The Manawatu Herald. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1918. WOMEN ON THE LAND.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1787, 9 February 1918, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1918. WOMEN ON THE LAND.

DURING the past two years 9,000 women have registered themselves as land workers in England. A proportion of these may be said lo have been more or less associated with farm and country life in a small wa.y, for years. But, then, the work they did was chiefly a matter of their environment, a normal part of their everyday' round. Now it is a matter of stern necessity. With them are associated the members of the Women’s Land Army —voluntary workers —whose origin dates hack only as far as March, 1917. Its members have probably never previously been in the habit of going on the land at all. ’Recently the Kent Women’s Agricultural Committee issued invitations for a demonstration of women’s farm work near Maidstone. Competitors—all women workers —came from Surrey, Sussex, and Hampshire, as well as fromMoeal farms, to the number 'of nearly 200. Competitions started early in the morning, and lasted till nightfall, and the tests included every branch of duty associated with land work —tilling, planting, hoeing, pruning, fruit-spraying, grading and packing' - , milking, thatching, and all the other details connected with ,a healthy and useful country' life. Mr A. D. Hall, F.R.S., secretary to the Board of Agriculture, plainly told those assembled that in a great measure the future of England rests in the hands of the farmer, and the farmer is dependent on the women to enable him to carry on the increased amount of work necessary. At present there are serious difficulties in the mutter

of food supply. It is.not merely a question of the submarine cutting off.numbers of our ships. It is the question of a real deficiency of food all over the Western World, for none of the Allies has in sight the amount of wheat that is expected in norma! years, and the outlook is more serious as there are no reserves to draw upon. We have to trust to a large extent to what each nation produces from its own soil in order to carry on. Every man in France who is tit is fighting, and the farm labour has been carried on by the greybeards and by the women. In England we have to get more, out of the soil than ever before, and woman is the only reserve before the farmer by which it can be done. The farmers of the country did not take the proposition of women labour seriously enough in the early days of the war; many of them turned their faces against the idea of bringing in the women to work on the land, and they did not put themselves out at all to make conditions suitable for women labour; instead, they had continued to go on holding back the men. Fortunately that prejudice had now passed away, and farmers all over the country realise that women can do an honest day’s work. At first the girls who came out from the towns and started duty as farm labourers did not receive the support to which they were entitled by virtue of their courage. But now they have proved their quality all over the country, and the farmers are greatly appreciative of the valuable help they are getting from these town girls, as well as from th local country women, England’s safety in the next two or three years hangs on the farmer; the results he gets will depend on the labour available —women labour —and whether he will make the fullest use of it on his land. Miss Muriel Talbot, formerly secretary of the Victoria League, but now director of the women’s branch of the Food Production Department, under the Board of Agriculture, said eyes had been opened to the capacity of women for doing such work as they have been called upon to do in farming. “We have been up againsl a number of stiff old English prejudices,” said Miss Unlbot, “stiff as the Kentish clay, but we are going to get the better of them all. Women arc going to do still belter work than in the past, and there will be no more room for prejudice of any kind, either on the part of the farmer or of the women. Farmers are going to lind that women’s labour is better a good deal than they thought it was going to be.”