Cornell University Library 
 HT 454.094 
 
 Women on the farm; an address before the 
 
 3 1924 014 003 580 
 
WOMEN 
 ON THE FARM 
 
 UNITED STATES 
 DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
 
 WASHINGTON, D. C. 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924014003580 
 
Women on the Farm 
 
 AN ADDRESS BEFORE THE 
 
 W^oman's Committee, Council of National Defense 
 
 MAY 13. 1918, WASHINGTON, D. C. 
 
 Delivered by 
 
 Clarence Ousley 
 
 Assistant Secretary of Agriculture 
 
 U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
 
 WASHINGTON, D. C. 
 1918 
 
Women on the Farm 
 
 By Clarence Ousley 
 
 Assistant Secretary of Agriculture 
 
 IT is no mere gallantry of sex, but an NtxesHty 
 acknowledgment of fact, to say that in °f .^ 
 this war emergency, as in all the crises 
 of our history and of the race, there is 
 nothing finer in spirit or effect than the service 
 which the women of the United States are 
 rendering. In her very nature woman is an 
 instrument of sacrifice. By circumstance and 
 habit, and perhaps also by nature, she is 
 accustomed to self-effacement. As a rule her 
 chief thought is the thing to be accomplished; 
 her least thought is her own welfare. The 
 greatest factor of success in war is sacrifice — 
 not the sacrifice of burnt offering but the 
 sacrifice of comfort, of well-being, and, if 
 need be, of self. 
 
 Hence it is that woman entered the war Not the 
 already trained in the psychology of war as %<^'**«'^ 
 it governs or influences personal conduct. It 
 is not her privilege to engage in the adventures 
 of war, to perform the thrilling feats on land 
 and sea and in the air which make war appeal 
 to the mind of the animal man as a great 
 emprise, and which in some degree compensate . 
 him for his sufferings and sacrifices. 
 
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WOMEN ON THE FARM 
 
 Tje Favored There is a vast difference between serving 
 Servtce gven in the trenches and serving behind the 
 lines, between fighting man to man and fight- 
 ing disease in the hospitals or hunger in the 
 kitcheps, and the difference to the manly man 
 or the courageous woman lies not, as the 
 cowardly and the low-minded imagine, in 
 favor of the sheltered service but in favor of 
 the battling service, where force matches force 
 and mind clashes with mind, and the grim 
 business takes on the nature of rivalry if not 
 of sport. I can imagine every brave woman 
 in the United States in these times wishing 
 she were a man, and I can excuse the wish 
 because every hour I am wishing that I were 
 younger. Yet I know there is service for the 
 elders and for the physically less fit, and that 
 it is unmanly to repine. 
 To Save So I bring you the assurance that your 
 Freedom service is none the less vital, and that you are 
 doing a part which, if not the greater part, is 
 assuredly not the lesser part of this big task 
 we have undertaken to save our Republic, to 
 save freedom in the world, and even to save 
 the German race from the utter bestiality to 
 which it is committed by its barbaric rulers. 
 
 I am asked to say something about what 
 
 women may do in producing food to sustaiii 
 
 • our people, our armies, and the armies and 
 
 peoples of those who are fighting with ui 
 
 4 
 
WOMEN ON THE FARM 
 
 This is the big job back of the lines. We 
 have now two million men under arms; mil- 
 lions more are engaged, directly or indirectly, 
 in work related to war; and while the farm has 
 lost only a small percentage of its man-power The Job 
 in the draft, it has lost a considerable share of ^" ^"^ 
 its labor by the demands of industries and by 
 the lure of cities, and yet it is called upon to 
 increase its harvests; and the harvests must be 
 increased or there will be privation here and 
 maybe hunger over there, where hunger spells 
 ruin to civilization. 
 
 To come directly to the point, to state the 
 case blimtly without further analysis, there is 
 need for the mobilization of additional labor 
 to supply the farmers with their needs for the 
 particular days or weeks of seasonal strain in 
 cultivation and harvest. Responding to the 
 Nation's appeals, the farmers last year in- 
 creased their plantings beyond those of any 
 preceding year, and this year are further 
 increasing their plantings. They are planting Famm 
 more than they will perhaps be able to culti- ^'"'"'ip 
 vate without increments of labor now and 
 then, and certainly more than they will be 
 able to harvest without increments when the 
 fields are ready for the harvest. Reports 
 I come to the Department of Agriculture that 
 I in many regions the farmers are working until 
 black dark, they are foregoing their Saturday 
 
