Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: The Woman’s Hour
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S): Weiss, Elaine F.
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://elaineweiss.com/
CITY: Baltimore
STATE: MD
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2008065591
Descriptive conventions:
rda
Personal name heading:
Weiss, Elaine F., 1952-
Birth date: 19520528
Found in: Weiss, Elaine F. Fruits of victory, 2009: ECIP t.p. (Elaine
F. Weiss)
E-mail message from publisher, 09-25-08: (Elaine F. Weiss;
b. May 28, 1952, this is her first book)
The great fight to win the vote, 2018: eCIP t.p. (Elaine
Weiss) data view screen (award-winning journalist and
writer whose work has appeared in The Atlantic,
Harper's, The New York Times, and The Christian Science
Monitor, as well as in reports and documentaries for
National Public Radio and Voice of America)
================================================================================
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS AUTHORITIES
Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave., SE
Washington, DC 20540
Questions? Contact: ils@loc.gov
PERSONAL
Born May 28, 1952; married Julian Krolik (a professor).
EDUCATION:Medill School of Journalism of Northwestern University, graduate.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Journalist, congressional aide, speechwriter, magazine editor, and university journalism instructor. Christian Science Monitor, correspondent.
AWARDS:Society of Professional Journalists recognition; Pushcart Prize “Editor’s Choice” award; MacDowell Colony Fellow.
WRITINGS
Contributor of articles to periodicals, including the Atlantic, Harper’s, New York Times, and Christian Science Monitor.
SIDELIGHTS
Elaine F. Weiss is an award-winning journalist who has written documentaries for National Public Radio and Voice of America, as well as news and nonfiction articles for magazines such as the Atlantic, Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, New York Times, and Harper’s. She was awarded recognition from the Society of Professional Journalists, received a Pushcart Prize “Editor’s Choice” award, and is a MacDowell Colony Fellow. Weiss holds a degree from the Medill School of Journalism of Northwestern University. She has held such jobs as congressional aide, speechwriter, magazine editor, and university journalism instructor
Fruits of Victory
Weiss’s first book was the 2008 Fruits of Victory: The Woman’s Land Army in the Great War, which was reprinted in 2015. The book chronicles the Woman’s Land Army (WLA) movement in which urban women left their kitchens to work in the fields on farms during World War I. More than 20,000 women helped stave off food shortages in American when the men were sent to fight in Europe. The so-called farmerettes did traditional “men’s work” plowing fields, driving tractors, and hauling lumber. Initially derided, they eventually received praise from shorthanded farmers. The women, many of whom had protested for women’s suffrage, demanded and received an eight-hour work day and equal pay as the men. The experience provided women the basis for working outside the home and contributing during World War II. For a book intended for scholarly readers and history buffs, Library Journal reviewer Patti C. McCall noted: “Weiss effectively chronicles the birth of the WLA movement and the dedicated women behind it.”
A report in Reference & Research Book News explains how Weiss used various archival materials such as newspaper accounts, photos, and information from Britain’s WLA to trace women’s political and social movements, urban and rural reform, work management, and labor rights. In an interview with Liane Hansen online at NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday, Weiss noted that “A lot of the women came from different socioeconomic groups, different ethnicities—not different race. That was just a taboo that couldn’t be breached.” Weiss also explained how the men on the farms, skeptical at first, came to appreciate the work of the women: “The farmers began to realize that the women were very conscientious and really could do all of the work that men could do, even the heavy labor, partly because they were able to use tractors.”
The Woman’s Hour
Weiss next published The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote in 2018. Weiss focuses on the all or nothing vote by the state of Tennessee in August 1920 to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution to allow women to vote. After seventy years fighting for women’s suffrage, women needed one more state to vote yes. But there were many opposed to women voting: politicians, liquor companies, railroad executives, racists who did not want black women to vote, and some women themselves who believed voting would lead women into moral corruption. However, on the side of right were strong champions like Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, Frederick Douglass, and Eleanor Roosevelt. The amendment was finally ratified due to a single vote in the Tennessee state legislature.
