Women's War Work (1916)

Post date: Jan 25, 2014 8:55:52 PM

Extract from Parish magazine of March 1916:

WOMEN'S WAR-WORK.

In an article headed "An Urgent Call" written by Lady Wolseley¹, in The Times (February 29^th), it was said that "some 400,000 women are required as soon as possible to enlist for patriotic work in cultivating farms, in milking cows, looking after pigs and poultry, and generally attending to the lighter of agricultural work during the absence of the soldiers." The figure seems to be a high one, but I believe it is generally recognised by farmers throughout the country that they will be hard pressed to find labour in the near future. Moreover, the nation is looking to them to increase the produce of the land during the coming season rather than to allow it to decrease. War Agricultural Committees have been formed to consider the difficulty and find means of coping with it; and the Government, realising that all the national resources must be organised with a view to winning the war, are offering their co-operation. The Board of Trade and the Board of Agriculture have issued a joint appeal to women of all classes to come forward and assist the farmers to keep up the food supply of the country, and Lord Selborne, President of the Board of Agriculture, has started a scheme whereby a Women's Farm Labour Committee is being established in every county. The work of the committee is to devise means of recruiting women-workers and placing them on the land where and when required. A scheme has already been made and set going throughout the country, on lines to be described below; and it is said to be proving sufficiently successful to leave no doubt that women in considerable numbers are ready to offer their services. It only remains for the farmers to fall into line, consenting to train the women to do such work as they are capable of. At present they are said to be hesitating, doubtful of the woman's strength and capability, and desirous, therefore, of keeping their men. But the men are wanted for the army, and every farmer who is a patriot (and who is not?) will eventually release every man in his employment who can be spared. As to the capability of the women, what has proved true in industrial and office work will prove equally true in farm work; right through industrial England, in making munitions and so on, women are doing, with efficiency, work which six months ago the ordinary man declared them incapable of performing. With a little training, and a little consideration from the farmer, they will prove equally useful in agricultural work. In Denmark and Belgium they have long been doing such work; in France they are doing it to-day—they are even ploughing the land.

The following list may be suggestive : it does not pretend to be exhaustive :—

In hop-gardens, if July and August (washing) be not excluded, there is work almost continuously from February or March round to October or November : stringing, tieing and pulling, washing and hoeing, picking, clearing bines.

In market-gardens, continuous work through summer and autumn : bunching carrots, parsnips and turnips; digging, picking up and sorting potatoes; picking, sorting and packing fruit and vegetables.

On farms generally: planting potatoes and wheeling-in grass seeds (spring); planting field cabbage (spring and summer); hoeing and thinning root crops (spring and summer); general weeding, cutting thistles and digging docks, cleaning land of couch and burning (spring, summer and autumn); hay harvest (June and July); corn harvest (July and August); pulling and stacking roots, banding fruit trees (autumn) ; tree-pruning, brushing hedges, mending sacks, etc. (winter months); and all the year round—dairy work, tending sheep, rearing calves, care and feeding of stock (cattle and pigs), etc. There are some women who could handle horses, both in the stable and in the field, and help with the ploughing, if not the fallowing, at least the subsequent ploughings.

No woman will be expected to work gratuitously: as soon as she is proficient she will receive a regular wage for regular work, whether she agree to work full time, or so many hours a day, or so many days a week.

So far in this Paper we have been dealing with the matter in reference to the country at large rather than our own locality. In this part of Kent so much of the work in the fruit and hop gardens is normally done by female labour that it might be thought, and it may be said, that, here at any rate, a scheme for organising women's work on the land is not wanted. The matter, however, is worth serious consideration. A number of men have already been called up, and as the months pass that number will be increased. The questions, then, that occur to one are—Can the farmers carry on without replacing the absent hands? If not, how is additional labour to be obtained? Can the women who are regularly employed do more than they usually do ? Are there no others who can be enlisted to work ? Now is the time for facing these questions: immediately the snow melts and the weather opens the work will begin, and the need of hands will be increasingly felt as the weeks go on. One may proceed, then, to explain the local organisation of the scheme.

The county, the district or union, and the parish: Lady Hardinge is President of the West Kent County Agricultural Committee, which consists of representatives of the districts; Mrs. Heron Maxwell. of Comp, is the District Representative of the Malling Union; the Registrar for this Parish of Wateringbury is Dorothea Livitt, who is ably assisted by a number of Canvassers. The duty of the Registrar is to arrange a house-to-house canvass of the parish, and to compile a register of the women who are already workers, of those who being workers will give more time than they have usually given, of those who not being workers are willing to become so. The canvass is not confined to cottages, it includes the houses of all classes. When the register is complete it is hoped that the Registrar will be able to supply such extra hands as a farmer may require. If the supply proves greater than the demand in this parish, and any volunteers are willing to go elsewhere to work, they will be placed, so far as possible, by the District Representative, who will be in constant touch with the local Labour Exchange. Such is the scheme. It is said to be already at work enlisting and placing female labour in some other parts of the country. It remains to be seen whether it will be of any use in West Kent. It merits a fair trial.

