WOMEN AND WAR WORK 103 



At the present time about one agricultural laborer in seven 

 is a woman. Her work has been reduced largely to domestic 

 affairs, and even in domestic affairs there seems to be a reduction 

 of work in the manufacture of food, clothing, and supplies. Con- 

 tinuing the same report to which we have alluded, we have the 

 following interesting situation: 



" With regard to very recent years census statistics of female agricultural 

 labor afford no satisfactory conclusions. A general knowledge of farming 

 conditions throughout the country, past and present, is more definite. The 

 outdoor work of white women on the farms of medium and better sort has 

 very greatly declined from early days, and the decline was more especially 

 marked after the Civil War. Farmers' wives and daughters no longer milk 

 the cows and work in the field and care for the livestock. They do not work 

 in the garden as much as before, nor assist so much in fruit and berry harvest; 

 they are making less butter, and cheese making on the farm has become a 

 lost art. They may care for the poultry and the bees, do housework and 

 gather vegetables for the table, and cook and keep the dwelling in order. 

 Their domestic work is substantially the limit of their work on the farm. 



" Decline of Household Labor. In farm household matters the situation 

 is acute with regard to the supply of hired labor. Country girls as well as 

 city girls, no matter how humble their lot in life, regard household labor for 

 hire as unrespectable. Joined with this fact is the other one that the women 

 of the farmer's family are neither able nor willing to repeat the manual 

 labor performance of their grandmothers on the farm. Besides this, the 

 farmer's standard of living has risen, certainly on the medium and better sort 

 of farms in the North and West; and in a perceptible degree the women of the 

 farmer's family have engaged in social functions which are beginning to be 

 incompatible with the performance of household labor without the aid of a 

 servant. The social obligations undertaken by them are for the Grange, the 

 woman's clubs, the Maccabees, the Women's Christian Temperance Union, 

 the local church, the farmers' clubs, a list that might be much extended. 



" Domestic Industries. The old-time domestic industries are all but 

 forgotten. The women of the farm make no more soap, candles, or lye, and 

 so on with a long list of the domestic products of former days; it is rare that 

 one of the younger of the women knows how to knit. Throughout large areas 

 the pride of the housewife in great stores of preserved, dried, and pickled fruits, 

 berries, and vegetables exists chiefly in history, and dependence is placed mostly 

 upon the local store for the products of the cannery and the evaporator. 



Women and War Work. The World War brought tremendous 

 social readjustments in all fields, one phase being the employment 

 of women for outdoor work on farms. The Woman's Land Army, 

 so called, rendered a very distinct service. But how permanent 

 this participation of women in farm work will be it is impossible 

 to forecast. 



The social and labor needs of farm women have been studied by 

 the Federal Department of Agriculture. " Where the farm woman 

 is the mother of three children or more," writes a Massachusetts 

 farm woman, "she should have an aid, and thus be allowed to give a 

 large part of her attention to her work as mother, at least until the 

 children are of age to help. A ' hired woman ' is as essential as a 