The women’s vote was only a matter of time, Weiss explained to Wendy Smith in an interview at Publishers Weekly: “Congressmen and state legislators who may not have been truly in favor of women’s suffrage were convinced that the train was leaving the station—that’s what the [suffragettes] were saying.” Smith commented that Weiss “has written a historical narrative with the furious urgency of a thriller.” In Kirkus Reviews, a writer observed that while we all know the historical results, “Weiss expertly builds the suspense, and the closeness of the eventual vote by the Tennessee legislature adds to the drama.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, December 1, 2017, review of The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote.
Library Journal, April 1, 2009, Patti C. McCall, review of Fruits of Victory: The Woman’s Land Army of America in the Great War, p. 87.
Publishers Weekly, December 11, 2017, Wendy Smith, “Score One for Women,” author interview, p. 140.
Reference & Research Book News, August 2009, review of Fruits of Victory.
ONLINE
Elaine Weiss Website, http://elaineweiss.com (April 1, 2018), author profile.
Weekend Edition Sunday, http://www.npr.org/ (April 10, 2018), Liane Hansen, “How The Women’s Land Army Fed America,” author interview.
Journalist. Author:The Woman's Hour:The Great Fight to Win the Vote (Viking/Penguin--March'18). Medill grad. MacDowell Fellow. Worried.
Baltimore, MD
Elaine Weiss is an award-winning journalist and writer. Her magazine feature writing has been recognized with prizes from the Society of Professional Journalists, and her by-line has appeared in The Atlantic, Harper’s, New York Times, Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, as well as reports and documentaries for National Public Radio and Voice of America. She has been a frequent correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor.
Her long-form writing garnered a Pushcart Prize “Editor’s Choice” award, and she is a proud MacDowell Colony Fellow. Her first book, Fruits of Victory:The Woman’s Land Army in the Great War was excerpted in Smithsonian Magazine online and featured on C-Span and public radio stations nationwide.
Elaine holds a graduate degree from the Medill School of Journalism of Northwestern University. She has worked as a Washington correspondent, congressional aide and speechwriter, magazine editor, and university journalism instructor.
Elaine lives in Baltimore, Maryland with her husband, Julian Krolik, a professor of astrophysics at Johns Hopkins University; they have two grown children. When not working at her desk, she can be found paddling her kayak on the Chesapeake Bay. And she votes in every election.
In 'The Woman’s Hour,' Elaine Weiss dissects battle for women’s right to vote
Lyda Phillips and Chapter16.org, Special to the Knoxville News Sentinel, USA TODAY NETWORK - Tennessee Published 8:00 a.m. ET March 4, 2018 | Updated 4:00 p.m. ET March 4, 2018
Women read phrases from articles before the 1920's on why they shouldn't have the right to vote. Nikita Mandhani
636554375414894231-Cover-THE-WOMAN-S-HOUR.jpg
(Photo: Submitted)
CONNECTTWEETLINKEDINCOMMENTEMAILMORE
The long march toward voting rights for women began as early as the 1820s, but it wasn’t formalized as a political goal until 1848 when Elizabeth Cady Stanton read her “Declaration of Sentiments” at the Seneca Falls Convention held in Seneca Falls, New York.
In "The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote," Elaine Weiss chronicles the history of that battle beginning with its early days, when Stanton and Susan B. Anthony joined forces, continuing through the Nineteenth Amendment’s introduction in 1878 and its passage in 1918, and finally to a 1920 showdown over ratification in Tennessee.
Weiss will discuss "The Woman’s Hour" at the East Tennessee History Center in Knoxville on March 8 at 7 p.m.
Elaine Weiss will discuss The Woman’s Hour at the East
Elaine Weiss will discuss The Woman’s Hour at the East Tennessee History Center in Knoxville on March 8 at 7 p.m. (Photo: Photo by Nina-Subin)
The amendment reads, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."
