NOTICES RELATING TO AGRICULTURAL ECONOMY IN GENERAL IO7 



and commercial occupations. The difficulties attendant on the work have 

 been most serious. Prejudice on the part of the farmers, reluctance on the 

 part of the women, insufficiency of housing accommodation, lowness of 

 wages, have all proved serious obstacles. 



To try to overcome these difficulties, a campaign of propaganda work 

 was instituted in the spring of 1915 by .the Board of Agriculture and the 

 Board of Trade. As a result of the combined action of the boards, local 

 voluntary committees, known generally as Women's County War Agri- 

 cultural Committees, have been formed. At the present time there are 

 sixty-three such committees, whose function is : 



i) To carry on propaganda work to promote the employment of 

 women in agriculture. 



2) To register women, and arrange for placing them in work and for 

 their training where necessary. 



3) To increase the production of home-grown food in ever3^ village. 

 The organization which it has been sought to establish has been in 



the nature of a county committee working through local committees or 

 village registrars — the usual procedure being to divide the county into 

 districts, each having a representative. The representatives form the 

 county committee, in charge of the general organization, and each of 

 them is responsible for the work carried on in liis or her own localitj^ by 

 means of a district committee or a registrar, or both, appointed in each 

 village. There are now 1,060 district representatives and 4,000 village 

 registrars. In some cases the Women's County Committees have a separ- 

 ate existence, although they work in co-operation with the men's County 

 War Agricultural Conmiittees, called into being by Lord Selborne in 

 August 1915. In others they are sub-committees of the War Agricultural 

 Committees. 



A certificate has been issued to workers at the discretion of the 

 committees, at the time of registration or only after proved service, or in 

 some cases not at all. After the)' have completed thiity da^-s' service on 

 the land, registered women are entitled to wear a government armlet of 

 green baize which bears the royal crown in scarlet. 72,021 certificates 

 and 62,000 armlets have been issued. 



It has been very difficult to obtain statistics from the committees 

 and such as the}- have supplied are not reliable. The approximate returns 

 indicate that nearly 140,000 women have been registered, including all 

 who have volunteered both for whole and for part time service. In cer- 

 tain counties — as Northumberland, Wilts, Devon, Kent and parts of lyin- 

 colnshire — and also in Wales, women have always been on the land in 

 large numbers, and many of these do not care to register as they think 

 that by so doing they may make themselves liable to some form of com- 

 pulsory' service. In one of the divisions of Lincolnshire, for instance, 

 599 women have been returned as registered and 2,041 as working ; and in 

 many villages the registrars can give no accurate idea of the number 

 working as the farmers so frequently make their own independent 

 arrangements. It appears that the comparatively small demand by 



