved an experiment rich in practical suggestion. Barnard students, +graduates of the Manhattan Trade School, and girls from seasonal trades +formed the backbone of the group. They were housed in an old farmhouse, +chaperoned by one of the Barnard professors, fed by student dietitians +from the Household Arts Department of Teachers College, transported from +farm to farm by seven chauffeurs, and coached in the arts of Ceres by an +agricultural expert. The "day laborers" as well as the experts were +all women. + +[Illustration: An agricultural unit, in the uniform approved by the Woman's +Land Army of America.] + +In founding the camp Mrs. Charles W. Short, Jr., had three definite +ideas in mind. First, she was convinced that young women could without +ill-effect on their health, and should as a patriotic service, do all +sorts of agricultural work. Second, that in the present crisis the +opening up of new land with women as farm managers is not called for, +but rather the supply of the labor-power on farms already under +cultivation is the need. Third, that the women laborers must, in groups, +have comfortable living conditions without being a burden on the +farmer's wife, must have adequate pay, and must have regulated hours +of work. + +With these sound ideas as its foundation the camp opened at Mt. Kisco, +backed by the Committee on Agriculture of the Mayor's Committee of Women +on National Defense of New York City, under the chairmanship of Virginia +Gildersleeve, Dean of Barnard College. + +At its greatest enrolment the unit had seventy-three members. When the +prejudice of the fanners was overcome, the demand for workers was +greater than the camp could supply. Practically the same processes were +carried through as at Vassar, and the verdict of the farmer on his new +helpers was that "while less strong than men, they more than made up for +this by superior conscientiousness and quickness." Proof of the +genuineness of his estimate was shown in his willingness to pay the +management of the camp the regulation two dollars for an eight hour +working day. And it indicated entire satisfaction with the experiment, +rather than abstract faith in woman, that each farmer anxiously urged +the captain of the group at the end of his first trial to "please bring +the same young ladies tomorrow." He was sure no others so good existed. + +The unit plan seems a heaven-born solution of many of the knotty +problems of the farm. In the first place, the farmer gets cheerful and +handy helpers, and his over-worked wife does not find her domestic cares +added to in the hot summer season. The new hands house and feed +themselves. From the point of view of the worker, the advantage is that +her food at the camp is prepared by trained hands and the proverbial +farm isolation gives way to congenial companionship. + +These separate experiments growing out of the need of food production +and the shortage of labor have brought new blood to the farm, have +turned the college girl on vacation and, what is more important, being a +solution of an industrial problem, the unemployed in seasonal trades, +into recruits for an agricultural army. And by concentrating workers in +well-run camps there has been attracted to the land a higher order +of helper. + +One obstacle in the way of the immediate success of putting such women +on the land is a wholly mistaken idea in the minds of many persons of +influence in agricultural matters that the new labor can be diverted to +domestic work in the farm house. This view is urged in the following +letter to me from the head of one of our best agricultural colleges: +"The farm labor shortage is much more acute than is generally understood +and I have much confidence in the possibility of a great amount of +useful work in food production being done by women who are physically +strong enough and who can secure sufficient preliminary training to do +this with some degree of efficiency. Probably the larger measure of +service could be done by relieving women now on the farms of this State +from the double burden of indoor work and the attempt to assist in farm +operations and chores. If farm women would get satisfactory domestic +assistance within the house they could add much to the success of field +husbandry. Women who know farm conditions and who could largely take the +place of men in the management of outdoor affairs can accomplish much +more than will ever be possible by drafting city-bred women directly +into garden or other forms of field work." + +The opinions expressed in this letter are as generally held as they are +mistaken. In the first place, the theory that the country-bred woman in +America is stronger and healthier than the city-bred has long since been +exploded. The assumption cannot stand up under the facts. Statistics +show that the death rate in the United States is lower in city than in +farm communities, and if any added proof were needed to indicate that +the stamina of city populations overbalances the country it was +furnished by the draft records. Any group of college and Manhattan Trade +School girls could be pitted against a group of women from the farms and +win the laurels in staying powers. Nor must it be