The scheme, moreover, goes beyond farm work. The canvass suggests other ways in which women of all classes may increase the food supply—by taking allotments, and making more of allotments or gardens already held; by keeping pigs, goats or poultry, or by keeping more pigs or poultry; by minding the children of a neighbour, and so releasing her to undertake work.

Arrangements are being made whereby a woman who can afford to do so may go away for a short training in some special branch of work before offering her services at home.

If no other good comes of such a canvass, in this or any other parish, it will at least serve to bring before the minds of the people the absolute need in the present crisis of making the very most of the country's sources of food supply. We venture, therefore, to commend the scheme to everyone's sympathetic consideration. Give it a fair trial. Some little time must elapse before a well-informed opinion can be passed upon it. G.M.L.

See also Women and the land (1917) and Women and agriculture (1917).

Notes:

Hew Strachan in his book "The First World War" notes that in 1914 6 million women, representing 26% of the workforce, in Britain already had jobs; this increased by the end of the war to 7.3 million or 36% of the workforce; there was a shift at a national level from low-paid domestic work to higher paid munitions work.

1. Lady Louisa Wolseley (1843-1920), nee Erskine, was married to Garnet Wolseley (1833-1913), a major Victorian military figure who was the brother of General Sir George Wolseley who lived in The Thatched House. See Christine Byron's article on the family at A Wateringbury Angel: Fanny Caldwell. Louisa died in 1920 at Hampton Court Palace in 1920. She had one child, Frances Garnet Wolseley (1872-1936) who was active encouraging women's gardening at Glynde in Sussex where the family lived for a time. Her article in the Times is on the same page as obituary of Henry James who had just died.

WOMEN AND THE LAND

AN URGENT CALL

(by Lady Wolseley)

Are the women of England answering the call of the land with all its absorbing interests, its health giving joys, and its great national usefulness? I am sure it is only necessary to make known to educated men and women the serious need there is for a careful consideration of the land and all it is expected to yield us in strength and stability and they will set an example which will be speedily followed by village women, who never wish to delay long in following others.

German ladies are said to do rough spade work with the intention of increasing the supplies of vegetables and we know how French and Belgian women are ploughing and tilling the land close behind the firing lines. They have realised from the beginning what we are only now awakening to, that food and warm clothing are quite as necessary to the fighting man as an ample provision of munition is helpful to him. The past experience of a seven year and a 30 years war has taught Germans that only by organisation and the employment of old men and active women on the land is it possible for a country to hold out during a period of prolonged warfare without fear of a deficiency of food and it would seem that in England we shall not obtain a sufficient number of the right kind of agricultural workers until the necessity of obtaining them has been authoritatively stated. During the last few weeks thousands of men have been taken away from farms and orchards, and many more will soon join the army. Before long only ploughmen, shepherds and those who are absolutely indispensable will be left to help the farmer, and yet we know that this year he is expected to produce more than ever before. Every care, again, must be taken to reduce our imports but in order to do without them we shall have to grow more food ourselves. If we become independent of supplies from other countries no submarine menace will threaten our people with scarcity of food or high prices and all the greater stability and lasting power this will give us, should the war continue for long.

NUMBERS WANTED

Some 400,000 women are therefore required as soon as possible to enlist for patriotic work in cultivating farms, in milking cows, looking after pigs and poultry, and generally attending to the lighter kinds of agricultural work during the absence of the soldiers. Each county war committee will appoint its staff of ladies who will in all probability make a house-to-house visitation in the villages and decide which of the women are able and willing to join in this national work. It is hoped that the offer of a good living wage, the inducement of wearing a uniform, and joining in the work of our second line of defence will bring to the assistance of Lord Selborne a large number of the recruits withouit whose help it will be impossible to obtain the food required by our people.

....

A PATRIOTIC ORGANISATION

The Women's National Land Service Corps., 50 Upper Baker Street, London N.W. has been formed to recruit women workers on the land, and is assisting to organize their training. It is a national patriotic movement, and it is hoped that it will be placed on the same ample and permanent basis as in Belgium and other countries where women are taught as thoroughly as the farmers and labourers. Educated women in Denmark and Belgium are taught those things that concern the benefits to be derived by co-operation as it affects the commercial side of agriculture and horticulture and the personal interest that they, and all those who are in authority, take in the practical hygiene of the farm tends to raise those industries to the high position which they should hold in all prosperous countries. Until, therefore, we in England return more wholeheartedly and seriously to these interests, we run the risk of not responding as readily as the women of other countries to the call of the land which goes out to civilians of fighting nations.