By August 1920, 35 states had ratified the amendment. Tennessee was poised to put the amendment over the top — giving women the right to vote in every state, in every election from dogcatcher to president — or stop the suffrage movement in its tracks. After three tied votes, the decision teetered on the shoulders of Harry Burn, a young man who wore the red rose of opposition in his lapel but who carried a pro-suffrage letter from his mother in his coat pocket.
Weiss tells much of this story through the machinations of three powerful women who converged with their attendant forces on the Hermitage Hotel in Nashville: Carrie Catt, the steely-eyed head of the National American Woman Suffrage Association; Sue Shelton White, a firebrand leader in the newer, more radical National Women’s Party; and Josephine Pearson, a passionate “Anti” from Monteagle, Tennessee.
Catt “was a firm believer in evolution, in both biological and social realms; her faith in it kept her optimistic, confident of progress,” writes Weiss. “For Carrie Catt, woman suffrage was not simply a political goal; It was nothing less than the next logical step in the moral evolution of humankind.”
Sue White, a native Tennessean, had begun her career with Catt’s army of suffragettes but had become impatient with its slow-but-steady strategy. White threw her lot in with the more confrontational National Women’s Party and proudly wore a “prison pin” on her blouse, a recognition that she had been arrested and jailed for the cause. Weiss explores the gradual schism that developed between the Catt wing of the movement and more radical women like White.
The anti-suffrage Pearson, by contrast, was a passionate defender of “the spirit of the woman of the Old South” and viewed suffragettes as “modern Eve [asking] for the forbidden fruit that may give out its deadly poison in the possible disruption of home.”
Weiss subjects the “Antis” to the same scrutiny she trained on the pro-suffrage movement, from Pearson in Nashville to such prominent national figures as Ida Tarbell, the muckraking journalist.
“Men and women are widely apart in functions and possibilities,” Tarbell wrote. “They cannot be made equal by exterior devices like trousers, ballots, the study of Greek.”
The Antis offered displays of blatant racism, flying the Confederate battle flag at their rallies and warning of dire consequences to “Anglo-Saxon values” if “Negro women” were allowed to vote.
“This well-researched and well-documented history reveals how prosuffragists sometimes compromised racial equality to win white women’s enfranchisement, and that, although the 19th Amendment was ratified, there exists to this day an ongoing battle to effect universal, unrestricted suffrage,” Library Journal writes of "The Woman’s Hour."
This timely exploration of the history of American gender politics reverberates during the present debate over female equality in all aspects of life and reminds us of how long and complex that struggle has been.
SCORE ONE FOR WOMEN: Elaine Weiss's new book, The Woman's Hour, puts excitement into the suffragettes' fight to win the vote
Wendy Smith
Publishers Weekly. 264.51 (Dec. 11, 2017): p140+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
One of Elaine Weiss's most remarkable achievements in her new book, The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote (Viking, Mar. 2018), is that she has written a historical narrative with the furious urgency of a thriller. Even readers well versed in American history will likely be surprised to learn that the ratification of the 19th Amendment came down to a single vote in the Tennessee state legislature in the summer of 1920. Tennessee was the 36th state to ratify the amendment, giving it the three-fourths total necessary to become law. Had one more representative voted no, women might have had to wait decades longer to get the right to vote.
"The suffs sensed that the pendulum was swinging," Weiss explains, using the contemporary nickname for suffragists (their opponents were called antis). In the months before the Tennessee vote, ratification had stalled with a high-profile defeat in Delaware and more predictable losses in Deep South states. "They knew that if they didn't get it now it might have been delayed quite a bit. Women didn't get the vote in Switzerland until 1971."
Weiss's vivid account shows the suffs twisting arms, dangling favors, and making compromises like true politicians. "These women had to learn to pull the levers of power," she says. "They were stymied in Congress for 40 years; woman suffrage was introduced every year for 40 years. They had to learn how to chip away so an idea that seemed totally impossible would come to seem inevitable. Toward the end, that's what they were able to do. Congressmen and state legislators who may not have been truly in favor of women's suffrage were convinced that the train was leaving the station--that's what the suffs were saying."
