The USDA issued a press release on April 10 announcing the formal establishment of the Women's Land Army. Florence Hall's official appointment as head of the WLA occurred two days later. Newspapers, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, gave prominent coverage to these events. The press reported that the WLA would be part of another new agency, the United States Crop Corps, an umbrella organization responsible for ensuring the successful harvesting of the crops. Women who had reached their eighteenth birthday and were physically fit would qualify for enlistment in the WLA. News articles also noted that a uniform, consisting of navy blue denim overalls, a tailored powder-blue sports shirt with a "Butcher Boy" denim jacket, and a visored hat, was being designed by Extension Service home economists. Hall told reporters that the work of the WLA would be "hard and long," but the women would bring "dexterity, speed, accuracy, patience, interest, curiosity, rivalry and patriotism" to the task. Two weeks later, on April 29, Congress approved funds for the Emergency Farm Labor Program, including the Women's Land Army.
As chief of the Women's Land Army, Hall worked closely with home demonstration agents in the Extension Service and with the state agricultural colleges to develop plans and procedures for recruiting and training women for the WLA at the state and local levels. She also relied on women's voluntary organizations, such as the American Women's Voluntary Services, the General Federation of Women's Clubs, and the YWCA, to help with recruitment and training. In addition, she drew upon the expertise and support of the US Women's Bureau of the Department of Labor. Frances Valentine, a Women's Bureau employee, conducted important studies of the 1943 work of the WLA in the northeastern and Pacific Coast states. In 1944, Valentine served as a consultant to the WLA and undertook a study of the WLA program in eight midwestern states.
Hall could also count on the assistance of long-time WLA supporter Eleanor Roosevelt. The first lady invited Hall to her May 10 press conference to present the WLA uniform to reporters. A home economist from the USDA modeled the uniform, and Hall explained that "overalls were selected for the Land Army uniform instead of slacks, so weight will be supported by the shoulders and [the] belt can be looser." The Washington Daily News reported that the cost of the denim overalls was about six dollars, and that a wrap-around skirt was available for the "Land Army soldieret" who chooses to "go feminine for farmhouse work." Despite this initial fanfare, the WLA uniform remained optional and was not widely adopted. When denim manufacturers converted their looms to tent twills, a denim scarcity resulted. Moreover, many women felt that it would be frivolous to purchase a uniform before their own work clothes wore out.
During the spring of 1943, the WLA, with the help of women's voluntary associations, inaugurated a massive campaign to recruit middle-class town and city women for farm jobs. The Women's Advisory Committee of the War Manpower Commission issued a special call to "women's clubs throughout the country to mobilize their members for active service on the nation's farms." One WLA recruitment pamphlet declared: "WAR TAKES FOOD — FOOD for our fighting men. FOOD for our fighting allies. FOOD for workers at home. . . . We need more HANDS. . . . ENROLL NOW in the WOMEN'S LAND ARMY." Heeding this appeal, the American Women's Voluntary Services set up WLA information booths at B. Altman's department store in New York City. Within a short time, booths were also busy at Macy's, Gimbel's, Bloomingdale's, Lord and Taylor, Stern's, and Helena Rubenstein. Women were urged to give up their vacations to work on farms. A popular woman's magazine encouraged office workers to plot "their vacation plans against a calendar of crop seasons," so they could "be on the spot to help get in the food our army must have, our allies must have, our workers must have, the people at home must have."
Training programs for the Women's Land Army had actually begun several months before the WLA had been approved by Congress. In mid-February, for example, a formal two-week course in dairy and poultry husbandry had been introduced at the University of Connecticut. The first fourteen women to enroll in the course included office workers, retail clerks, and candy makers. Eleanor Roosevelt visited the training site and observed the women at work in the dairy barn. Later in the spring, courses in vegetable production and greenhouse work were introduced. Faculty from the University of Connecticut and personnel from the U.S. Employment Service and Cooperative Extension helped with the training. Formal graduation exercises occurred every two weeks, and these training sessions continued into 1944.
Many WLA recruits lived at home and participated in day-haul programs in which they traveled back and forth to work each day in buses, trucks, or car pools. Recruits from distant cities lived either in camps or on farms. While some states established training courses, such as the one sponsored by the University of Connecticut, most WLA workers received "on-the-job" training.33 At first, only nonfarm women could join the Women's Land Army, but eligibility requirements were modified late in 1943 to allow both farm as well as nonfarm women to be members.
In fact, the WLA routinely emphasized that the "farm woman is the unsung heroine of the food front" and that she works "longer hours than ever before . . . at the double job of housekeeper and farm work."
