LoC Blog: World War I - The Women’s Land Army

“The man with the hoe is gone. Six hundred thousand of him left the fields of America last year,” observed the Los Angeles Times in April 1918. Hundreds of thousands more would follow as a mobilizing U.S. military called millions to serve. Wasted harvests and diminished agricultural production could be avoided, but it meant that others would have to farm the fields. “The woman with the tractor must take his place,” wrote the Times.
The Library of Congress exhibit Echoes of the Great War: American Experiences of World War I explores of the role of the Women’s Land Army, revealing a fascinating intersection of wartime exigencies, suffragist fervor and labor.
The idea of a U.S. women’s land army had circulated as early as 1915 due to labor shortages. U.S. entry into World War I and a series of lectures at Vassar College in 1917 by British feminist Helen Fraser brought the idea to greater prominence, points out historian Rose Hayden-Smith. ... [mehr] https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2018/03/world-war-i-the-womens-land-army/