The loss in Tennessee was not the end for the antis, Weiss notes. "After 1920, the antis get stronger and move on to issues we see hinted at in Tennessee--they become rabid anticommunists, superpatriots, against immigration, against public health; they are against a maternal health bill that comes up in Congress shortly after 1920 because it's big government. These themes of big government and states' rights are voiced today. I'm not sure it's possible to connect the dots all the way to Phyllis Schlafly [the constitutional lawyer and conservative activist], but there is a legacy of socially and politically conservative women who still wield power."
Anti leader Josephine Pearson, mainstream suff Carrie Chapman Catt, and the more militant Sue White are the book's main characters. "It was just one of those gifts to writers," Weiss comments. "I was reading the local Tennessee press, and I saw that these three arrived in Nashville on the same day from different parts of the country, and that they represented different sides of the argument. They allowed me to explore the tensions in Nashville and the larger questions of suffrage and anti-suffrage."
Contemporary newspapers were among Weiss's most important sources. "This was a time when newspapers reported everything," she says, with professional appreciation; she is herself a veteran journalist. "That was also a great gift, because they would report conversations, what the reporter heard in the hallways, and the floor debate over ratification. For me, this was like interviewing; I had the quotations that really give you character, it's just that my sources were dead. Journalism is the first draft of history, and I had a great opportunity to write the second draft."
Suffragist archives in Tennessee and the Library of Congress also helped Weiss bring that second draft to life. "I had receipts, telegrams, letters, handwritten notes that gave me a sense of what was going on day by day," she says. "I wanted readers to understand what these people were like, because change isn't done in a vacuum by anonymous people; it's done by flawed human beings. These people weren't automatons acting out roles; they were scared, they were hot, they were vain. It didn't make it into the final draft, but Carrie Catt wrote to her secretary, 'If sweat could do it, I would come home thin!' "
Editor Wendy Wolf blue-penciled that comment, along with some other details Weiss regrets losing, even though she acknowledges the necessity. "Wendy's favorite marginal comment was, 'We need to move on,' " Weiss says, laughing. "I am so fortunate to have her. And I can't say enough about my agent, Dorian Karchmar at William Morris Endeavor: smart, passionate, an excellent writer herself. Dorian has a very discerning eye--a very clear idea of how she wants something developed. We worked for over a year on this proposal; she pushed me and pushed me. She kept bringing it back and saying, 'Let's sharpen this, let's deepen this.' The final proposal was something like 90 pages: two sample chapters and a complete chapter breakdown, with character analysis and an overview of themes; basically, I had to know the whole book and how I was going to tell it. My friends would say, 'You're still writing this proposal?' But Dorian knew exactly what she was doing, and I trusted her judgment completely. When it was ready, it was like that"--Weiss snaps her fingers. "Twelve publishers were interested. Nobody wanted my first book, and now people were explaining to me why they should publish this."
Weiss's first book-length effort, an oral history of an elderly female storyteller, remains unpublished. "It won a Pushcart Prize for a neglected manuscript--but not a contract," she remembers ruefully. "But one of the stories she told was about coming from Massachusetts to Vermont as a young woman to join the Woman's Land Army."
That stray detail eventually led to Fruits of Victory: The Woman's Land Army in the Great War, a history of the "farmerettes," who, during World War I, worked on America's farms in place of the men serving overseas. Weiss speaks highly of her editor on that project, Elizabeth Demers, whose commitment to the manuscript survived several job changes. "Elizabeth bought that book three times! She signed me at the University of Nebraska Press, which does wonderful crossover books, and just as I was handing in the manuscript, she said, 'I'm leaving.' I followed her because she loved that book and knew that book."
Finally published in 2008 by Potomac Books, Fruits of Victory remains in print, and Weiss still gets occasional invitations to speak about this neglected byway of history. But she's glad to be at Viking with Wolf this time around. "Dorian wanted Wendy to get the book," Weiss says. "They'd worked together before, and she said, 'Wendy's going to be tough and she's going to get the best out of you,' and she absolutely did. Wendy is wonderful, she has this wry sense of humor, and she's very detail oriented and supportive. She and Dorian continue to be deeply involved in all aspects of The Woman's Hour. We feel like we're the suffs here: we have this cause and this story, and we're going to tell it."
