The Project Gutenberg eBook, Mobilizing Woman-Power, by Harriot Stanton Blatch

Title: Mobilizing Woman-Power

Author: Harriot Stanton Blatch

Release Date: November 14, 2003 [eBook #10080]

Language: English

Chatacter set encoding: iso-8859-1

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOBILIZING WOMAN-POWER***

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TO THE ABLE AND DEVOTED WOMEN OF GREAT BRITAIN AND FRANCE

Who have stood behind the armies of the Allies through the years of the Great War as an unswerving second line of defense against an onslaught upon the liberty and civilization of the world, I dedicate this volume.

HARRIOT STANTON BLATCH

CONTENTS

FOREWORD BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT

I. OUR FOE

II. WINNING THE WAR

III. MOBILIZING WOMEN IN GREAT BRITAIN

IV. MOBILIZING WOMEN IN FRANCE

V. MOBILIZING WOMEN IN GERMANY

VI. WOMEN OVER THE TOP IN AMERICA

VII. EVE'S PAY ENVELOPE

VIII. POOLING BRAINS

IX. "BUSINESS AS USUAL"

X. "AS MOTHER USED TO DO"

XI. A LAND ARMY

XII. WOMAN'S PART IN SAVING CIVILIZATION

ILLUSTRATIONS

Jeanne d'Arc--the spirit of the women of the Allies

They wear the uniforms of the Edinburgh trams and the New York City subway and trolley guards, with pride and purpose

Then--the offered service of the Women's Reserve Ambulance Corps in England was spurned. Now--they wear shrapnel helmets while working during the Zeppelin raids

The French poilu on furlough is put to work harrowing

Has there ever been anything impossible to French women since the time of Jeanne d'Arc? The fields must be harrowed--they have no horses

The daily round in the Erie Railroad workshops

In the well-lighted factory of the Briggs and Stratton Company, Milwaukee, the girls are comfortably and becomingly garbed for work

The women of the Motor Corps of the National League for Woman's Service refuting the traditions that women have neither strength nor endurance

Down the street they come, beginning their pilgrimage of alleviation and succor on the battlefields of France.

How can business be "as usual" when in Paris there are about 1800 of these small workshops where a woman dips Bengal Fire and grenades into a bath of paraffin!

Countess de Berkaim and her canteen in the Gare de St. Lazarre, Paris.

An agricultural unit in the uniform approved by the Woman's Land Army of America.

A useful blending of Allied women. Miss Kathleen Burke (Scotch) exhibiting the X-ray ambulance equipped by Mrs. Ayrton (English) and Madame Curie (French).

FOREWORD

It is a real pleasure to write this foreword to the book which Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch dedicates to the women of Great Britain and France; to the women who through the years of the great war have stood as the second line of defense against the German horror which menaces the liberty and civilization of the entire world.

There could be no more timely book. Mrs. Blatch's aim is to stir the women of this country to the knowledge that this is their war, and also to make all our people feel that we, and especially our government, should welcome the service of women, and make use of it to the utmost. In other words, the appeal of Mrs. Blatch is essentially an appeal for service. No one has more vividly realized that service benefits the one who serves precisely as it benefits the one who is served. I join with her in the appeal that the women shall back the men with service, and that the men in their turn shall frankly and eagerly welcome the rendering of such service on the basis of service by equals for a common end.

Mrs. Blatch makes her appeal primarily because of the war needs of the moment. But she has in view no less the great tasks of the future. I welcome her book as an answer to the cry that the admission of women to an equal share in the right of self government will tend to soften the body politic. Most certainly I will ever set my face like flint against any unhealthy softening of our civilization, and as an answer in advance to hyper-criticism I explain that I do not mean softness in the sense of tender-heartedness; I mean the softness which, extends to the head and to the moral fibre, I mean the softness which manifests itself either in unhealthy sentimentality or in a materialism which may be either thoughtless and pleasure-loving or sordid and money-getting. I believe that the best women, when thoroughly aroused, and when the right appeal is made to them, will offer our surest means of resisting this unhealthy softening.

No man who is not blind can fail to see that we have entered a new day in the great epic march of the ages. For good or for evil the old days have passed; and it rests with us, the men and women now alive, to decide whether in the new days the world is to be a better or a worse place to live in, for our descendants.

In this new world women are to stand on an equal footing with men, in ways and to an extent never hitherto dreamed of. In this country they