overlooked that we are +not dealing here with uncertainties; the mettle of the girls has +been proved. + +In any case the fact must be faced that these agricultural units will +not do domestic work. Nine-tenths of the farm houses in America are +without modern conveniences. The well-appointed barn may have running +water, but the house has not. To undertake work as a domestic helper on +the average farm is to step back into quite primitive conditions. The +farmer's wife can attract no one from city life, where so much +cooperation is enjoyed, to her extreme individualistic surroundings. + +A second obstacle to the employment of this new labor-force is due to +the government's failure to see the possibility of saving most valuable +labor-power and achieving an economic gain by dovetailing the idle +months of young women in industrial life into the rush time of +agriculture. + +One department suggests excusing farm labor from the draft, as if we had +already fulfilled our obligation in man-power to the battlefront of our +Allies. The United States Senate discusses bringing in coolie and +contract labor, as if we had not demonstrated our unfitness to deal with +less advanced peoples, and as if a republic could live comfortably with +a class of disfranchised workers. The Labor Department declares it will +mobilize for the farm an army of a million boys, as if the wise saw, +"boys will be boys," did not apply with peculiar sharpness of flavor to +the American vintage, God bless them, and as if it were not our plain +duty at this world crisis to spur up rather than check civilizing +agencies and keep our boys in school for the full term. + +Refusing to be in the least crushed by government neglect, far-seeing +women determined to organize widely and carefully their solution of the +farm-labor problem. To this end the Women's National Farm and Garden +Association, the Garden Clubs of America, the Young Women's Christian +Association, the Woman's Suffrage Party, the New York Women's University +Club, and the Committee of the Women's Agricultural Camp, met with +representatives of the Grange, of the Cornell Agricultural College, and +of the Farmingdale State School of Agriculture, and formed an advisory +council, the object of which is to "stimulate the formation of a Land +Army of Women to take the places on the farms of the men who are being +drafted for active service." This is to be on a nationwide scale. + +The Council has put lecturers in the Granges to bring to the farmer by +the spoken word and lantern slides the value of the labor of women, and +is appealing to colleges, seasonal trades and village communities to +form units for the Land Army. It is asking the cooeperation of the labor +bureaus to act as media through which units may be placed where labor is +most needed. + +This mobilization of woman-power is not yet large or striking. The +effort is entirely civil. But all the more is it praiseworthy. It shows +on the part of women, clear-eyed recognition of facts as they exist and +vision as to the future. + +The mobilization of this fresh labor-power should of course be taken in +hand by the government. Not only that, it should be led by women as in +Great Britain and Germany. But the spirit in America today is the same +as in England the first year of the war,--a disposition to exclude women +from full service. + +But facts remain facts in spite of prejudice, and the Woman's Land Army, +with faith and enthusiasm in lieu of a national treasury, are +endeavoring to bring woman-power and the untilled fields together. The +proved achievement of the individual worker will win the employer, the +unit plan with its solution of housing conditions and dreary isolation +will overcome not only the opposition of the farmer's wife, but that of +the intelligent worker. When the seed time of the movement has been +lived through by anxious and inspired women, the government may step in +to reap the harvest of a nation's gratitude. + +The mobilization of woman-power on the farm is the need of the hour, and +the wise and devoted women who are trying to answer the need, deserve an +all-hail from the people of the United States and her Allies. + + + + +XII + +WOMAN'S PART IN SAVING CIVILIZATION + + +Men have played--all honor to them--the major part in the actual +conflict of the war. Women will mobilize for the major part of binding +up the wounds and conserving civilization. + +The spirit of the world might almost be supposed to have been looking +forward to this day and clearly seeing its needs, so well are women +being prepared to receive and carry steadily the burden which will be +laid on their shoulders. For three-quarters of a century schools and +colleges have given to women what they had to confer in the way of +discipline. Gainful pursuits were opened up to them, adding training in +ordered occupation and self-support. Lastly has come the Great War, with +its drill in sacrifice and economy, its larger opportunities to function +and achieve, its ideals of democracy which have directly and quickly led +to the political enfranchisement of women in countries widely separated. + +Fate has prepared women to share fully in the saving of civilization. + +Whether