Written in Apil 2019, for my Creative Nonfiction class
For the first time in a week, I’m in my happy place.
April showers bring multiple papers due all in the last two weeks of class. I spent my week working on my 10-page history research paper while stressing over a creative writing piece due on Monday. I also need to submit my application in for my internship at Colonial Williamsburg next semester.
Ah, the life of a history and English double major.
Despite all of this there is something strangely comforting in creating a list of all the things I need to do. Maybe it’s because I’m a Virgo, although I don’t follow astrology. But mostly, it’s because I know that I’m usually not one to stress, despite the fact the students around me had a reputation of doing so. I try my best, and am good at managing my time, and always had been. I also deeply love where am at now, studying the things I love at a place I love. Colonial Williamsburg and William & Mary have always had my heart.
It’s Saturday, the perfect day for a walk in Colonial Williamsburg. Although it is a little humid, the city slowly turning into a swamp of summer, the breeze is nice as I follow D.O.G. street towards the Capitol Building (which, by the way, is historically inaccurate). Tourists line the street; families with young children who are experiencing the area for the first time.
—–
I watch a mother, with two little boys in tow, explain how important history is to them. The boys respond,
“I still don’t know why we’re here!”
“But I wanted to go to Disney World!”
I think back to one of my own visits to Williamsburg as a child, in November 2008. Unlike the two little boys of 2019, little me of 2008 loved trips to Williamsburg. It was the year I found my love early American history, inspired by my fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Norton, who was a William & Mary alum, and her bookshelf full of historical fiction books. At the time, I was reading the Felicity American Girl books, which made the Williamsburg experience much more magical. I pretended to be in Felicity’s time as I walked through the streets with my parents, passed the Cheese Shop and down the alley towards the Baskin Robins.
—–
Williamsburg was beautiful in autumn. I can’t decide if I like Williamsburg more in the spring or in the autumn, full of tulips or golden leaves. At least, I think, Williamsburg doesn’t have this much pollen in the autumn. I have been feeling stuffy all week, but the flowers outside Bryan Hall somehow make it all worth it.
I continue my walk, upset that some, or rather most people, would rather go to Disney World than Williamsburg. Well, at least at Disney World there is no to need step around horse waste on the streets.
I pass sheep, white clouds amongst the vibrant green of the grass they feed on. I smile. The sheep are admittedly one of my favorite parts of my walks in Williamsburg.
I remember two weeks ago fondly, seeing the sheep with Jason as we adventured throughout the colonial city. I find myself smiling even more.
—–
Have you ever heard a sheep baa? Even if you think you have, I guarantee that haven’t heard a sheep baa as loud as the ones in Colonial Williamsburg.
It two Saturdays ago, full of sunshine and green, when Jason and I spotted the sheep, relaxing in a pasture off Prince George Street.
I love watching the sheep. They are beautiful, wonderful, little animals. I have always dreamt of petting one, though preferably not the ones in Colonial Williamsburg, their fur natural and covered in dirt.
We spent quite some time watching them. I pretended that the sheep were living balls cotton candy, sweet fluffy sugar clouds. Soon enough another couple came by the fence, excited to catch a glimpse of the lives of the sheep of Colonial Williamsburg.
That’s when it happened. Loud, brutal, and screaming. It sounded like a man, deep and musky and attempting to imitate a sheep.
“BAAAAAA!!!”
Jason burst out laughing.
If you’ve ever heard a sheep baa, I guarantee you’ve never heard a sheep baa like the ones in Colonial Williamsburg.
—–
That day when we heard the sheep baa turned out to be the day my grandmother, G, my best friend since childhood, passed away. I hold in my tears and, after briefly thinking of the pillow she had on her bedside chair that declared Grandmothers are just antique little girls, brutally force myself to think of something else.
—–
I have a lot on my mind. These past few weeks have been really difficult for me. Yet, when I pass the colonial interpreters welcoming tourists in beautifully patterned gowns, I feel a little hopeful for the future.
