Farming for the Flag

During World War I thousands of American women tilled their way to triumph while men answered the call to war.

The Women's Land Army of America mobilized women from cities and towns nationwide. Nicknamed the farmerettes, they ploughed and harvested from Maine to Minnesota. They saved the nation's food stores and cultivated national pride. And then, just as quickly as they sprouted, they disappeared. Until Elaine F. Weiss dusted off their story.

"The farmerette was a celebrated woman, a symbol, an icon," Weiss said. "Her picture was on every magazine cover from House Beautiful to Scientific American. That makes it all the more astounding to me that she has been lost to history."

Weiss spoke about her new book Fruits of Victory: The Women's Land Army of America in the Great War Thursday night at the Wilton Library. The occasion marked Women's History Month.

During the summer of 1918, an estimated 20,000 women, 400 of whom came from Connecticut, scythed for Uncle Sam. Then, after they were disbanded in 1919 the story of the "Girl with a Hoe behind the Man with the Gun," lay dormant.

"A spunkier Rosie the Riveter, the farmerette was doing a man's job in a man's style uniform," said Laura McLaughlin, assistant librarian.

That man's uniform caused quite a bit of consternation. Ever practical, the women ditched the skirts and donned overalls. Except in the south; skirts stuck.

"It doesn't look outrageous to us, but believe me it was really outrageous," Weiss said.

In Wilton, Grace Knight Schenck, who owned a home on 122 River Road, helped organize farmerette units. Schenck convinced skeptical Connecticut farmers that women could do anything a man could do.

"Wilton women were very involved," said Weiss who spent a great deal of time researching her book in Wilton's History Room.

Great Britain's Land Lassies inspired the American Land Army. But unlike its British sister, civilians ran the American program.

The program was essential. Food anxiety gripped the nation starting about 1917, with food riots in the streets of New York City, Chicago, and Philadelphia.  Women firebombed stores and smashed butcher shops.  They protested escalating food prices, the result of Europe's ravenous appetite for American food.

Trenches and bombs ravaged farmland across the Continent. German submarines isolated Britain, which at that time relied on food imports. Then the Russian Revolution exploded in 1917 and civil unrest grew.

The U.S. Congress held hearings about how to address the crisis. American men were leaving home either to fight or to work in industry. Congress considered using convicts to farm, men who flunked their military physicals, or boys too young to fight.

"The government refused to think about using women, although it had been done in Great Britain and Canada," Weiss said.

Not content to let farms go untended, the women organized. The American Land Army was born. Women recruits had to pass a physical exam to prove they could handle eight-hour days. They learned to drive tractors and how to plough.

The farmerettes demanded and received equal pay: 25 cents an hour or $2 a day. The units integrated shop girls, society girls, immigrants and college girls. It was a test of democracy on a grand scale.

"Food will win the war" became one slogan. The words "Save Food, 120 million Allies Must Eat" marched across a banner on a Baltimore building.

"It was a sense of duty to feed the word," Weiss said.

An as they worked they sang the Land Army Song, to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic:

"We are going to whip the Kaiser and our hearts are unafraid; We will help to win this wicked war with hoe and rake and spade."