By the end of September, 1918, women were working in munition plants of many kinds, making shells, grenade belts, fuses, gas masks, metal parts of rifles, revolvers and machine guns, and many other sorts of the direct supplies of war. Accurate statistics of their numbers made in the early summer of 1918 showed that about 1,500,000 women were engaged in the industrial work directly or indirectly connected with the Government’s war program, while subsequent estimates added about 500,000 to that number to cover those entering such work down to the signing of the armistice.
Woman’s Land Army Members Sorting and Grading Potatoes
By Permission of Woman’s Land Army
Training Camp of Woman’s Land Army
The former report, covering the conditions at the end of our first year of war, showed 100,000 women working in private munition plants and Government owned arsenals, another 100,000 in trades necessary for the prosecution of the war, such as work in airplane factories, in chemical plants, in those making electrical appliances and in metal trades making bolts, screws and other small parts necessary for the building of many war essentials. More than 600,000 women were engaged in the manufacture of things necessary for the soldier’s equipment and 800,000 more in industries necessary to feed and clothe him. All these numbers were greatly augmented during the seven following months until the close of the war.
Training classes and entering schools were established in scores of plants for the training of unskilled women workers. Practically all the employers of women bore testimony to the efficiency with which they worked. In order to protect their welfare the United States Department of Labor organized a Woman in Industry Service which, by means of a council of representatives from all the Federal agencies for the prosecution of the war in which women were employed, established standards and policies for the controlling of wages and industrial conditions in plants employing women.
More than 100,000 women entered the service of the Railroad Administration, where they undertook capably many forms of unskilled labor and held many varieties of positions requiring knowledge and experience, from bookkeeping to office superintendency, while many thousands more filled places left vacant by men on surface, elevated and subway car lines.
It is impossible even to estimate the number of women who engaged in the production of food for the purpose of aiding the war. They cultivated war gardens from end to end of the country; in the South young women of social station, because of the lack of the usual labor, helped to gather cotton and other crops; in the Northwest women volunteered their help in the harvesting season and in some localities they formed half or more of the workers who shocked the grain in the fields; in other regions they picked berries and gathered fruit; they went from cities and towns to country districts to help the farmers’ wives; they took an active part, individually and through clubs, in the increase of poultry, hog and dairy production; in state after state they registered for farm work; and they organized the Woman’s Land Army which gave much and efficient aid in many parts of the country.