In the fall, I will intern in Colonial Williamsburg
, humanizing the past like G humanized the Great Depression when she told me of her childhood. She was only 16 when she left her family farmhouse in Staunton to work for the war effort in D.C. She was so brave. I have always loved the past. There has always been something magical in knowing that history made the present: that right now will be history to my grandchildren, and that someday high school history classes will analyze our reasons for being.
—–
I was done with work for the day. So, naturally, I decided to go on Colonial Williamsburg’s YouTube channel.
There’s a video posted there that I really love. It’s a wonderful slice of history, of what Williamsburg is today. The video shows a split screen image of D.O.G. street, one side showing how it looked in the 1920s, before it’s restoration, to now.
Of course, Colonial Williamsburg is neither completely authentic nor historically accurate. Colonial Williamsburg was built up from the ashes funded by the Rockefeller’s spare change. I am reminded of my professor telling me about the controversy in the great restoration.
“In rebuilding previous colonial structures, they had to tear down Antebellum and Civil War-era buildings,” she said. “Many of which were historic themselves. Which brings us to the question: how old is old enough for us to consider things historic? What parts of history do we want to remember, and what about the history of eras that are less desirable?” After all, Williamsburg saw more action during the Civil War than during the American Revolution.
Early American history has always been my favorite, but I don’t want to ignore other stories. Still, I choose to love the imperfect, slightly historically inaccurate Williamsburg that I have. After all, all that forgotten past still has shaped us all in a way.
—–
The sun is beginning to set. I hear the fife band, ceremoniously celebrating the end of the work day. I decide it’s time to go back to my dorm room: I’ll have time to work more on my research paper, explore more into the past, then time travel back to 2019 all before bedtime. The sun is setting, but the world is growing, deeper and deeper into the worlds of the unborn, until the darkness will finally consume the present day.
I thought I should share one of the reasons I haven’t posted in a while: my research. For the Historian’s Craft, a history writing seminar at College, I was asked to write a 10 page research paper on any topic I wanted, as long as it related to World War I. Although my area of expertise is in women in Early America, I thought it would be fun to research how gender roles were shaped through work in World War I.
This paper was honestly such a joy to research. I pulled primarily from the diary of Ruth Thompson, a women worker during the war, and it was neat to see how her story reflected larger themes in the Sufferage Movement. To see her own handwritting, circling the names of drafted loved ones in the newspaper, was simply amazing. So while this post is different than my usual short story or journalist article, I hope you enjoy this research as much as I enjoyed discovering this story.
Introduction:
It is undeniable that World War I changed the United States, particularly in the lives of American women. The conflict marks new opportunities for women in the workforce unavailable even to the Suffragettes of ten years prior. With work came increased activism in the community, and with activism came the pressing issue of the woman’s vote. When the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, it was no doubt the result of woman activists in the increasingly prominent female workforce that found steam during the war. The Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), one of many organizations that backed a push for women into the workforce during the war, even went as far as to describe woman workers as the U.S.’s “second line of defense” in a 1918 propaganda poster.[1] Although this new wartime work often required long hours, women involvement in the workforce continued to grow throughout the two years the U.S. was involved.[2] Female efforts in the workforce were often recorded in personal diaries and journals, chronicling their reactions towards these new opportunities. In primary accounts of women World War I workers, personal motives for working in advanced positions are revealed. While some woman workers certainly did seek to enhance the feminist cause, others’ motives were affected by a common wartime emotion: grief.
