100 years ago in The Saratogian
Saturday, April 20, 1918. “If soldiers are willing to serve in the trenches, to dig ditches, build railroads and risk their lives, many civilians can well afford to spare a part of their time to serve in the furrows and in the harvest fields.”
That’s the opinion of U.S. Agriculture Secretary David F. Houston. Today’s Saratogian includes a new application form making it easier for people to volunteer for wartime farm work.
Farms across the country have suffered from labor shortages since the U.S. declared war on Germany last year. Many men who formerly did seasonal farm work have been drafted or have volunteered to join the U.S. military, while others have taken better-paying jobs in factories with military contracts.
To replenish the rural work force, the Saratoga County Farm Bureau and the Saratoga Springs Business Men’s Association have created a registration card that will be distributed throughout the region next week. To save time, the Emergency Farm Labor committee invites Saratogian readers to clip the facsimile form in today’s paper and sending it to the Saratoga Shoe Company.
Volunteers can designate the dates and times when they’re willing to work. They’ll receive “the regular farm wage” and board with local farmers. Transportation to farms will be provided by farmers or the Farm Bureau.
“It is hoped that every man in our community who can spare a few days for this work will gladly volunteer for this service and it is hoped that every employer will willingly let men off for this patriotic service,” the committee states.
Army of Nurses Nation’s Great Need
The need for farm labor may be urgent, but Dr. G. Scott Towne tells a meeting of the College Women’s Club this afternoon that “next to an army the nurses’ army back of them is the greatest need of any nation at the present time.
Speaking at the Skidmore School of Arts auditorium, Towne says, “We have heard many slogans for the winning of the war, but the slogan of nurses to win the war is one which should be used. It is absolutely impossible to carry on a modern war without the great Red Cross organization and its most important branch, the nurses.”
Towne calls on women with at least one year of high school, good health and “the courage to stand homesickness” to take up the nursing profession. However long the war with Germany lasts, he predicts that the U.S. will need still more nurses in peacetime to “go into the western part of the country and help in the lowering of the infant and maternal death rate in those places.”