What America did

by Florence Finch Kelly

Business and professional men frequently took their vacations or spent week-ends upon farms, lending a hand in farm labor. Women took up farm work and, as told in “The Work of Women for the War,” a goodly sized army of them aided in the raising of more crops. The home war garden movement swept the country with enthusiasm and in the summer of 1918 planted over 5,000,000 home plots that produced more than $500,000,000 worth of food. In New York City there were in that year 64,000 of these home war gardens, besides the school gardens, the number exceeding even that of the gardens of London. The patriotic, mounting spirit of the people caused the tillage in 1918 of an increase in food producing acreage of 10,700,000 acres, whose produce excelled the value of that of the previous year, itself a record, by $614,000,000.

There was everywhere the greatest eagerness to do anything for the men of the Army and the Navy that would give them help or pleasure. The story of the organized effort for that purpose is told in “Big Brothering the Fighting Forces.” But, in addition, there were numberless movements of smaller scope that enlisted the aid of many people. Hundreds of thousands bought “smileage tickets,” for seats in camp and cantonment theaters, and donated them to welfare organizations for distribution among soldiers and sailors. Many newspapers, clubs and business concerns collected money for the “smokes” of which the Army and the Navy consumed enormous quantities. The support of these tobacco funds enlisted the aid of men, women and children who gave money, organized entertainments, solicited help, did a thousand things to help swell the total. The value of the tobacco, cigars and cigarettes thus contributed for the comfort of our soldiers and sailors amounted to many hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The navy needed binoculars, opera glasses and telescopes, and over 50,000 patriotic Americans sent their instruments. Quantities of musical instruments were donated for use in camps and at sea. The work of collecting and distributing phonographs and records was organized into a system that included the whole country, and machines by the hundred and disks by the thousand were given or loaned to it or bought for it and sent out to camps and hospitals, to troop transports, battleships, cruisers, destroyers and in great quantities to the men overseas. The Over-There Theater League, organized and directed by men prominent in theatrical affairs, included among its members and supporters practically all the theatrical managers and the important people of the stage in the United States, all of whom gave their services for the providing of theatrical entertainment for the men overseas. Moving picture actors and managers contributed services to the Liberty Loan campaigns and other phases of war effort.

Old men and women who were too disabled to do anything else joined the ranks of the knitters and made helmets, sweaters and mufflers, to go with the mountainous stacks of these articles made for the Army and the Navy. Hundreds of ministers, college and university professors and other professional and business men spent in the shipyards, or in munitions factories or on the farms their summer vacations of from two to twelve weeks, while some of them even gave up their positions in order to remain in this most necessary work. Many people owning country homes or estates turned them over to the Government to be used as hospitals or convalescent homes for wounded men. Every community in or near which were camps of any sort opened its homes to the soldiers and sailors and gave them hospitality, friendship, entertainment.

When the Red Cross asked for 5,000 tons of clothing for the destitute in France and Belgium the people gave it 10,000 tons. Successful men of business gave their time, their experience, their best thought and work to the directing of relief organizations. There were many of these, perhaps two score, in addition to the seven most important and every one of them was generously supported. So willing were the people to give that crooks and criminals made rich harvests by collecting money under false pretenses. Many millions of dollars were stolen in this way whose givers believed it was to be used for the benefit of their country’s fighting men. It was estimated by those familiar with the work of the relief organizations that the American people contributed for these several welfare purposes close to $4,000,000,000.

Throughout the war the American people gave whatever was needed for its prosecution, whether themselves, their loved ones, their energy, their labor, their time, their thought or their money, with an ever increasing ardor of patriotism and intensity of purpose. A spendthrift and wasteful nation disciplined itself to the practice of care and economy, and a nation of individualists, jealous of personal rights, acceded willingly to Government interference in private business and Government control of business relations for the sake of the country’s need. Hating war with a profound unanimity of feeling and conviction, the whole people joined hands with an equal depth of conviction and feeling that this war must be pushed through to a victorious conclusion in the quickest possible time.

The spirit of the American soldiers at Belleau Wood and in the Argonne Forest was the same spirit that animated the people at home and it brought the whole nation into a closer union and a more understanding comradeship than it had ever previously known. In the army at the front were three hundred thousand negroes, among the most valiant of its fighters; representatives of fourteen tribes of Indians, as contemptuous of death as any of their forefathers and as devoted to their country as any of their comrades; men of almost every racial strain under the sun, and all of them loyal soldiers of America. And, just as all these troops in uniform were joined together in the democracy of their crusading spirit, so all the people of the nation behind them were joined together in feeling and effort and purpose—the purpose that America should win the war for democracy’s sake, the utmost effort needed to realize that aim, a passionate patriotism that blazed at white heat in every heart.

The occasional rumbles of dissatisfaction that were heard in some of the centers of alien population during the first months of our participation in the war, due chiefly to enemy propaganda of one or another form, soon ceased as better information was spread among them and the country’s cause had no more whole-hearted and self-sacrificing support than was given by those same crowded centers of foreign born people. Thoroughly representative of this rapidly changing spirit and of our foreign-born citizens throughout the land was the East Side of New York City, where German propaganda and disloyal socialism together did their best to create trouble. But the American Army contained no better and more valiant soldiers and none more inspired by the crusading spirit than the thousands of lads from that region, whose unyielding courage, soldierly qualities and loyalty to their comrades in battle won the praise of all who shared with them the dangers of shell fire, gas and machine gun bullets.

And just as fine and staunch in its different way was the patriotism of their families at home, for whom the absence of their men meant much self-sacrifice and even sometimes serious financial troubles. But they proudly hung their service flags in their windows and supported the Government’s war program in every way in their power. Their purchases of thrift and war stamps constantly increased and in the second Liberty Loan campaign they more than doubled their subscription to the first, in the third they multiplied their subscription to the second by sixty and in the fourth they more than trebled their subscription to the third, buying in it $50,000,000 worth of bonds.

It was on the East Side of New York City that the “block party” had its birth—unique fruit of the war and symbolic of the war’s influence upon the people of the nation. For such a party all the people living in a block, or several adjoining blocks, decorated their houses and the street with flags, colored lanterns, ropes of greens, bright fabrics; and on the appointed night everybody swarmed into the street and to the accompaniment of music and cheers speeches were made, a huge service flag, with a star for every man of the block in service, was strung across the street and then all the nations and races represented among them told one another the news they had heard from their soldier and sailor lads, sang patriotic songs and danced on the pavement and sidewalk all the rest of the evening. Soon the block party spread to all parts of the city and established itself even in the exclusive residence districts where men, women and children, janitors and those whom they served, house maids and mistresses, met on the pavements, talked and sang and cheered and danced together as the service flag of their block was swung to its place and floated above them, their bond of union in common devotion to their country.