Fruits of Victory

Imagine a more controversial Rosie the Rivetera generation older and more outlandish for her time. She was the farmerette of the Womans Land Army of America (WLA), doing a mans job on the home front during World War I. From 1917 to 1920 the WLA sent more than twenty thousand urban women into rural America to take over farm work after the men went off to war and food shortages threatened the nation. These women, from all social and economic strata, lived together in communal camps and did what was considered mens work: plowing fields, driving tractors, planting, harvesting, and hauling lumber. The Land Army was a civilian enterprise organized and financed by women. It insisted on fair labor practices and pay equal to male laborers wages for its workers and taught women not only agricultural skills but also leadership and management techniques. Despite their initial skepticism, farmers became the WLAs loudest champions, and the farmerette was celebrated as an icon of American womens patriotism and pluck. The WLAs short but spirited life foreshadowed some of the most significant social issues of the twentieth century: womens changing roles, the problem of class distinctions in a democracy, and the physiological and psychological differences between men and women. The dramatic story of the WLA is vividly retold here using long-buried archival material, allowing a fascinating chapter of Americas World War I experience to be rediscovered.