Mobilizing Woman-Power by Harriot Stanton Blatch
page 119 of 143 (83%)
page 119 of 143 (83%)
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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 |
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