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Farmerette: 1919

1919. Washington, D.C., or vicinity. "Girl Scouts. Farmerette harvesting crops." Harris & Ewing Collection glass negative. View full size.

1919. Washington, D.C., or vicinity. "Girl Scouts. Farmerette harvesting crops." Harris & Ewing Collection glass negative. View full size.

 

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Today a girl this age would be dressed in clothes from Hollister not overalls and holding her iphone not ears of corn. We can agree on the shoes.

Didn't you know?

They prefer to be called "farmesses."

Woman's Land Army

Washington Post, Mar 9, 1919

Need Labor on Farms

Rally for "Farmerettes"


The Woman's Land Army was organized as a war emergency organization last spring. Its general plan was to place units of girls in self-sustaining groups, where they would be available to a group of farmers for labor. During the summer of 1918, units in twenty States had an enrollment of 15,000 farmerettes. When the season closed in late September, the Department of Labor proposed affiliation between the Woman's Land Army, and the United States employment service during the coming year. This program has been completed and accepted, and the Woman's Land Army is now a government organization.

The Federal organization, under Mrs. [William H.] Hubert's direction, plans to place as many woman is needed on the farms during the coming season, in units or groups. The women will be trained in agriculture colleges and in land army training camps. … The farmerettes will receive wages based on those paid for farm labor in each state. The experienced women will receive good wages and "green hands" will receive some compensation while learning. The land army predicts that the women will be the nucleus of a movement, "away from the cities and back to the land."


Washington Post, Sep 13, 1919

City Briefs

The farmerettes at 6000 Blair road are offering sweet corn at the field at 20 cents a dozen, green tomatoes at 50 cents a peck, shell beans on the vine at 25 cents a peck, picked ready to shell at 40 cents a peck. Cantaloupes and lima beans will soon be ready to gather. A harvest scene will be staged this afternoon, when the pictures of the girls' land army will be taken.


Washington Post, Sep 29, 1919

Farmerette Beans Cheap

Lima beans at $1 a bushel. Now say that the high cost of living isn't coming down. But the beans are strung on the bushes and the housewife must pick the beans herself.

There are acres and acres of beans at the farmerette's training field, 6000 Blair road. But a cessation of the Saturday half holidays have so cut into the force of volunteer office woman who use to "till the soil" that no way can be found to prevent their going to waste unless the housewives pick the beans. Any one who does not want the beans but wants the exercise can earn 50 cents a bushel for picking and 8 cents a quart for shelling the beans. Apple pickers on about the same terms are in demand at the farmerette camp at Ednor, Md. Applicants should apple to Mrs. Bertha Taylor Voorhorst at the Y.W.C.A.


More on the Woman's Land Army, farmerettes and the connection to the suffragist movement: NPR, and Smithsonian Magazine.

Perfectly up-to-date

There is not one thing about her hair, clothing or even facial expression that would lead one to think this picture was taken almost 92 years ago! The only part of her wardrobe that wouldn't fit in today are the shoes.

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