May, 1918 
55 
PRIVATE HILDA—NATIONAL ASSET 
How the Province of Ontario , Canada, Mobilized Its Girls for the 
Strawberry Drive and the Peach Push 
BETTY THORNLEY 
H ILDA knelt at the window with her face lifted 
to the harvest moon. It wasn’t the heat that 
kept her awake, though the night was white 
hot, and the incense of the wet grass and the ripened 
fruit steamed up under the stars. It wasn’t the 
shrill cicada orchestra, either, thrilling the love songs 
of an alien world, nor the staccato churring of the 
katydids. It was the moon itself, that had looked 
down on the trenches of Flanders. 
Hilda s hair was loose in a gold-brown cloud, so 
you wouldn’t have known about the scars, but there 
were three of them, big, red, ribbed blotches, on the 
back of her slim neck. Hilda was seventeen, a 
signed-up fruit picker from June till the middle of 
October. The scars were sunburn blisters, gained 
when the thermometer stood at ninety-six in the 
shade, and Hilda stood, ten degrees hotter, in the 
grilling midsummer noon, hilling up her country’s 
tomatoes. She had ten straight hours of hoeing 
that day. Those scars were little scars compared to 
the kind you got in the trenches—Hilda felt them 
with one brown, broken-nailed finger—but they went 
with the blue National Service badge on the arm 
of her khaki middy, and they meant that she too 
“belonged.” 
She had planned the usual summer of visiting, 
motoring, tennis, swimming and pretty clothes. Then 
one day she had seen a poster that the Ontario 
Department of Agriculture had had printed. There 
were three men in it. One carried a pitchfork, the 
next a rake, and the third, an old man, held a hoe. 
They were standing at attention and underneath 
was written, “Recruits Wanted for Production.” 
But the thing that : had startled Hilda was this. 
Between the first man and the second, there was a 
space, with a shadowy outline figure. And across 
this was written, “A Place for You!” 
It has been demonstrated beyond all doubt that 
women can perform even the heavier kinds of farm 
work 
WOMEN ON THE LAND 
The success of these women farmers of Canada echoes 
that of their English sisters, 258,000 of whom are in the 
Land Army in Great Britain, actively engaged in agri¬ 
cultural work. And now the proven statement that women 
can take over all [ branches of farm activities applies 
equally to the United States. The Women’s Land Army 
of America has been organized and recruits are rapidly 
joining its ranks. Executive Headquarters are at 32 
Fifth Avenue, New York City. 
It is no experiment, no spur-of-the-moment undertak¬ 
ing. The organization is inspiringly in earnest, sanely 
practical and countrywide. The aims are similar to those 
described in this article. The Government is heartily back¬ 
ing the movement. The facilities of the State and Federal 
recruiting offices have been placed at its disposal. The for¬ 
mation of administrative offices is complete in New York 
and soon will be in twenty other States. Many members 
at this moment are at work on farms in the East. By early 
summer their numbers will have increased to thousands. 
This new army to fight the Hun has limitless possibili¬ 
ties. Its organizers and officers know what they are about. 
They are fully awake to the difficulties, but just as fully 
they recognize the need. They are in deadly earliest—and 
they are going to win! JOIN NOW! 
There are three great fruit districts in Canada— 
the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia, the An¬ 
napolis Valley in Nova Scotia and the Niagara 
Peninsula, that long, narrow, flat, hot projection that 
lies, orchard to orchard, between the eastern end of 
Lake Erie ana Lake Ontario. And here is where our 
story centers. 
Down in Toronto, where all things in Ontario 
begin, a big office was opening. Dr. Riddell hung 
out his sign for men. And upstairs little Miss Har¬ 
vey waited for the girls. The Ontario Government 
Employment Bureau was on the firing line prepar¬ 
ing for the great spring drive, and Miss Harvey’s 
share was to be the strawberries. 
The Dominion Council of the Y. W. C. A. was 
the first and the biggest recruit and promised to in¬ 
stall properly chaperoned camps at Grimsby, St. 
Williams, Vittoria, Beamsville, Winona, Bronte, Oak¬ 
ville and Clarksons, for which volunteer cooks and 
matrons were procured. Four more camps were 
established directly under the Bureau’s own super¬ 
vision, and a few sprang up locally. Almost at once 
the volunteers began trickling up to the wicket— 
college and high school girls in the main, with a 
sprinkling of professional women and some of the 
so-called “leisure” class—which is really non-existent 
nowadays—who had knitter’s neuritis and wanted a 
change of war work. 
