Hall, Florence

views updated

Florence Hall

Born August 1888

Died 1952

Director of Women's Land Army, home economist

In April 1943 the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced the appointment of home economist Florence Hall as chief of the Women's Land Army (WLA). The goal of the WLA was to recruit and organize a large number of women to provide farm labor in place of the many farmers and hired hands who had joined the military or left home to take a job in a defense plant.

Hall had been serving as a senior home economist in the Extension Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The Extension Service, in cooperation with state and county government extension services, provided educational services covering all aspects of farming and homemaking on the farm. Hall drew on her experience to skillfully and quickly begin a nationwide recruitment campaign for the WLA. Hall also over-saw and coordinated efforts by WLA supervisors at the local and state levels. She ably communicated to agricultural communities that women could assume most all farm responsibilities and therefore should be hired to help alleviate the wartime farm labor shortage.

Early years

Florence Louise Hall, born in August 1888, was raised in Port Austin, Michigan. Her father, James A. Hall, although a lawyer and banker by profession, owned a nearby farm on which he raised livestock. As a youngster, Florence eagerly enjoyed time at the farm. She learned to ride a horse and milk a cow as well as any rural farm girl. Florence attended college at Michigan State Agricultural College. She graduated in 1909 with a Bachelor of Science degree in home economics.

Following graduation, Florence Hall taught high school mathematics in Lansing, Michigan. At the age of twenty-nine, Hall entered public service for the first time as a home demonstration agricultural agent for Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. Practically applying the knowledge gained during her college years, Hall instructed rural homemakers how to deal with the shortages experienced in World War I (1914–18). She energetically demonstrated how to prepare meatless recipes, the art of canning, and the repair of clothing. Dedicated to her work, Hall related well to the rural wives.

Move to Washington, D.C.

In 1922 Hall joined the Bureau of Dairy Industry within the USDA and moved to her home base in Washington, D.C. She traveled extensively throughout the United States speaking to farming groups, women's organizations, and consumer groups. In 1928 Hall was named as the department's Field Extension agent for the Northeastern United States, from Maine south to West Virginia. Extension agents worked within the USDA's Extension Service Department.

The USDA, quoted in Current Biography (1943), had this to say of Hall's job performance: "She has always been greatly absorbed in her work, which has taken her into hundreds of rural homes, talking to groups of home demonstration clubs, always vitally interested in their problems of home furnishing, feeding the family, and planning their wardrobes. She likes to try out the practices recommended in her own home and on her own clothes. It is safe to say that thousands of these farm women feel that they know her personally, and the local home demonstration agents feel that her enthusiasm and practical way of looking at any problem gives them a new lease on their jobs. She is always a popular speaker at farm and home weeks and other big gatherings of farm people, because of her radiant friendliness and her logical, practical way of looking at things."

Despite her close ties to rural America, Hall maintained her home in the heart of Washington, D.C., at an apartment on 16th and Irving Streets, NW. She enjoyed furnishing her home with antiques. Photographs of her living room occasionally showed up in home economist publications.

Women's Land Army

When World War II (1939–45) began for the United States in December 1941, Hall was a proven leader in the Extension Service. By mid-1942, as the farm labor shortage grew, state and local agencies and private groups began to recruit nontraditional workers, including large numbers of women, to bring in the crops. Based on America's "farmerettes" of World War I and women's land armies already functioning in several countries, including Great Britain and Canada, equivalents of women's land armies were organized in the United States, particularly in the Northeast—Volunteer Land Corps of Vermont, Connecticut Land Army, Women's Emergency Farm Service in Maine—and on the West Coast in California and Oregon. Hall kept in close contact with the leaders and was informed of the various groups' activities.

USDA secretary Claude R. Wickard was still reluctant to put women into the fields. Nevertheless, in December 1942 Meredith L. Wilson, director of the Extension Service and charged with drawing plans to meet the farm labor crisis, appointed a three-person committee to study the feasibility of nonfarm women being recruited to work on the farms. The committee consisted of three home economists, Mary A. Rokahr, Grace E. Frysinger, and Hall. By mid-April 1943, WLA was created with Hall at its head. For WLA service Hall was to recruit, organize, and utilize nonfarm women for most types of farm work. WLA women would serve as an emergency wartime farm labor force. Hall's lifestyle, which included both urban and rural aspects, made her a perfect choice to recruit urban women.

By overseeing cooperation between the USDA Extension Service, state agricultural colleges, state and county extension agents, and the U.S. Employment Service that recruited in cities, Hall was able to place 250,000 women on farms within months for the 1943 crop season. Hall stressed that the women needed to be strong, possess dexterity, speed, accuracy, and patriotism; however, they needed no experience. Those women expecting to participate year-round would be given several weeks' training at a college to learn farming techniques. Those who would work only temporarily would be trained on the job. Hall understood the need to quickly bring as many women as possible into farm labor. Women were to be paid at the prevailing wage rate for the area in which they worked.

