Readers Write

Northern Advocate, 19 February 1942, Page 2

Readers Write

We are told we are to have a land girl army. These girls, without any experience, are to have about three

LAND GIRL ARMY

times the pay that girls of the same age without experience

are getting at any other work, and they are not to be allowed to work unless there is one able-bodied man on the farm. Now it seems to me those farms most in need of help is where there is no man, where mothers, sisters and wives are carrying on alone. Beingexperienced farmei's, they do not count with the Government. One wife with three children under school age had to milk 60 cows, I am told. Another man in hospital appealed for help, but was told that his wife, with a month-old baby could milk 40 cows. And so on. There are hundreds of men and women on farms between 60 and 80 years of age carrying on while the boys are away, and there must be hundreds living in retirement with pensions, or independent able-bodied people of the same age who would go back and help, not only on farms, but in factories. The trade unions will not allow men too old for a full day’s work to put in time between them. The unions will not allow this or that. Yet we are at war for our lives, our freedom, or what is left of it. How long is it going to take to wake people up that any day, if alive, we will have to work far longer for a handful of rice, or some such. “FREEDOM FARMER.”