victory be ours in the immediate future, or whether the dangers +rising so clearly on the horizon develop into fresh alignments leading +to years of war, civilization stands in jeopardy. Political ideals and +ultimate social aims may remain intact, but the immediate, practical +maintenance of those standards of life which are necessary to ensure +strong and fruitful reactions are in danger of being swept away. + +We have been destroying the life, the wealth and beauty of the world. +The nobility of our aim in the war must not blind us to the awfulness +and the magnitude of the destruction. In the fighting forces there are +at least thirty-eight million men involved in international or civil +conflict. Over four million men have fallen, and three million have been +maimed for life. Disease has taken its toll of fighting strength and +economic power. In addition to all this human depletion, we have the +loss of life and the destruction of health and initiative in harried +peoples madly flying across their borders from invading armies. + +Starvation has swept across wide areas, and steady underfeeding rules in +every country in Europe and in the cities of America, letting loose +malnutrition, that hidden enemy whose ambushes are more serious than the +attacks of an open foe. The world is sick. + +And the world is poor. The nations have spent over a hundred billions on +the war, and that is but part of the wealth which has gone down in the +catastrophe. Thousands of square miles are plowed so deep with shot and +shell and trench that the fertile soil lies buried beneath unyielding +clay. Orchards and forests are gone. Villages are wiped out, cities are +but skeletons of themselves. In the face of all the need of +reconstruction we must admit, however much we would wish to cover the +fact,--the world is poor. + +[Illustration: A useful blending of Allied women. Miss Kathleen Burke +(Scotch) exhibiting the X-ray ambulance equipped by Mrs. Ayrlon +(English) and Madame Curie (French).] + +And still, as in no other war, the will to guard human welfare has +remained dominant. The country rose to a woman in most spirited fashion +to combat the plan to lower the standards of labor conditions in the +supposed interest of war needs. With but few exceptions the States have +strengthened their labor laws. In its summary the American Association +for Labor Legislation says: + +"Eleven States strengthened their child labor laws, by raising age +limits, extending restrictions to new employments, or shortening hours. +Texas passed a new general statute setting a fifteen-year minimum age +for factories and Vermont provided for regulations in conformity with +those of the Federal Child Labor Act. Kansas and New Hampshire +legislated on factory safeguards, Texas on fire escapes, New Jersey on +scaffolds, Montana on electrical apparatus, Delaware on sanitary +equipment, and West Virginia on mines. New Jersey forbade the +manufacture of articles of food or children's wear in tenements. + +"Workmen's compensation laws were enacted in Delaware, Idaho, New +Mexico, South Dakota, and Utah, making forty States and Territories +which now have such laws, in addition to the Federal Government's +compensation law, for its own half-million civilian employees. In more +than twenty additional States existing acts were amended, the changes +being marked by a tendency to extend the scope, shorten the working +period, and increase provision for medical care." + +The Great War, far from checking the movement for social welfare, has +quickened the public sense of responsibility. That fact opens the widest +field to women for work in which they are best prepared by nature +and training. + +Many keen thinkers are concerned over the question of population. One of +our most distinguished professors has thrown out a hint of a possibility +that considering the greater proportion of women to men some form of +plurality of wives may become necessary. The disturbed balance of the +sexes is a thing that will right itself in one generation. Need of +population will be best answered by efforts to salvage the race. The +United States loses each year five hundred thousand babies under twelve +months of age from preventable causes. An effort to save them would seem +more reasonable than a demand for more children to neglect. Life will be +so full of drive and interest, that the woman who has given no hostages +to fortune will find ample scope for her powers outside of motherhood. +The "old maid" of tomorrow will have a mission more honored and +important than was hers in the past. + +But whatever the conclusions as to the wisest method of building up +population, there is no doubt that government and individuals will make +strict valuation of the essentials and non-essentials in national life. +In our poverty we will test all things in the light of their benefit to +the race and hold fast that which is good. + +The opinions of women will weigh in this national accounting. There will +be no money to squander, and women to a unit will stand behind those men +who think a recreation field is of more value than a race track. It will +be the woman's view, there being but one choice, that it is better to +encourage