Current historiography notes how the war pushed women into an unexplored world of opportunities, with positions opened in munition factories, rationing, and other war-related fields. The rise women in highly-paid, visible work helped pave the way for the 19th amendment, securing the women’s vote. However, we often fail to recognize that the motive for women taking these new wartime positions is not one of solely advancing the feminist cause. Grief as a motive becomes clearly visible when visiting primary accounts from World War I woman workers, such as in Ruth Elizabeth Thompson’s 1917 diary. 25-year-old Ruth of Indianapolis, Indiana kept note in her diary of volunteering with the American Red Cross, later seeking employment with the sugar division of the U.S.’s rationing administration.[3] Throughout her narrative, one thing becomes clear: Thompson was suffering through great grief during the war. In between entries on the Red Cross and other wartime work, Thompson portrays how deeply she worries for her enlisted loved ones: Lyman, her older brother, and Frank Richards, a longtime lover. For Ruth Thompson, wartime work was a way to relive grief. In misunderstanding the other motives for World War I wartime work, historians fail to realize the humanity of woman workers. Women simply weren’t machines in the quest for the vote, yet their personal alternate motives helped pave the way to the gift of the vote.
World War I allowed women to explore new opportunities in the workforce, which helped build demand for the 19th amendment. By exploring what these opportunities looked like, then bringing in the context of grief as a motive, these woman workers of the past are humanized, accidental change-makers in the mission of feminism.
Part One: Exploring the Roles of Woman Workers
“My days have been so full [from volunteering with the Red Cross] that I have seen few [other] people at all. But one day 9 of us [other women volunteers from the Red Cross] went to the park after the Red Cross.”— Ruth Thompson’s diary entry, June 1917
World War I remains significant for women in part because of its timing. The early 20th century saw the rise of “first wave feminism,” still gaining momentum when the war broke in Europe. The feminist movement, although primarily focused on voting rights, correlated with a rise of female workers. World War I further promoted the inclusion of women in the workforce through wartime propaganda. For the first time in American history, female workers were advertised as crucial to the war effort. This is not to say that U.S. women did not work before the conflict. Women worked in increasing numbers pre-war; female participation in the labor force had steadily grown since the end of the Civil War, 24.8 percent of adult women worked in 1910, according to the U.S. census.[4] Rather than creating the brand-new opportunity for women to work, the war instead offered more visible and desirable jobs to women. Thus, Thompson was not an anomaly to find many female friends in her co-workers, but experienced these friendships in a more visible job setting. Many women war workers had worked in “pink collar” jobs before the war.[5] Popular pre-war “pink collar” careers, lower positions designated specifically for women, included work as office workers, telephone operators, teachers, factory workers, and nurses. Even inside factories during the first decade of the 20th century, positions were gendered with lower-skilled jobs reserved for women.[6]
One new workplace opened for women was in the country’s munition factories, producing the nation’s war bullets. Previously, such industrial factory work was considered “a man’s job;” and women rarely worked in munition factories before the war. [7] Welding was a dangerous job, with female worker Edith Airey admitting, “Small bits of brass seemed to be a target for my eyes.” [8] Yet the demand for munitions and shortage of male workers during the war made recruiting women to the factories a national cause. Propaganda urging for women to “do their part” in the war effort and seek work in munition factories began filling newspapers and public spaces, recruiting women workers to the industry.[9] In the munition industry, women found a plethora of positions awaiting them, whether industrial or clerical. In the making of munition inside the factories, women ran drill presses, welding metals, and handling all equipment such as cranes and screw machines. [10] Other positions found women in the roles of supervisors, outside factory inspectors, and associate roles.[11]
While munition factory work skewed more industrial, women also found clerical government positions opened during the world war. The U.S. government’s use of food rationing administrations gave way to new office positions for women. Using the traditional stereotype of the housewife’s realm in the kitchen, woman workers were mobilized in promoting “self-conservation” in cooking. Propaganda urged domestic women to ration food, noting that “the kitchen is the key to victory” internationally.[12] Rationing took root as a national cause under rationing organizations. Under the suggestion of California food administrator Ralph Merritt, rationing administrations created teams of women to conduct food conservation pledges. Woman workers sought to recruit neighbors and friends to enlist additional housewives to pledge, advancing her rank among her colleagues. Women “privates” were to be given “dainty” enameled U.S. shields, revealing to others that she had done her part in helping the war cause.[13]
As women began filled roles in the United States’ mutation factories, with rationing administrations, and in other work positions, the urgency of women suffrage found increased national attention.[14] However, the movement was clearly not on the consciousness of Ruth Thompson, who began her work with the Red Cross right as the United States entered the conflict. For Thompson, and no doubt countless other female workers during the war, grief and patriotism were the primary motives to work. While work was oftentimes a distraction from grief, it also was a motivation for it. It is important to note that women were not weakened in feeling grief, but rather strengthened and motivated by it to do their part in securing the safe return of enlisted love ones. Using Ruth Thompson as a case study into women’s motivations to work, we can further examine how grief motivated and effected women during World War I.