“Factory girls? Yes, there were a few,” said Miss 
Harvey, “but not many. Most of the regular wage- 
earners who wanted to help were already in muni¬ 
tions, which, of course, is all-year work, and pays much 
better. We were, in the main drawing from a class who 
had never done manual labor of any kind in their lives 
—unless you include chasing a golf ball.” 
Convincing the Farmers 
The Reason for the Call 
That very afternoon the Latin professor told them 
that girls too were needed. Hilda couldn’t get her 
mind back to her new sports clothes at all. Was a ten¬ 
nis net really the place for an able-bodied Canadian 
with most of her male relatives in the trenches. 
The funny thing was that the very same idea had 
come to Dot, who lived across the road. 
“There are to be big camps and hundreds of girls 
are going— hundreds, Hilda! They’ll sign on, just 
like the boys in the Army, and they’ll be sent wher¬ 
ever they’re needed. Wouldn’t it be great to be in it?” 
Yes, girls were 
needed, and men were 
needed, not because 
Canada was bankrupt, 
but because she was so 
prosperous. The 1916 
wheat crop had turned 
out to be, not 175,000,- 
000 bushels as per esti¬ 
mate, but 250,000,000. 
And the 1917 crop 
would be bigger still. 
Bank clearances were 
unprecedented, export 
trade was booming de¬ 
spite the submarine, 
and the earnings of the 
Canadian Pacific rail¬ 
way, that barometer of 
national life in the 
Dominion, were thirty 
and a half millions big¬ 
ger than they had been 
the year before. The 
only thing that Canada 
lacked was men. You 
can’t take half a mil¬ 
lion of the best work¬ 
ers from their regular 
employments and leave 
the rest of a population 
of nine million able to 
run the country with¬ 
out some extraordinary 
readjustments. Boys 
and, girls and women 
must be thrust into the 
vacant places. 
Fifth Avenue, New York City. 
It is no experiment, no spur-of-the-moment undertak¬ 
ing. The organization is inspiringly in earnest, sanely 
practical and countrywide. The aims are similar to those 
described in this article. The Government is heartily back¬ 
ing the movement. The facilities of the State and Federal 
recruiting offices have been placed at its disposal. The for¬ 
mation of administrative offices is complete in New York 
and soon will be in twenty other States. Many members 
at this moment are at work on farms in the East. By early 
summer their numbers will have increased to thousands. 
This new army to fight the Hun has limitless possibili¬ 
ties. Its organizers and officers know what they are about. 
They are fully awake to the difficulties, but just as fully 
they recognize the need. They are in deadly earnest—and 
they are going to win! JOIN NOW! 
The Women’s Land Army of America is inspiringly in earnest. With 
English and Canadian ■women to encourage them, its members haves set 
the world that they can play a leading part in our drive for food 
The difficulty wasn’t to get volunteers, but rather 
to convince the ever-conservative farmers that city 
girls would be other than a “durn nuisance.” 
One farmer absolutely refused to take the girls 
until conditions literally forced his hand. Then he 
consented to try a squad at the regulation fifteen 
cents an hour for time work. But instead of putting 
them at the picking and hoeing which he really 
needed, he turned them grimly into a vineyard he 
had. The neighbors could have told the pickerettes 
something about that vineyard. It hadn’t been 
touched for two years, the soil was heavy clay, the 
roots were a veritable Hindenburg Line. He’d tried 
to get men to do it the 
summer before, and 
they’d just grinned at 
him. 
But the bloomer bri¬ 
gade didn’t know all 
this. According to the 
way they saw it, yonder 
was Hill Seventy, and 
they’d been told to go 
over the top and get it. 
They went in at 
noon and worked till 
six. They got up at 
five-thirty and were at 
it again until twelve, 
when they had the big 
end of the irregular 
five-acre patch all done. 
“I didn’t think—” 
said the farmer, “hon¬ 
est, I didn’t think you’d 
ever stick it out. But 
you have. I’m con¬ 
verted to you for life, 
and I’ll give you all 
the work you want.” 
In addition to mar¬ 
keting his regular prod¬ 
uce in good condition, 
that man planted two 
or three extra fields of 
corn and potatoes, as a 
result of the girls’ be¬ 
ing on hand to attend 
to them. When Hilda 
remembered that her 
(Confin’d on page 72) 
the examples of 
to work to show 
production 
