What America did : $b A record of achievement in the prosecution of the warKelly, Florence Finch
History
What America did : $b A record of achievement in the prosecution of the war
Kelly, Florence Finch
World War, 1914-1918 -- United States
Women’s clubs of every sort all over the country had their war service
committees, or mobilized all their members for that purpose, and these
were closely linked together through their federations so that their
work, which included assistance for every war making and war assisting
agency of Government or people, could be done without overlapping
or waste. Women’s colleges and women students in co-educational
institutions also took up war work, as described in “Feeding the
Nations.” As the men students of the colleges mobilized for training
for the war in the Students’ Army Training Corps, the women students
mobilized for work to uphold the war. The Association of Collegiate
Alumnæ, with membership spread all through the Union, organized itself
for war effort with especial reference to the task of bringing home
to people everywhere the fundamental issues involved in the war, the
necessity of fighting it through to a completely victorious conclusion
and the dangers that would lurk in a premature peace. The Association
coöperated with the Committee on Public Information, held college
women’s rallies, formed local speakers’ bureaus, helped to procure
trained workers for various forms of national service, set on foot a
movement to provide in colleges preparatory nursing courses for women,
and worked with and for all of the war sustaining agencies of the
Government.
Coöperating with all these and with the many other women’s
organizations for war effort and comprehending in its nation-wide
scope all the women of the country was the Woman’s Committee of the
Council of National Defense, which interlocked in effective team-work
all organizations of women and, reaching out to almost every community
in the land, inspired those outside such organizations to definite,
regular, organized effort for war service especially fitted for women’s
hands. It served solely among women, just as the Council of National
Defense, of which it was a part, joined in team-work all war sustaining
and war producing agencies and organized the communities, as told in
“Organizing the Nation.”
The Woman’s Committee was created in April, 1917, and very soon had
its divisions organized in each of the forty-eight states and also
in Alaska, Hawaii, Porto Rico and the District of Columbia. Upon
each State Committee were represented both the state-wide women’s
organizations and the women not connected with any organization, and
these committees organized the states into small units. Over 15,000 of
these subordinate units had been formed and were at work by mid-summer
of 1918, including 2,500 counties and 8,500 cities, towns and townships
and, in addition, many thousand smaller units, such as school
districts, wards, precincts, city blocks. These small units brought the
organization into direct touch with women everywhere and enlisted them
as individuals and as groups in the great army of patriotic women who
were giving everything in their power for the prosecution of the war.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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