Hall became the chief spokesperson for WLA. She traveled extensively throughout the country on inspection trips to farms, training centers, and camps established to house women workers. She spoke to and coordinated activities with women's volunteer organizations such as the American Women's Volunteer Services, YWCA, and the General Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs, all of which helped WLA recruit and train. Hall oversaw articles and materials released to the press. Both newspapers and popular magazines jumped on the WLA bandwagon and reported in glowing terms the accomplishments of WLA. One magazine, Independent Woman, official publication of the General Federation, even urged workers to plan their vacations around the crop seasons.

Rescuing Crops

By late 1942 there was an acute shortage of labor on America's farms. Between 1940 and 1945, roughly six million farmers and farm workers left the land for more lucrative jobs in defense plants or for the military. Farm women stepped in to keep their farms running while their husbands, fathers, and brothers were away. Although they quickly proved they could handle farm responsibilities, many additional hands were required to tend and harvest crops.

Realizing the burgeoning labor difficulties, the USDA scrambled to locate new sources of farm labor. Approximately 230,000 foreign workers were brought into the United States and 265,000 prisoners of war were used. Eight thousand servicemen received furloughs to plant and harvest, and roughly 26,000 detained Americans of Japanese descent were granted furloughs from their relocation camps for agricultural work. The largest number of workers came from two groups, the Victory Farm Volunteers (VFV), aimed at teenagers, and women.

VFV, 2.5 million teenagers strong, worked the farms in the summertime and when released from school in the fall to aid in the harvest. Women made up the single largest group that stepped forward to "rescue" the crops. In April 1943 the USDA established the Women's Land Army (WLA), which actively and successfully recruited nonfarm women, those not previously involved in any farm labor, for temporary and permanent agricultural work. Between 1943 and 1945 approximately 1.5 million nonfarm women joined WLA. Overall, the USDA estimated three million women—WLA members, women who were hired directly by farmers, and farm wives, daughters, mothers, and grandmothers—plowed, planted, tended, harvested, and preserved a vital portion of the nation's agricultural bounty.

In fall 1943 Hall created the Women's Land Army Newsletter. It was primarily a newsletter for WLA staff. She provided information about the nationwide program, gave encouragement to WLA supervisors, tips on recruitment and for publicity, and encouraged an open channel of communication between the states to Washington, D.C. Hall also included in the newsletter quotes from farmers praising the exemplary job WLA workers were doing. When WLA was just being established, one of Hall's major challenges had been to convince farmers to allow women onto the farms. The South proved an especially difficult region as fieldwork had long been associated only with black Americans, and because of this Southern whites protested the use of white women in the fields.

In early 1944 the USDA estimated eight hundred thousand women would be needed in agricultural work. The 1944 recruitment pamphlets reported that WLA wages averaged between twenty-five and fifty dollars a month depending on the region of the country. Room and board was furnished. Hourly rates for temporary workers were between twenty-five and fifty cents. Hall's successful recruitment and coordination efforts continued on through the 1945 crop season as did her coordination efforts with WLA supervisors in the states.

On December 10, 1945, Hall issued her last Women's Land Army Newsletter. Over the previous two and a half years, women from all vocations had joined the WLA—many university students, housewives, secretaries, clerks, entertainers, bookkeepers, artists, teachers, editors, and government employees. In all, some 1.5 million nonfarm women entered the farm labor force. Some left their jobs to stay on farms year-round while others spent their vacation weeks or weekends. Most all joined out of a patriotic duty to aid in the war effort.

A job well done

Hall's army raised and harvested vegetables in New England, strawberries in Connecticut, fruits in Maine; labored in the cornfields of the Midwest, onion fields of Michigan, peach orchards in Ohio; worked the wheat fields of North Dakota; picked cotton in the South; dug potatoes in Colorado; and harvested fruits, nuts, and vegetables on the West Coast. They drove tractors, milked cows, cared for livestock, tended hens, kept production records, and established canning centers. Wartime food production was kept on track; therefore, food was more available for those on the home front, for combat forces, and for European allies. Hall had made contributions to U.S. agriculture through her entire career. In her last WLA newsletter she stated being director of WLA had indeed been "an enriching experience." Hall died in 1952 at the age of sixty-four.

Although history frequently praises and tells the story of women who worked in the war industries, it largely forgot the wartime women farm workers and the women who led them. Only at the end of the twentieth century and start of the twenty-first century have articles and books appeared telling the story of those women who came to the rescue of U.S. farms during World War II.