By Jen Bonczar

Last Tuesday, January 27, attendees in Wyndham’s Ely Room found themselves rapt with attention as journalist Elaine F. Weiss described a vision of American women tilling the soil in distinctly unfeminine blue shirts and overalls, the “icon of American patriotism and pluck.”

Weiss presented her lecture, “Bryn Mawr Farmerettes in the Women’s Land Army”, a documentation of the successful efforts of America’s women to contribute to the nation’s dwindling food supply during World War I through a nationally organized, service-based, woman-sponsored organization.

Co-sponsored by the Katharine Houghton Hepburn Center, the Department of History, and Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, the lecture drew from Weiss’ recently published book, Fruits of Victory: The Woman’s Land Army of America in the Great War. Weiss highlighted in particular the role of Bryn Mawr and other women’s colleges in supporting the organization that came to be known as the Woman’s Land Army of America.

Following a brief introduction by Leslie Rescorla, Director of the Hepburn Center, Weiss introduced the character of her lecture: the farmerette, the “heroine of the home front, the soldier of the soil,” a woman whose place in World War I has regrettably slipped from memory.

The farmerettes, the soldiers of the Woman’s Land Army (WLA), helped alleviate the dwindling Allied food supply by taking the place of drafted soldiers on America’s farms. The WLA, which originated under similar circumstances in Great Britain, was adopted at many women’s colleges such as Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, and Vassar.

Training schools were established at these colleges to educate women on how to use farm equipment and plant crops, and also to establish the best farming methods for women’s bodies in order to match the production rate of men. Once trained, these women traveled to farms, hired themselves out for eight hours per day, and demanded they be paid equally with men.

While many women were initially met with skepticism from American farmers, they eventually earned their respect as equally hardy workers. As one South Hadley villager put it, “What them women can’t do!”

Bryn Mawr’s involvement in the institution was particularly extensive. Weiss recounted how, in early 1917, President M. Carey Thomas exhorted Bryn Mawr students to take up plows in patriotic service to America. Before long, Bryn Mawr students were being trained as farmerettes at the College farm in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

Helen Taft ’15, the daughter of former President William Taft and newly appointed Dean of the College at the time, joined the Bryn Mawr farmerettes and shared in their zeal on the farm with hoe and shovel in hand. Taft later joined the national recruiting campaign for the WLA.

Helen Ida Ogilvy, another Bryn Mawr alumna, volunteered to be the director of a women’s agricultural camp in Bedford, New York and helped develop many of the logistics of the WLA: living in tents while working, remaining self-dependent for food and clothing, and demanding the same pay as men.

Weiss took note of the interesting social dynamics within the farmerettes. As “blue shirts and overalls made distinctions impossible,” the WLA saw women of different educational backgrounds, ethnicities, and classes working together on the same farm.

Expectations were upended; for instance, it had been initially assumed by organizers that college women would provide the brains and that the factory women would provide the brawn. The opposite proved true; whereas factory women had the discipline to hold leadership positions, college girls were “found to be the huskiest young animals, fit for work.”

On a national scale, the WLA was used as a platform by women activists to promote women’s suffrage and civil rights. Before long, the WLA received local and national funding.

Weiss displayed some of the numerous ads used to promote the WLA; in one, a woman in blue uniform, bearing a shovel, shakes the hand of Uncle Sam and joins the WLA. In much finer print are the words, “until the boys come back,” words representative of the long battle ahead for equal women’s rights.

By 1918, more than 20,000 women were employed as farmerettes; by late 1919, the army had disbanded, though the farmerettes were called into service once again 20 years later during World War II.

Weiss concluded her lecture by engaging the audience in one of the WLA work songs, set to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic: “We are going to whip the Kaiser and our hearts are unafraid/ we will help to win this wicked war with hoe and rake and spade.”

The farmerette has faded from the American historical memory since World War II; where she was once commemorated in political journals and magazines, cinema news reels and Broadway, there are now only a few t-shirts for sale on the Internet imprinted with old WLA posters.

Says Rescorla, “I wanted to help people in the College and abroad to learn about this exciting movement that I think very few people know about, which played such an important role and represents a pioneering achievement.”

Students at the lecture harbored similar feelings.

“It was interesting to hear a historical perspective looking back at [The Women’s Land Army] and to discuss why it is so forgotten,” stated Leah Boylan ’11.

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