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Smith, Wendy. "SCORE ONE FOR WOMEN: Elaine Weiss's new book, The Woman's Hour, puts excitement into the suffragettes' fight to win the vote." Publishers Weekly, 11 Dec. 2017, p. 140+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A521875899/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=f7366bd9. Accessed 4 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A521875899
Weiss, Elaine: THE WOMAN'S HOUR
Kirkus Reviews. (Dec. 1, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Weiss, Elaine THE WOMAN'S HOUR Viking (Adult Nonfiction) $28.00 3, 6 ISBN: 978-0-525-42972-2
A history of the political battle in Tennessee in 1920 over the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The approval by the Tennessee legislature would meet the requisite number of states to provide women the vote in all elections. The efforts by women--and plenty of men--to secure universal suffrage date back to the beginning of the Republic, and journalist Weiss (Fruits of Victory: The Woman's Land Army of America in the Great War, 2008) weaves useful historical context throughout the book. But the tight focus on a few weeks in Nashville makes for a compelling narrative, marred only by an overabundance of detail about the many battles between the suffragists and their opponents. What strengthens the narrative are the author's minibiographies of primary characters in this "furious campaign"--Carrie Chapman Catt ("it was [her] job--more precisely, her life's mission--to guide American women to the promised land of political freedom"), Alice Paul, Josephine Pearson, and Presidents Warren G. Harding and Woodrow Wilson--as well as of the less-well-known players (mostly Tennessee politicians and lobbyists). Pearson is the most visible of the women who opposed suffrage, believing that it posed a danger "to the American family, white supremacy, states' rights, and cherished southern traditions." Perhaps the most famous of the anti-suffragists was muckraking journalist Ida Tarbell, whom Weiss chronicles briefly. The author clearly explains how the opposition by women--a stance that will surprise some modern readers--derived partly from their desire to be sheltered from politics, partly from the negative influence of men in their lives, and partly from racism (providing ballots to white women would open the floodgates of black women voters).
Although the outcome of the Tennessee drama is obvious--after all, we all know the amendment was ratified--Weiss expertly builds the suspense, and the closeness of the eventual vote by the Tennessee legislature adds to the drama.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Weiss, Elaine: THE WOMAN'S HOUR." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Dec. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A516024517/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=5f3d9bdc. Accessed 4 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A516024517
The Woman's Hour: The Last Furious Fight to Win the Vote
Publishers Weekly. 264.45 (Nov. 6, 2017): p70.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* The Woman's Hour: The Last
Furious Fight to Win the Vote
Elaine Weiss. Viking, $28 (416p) ISBN 978-0-525-42972-2
Despite the story's foregone conclusion, historian Weiss (Fruits of Victory) orchestrates a page-turning reconstruction of the last push to ratify the 19th Amendment in Tennessee in 1920. The drama reaches hair-raising heights in the last half of the book as support for the so-called "suffs" falls away under pressure from corporate lobbyists, outraged "antis," and Tennessee's unique state constitution. Weiss nimbly organizes a large ensemble of suffragettes, protesters, and politicians, and she smoothly punctuates her scenes of high-stakes action with history of the recent world war and the 70-year battle for legalizing votes for women. Weiss doesn't flinch from depicting the political machinations on all sides. If suffragette leaders Carrie Catt of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and Sue White of Alice Paul's Women's Party get more attention than Josephine Pearson and the antis, it is perhaps because the anti tactics of bribes, threats, intimidation, ruses, liquor, and relentless appeals to racism are less moving than the suffs' pleas for real democracy. Readers will find in the political landscape of 1920 features familiar today: corporate shaping of legislation, bitter partisanship, and the intense effort by some groups to obstruct what looks from most angles like simple justice. Weiss's remarkably entertaining work of scholarship provides a thorough and timely examination of a shining moment in the ongoing fight to achieve a more perfect union. Photos. (Mar.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Woman's Hour: The Last Furious Fight to Win the Vote." Publishers Weekly, 6 Nov. 2017, p. 70. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A514056634/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=40ad97ca. Accessed 4 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A514056634
