WOMEN ON THE LAND.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 16038, 24 January 1918, Page 5

WOMEN ON THE LAND.

BRITISH EXPERIENCE. BREAKING DOWN PREJUDICE. LONDON, Nov. 30. During tbepast two years, 9000 women have registered themselves as land workers. A proportion of these may be said to have been more or less associated with farm and country life, in' a small way, for years. But then the work they did was chiefly a matter of their environment, a norms! part of their everyday round. Now it is a matter of stern necessity. With them arc associated the members of the Women's Land Army —voluntary workers —whose origin dates back only as far as March, 1917_ Its members have probably never previously been in the habit of going on the land at all.

This week tho Kent Women's Agricultural Committee issued invitations for a demonstration of women’s farm work near Maidstone. Competitors—all women workers—came from Surrey, Sussex, and Hampshire, ns well as from local farms, to the number .of nearly 200. Competitions started early in the morning, and lasted till nightfall,, and the tests included" every branch of duty associated with land work—tilling, planting, hoeing, pruning, fruitwspraymg, grading and packing, milking, thatching, and all the other details connected with a healthy and useful country life. Mr. A. I>. Hall, F.R.S., secretary to tho Bqard of Agriculure, plainly told those assembled that in a great measure tho future of England rests in the hands of the fanners. The country is dependent on the farmer for the food that will bo needed during tiie next few years, and the farmer is dependent on the women to enable him to carry on the increased amount of work necessary. At present there arc- serious difficulties in the matter of food-supply. It-is not merely a question of the submarine cutting off numbers of our ships. It is the question of a real deficiency of food all oyer the western world, for none of the allies has in sight the amount of wheat that is expected in normal years, and the outlook is more serious as there are no reserves to draw' upon. Wo have to trust to a large extent to what each nation produccs\from its own soil in order to carry on. Every man in France who is fit is fighting, and the farm labour has been carried on by tho greybeards and by the women. In England we have to get more out of tho soil than ever before, and woman -.is the only reserve before tho farmer by which it can be done. The farmers of the country did not take tho proposition of woman labour seriously enough ill the early days of the war; many of them turned their faces against the idea of bringing in the women to work on the land M and they did not put themselves out at all to make conditions suitable for women labour ; instead, they had continued to go on holding Back the Inon. Fortunately that "prejudice-had now passed away, and fanners all ever the country realise that women can do an honost clay’s work. ■ At first tho girls who came out from the towns and started duly as farm labourers did not receive the support to which they were entitled by virtue of their courage. But now they have proved their quality all over the country, and the farmers are greatly appreciative of the valuable help they are getting from those town girls, as well as from the local county women. England’s safety in the next two or three years hangs on the farmer; tho rcsults'ho gets will depend on tho labour available —woman labour —and whether he will malic the fullest use of it on his land.

Miss Mcriel Talbot, formerly secretary of the Victoria League, but now director of the .women’s branch of the Food Production. Department under the Board of Agriculture, said eyes had been opened to" tho capacity of women for doing such work as they have been called upon to do in farming. “We have been up against a number of stiff old English prejudices,” said Miss Talbot, “stiff as the Kentish clay, but wo aro going to got the bettor of them all. Women are going to do still better work than in the past, and there must be no more, room for prejudice of any kind, either on tho part of the farmer or of the women. Fanners are going to find that women’s labour is better a°good deal than they thought it was going to'be.”'