Part Two: Women Workers and Grief
“Another year. What if I could look forward to the end of it…What can the rest of the year bring?”— Ruth Thompson’s diary entry, January 1917
While Ruth Thompson’s first entry in her diary might seem bleak, as Thompson grew prepared to see her loved ones sent off to war, Thompson’s entries to come would be even bleaker. As an upper-middle class girl growing up in Indianapolis, Indiana during the turn of the century, Thompson’s 1917 pales in comparison to her childhood years.[15] Although Thompson’s 1905 memory book paints the picture of an enjoyable life for 14-year-old Thompson, much of her days spent planning parties with friends and at dances, Ruth spent her 1917 diary writing either about her wartime work or the grief she felt. Because of the repeated use of grief in her diary, it becomes clear that grief was a major motivator for Thompson’s wartime work. Thompson’s grief during the war, spurred by the loss of loved ones (notably her brother, Lyman, and her lover Frank Richards) to the draft as well as the stark contrast of wartime life compared to her pre-war life, followed her to her volunteerism with the Red Cross as the U.S. entered the war. Her grief followed her to a job in Indianapolis’s Rationing Administration’s Sugar Department in 1918. Thompson’s grief practically consumed her life during the two years the country was involved in World War I.
Despite all of this, work still becomes an important outlet for Ruth Thompson during the war. Thompson moved up in the ranks of the Red Cross, acting at a Little Theatre Society of Indiana war propaganda play in the Indiana State Conference for War Work of the YWCA in 1917.[16] As Thompson and other women war workers moved up in the workforce, the lack of woman’s suffrage became a prominent issue of national attention. Furthermore, Thompson’s diary shows how women were motivated to work by grief as using work as a distraction to grief and by using work to indirectly help enlisted loved ones come home safely, all while gaining more prominence in the work force and fulfilling the feminist’s movement’s needs.
Work as a Distraction:
“This week was almost too much,” Ruth Thompson wrote in a June 1917 entry, “except [the Red Cross] took my mind off things.”[17] Here, Thompson exemplified the idea that work was a distraction. Instead of dwelling on the uncertain fates of enlisted loved ones, women found productivity in working for the war cause, which indirectly helped loved ones on the battlefront. In using work as a means of coping in the war, women found the steps to empowerment, unintendedly winning public approval for the 19th amendment.
Wartime work empowered women by enhancing their involvement in the community, while being productive towards the war effort and easing their own personal grief. This
Ruth included this news report of the draft in her diary. Her brother’s name, Lyman Thompson, is circled.