During the 1943 crop year, forty-three states appointed home demonstration agents to serve as either full- or part-time WLA supervisors, nine states offered special agricultural training courses, and seventeen states operated camps for women workers. WLA recruits included farm wives and daughters, college students, school girls, teachers, store clerks, stenographers, service wives, and homemakers. These women raised vegetables in New England, topped onions in Michigan, detasseled corn throughout the Midwest, shocked wheat in North Dakota, picked cotton in the South, planted potatoes in Maine, and harvested fruits and nuts on the West Coast. They also drove tractors, fed livestock, and performed dairying and poultry work. In total, 250,000 women were placed on farms during the 1943 crop season.
The work of the Women's Land Army was well appreciated by the American public. The covers of popular magazines featured land army recruits, and numerous articles about the WLA were published. Local and national radio stations aired programs on the important work of the WLA.
In addition, the land army received enthusiastic endorsements from leading women's organizations. The National Advisory Committee of the WLA counted among its members the presidents of the General Federation of Women's Clubs, the Council of Catholic Women, the National Parent-Teacher Association, the National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs, the National Home Demonstration Council, and the Associated Women of the American Farm Bureau Federation.
In her 1943 report on WLA activities in the northeastern states, Frances Valentine offered some astute observations:
Since she has a choice, each woman and girl must decide where she will put her efforts on war work. But she should put it where it is needed and needed now. She is obligated to take a job that bears a direct relation to her country's war needs. The women who will warm the hearts of America's fighting men are those who pick a good hard job and do their best at it. Farming is just such a job. The women of 1943 were just such women.
Margaret Hickey, the chair of the Women's Advisory Committee of the War Manpower Commission and a member of the National Advisory Committee to the WLA, drew further attention to the important work of the Women's Land Army when she was quoted in the New York Times on December 7, 1943, as saying, "The day of the lady loafer is over."
In order to disseminate information about the work of the WLA to state supervisors as well as to provide them with ideas about publicity and recruitment, Hall inaugurated a Women's Land Army Newsletter in the fall of 1943, which she continued to publish until December 1945. She reported on her numerous visits to WLA training sites throughout the nation, provided tips for recruitment, included information about publicity campaigns, and urged supervisors to keep her abreast of state and local WLA activities.
The December 17, 1943, issue of the Women's Land Army Newsletter reported that forty-one women representing thirty-seven states had participated in WLA workshops held at four regional conferences on the Farm Labor Program during November and early December. In commenting on the success of these workshops, Hall stated, "Many good stories of accomplishment, many good ideas relating to the use of women workers in agriculture, many good suggestions for next year's program, were exchanged during the four conferences."
In their 1943 annual reports, WLA state supervisors recounted how they had made contact with women's organizations, colleges and universities, newspaper and magazine editors, representatives from business and industry, and numerous farm homes.
They evinced pride in the results of their work, but they also recognized that the coming year would bring forth significant challenges.
WLA supervisors reported that low farm wages and the competition for relatively high-paying jobs in urban areas often made recruitment difficult. The reluctance of farmers to accept women as agricultural workers posed still another problem to be overcome. In the Midwest, where agriculture was mechanized and heavy farm machinery was regularly used, farmers were particularly skeptical about recruiting women for farm work. Supervisors emphasized that a shortage of day-care facilities presented significant problems for many WLA mothers. They also recommended that additional training programs for nonfarm women be instituted.
WLA supervisors in the South reported that the deleterious and complex nature of southern race relations sometimes hampered recruitment campaigns. Supervisors noted that because field labor in the South was often associated with the work of black women and men, many white southerners objected to the use of white women in the fields. Yet reports from several southern states also acknowledged that efforts to recruit and train black women for the WLA had been deliberately bypassed. South Carolina officials admitted that "it was thought best to start the Women's Land Army in the State with white women only this year, as, if it became known first as a [N]egro program, it would have been impossible later on to interest white women in participating."
Nonetheless, black women throughout the South demonstrated their support for the agricultural war effort in a number of important ways. For example, the March 1943 meeting of the Home-Making Institute, sponsored by Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina, used the slogan, "Produce, Conserve, Consume for Victory." Nannie Burroughs, the well-known black educator and founder of the National Training School for Women and Girls in Washington, D.C., was the featured speaker. In Bolivar County, Mississippi, the Bolivar Commercial reported in April 1943 that two young women from the all-black town of Mound Bayou had "made six bales [of cotton] on seven acres . . . of their land." In addition, Winnie Anderson, a graduate of Tuskegee Institute, was hired by the Bolivar County Farm Bureau to help black farm families develop ways to increase wartime agricultural production.
Projections of farm labor needs for the 1944 crop year suggested that U.S. women would be required to make even greater contributions to the agricultural war effort. USDA officials estimated that as many as 800,000 women and 1.2 million young people would be needed in 1944 to assist in agricultural work. In February of that year, regional conferences attended by state WLA supervisors, employment experts from the Extension Service, and representatives of the U.S. Employment Service were held in New York City, Memphis, Chicago, and Denver to plan for the coming crop year. When addressing the New York City conference, M. L. Wilson concluded: "The major burden of harvesting the increase will fall squarely on the shoulders of the women of the country and teenage boys and girls."