120 8 Farewell Rally, Women's Land Army. [mar., 



Much of his doubt was due to a perfectly natural sense of 

 chivalry, and the disHke of the idea that a woman should have 

 to do the rough work which his man had always done. In his 

 opinion it was not the time for such considerations as better 

 housing, a new standard of wages, and hours, and government 

 interference. It must have seemed to many men that the 

 demand for this consideration only proved his contention that 

 general farm work was not suitable for women, except at 

 seasonal times when they might be employed locally because 

 he could not do without them. Then, when it was clearly 

 explained to him that he could not even merely supplement his 

 labour with organised and subsidised women labour but must 

 accept the latter wholly with its attendant conditions, and 

 when growing shortage compelled him to give up the idea that 

 the scheme was instituted merely for the pushing of women 

 into agriculture, he settled down and matters began to 

 improve. 



He soon began to see that if he was to get the best out of his 

 girl he must give her a chance, give her time to do the all- 

 important thing in the eyes of the small farmer — " get into his 

 ways." In the North of England, at any rate, where a farmer's 

 ways are very much his own and very little those of anyone 

 else, this is the essential thing, and he began to use patience. 

 With patience, if the girl was willing and had commonsense, 

 came interest, and soon he began to watch her progress with a 

 kindlier eye than merely to mark her increasing worth of her wage . 

 It has been a joy to watch the growing companionship and 

 understanding between some of the best of the women and their 

 employers, and the way in which the latter have fallen in with 

 the more individual and human outlook of the women. " That 

 ^eU," remarked a farmer, leaning over his gate with his pipe 

 in his mouth and watching his young worker handling calves 

 with a sort of passionate deftness in her movements, " treats 

 they calves as if they was babies instead of machines in the 

 making, and blame me if I don't think they're the gainer all 

 along. What there is in beasts she gets out of them, and that's 

 a deal more than I ever thought to look for before." 



Some very creditable all-round farm hands began to show 

 themselves amongst the newly-trained girls, together with 

 some extremely creditable milkers and stockwomen. Then 

 there came those women who in the face of a storm of doubt 

 and incredulity had speciaHsed- — the thatchers, the threshers 

 and the tractor drivers. The thatchers could not be supplied 

 fast enough, the threshers — a job which many of the farmers 