Weiss, Elaine F.: Fruits of Victory: The Woman's Land Army of America in the Great War
Patti C. McCall
Library Journal. 134.6 (Apr. 1, 2009): p87+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2009 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Weiss, Elaine F. Fruits of Victory: The Woman's Land Army of America in the Great War. Potomac. 2008. c.400p. photogs. bibliog. index. ISBN 978-1-59797-273-4. $29.95. HIST
Weiss, who has written for such publications as the New York Times and Harper's, chronicles the largely forgotten history of the Woman's Land Army (WLA), a group of women in the United States who left their homes and college dorms in droves to volunteer when American involvement in World War I called young men from the fields to the trenches of Europe. Weiss shows how these "farmerettes" faced an uphill battle, as they were often met with disdain by shorthanded farmers and Washington politicians who did not feel the situation was dire enough to warrant hiring women to do men's work. WLA architects, many of whom earned their stripes in the suffrage movement, developed a blueprint for managing a group anywhere in the United States, and they were able to secure wages--and an eight-hour workday--equal to their male counterparts. The group was disbanded after the war, but the farmerettes helped pave the way for women working during World War II. Weiss effectively chronicles the birth of the WLA movement and the dedicated women behind it. Recommended for both scholarly readers and interested history buffs.--Patti C. McCall, Albany Molecular Research, Inc., NY
McCall, Patti C.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
McCall, Patti C. "Weiss, Elaine F.: Fruits of Victory: The Woman's Land Army of America in the Great War." Library Journal, 1 Apr. 2009, p. 87+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A197926617/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=5ddbe37e. Accessed 4 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A197926617
Fruits of victory; the Woman's Land Army of America in the Great War
Reference & Research Book News. 24.3 (Aug. 2009):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2009 Ringgold, Inc.
http://www.ringgold.com/
Full Text:
9781597972734
Fruits of victory; the Woman's Land Army of America in the Great War.
Weiss, Elaine F.
Potomac Books, Inc.
2008
315 pages
$29.95
Hardcover
D639
Weiss, a journalist, tells the story of the women who served in the Woman's Land Army of America during World War I, known as farmerettes, who took over farm work in the rural parts of the country after men were called to fight in the war. Using archival materials, newspaper accounts, and photos, she traces the roots of this volunteer corps to political and social movements such as the Women's Land Army of Great Britain, suffrage, urban and rural reform, scientific work management, and labor rights, and brings their forgotten history to light. She also describes specific work in California, Maryland, Connecticut, Illinois, New England, New Jersey, Georgia, and other states. Distributed by Books International.
([c]2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Fruits of victory; the Woman's Land Army of America in the Great War." Reference & Research Book News, Aug. 2009. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A205549124/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=81f689d5. Accessed 4 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A205549124
How The Women's Land Army Fed America
Weekend Edition Sunday. 2009.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2009 National Public Radio, Inc. (NPR). All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions page at www.npr.org for further information. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.
http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=10
Full Text:
To listen to this broadcast, click here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101595078
LIANE HANSEN, host:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Liane Hansen.
Coming up, a young woman's story of her childhood in Sierra Leone.
Ms. BAINDU GEORGE(ph): (Through translator) They are using shovels, using shakers, look out for diamonds.
HANSEN: That was Baindu George talking through a translator nine years ago about her experience as a diamond slave in Sierra Leone. She's a teenager in the United States today. Her story in a few moments.
First, the story of some forgotten American women and what they did for their country during the first World War. When U.S. servicemen were called to fight over there, the women stepped in to feed the population here. The farmerettes were members of the Women's Land Army of America.
Elaine Weiss will deliver a lecture at the Library of Congress about the army. She's a journalist and the author of the book, "Fruits of Victory: The Women's Land Army of America in the Great War." And Elaine Weiss is in NPR's New York bureau. Welcome to the program.
Ms. ELAINE WEISS (Author, "Fruits of Victory: The Women's Land Army of America in the Great War"): Thank you, Liane.
