The most recent development of women’s land work is their employment on timber-felling and bark-stripping; and though this is a completely new industry for women, and has not so far been taken up on a general scale, the results of the first experiments are full of promise. Timber work has been started in Devonshire under the energetic auspices of Miss Calmady Hamlyn, the inspecting officer for the Western District of England under the Board of Agriculture. An expert woodman instructor, after watching some of the novices at work, pronounced that in barking these women already excel men, and in tree-felling they will certainly equal them.
Many of the village women whose husbands are serving have wisely taken up land work as being the best antidote to worry. From Devonshire comes the story of a soldier ordered to the front, who gave his wife the parting counsel: “My dear, you go up and work on that old field to-morrow; it will help you more than anything.” Mrs. Hockin went, and worked indomitably at any job in all weathers, and is proud that she can earn a man’s day-wage at piece-work. “Why I am a war worker is because I felt it was my duty to do my bit,” Mrs. Hockin writes. “I am a married woman with three children. My husband has joined the Army, and I have done my best to help my country. As I live in the country, there is nothing for me to do but to work on the land, which I have done for nearly two years.... I have worked on the farm doing various kinds of work, such as weeding corn, hoeing turnips, spreading manure over the fields, turning up ground, picking in apples, wheeling away coke, helping in the harvest-fields, both hay and corn, and, by what our employers have told our instructor, we have given them every satisfaction.” Mrs. Hockin has recently taken up the new timber-felling work, and is now leader of a gang of woodwomen. Though she is new to the work, Mrs. Hockin is able to fell trees at the rate of thirty in half a day, and she states that she does not find the work unduly fatiguing, though “a bit windy.”
An agricultural demonstration by women, held recently in Surrey under the auspices of the Board of Agriculture, provided striking examples of the excellence of women’s agricultural work. A hundred and twenty women took part, the majority of whom have started the work since the war. They entered for competitions in ploughing, harrowing, milking, management of calves and horses, hoeing corn, hand weeding, etc. In spite of the difficulties occasioned by bad weather, and having to work with strange animals under unfamiliar conditions, the women succeeded in making a deep impression on the farmers who came to watch their efforts. The sensation of the afternoon was caused in the milking competition, when the first prize was won by Miss M. Soutar, aged 10½, who obtained a total of ninety-five points out of a possible hundred. Experimental demonstrations of this kind will do much to solve one of the greatest difficulties in the employment of women, namely, the conversion of the farmers; but most of those who have given the women a chance have not had cause to regret it.
When the farmers recognise the motive behind the women’s work, and are willing not only to employ them but to treat them generously, it is certain that both farmers and women, working together under the same influence of patriotism, are bound to achieve results of which both may be proud.
THE DAY’S LAST LOAD OF TIMBER
Alfieri
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V
DR. ELSIE INGLIS