Mobilizing Woman-Power | Page 8

because he wanted
women, but because he now had only five applications by fit men to
thirty or forty formerly. There were men to be had, he said, and at

lower wages than his company was paying; but they were "not of the
class capable of fulfilling the requirements of the position."
The Labor Administration announced on its creation that its "policy
would be to prevent woman labor in positions for which men are
available," and one of the deputy commissioners of the Industrial
Commission of the State of New York declared quite frankly at a labor
conference that "if he could, he would exclude women from industry
altogether."
We may try to prevent the oncoming tide of the economic
independence of women, but it will not be possible to force the
business world to accept permanently the service of the inefficient in
place of that of the alert and intelligent. To carry on the economic life
of a nation with its labor flotsam and jetsam is loss at any time; in time
of storm and stress it is suicide.
Man-power is short, seriously so. The farm is always the best
barometer to give warning of scarcity of labor. The land has been
drained of its workers. A fair wage would keep them on the farm--this
is the philosophy of laissez faire. Without stopping to inquire as to
what the munition works would then do, we can still see that it is
doubtful whether the farm can act as magnet. Even men, let us venture
the suggestion, like change for the mere sake of change. A middle-aged
man, who had taken up work at Bridgeport, said to me, "I've mulled
around on the farm all my days. I grabbed the first chance to get away."
And then there's a finer spirit prompting the desertion of the hoe. A
man of thirty-three gave me the point of view. "My brother is 'over
there,' and I feel as if I were backing him up by making guns."
The only thing that can change the idea that farming is "mulling
around," and making a gun "backs up" the man at the front more
thoroughly than raising turnips, is to bring to the farm new workers
who realize the vital part played by food in the winning of the war. As
the modern industrial system has developed with its marvels of
specialized machinery, its army of employees gathered and dispersed
on the stroke of the clock, and strong organizations created to protect
the interests of the worker, the calm and quiet processes of agriculture

have in comparison grown colorless. The average farmhand has never
found push and drive and group action on the farm, but only
individualism to the extreme of isolation. And now in war time, when
in addition to its usual life of stirring contacts, the factory takes on an
intimate and striking relation to the intense experience of the battle
front, the work of the farm seems as flat as it is likely to be unprofitable.
The man in the furrow has no idea that he is "backing up" the boy in
the trench.
The farmer in his turn does not find himself part of the wider relations
that attract and support the manufacturer. Crops are not grown on order.
The marketing is as uncertain as the weather. The farmer could by
higher wages attract more labor, but as the selling of the harvest
remains a haphazard matter, the venture might mean ruin all the more
certain and serious were wage outlay large. In response to a call for
food and an appeal to his patriotism, the farmer has repeatedly made
unusual efforts to bring his land to the maximum fertility, only to find
his crops often a dead loss, as he could not secure the labor to harvest
them. I saw, one summer, acres of garden truck at its prime ploughed
under in Connecticut because of a shortage of labor. I saw fruit left
rotting by the bushel in the orchards near Rochester because of scarcity
of pickers and a doubt of the reliability of the market. The industry
which means more than any other to the well-being of humanity at this
crisis, is the sport of methods outgrown and of servants who lack
understanding and inspiration. The war may furnish the spark for the
needed revolution. Man-power is not available, woman-power is at
hand. A new labor force always brings ideas and ideals peculiar to itself.
May not women as fresh recruits in a land army stamp their likes and
dislikes on farm life? Their enthusiasm may put staleness to rout, and
the group system of women land workers, already tested in the crucible
of experience, may bring to the farm the needed antidote to isolation.
To win the war we