HANSEN: So, I've never heard of them. Who were these farmerettes of the Women's Land Army in World War I?
Ms. WEISS: Well, the farmerettes were just an enormous organization of women who mobilized themselves to serve the nation during war on the nation's farms. So the men were called off to war and there was a lot of fearfulness about food shortages and high prices. And the farmers needed labor and the women said, we'll do it.
And they organized themselves all over the country in 25 states and sent more than 20,000 women in uniform and living in communal camps to take over the work of the men.
HANSEN: Were they accepted by the farmers?
Ms. WEISS: Not at first. They really - very skeptical. Women, of course, had always worked on farms, but they'd never been paid to work on farms. And these women demanded an eight-hour day, and they demanded to be paid the same rate of pay as men, which was a rather audacious demand. And they did prove themselves in the field.
And after a very short while - and this happened in every community and every state all across the nation - the farmers began to realize that the women were very conscientious and really could do all of the work that men could do, even the heavy labor, partly because they were able to use tractors.
HANSEN: They even had, kind of, camp songs that they would sing?
Ms. WEISS: Yes, they did. A lot of the women came from different socioeconomic groups, different ethnicities - not different race. That was just a taboo that couldn't be breached. But they did live in these camps in very close quarters. Sometimes they'd be living in an abandoned house sometimes, in a barn sometimes, in tents, and they would sing.
They'd sing in the fields. They'd sing in the evening. Sometimes a song would be written for a recruitment campaign. So there were some really very neat songs to popular tunes of the day.
HANSEN: There is the Land Army song - this seems to be the big song, and it's to the tune of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic." If you like, please, you can read some of the lyrics, but...
Ms. WEISS: I could try.
HANSEN: Go ahead.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. WEISS: This was a favorite -- this was actually written by the Southern California Land Army organizer. A woman named Myrtle Shepherd Frances, who was very big in suffrage and civic reform movement there, and she wrote this.
Ms. WEISS: (Singing) Our mother earth has called us for the nations we must feed. We have rallied to her standard to produce our greatest need. We will labor on her bosom and achieve that worthy deed as we go marching on.
Ms. WEISS: I'll cut the hallelujah.
Ms. WEISS: (Singing) We are told by Herbert Hoover that the war by food is won. So, we're laboring at production from the dawn til set of sun. We have donned the khaki uniform to fight the might hun. And we go working on.
HANSEN: Oh my. My, and it does go on.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. WEISS: It does go on.
HANSEN: You know, they will help to win this with the Kaiser win this wicked war with hoe, and rake and spade.
Ms. WEISS: Yes, they did.
(Soundbite of laughter)
HANSEN: This was 1918 when the Women's Land Army was at full force. Some of the leaders were actually involved in the suffrage movement, in some of the other labor and progressive movements. Was there a connection between the Women's Land Army and the quest for suffrage?
Ms. WEISS: Oh, there was a very strong connection. The suffragists saw this as a way for women to break into a new field, do something that was considered men's work of the time and also to prove their citizenship. To prove that they were patriotic, that they could serve their nation and so deserved the vote.
HANSEN: So what happened after it was over? I mean, their history is pretty much forgotten. It appears that at least in American society, the farmerette was replaced by the flapper.
Ms. WEISS: Why they're forgotten, I don't really know. They were in every magazine and newspaper. If you could imagine, Liane, they would've been on the cover of The New Republic and the Ladies Home Journal. They would've been on NPR if there was radio. They were very, very famous. Ziegfeld Follies had them, Broadway shows had them. And how they could've just slipped from the national memory is still a mystery to me.
HANSEN: "Fruits of Victory: The Women's Land Army of America in the Great War" is published by Potomac Books. Its author, Elaine Weiss, joined us from our New York bureau. Thanks a lot.
Ms. WEISS: Thank you, Liane.
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Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"How The Women's Land Army Fed America." Weekend Edition Sunday, 8 Mar. 2009. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A195136434/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=07af1454. Accessed 4 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A195136434