GAKDENING AFTER THE WAR 61 



It is difficult at this time to arrive at exact figures, for the Land 

 Army work is so new; but it has been hnked up with the Depart- 

 ment of Labor and has become part of the United States Employ- 

 ment Service system. 



The Women's Land Army of America was organized primaril\' 

 for increasing food production during the war, meeting the farmers' 

 needs by providing units or groups of women who live in separate 

 houses with a chaperon-housekeeper or supervisor; and furnishing 

 their own food and cooking. This patriotic organization of volun- 

 teer workers came into existence in New York City in Decemlier, 

 1917, and, from the beginning, has operated in cooperation v,it\\ 

 the LT. S. Employment Ser^dce with a degree of success far beyond 

 the utmost expectations of its creators and the country at large, as 

 is shown by its reports to the Department of Labor at ^^'ashington. 



Wherever the Army members have operated they have left an 

 euAaable record, and many an estate manager, superintendent and 

 farmer, skeptical at first as to the practicability of emplo;sing women 

 to do men's work on the place, is now wholly convinced of their 

 value in this field. 



According to available figures, as reported to the Department, 

 ten thousand women worked in land camps last summer and, it is 

 estimated, at least five thousand more have gone out in groups, or 

 singly, to lend their assistance in saving crops that otherwise would 

 have perished. Now it is significant that these women were drawn 

 from the ranks of college girls, school teachers, seasonal workers 

 out of emplo^iiiient, hitherto unused sources. They have taken 

 hold of the hardest of tasks and accomplished results that it has 

 been popularly supposed only men could do. 



In the state of Illinois the Land Army established a training 

 farm where girls and women passed through a period of intensive 

 training prior to being sent out to work on farms. They are said 

 to have learned quickly and to have accomplished in the period of 

 their training much more than their instructors had considered 

 possible, and the quality of their work after leaving the school is 

 said to have completely won over the Illinois farmers and convinced 

 them that in the women of the Land Army lies one solution of the 

 labor troubles that had been perplexing them for years. 



Forty states now have Land Army chairmen where committees 