dichotomy between women’s private grief and public rights furthered feminist thought among women workers More women demanded the right to vote as they became more involved in the community through work. Women such as Ruth also found new opportunities for growth in their public work lives. For Ruth, this growth came in the form of speaking at conferences on behalf of the Red Cross, and felt empowered to be “doing her part” in the war cause. While Thompson had never worked before the war, she wrote of how lucky she felt to be working: noting that she was “Excited to be doing something, and thankful for the opportunities the year brought.”[18]
It is important to note that women were not weak in needing something to distract them from the European war theatre, in fact, it was quite the opposite. Grief was only human nature, but women who replaced grief with work were empowered to move above nature, defying the gender role of the stay-at-home wife and expanding their experiences. Ruth Thompson found a new circle of female co-workers as friends while volunteering at the Red Cross. Lucile, a co-worker Thompson never mentions until she starts volunteering, becomes a frequent guest and close friend of the Thompson household. Ruth also described finding “a deeper sense of self” due to her successes at the Red Cross, “despite war something good has come out of it.”[19]
Although work was a distraction to grief for Ruth Thompson, she did write of times where she felt extremely upset over the uncertain futures of her enlisted loved ones. The taints of grief in Thompson’s diary occur on pages where she doesn’t mention her work at all, or on days she explicitly states she was not working. One entry noted that Thompson, “went to work. Then I had dinner with mother and her friends. They talked of war, but I suggested to play bridge and talk about [the Red Cross] because I wanted to try to forget war for a few moments.”[20] This theme of using work as a distraction is reflected further when Thompson is hired by Indianapolis’s Food Rationing Administration in the Sugar Department in November 1918. Although Ruth began working only a mere week before victory was declared on November 11th, she explicitly mentions enjoying her work as a form of distraction.[21]
Work empowered women with new opportunities while distracting them from the worry of loved ones enlisted. Women found close friends in their female co-workers in new, prominent positions in factories, administration, and other work industries. Women also felt productive in helping enlisted loved ones indirectly by working in the war effort. Women helped secure the safe return of the enlisted loved ones they grieved for by doing their part to support the war in wartime work.
Work as a Means of Helping Enlisted Loved Ones:
While women certainly worked as a means fulfilling patriotic duty and supporting their country, many workers worked to indirectly help enlisted loved ones. Even before Lyman was drafted, Ruth took pleasure in the idea of helping American soldiers return home safety, writing “I have turned to the new pleasure of work. We are now invested [as a country] in the homecoming of our boys.”[22] Thompson’s enlisted loved ones realized such duty and thanked Thompson for her work in the Red Cross in letters sent to her from training camps and from Europe.[23] Because soldiers began realizing the contributions women workers to the war effort, the American political scene became enthralled women workers as the “second line of military defense.”
Women found work and other war-supporting activities such as rationing as a means of helping loved ones. By supporting their enlisted loved ones through work, and loved
An image of Ruth Thompson’s 1917 diary.
ones personally thanking them for their efforts in letters to home, women felt more connected to their enlisted loved ones overseas. “Mother cried when she heard news of war [fearful for her sons enlisting], but the Lord will help us,” Thompson wrote in an April 1917 entry, a week after she entered the workforce and the U.S. entered World War I. “Lyman told us the reality of him fighting was slim, and we would help support him from home.”[24] Although Lyman would go off to Europe a few short months after Ruth wrote this entry, Lyman was right in that he had his family supporting him back at home. In letters, Lyman would thank Ruth for her work with the Red Cross, noting the organization’s importance in serving wounded soldiers. Ruth’s mother would also do her part in supporting rationing during the war, despite not entering the workforce with her daughter. Ruth noted that her mother was becoming “thrifty but very stylish,” by making clothes out of old material, even wearing a homemade recycled hat to a dinner for mothers of enlisted soldiers.[25] Thus, the recognition of domestic efforts to help the war also helped pave the way for women’s suffrage.
Efforts to help loved ones in wartime work was epitomized in work recruitment efforts. As a member of the Red Cross, Ruth was expected to help promote the Red Cross’s interests among other women in her social sphere. “Today [Lucille and I] distributed Red Cross pamphlets to friends,” Thompson wrote in a November 10 diary entry, a year and a day before the end of the war. “It was an easy exchange to tell about my work, and I hope some will consider joining. I feel at ease with war when I work.”[26] Thompson found empowerment through the female workspace at the Red Cross, helping the organization gain notability as a women-founded place of support for soldiers during war.
