Mobilizing Woman-Power

by Harriot Stanton Blatch

But the discipline will not come from the gods. Nor will our government readily turn taskmaster. The effort must come largely as self-discipline, growing into group determination to win the war and the conviction that it is impossible to achieve victory and conserve the virility of our people, if any considerable part of the community devotes its time, energy and money to creating useless things. A nation can make good in this cataclysm only if it centers its whole power on the two objects in view: military victory, and husbanding of life and resources at home.

Let me hasten to add that the act of creating a thing does not include only the processes of industry. The act of buying is creative. The riot of luxury trades in the United States will not end so long as the American woman remains a steady buyer of luxuries. The mobilization of women as workers is no more essential to the triumph of our cause, than the mobilization of women for thrift. The beginning and end of saving in America rests almost entirely in the hands of women. They are the buyers in the working class and in the professional class. Among the wealthy they set the standard of living.

Practically every appeal for thrift has been addressed to the rich. I am not referring to the supply of channels into which to pour savings, but to appeals to make the economies which will furnish the means to buy stamps or bonds. Those appeals are addressed almost wholly to the well-to-do, as for example, suggestions as to reducing courses at dinner or cutting out "that fourth meal."

Self-denial, no doubt, is supposed to be good for the millionaire soul, but to such it is chiefly recommended, I think, as an example sure of imitation. What the rich do, other women will follow, is the idea. But the steady insistence that we fight in this war for democracy has put into the minds of the people very definite demands for independence and for freedom.

In such a democratic world the newly adopted habits of the wealthy will not prove widely convincing. Economy needs other than an aristocratic stimulus.

How can business be "as usual" when in Paris there are about 1800 of these small workshops where a woman dips Bengal Fire and grenades into a bath of paraffin!

I do not mean to under-estimate the value of economy in the well-to-do class. There is no doubt that shop windows on Fifth Avenue are a severe commentary upon our present intelligence and earnestness of purpose. No one, I think, would deny that it would be a service if the woman of fashion ceased to drape fur here, there and everywhere on her gowns except where she might really need the thick pelt to keep her warm, and instead saved the price of the garment which serves no purpose but that of display, and gave the money in Liberty Bonds to buy a fur-lined coat for some soldier, or food for a starving baby abroad. And overburdened as the railways are with freight and ordinary passenger traffic, I am sure the general public will not fail to appreciate to the full a self-denial which leads patrons of private cars, Pullman and dining coaches to abandon their self-indulgence.

Undoubtedly economy among the rich is of value. I presume few would gainsay that it would have been well for America if the use of private automobiles had long since ceased, and the labor and plants used in their making turned to manufacturing much-needed trucks and ambulances. But while not inclined to belittle the work of any possible saving and self-sacrifice on the part of those of wealth, it seems to me that the most fruitful field for war economy lies among simple people. Thrift waits for democratization.

We of limited means hug some of the most extravagant of habits. The average working-class family enjoys none of the fruits of coöperation We keep each to our isolated family group, while the richer a person is the more does she gather under her roof representatives of other families. Her cook may come from the Berri family, the waitress may be an Andersen, the nurse an O'Hara.