 5 
 
WOMEN ON THE FARM 
 
 half -holiday, and their families are making the 
 most of every hour of daylight. What addi- 
 tional help can be provided in these circum- 
 stances? Let us understand that additional 
 help must be provided, for we can not afford 
 to default in food production. 
 ff^asteJ In the first place, there are many able- 
 Man-Power bodied men in the towns and cities doing 
 utterly useless things for their own comfort or 
 the comfort of other people who are finan- 
 cially able to employ their services. There 
 are thousands of men checking hats, brushing 
 clothes, carrying hand baggage, running plea- 
 sure automobiles, sprinkling lawns, and an- 
 nouncing visitors, who represent a sinful waste 
 of energy in a time when every ounce of energy 
 is needed. It is against the fashion in Eng- 
 land, France, and Italy to employ useless 
 servants. Women set the fashion. The ex- 
 ample of social leaders, with the indorsement 
 of organized women, would speedily put an 
 end to indulgences which to the right-minded 
 and the patriotic must soon appear as vulgar 
 and wicked. 
 I^e In the next place, there are thousands of 
 
 jS ^^^ ^^ *^® *^^^^ ^^^ c^^^es <loing things that 
 women can do as well. There are men cooks, 
 men waiters, men clerks, men bookkeepers, 
 whose places might well be filled by women. 
 This is a situation not so easily affected by a 
 
 6 
 
WOMEN ON THE FARM 
 
 decree of fashion, and yet it is none the less 
 subject to an irresistible influence which wo- 
 man can instantly exercise. The man does Scom the 
 not live who can resist the scorn of his fellow- '^'^'^^^ 
 men; much less can he resist the scorn of 
 womankind. It has come to pass already that 
 the coward who tries to evade military duty 
 without a good reason finds no favor among his 
 women friends. It would be quite becoming if 
 the women of the land, in a discriminating and 
 just way, would visit their unspoken, but none 
 the less sufficient, condemnation upon the man 
 who is not in the true sense doing a man's job. 
 With the relief of man-power by the sus- 
 pension of useless service and by the substitu- 
 tion of women in tasks which woman can 
 readily perform, there will remain more to be 
 done upon the farm, and there is opportunity 
 from time to time for women to work on the 
 land. It would be extremely unfortunate, 
 I think, if we should get the notion or herald 
 the idea that we have come to such a pass in 
 the United States that we must drive our 
 women to the farms. As God made woman a Mai 
 little finer in spirit than man, so he made her 
 a Httle frailer in body. She can endure more 
 suffering, perhaps, but as a rule she lacks the 
 physical strength and endurance for the hard 
 labor from sunup to sundown that constitutes 
 the day's work on the farm. 
 
 7 
 
WOMEN ON THE FARM 
 
 The I will despise American manhood if the 
 y^T" 8^^^* body of our men permit our women to be 
 drafted for these hard tasks of agriculture until 
 we have sent every able-bodied creature io 
 breeches to the trenches or driven him to the 
 fields, but women are to be encouraged, so 
 far as their physical condition will permit or 
 the circumstances surrounding them will ad- 
 vise, to engage in the lighter tasks of the farm, 
 particularly in dairy work, in vegetable culti- 
 vation, and in fruit harvesting. Well-planned 
 undertakings to this end should be stimulated, 
 provided only that we do not fall into hysterics 
 about it, that we do not undertake the im- 
 possible, that we do not create the impression of 
 exhaustion of man-power, and, most important 
 of all, that we do not encourage physical slackers 
 to keep the shady and sheltered places while 
 our women take the sun and the rain. 
 Women However, let me remind you that there is a 
 Agriculmre considerable army of women already in the 
 field of agriculture. The Department of Agri- 
 culture, in cooperation with the land-grant 
 colleges in all the States, maintains a service 
 of home demonstration in domestic science 
 and arts in 1,675 out of 2,957 counties in the 
 United States. This service is conducted by 
 1,150 trained women who are in the homes of 
 the farmers, teaching them better ways of 
 livmg, showing them new methods of conserva- 
 
 8 
 
WOMEN ON THE FARM 
 
 tion, and making the farm home a point of as 
 much concern in the interest of health and 
 comfort as the farm establishment from the 
 standpoint of profit. 
 