fleetness and skill in boys and girls than in horses. If we +have just so much money to spend and the question arises as to whether +there shall be corner saloons or municipal kitchens, public sentiment, +made in good measure by women, will eschew the saloon. + +The things that lend themselves to the husbanding of the race will draw +as a magnet those who have borne the race. The tired world will need for +its rejuvenation a broadened and deepened medical science. Women are too +wise to permit sanitation and research to fall to a low level. On the +contrary, they will wish them to be more thorough. There will be economy +along the less essential lines to meet the cost. + +The flagging spirit needs the inspiration of art and music. To secure +them in the future, state and municipal effort will be demanded. Women +are born economizers. They have been trained to pinch each penny. With +their advent into political life, roads and public buildings will cost +less. Through careful saving, funds will be made available for the +things of the spirit. + +One of the men conductors on the New York street railways somewhat +reproachfully remarked to me, "No one ever came to look at the +recreation room and restaurant at the car barns until women were taken +on. Men don't seem to count." Is the reproach deserved? Have women been +narrow in sympathy? Perhaps we have assumed that men can look out for +themselves. They could, but in private life they never do. Women have to +do the mothering. A trade-unionist is ready enough to regulate wages and +hours, but he gives not a thought to surroundings in factory +and workshop. + +An act of protection generally starts with solicitude about a woman or +child. Factory legislation took root in their needs. There was no mercy +for the man worker. His only chance of getting better conditions was +when women entered his occupation, and the regulation meant for her +benefit indirectly served his interest. + +"Men suffer more than women in certain dangerous trades, but I did not +suppose you were generous enough to care anything about them," came in +answer to an inquiry at a labor conference at the end of a most +admirable paper on women in dangerous trades, given by one of the +doctors in the New York City Department of Health. He was speaking to an +audience of working women. I doubt if his hearers had given a thought to +men workers. + +Perhaps this is natural, since there has been going on at the same time +with the development of factory legislation in America a strong +propaganda directed especially at political freedom for women. We have +been laying stress on the wrongs of woman and demanding very +persistently and convincingly her rights. The industrial needs and +rights of the man have been overlooked. + +With increasing numbers of women entering the industrial world, with +ever widening extension of the vote to women, and the consequent +quickening of public responsibility, together with the recent experience +of Europe demonstrating the importance of care for all workers, both men +and women, there is ground for hope that even the United States, where +protective legislation is so retarded in development, will enter upon +wide and fundamental plans for conservation of all our human resources. + +Protection of the worker, housing conditions, the feeding of factory +employees and school children, play grounds and recreation centers, will +challenge the world for first consideration. These are the social +processes which command most surely the hearts and minds of women. The +churning which the war has given humanity has roused in women a +realization that upon them rests at least half the burden of saving +civilization from wreck. Here is the world, with such and such needs +for food, clothing, shelter, with such and such needs for sanitation, +hospitals, and above all, for education, for science, for the arts, if +it is not to fall back into the conditions of the Middle Ages. How can +women aid in making secure the national position? Certainly not by +idleness, inefficiency, an easy policy of laissez faire. They must +labor, economize, and pool their brains. + +Women can save civilization only by the broadest cooeperative action, by +daring to think, by daring to be themselves. The world is entering an +heroic age calling for heroic women. + + + + +APPENDIX + +DOCUMENTS USED IN WOMEN'S WAR-WORK IN +ENGLAND AND FRANCE + + + + +WAAC + +WOMEN'S ARMY +AUXILIARY +CORPS + + + + +CONFIDENTIAL. Reference No: J.W. 21 [o.] + +Joint Woman's V.A.D. Department. + +DEVONSHIRE HOUSE. PICCADILLY, LONDON. W.I. + +_Return to Secretary, +V.A.D Department. +Devonshire House, +Piccadilly, S.W.I._ + +Territorial Force Associations, +British Red Cross Society. +Order of St. John of Jerusalem. + +Telegrams [unreadable] +Telephone Mayfair 4707 + +_B.R.C.S. or Order of St. John ..._ + +Sir, + +Will you kindly fill up the following form of Medical Certificate, +returning it to the address given above. + +Your communication will be received as strictly confidential. + +It is urgently requested that Members' +names and detachment numbers should +be filled in legibly. + +Yours faithfully, + +MARGARET HEMPHILL + + +MEDICAL CERTIFICATE + + 1. Name + + 2. County No. of Detachment + + 3. How long have you been acquainted with her? + + 4. Have you attended her professionally? + + 5. For what complaint? + + 6. Is she intelligent and of active habits? + + 7. General health? + + 8. Has she flat feet, hammer-toe, or any other defect? + + 9. Is her vision good in each eye? + +10. Is her hearing perfect? + +11. Has she sound teeth, and if not, have they been properly + attended to by a Dentist lately? + +12. Has she shown any tendency to Rheumatism, Anaemia, + Tuberculosis, or other illness? + +13. When? + +14. What? + +15. Has she ever had influenza? + +16. Does she suffer from headaches? + +17. Any form of fits? + +18. Heart disease or varicose veins? + +19. Is she subject to any functional disturbance? + + * * * * * + +I have on the day of 191 seen and +examined and +hereby certify that she is apparently in good health, that she +is not labouring under any deformity, and is, in my opinion, +both physically and mentally competent to undertake duty in +a Military Hospital, and is [*]A. Fit for General Service. + B. Fit for Home Service only. + C. Unfit. + +_Date (Signed) + Address_ + +[Footnote *: Kindly delete categories which do not apply.] + + + + + * * * * * + + +Reference No.: J.W. 19c. + +JOINT WOMEN'S V.A.D. DEPARTMENT. +Territorial Forces Association. British Red Cross Society. Order of St. +John of Jerusalem. +DEVONSHIRE HOUSE, PICCADILLY, LONDON. W1. + + + + * * * * * + +QUALIFICATIONS +of Members of Women's Voluntary Aid Detachments for Nursing Service or +General Service. + + * * * * * + +1. (a) Name in full (_Mrs. or Miss_). + (b) If Married state Maiden Name. + +2. Permanent Postal Address. + Present Postal Address. + +3. Telephone No. + +4. Telegraphic Address. + +5. Detachment County and No. + B.R.C.S. + St. John Brigade. + St. John Association. + +6. Name and Address of Commandant of Detachment. + +7. Rank in Detachment. + +8. Time of Service in Detachment. + +9. Age and Date of Birth. + +10. Place and Country of Birth. + +11. Nationality at Birth. + +12. Present Nationality. + +13. Height. + +14. Weight. + +15. Where Educated. + +16. At what age did you leave school? + +17. Whether Single, Married, or Widow. + +18. If not Single, state Nationality of Husband. + +19. Name and Address of Next-of-Kin or Nearest Relation + residing in the British Isles. + +20. Father's Nationality at Birth. + +21. Mother's Nationality at Birth. + +22. Father's Profession. + +23. Religion. + +24. (a) If you volunteer for nursing duties state what experience + you have had in wards. + + (b) Name and address of hospital. + + (c) Date. + +25. Certificates held. + +26. (a) Nursing. (f) Motor Driver. + (b) Kitchen. (g) Laboratory Attendant. + (c) Clerical. (h) X-Ray Attendant. + (d) Storekeeping. (i) House Work. + (e) Dispenser. (j) Pantry Work. + +27. State what experience and qualifications you have had + for Categories in No. 26. + +28. Have you been inoculated against Enteric Fever? + If so, what date? + If not, are you willing to be? + + Have you been vaccinated? + It so, what date? + If not, are you willing to be? + +29. Your usual Occupation or Profession? + Your present Occupation or Profession? + +30. Give the Names and Addresses of two British Householders with + permanent addresses in the British Isles who have known applicant for + two or more years, but are not related to applicant, to act as + References, having previously obtained their permission to use + their names. + + (a) (Mayor, Magistrate, Justice of the Peace, Minister of Religion, + Barrister, Physician, Solicitor or Notary Public). + Acquaintance dating from year ________ + (b) Lady. + Acquaintance dating from year _______ + +31. Name and Address of Head of College or School, recent Business + Employer, Head of Government Department, Secretary of Society or some + other person who can be referred to for a report on your + qualifications for the work selected. (The Quartermaster of your + V.A.D. could be given if you have worked in her department.) + + In what capacity employed? + + How long employed? + Year? + +32. Are you willing to serve at home or abroad? + +33. Are you willing to serve in Civil Hospitals from which + personnel have been withdrawn for War Service? + +34. Are you willing to serve:-- + + (a) With pay, + (b) For expenses only, + on the terms of service laid down in our terms of service? + + N. B.--Members who can afford to work for their expenses only are + urgently needed. + +35. Date after which you will be available for duty. + +36. (a) Are you pledged to serve in any other organisation? + (b) If so, what? + +37. (a) Have you served with the Women's Legion or any + similar organisation? + (b) If so, what? + +I hereby declare that the above statements are complete and correct to +the best of my knowledge and belief. + +Date .......... Usual Signature .......... + +_For Office Purposes_, please add your full Christian Names and Surname +legibly written. + +I certify that the above declaration is, to the best of my knowledge and +belief, true; and that M ............ is a fit and proper person to be +employed by the Joint V.A.D. Committee. + +REMARKS:-- + +Date .......... Signed .................... + _Commandant_. + +Date .......... Countersigned .................... + _County Director_. + +NOTE.