Women unsung heroes of agriculture

(U. S. Department of Agriculture)

     Women are agricultures unsung heroes. Historians have largely ignored their contributions -- probably because plowing a field, slopping hogs, churning butter, making soap, emptying chamber pots and washing work clothes don't seem like great achievements.
     Neverless, their willingness to do tiresome but necessary chores has kept many a farm business from going under.
     Farmwomen worked especially hard in pioneer days. One account of life in Dutch New Netherlands (now New York) circa 1625 tells of the men spending their time hunting, while the women were left to tend the farm and do housework, not to mention caring for the children.
     More than two centuries later, most farmwomen were still doing more work than their husbands. An 1862 report from the newly-formed United Stated Department of Agriculture (USDA) said that on three out of four farms "the wife works harder, endures more, than any other on the place."
     Unfortunately, the report offered no solution to the farmwoman's lot. The author simply said that husbands could and should remedy this situation, and that a mother "should train her daughters for marriage and her sons in giving their wives proper treatment."
     Although most early women settlers labored on small farms with their spouses, some Southern women managed huge plantations, especially during the Civil War when many fathers and husbands went off to battle.
     Without their men, farmwomen in both the North and the South returned to the fields -- running mowers, reapers, rakes, drills and plows -- caring for livestock, milking cows and making butter and cheese. These women literally fed both armies.

Women's role in the Grange

     After the Civil War, a number of farmers' organizations were formed in which women played an active role. The National Grange, born in 1867, realized the importance of the family unit. Women held several offices during the Grange's early years. Members such as Mary Anne Bryant Mayo of Michigan lectured and urged other women to get involved in social and educational activities.
     In 1892 the Grange voted to give Caroline Hall equal status with the seven male founders of the organization.
      Another leader in American agriculture was Mary Elizabeth Lease, who became associated with the Farmers' Alliance movement. Admitted to the bar in 1885, she developed a gift of oratory that she used in support of Union Labor candidates during the 1888 campaign.
     Two years later she made 160 speeches for the Union Labor Party, including the famous: "What you farmers need to do is to raise less corn and more hell."
     Called the "Patrick Henry in Petticoats," Mrs. Lease was well received in the midwestern states, sometimes making as many as eight speeches a day.

Joining the lecture circuit

     A number of women became adept public speakers, through their affiliation with the National Grange and other farmers' institutes organized by agricultural societies, state boards of agriculture, state colleges of agriculture and experiment stations.
     Women participated in the formative meetings of the American Association of Farmers' Institute Workers, begun in 1895. However, once the organization was on its feet, the men voted -- against strong opposition from the women -- that the women must have separate meetings.
     A committee was set up to work on women's institutes. But due to stiff competition for the Homemakers Association, canning clubs and extension home demonstration agents, the institutes were disbanded during World War I.

Government becomes concerned

     Various organizations at the turn of the century were concerned with upgrading rural life, food production, and nutrition, but not until 1908 did the Federal Government get into the act...to the betterment of women. President Theodore Roosevelt appointed the Country Life Commission. The report of the Commission in 1909 discussed women's work on the farm and concluded that "relief to farmwomen must come through a general elevation of country life."
     The role of women in agriculture continued to be a topic of discussion and study. A survey taken about 1912 showed that few farmwomen enjoyed modern conveniences in their homes. Only 57 percent had oil stoves; 15 percent had furnaces; 33 percent, hand operated washing machines; 10 percent, washmachines run by engines; and only 11 percent had drinking water in the house. The survey also found that women were working in the fields, doing some of the most backbreaking chores.
     Another survey, reported by Secretary David Houston of USA in 1913, showed that women wanted labor saving appliances, assistance in home management, and a women's bureau. They complained of isolation and loneliness. Some of their grievances were answered by the Smith-Lever Act of 1914, which for the first time made extension work an official institution.

Farmwomen to the rescue

     The entrance of the U.S. into World War I drained manpower from the farm, and once again, women filled the void. The Food Production Act of 1917 employed 600 women as emergency extension agents. The next year the number had risen to 1,724 home demonstration workers and 762 boys' and girls' club workers.
     Young women from towns and cities joined the Farmettes - a joint venture of the USDA and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration - and canned and dried food and worked in commercial processing plants.
     Mary Pennington came to USDA to head the Food Research Lab in 1908.

USDA representative

     Later that year, despite protests within the department over the selection of a woman, she was designated USDA's representative to the first International Congress of Refrigerating Industries in Paris.
     Dr. Pennington's work in sanitation and refrigeration led to revolutionary changes in the egg and poultry industries.
     In 1940, she received the Francis Garvan gold medal, awarded to American women for distinguished service in chemistry.
     Secretary Henry C. Wallace was instrumental in recruiting the first and only woman to head a major USDA research agency. In 1922 he announced his intention to expand the department to include a new bureau of home economics to be led by a woman. Louise Stanley, head of the Home Economics Division of the University of Missouri, was elected.
     Probably the most significant of these efforts was a landmark nutrition study conducted in the late 1920s and early 1930s to determine scientifically what makes up a well-balanced diet for humans at different levels of expenditure.
     During 1943-45 more than a million women were recruited for seasonal work, and over 32,000 for the year round, primarily on dairy and poultry farms. Women also worked in processing plants - canning, freezing and drying foods.
     The major changes in American agriculture during World War II and the postwar years greatly affected the life of farmwomen. Most homes now have running water, central heating, electricity, telephone, radio, television, freezers and other labor-saving appliances.
     Because of the trend toward large-scale, specialized farming, fewer farms keep a large garden, a cow for butter and milk and a few chickens for eggs. Thus, these chores have been largely eliminated from the farmwoman's daily routine.
     Nonetheless, farmwomen still do their share. Besides housework, they can and freeze foods, sometimes run tractors during planting and harvest time and often do the paperwork that keeps the farm running.

Extracted from the Eau Claire Leader Telegram
Special Publication, Our Story 'The Chippewa Valley and Beyond', published 1976
Used with permission.