 These leaders last year taught 1,900,000 FilUd 
 women and girls to can and dry vegetables P<">t^ 
 and fruits. The girls under instruction canned 
 over 14,000,000 containers, and the women 
 more than 35,000,000 containers. At the mini- 
 mum wholesale price of these products their 
 value aggregated more than $7,000,000, and 
 the recorded activities represent only a part 
 of what was accomphshed under the leader- 
 ship of these women employed by the Depart- 
 ment of Agriculture and the land-grant col- 
 leges last year in the production and conserva- 
 tion of fruits and vegetables. There are in 
 the pantries of the United States to-day more 
 of such products than there ever were before, 
 and every container represents an equal amount 
 of commercial pack released for transportation 
 across the sea. This service is in its infancy, 
 so to speak. Within another four or five years 
 I do not doubt that it will be extended to every 
 agricultural county in the United States and 
 to many of the cities. Its accomphshments 
 will be multiplied manyf old if the women of 
 the land, through group action and local organ- 
 ization, would accept and put mto practice 
 the teachings of these leaders. 
 
 9 
 
WOMEN ON THE FARM 
 
 The It is hard for many people to understand 
 Small ^jjg^^ 3^ national accomplishment is the sum of 
 
 ocrvtcc ... , 
 
 individual accomplishments, that the aggre- 
 gate of the millions of bushels or pounds of 
 increased production or of decreased consump- 
 tion is composed of the few bushels or few 
 pounds produced or conserved by the indi- 
 vidual. Too many people are trying to serve 
 the country by doing something spectacular, 
 especially by coming to Washington or by 
 going to Europe. The service that we most 
 need now is the service of individual perform- 
 ance in our own homes, in our own business, 
 and ia our own neighborhoods. 
 The But there is another vastly greater army of 
 ^"whies "^^^^^ ah-eady on the land, and they are doing 
 a man's share of agricultural production and 
 conservation. I speak of the six or seven 
 millions of farmers' wives. Most of our pub- 
 heists and leaders have forgotten them. Most 
 of them are in the kitchen before daylight and 
 long after dark; they cook and sew, and gener- 
 ally they wash, often even for the hired men; 
 they cultivate the gardens; they care for the 
 poultry; they make the butter, and often 
 they work in the fields. I have seen them 
 hoeing in the hot sun while their babies lay 
 in the shade of near-by trees. They are truly 
 and to the hmit of their strength and their 
 marvelous patience the helpmeets of their 
 
 10 
 
WOMEN ON TH E FARM 
 
 husbands. They are the world's strictest 
 economists, and its most heavily laden burden- 
 bearers, for while they take on the burdens of 
 vocation they do not lay down the burdens 
 of sex; they bear children and they grow old 
 prematurely. 
 
 I can imagine no finer thing for a city woman Help a 
 to do in this war emergency than to go to the ^"" 
 farm for the harvest or for some other period 
 of labor strain to help her country sister bear 
 these burdens of kitchen and farm. Any 
 good woman would keep house for a sick 
 friend; the nurses in France are scrubbing 
 floors in hospitals. It seems to me that some 
 of the splendid zeal of our American city 
 women to render war service might find satis- 
 faction in the farm homes. 
 
 I do not undertake to prescribe any precise W^omm's 
 method of organization or mobihzation, or to ^''^'"" 
 set any hmit upon the activities of women in 
 the field of agriculture. I have tried merely to 
 tell you something of the problems as I see 
 them. I have full faith that when the women 
 of America address themselves seriously and 
 sympathetically to this problem, as they have 
 addressed themselves to other problems within 
 the sphere of their particular responsibiUty, 
 or within the range of their particular fitness, 
 they will work out methods far more efiicient 
 than the mind of mere man can conceive. 
 
 11 
 
WOMEN ON THE FARM 
 
 The It will be a blessed thing if out of this trial 
 ^'8^ and the occupational and economic readjust- 
 ments to which we must resort we can establish 
 a new relation or revive an old relation 
 between the town woman and the country 
 woman; if we can make farm home life more 
 comfortable; if we can make city home life 
 more wholesome; if we can get into the country 
 something more of the city's spirit of aspira- 
 tion, and if we can get into the city something 
 more of the country's spirit of humility; if we 
 can take to the country the order and the 
 progress of the city, and if we can take to the 
 city the freshness and the fragrance of the 
 country. I venture the suggestion that such 
 an imdertaking of blessing and beauty will 
 yield a richer accomplishment imder the 
 acknowledged instinct of woman than imder 
 the boasted philosophy of man.