Ruth also used the Red Cross as a means of personalizing gifts sent to training camps where her loved ones were stationed. Frank Richards thanked Thompson personally for food gifts sent through the Red Cross to his training camp in a personal letter. In this letter, Richards noted that “the boys are certainly enjoying [the homemade rolls], our food is getting better [thanks to all the] donations…If it hadn’t been for the mess [of the camp] I would have thought I was at home.”[27] In the weeks leading up to Christmas, Thompson worked overtime to complete Christmas gifts for oversea soldiers supported by the Red Cross, “I have been working on Xmas presents, for friends here and for aiding [soldiers abroad]. I took a little break to go to lunch at the church with mother, then continued working on Xmas gifts in the eve.”[28] By using the Red Cross as a personal connection to her enlisted loved ones, Thompson made a more personal impact on the quality of live for soldiers.
Ruth Thompson found self-empowerment through her work as a Red Cross volunteer, channeling her grief towards helping enlisted soldiers like Lyman and Frank Richards. With work, she found a sense of purpose, and felt like she was making an impact in the larger cause of the war effort. At the end of the war in 1918, her work with the Red Cross and Indianapolis’s rationing administration drawn to a close, Ruth ended her diary with a hopeful note: feeling a stronger sense of self, Ruth decides to further pursue work, filling a position as an instructor at Pinewood Camp, a girl’s summer camp in Michigan by 1920.[29]
Conclusion:
“We awoke about 3 o’clock in the morning with the church bells and whistles celebrating the end of the war.”— Ruth Thompson’s diary, November 11, 1918 entry
Although the influx of female workers in prominent professions during World War I heavily influenced support for the ratification of the 19th Amendment, it is important to look at the motives women had to work other than furthering the feminist movement. To completely ignore the motives of women like Ruth Thompson is to paint an unrealistic picture of the lives of these accidental women change-makers, dehumanizing them into purely machines for the Suffrage Movement. Women who were motivated by grief found empowerment in work by using work to forget grief, while helping to support enlisted loved ones they grieved for. Although women would largely be pushed back into pink-collared jobs after the war, forced to abandon their wartime positions as opportunities closed with the war, these women workers opened new doors for the feminist cause, even if the feminist movement wasn’t on their minds. “I feel proud in my work,” Thompson wrote in her 1917 diary. “I am helping the war cause, and I am opened to the world around me.”
[1] Ernest Hamlin Baker. YWCA: For Every Fighter, a Woman Worker: Back Our Second Line of Defense. 1918. Poster, 105.2×70.7 cm.
[2] Lynn Dumenil. The Second Line of Defense: American Women and World War I. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2017, 161.
[3] Ruth Elizabeth Thompson. “1917 Diary.” Diary, December 1917.
[4] “Historical Statistics of the United States.” Census. United States Census Bureau, 1910.
[7] Menapace, Chris. n.d. “Women in the Factories: Industry in Connecticut during World War I, Digital History 511: Theory & Practice.” Central Connecticut State University Library. Accessed April 12, 2019.
[8] Fara, Patricia. 2018. A Lab of One’s Own: Science and Suffrage in the First World War. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 84.
[9] Bridgeport Times & Evening Farmer. 1918. Which Will Your Brother or Sweetheart See? Making Munitions Is Woman’s Job. Newspaper Advertisement.
[10] Fara. 2018. A Lab of One’s Own. 80-81.
[11] Angela Woollacott. 1994. On Her Their Lives Depend. Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 2.
[12] Susan R. Grayzel. 2002. Women and the First World War. Seminar Studies in History. London: Longman, an imprint of Pearson Education. 13-15
[13] Virginia Mcloughlin. “‘Hoeing Smokes’: A New Milford, Connecticut, Unit of the Woman’s Land Army, World War I.” Connecticut History, 2001, 39.
Claudia's Corner 