--Commandants are held responsible for all statements on this form +being accurate so far as it is possible for them to find out, also for +the fact that the member who signs it is a British subject, and in every +way suitable for appointment by the Joint V.A.D. Committee. + +This form must be signed by the Commandant, who should then send it to +the County Director for counter signature and forwarding to +Headquarters. + + + + +_Application No._ + +_For Official use only_. + +CONFIDENTIAL. + +WOMEN'S ARMY AUXILIARY CORPS +FORM OF APPLICATION + +N.B.--No woman need apply who is not prepared to offer her services for +the duration of the war and to take up work wherever she is required. + +1. Name in Full (Mrs. or Miss). + +2. Permanent Postal Address. + +2a. State nearest Railway Station. + +3. Surname at birth, if different. + +4. For what work do you offer your services? State your + qualifications for this work. (The occupations for which women are + required are set out in the accompanying leaflet.) + +5. Are you willing to serve:-- + (a) At Home and Abroad as may be required. + (b) At Home only. + +6. If selected and enrolled how many days' notice will you require before + your services are available? + +7. Age and date of birth. + +8. Place and Country of Birth. + +9. Nationality at Birth. + +10. Present Nationality + (if naturalised give date). + +11. Whether single, married or widow. + If married state number of children, + (a) under 12 years old. + (b) " 5 " " + +12. If not single state Nationality of Husband. + (a) Is your husband serving with the Forces? + (b) If so, where? + +13. Father's Nationality at Birth. + +14. Mother's Nationality at Birth. + +15. Father's Occupation. + +16. State school or college where educated. + At what age did you leave School? + +17. Particulars of any other Training, stating Certificates held. + +18. (a) Name and Address of your present employer + (_see Note on other side_). + + N.B.--(The employer will not be referred to unless he is given as a + reference under paragraph 20 below.) + + (b) Nature of his business. + + (c) Capacity in which you are employed. + + (d) Length of your service with him. + + (e) Salary which you are now receiving. + +19. Previous business experience (if any) giving dates, salaries + received, and names of Employers. + +20. Give below for purposes of reference the names of two or more + British householders with their permanent addresses, one of whom + should be, if possible, your present or previous Employer, a Teacher, + a Town Councillor, Mayor or Provost, Justice of Peace, Minister of + Religion, Doctor or Solicitor, who has known you for two or more + years, but is not related to you. One of the references must be + a woman. + + (a) Name. + Profession or Occupation. + Address. + + (b) Name. + Profession or Occupation. + Address. + + (c) Name. + Profession or Occupation. + Address. + +An offer of Service can in no way be regarded as a final enrolment. + +_I hereby declare that the above statements are complete and correct to +the best of my knowledge and belief_. + +_Date_ ___________ _Usual Signature_ ____________ + +This Form should be filled in by the Applicant and returned +to:--Employment Exchange _________________________ + + * * * * * + +NOTE. + +Women who are already engaged in any of the following occupations will +not be accepted unless they bring with them a letter from their Employer +or Head of Department stating that they have permission to volunteer:-- + +(i) Government Service. + +(ii) Munition work. + +(iii) Work in a Controlled Establishment. + +(iv) Full-time work in an establishment engaged on contract + work for a Government Department. + +(v) V.A.D. Military Hospitals and Red Cross Hospitals. + +(vi) School Teaching. + +(vii) Local Government Service. + +No woman who is a National Service Volunteer or is employed in +Agriculture will be accepted. + +N.B.--Applicants are urged not to give up any present employment until +they are called upon to do so. + + + + +(Part of the application form used in England by the +Women's Land Army.) + + * * * * * + +WOMEN'S LAND ARMY + + * * * * * + +CONDITIONS AND TERMS. + +There are three Sections of the Women's Land Army. + +(1). AGRICULTURE. + +(2). TIMBER CUTTING. + +(3). FORAGE. + +If you sign on for A YEAR and are prepared to go wherever you are sent, +you can join which Section you like. + + +YOU PROMISE:-- + +1. To sign on in the Land Army for ONE YEAR. + +2. To come to a Selection Board when summoned. + +3. To be medically examined, free of cost. + +4. To be prepared if PASSED by the Selection Board to take up work + after due notice. + +5. TO BE WILLING TO GO TO WHATEVER PART OF THE COUNTRY YOU ARE SENT. + + + +THE GOVERNMENT PROMISES:-- + +1. A MINIMUM WAGE to workers of 18/- a week. After they have passed + an efficiency test the wages given are L1 a week and upwards. + +2. A short course of FREE INSTRUCTION if necessary. + +3. FREE UNIFORM. + +4. FREE MAINTENANCE in a Depot for a term not exceeding 4 weeks if + the worker is OUT OF EMPLOYMENT through no fault of her own. + +5. 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