The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-11-19

Clermont-Ferrand, Central France Nov. 1e.@The women of France gath cred the crops this year. while their sons and brothers are fighting at the front, and they are big crops. The harvest is just closing, the barns in this vast farming region are fairly bursting with wheat, oats, and a null titude of farm products, and the fields the stacked with the. straw-covered yield of potatoes, carrots, beets, and vegetables of all kinds-a,n these are a tribute to these Spartan peasants women of France who in way are fighting the country's battle just as much as the men in the trenches.
 For. three days a correspondent of the Associated Press has passed through 800 miles of this farming re- zion, under escort of army officers assigned by the Ministry of War, pri- marily for the purpose of seeing the thousands of German prisoners gath cred in from Champagne and else where, but Incidentally given the op- portunity Of seeing these French peas ant women scultivating the fields, picking, sorting and shipping fruit, and gathering in the stores of vege- tables and tobacco.
 Women were to be seen everywhere bending over the furroughs or with panniers on their backs carrying the
 
 on top of straw-ricks pitching the grain into place or loading it onto wagons; in the freight yards near the stations bringing in the farm pro ducts and storing them on flat cars; and in long irregular companies along the roads at night going home from work with their dogs, wheelbarrows, babies and armsfu1f of fagots.
 In one 30-acre field of turnips five sturdy matrons were at work and one young woman, with an old gray-beard- ed peasant, evidently the father, in a chair under sheItering tree with the baby beside him. He was too old for the fighting lines or the warfare of the women in the fields. Further along d great sweep of fields were dotted with knots of women gathering pota- toes in bags, and then throwing the filled bags over their shoulders to carry to the waiting carts Each group of women had a yoke of oxen and a cart. They were heavy-set, square-built women. like those paint ed by Millet, with course aprons an1 black dresses girt up to their knees, usually bareheaded but at times with the big white head-gear. typical of this Auvergns farm country.
 E On one large farm a party of wo- men were putting on the fall fertilf- ger before the winter sets in- Some were on the carts hauling in the ma nure, and scores of others were scat tered over the black earth levelhng and distributing the fertilizer In an- other field one woman was doing the fertilizing. and a sweep of about 10 cres showed what she had accomplish ed. The next farm had already yield ed it's crop of corn, and now the Wo- men were gathering the pumpkins from between the close-cut eorn-StOck The bodies of the women moved up and down with the regularity of a -S<,1- %11,n hi pumpkins and heaved them up to other women standing on the carts t. receive them-
 Several times along the route there was picture of the army of fighting men on hand, and the army of work ing women on the other, when a de- tachment of artillery or cavalry passed forward on their way to the front. One artillery detachment had heavy field guns, and stretched along the road for quarter of a mile, another had the light French nttra1euse, or rapid fire gun. At one point a whole divi- sion of cavalry was encamped on a level sweep of farm country, and col urnns of troops were exercising on the field of nanoeuvres. When these de- ta chments passed along the roads, all the women in the fields would stop work and stand with arms akimbo gazing intently at the spectacle of their men going forward for the fight ing for in almost evry case the women in the fields were the wives and sweet hearts, mothers and sisters Of the recruited in this vicinity and now on the march nearer the fighting line {. After the detachmeI eIlt of heavy field guns had passed, we stopped to ex- anime the road, to see if this splendid macadam had been cut by the con- stant passing of artillery and the dig ging of cavalry -hoofs. But there was not a dent from the passing of these twenty-one guns, and the well-made road showed no more effect than from the passing of several automobiles The officer said this condition was general, and that the famous roads of France was passing through this orr deal of artillery without appreciable impairment. S
 The women's work in the farm re- gions is not confined to the field but covers the whole range of work incl dent to agriculture. One stretch of country was particularly abundant in straight young saphng, and here the women were at work hewing the sap lings, piling them like cord-wood along the road ready for the carts to take them to the station, women were on the fIat-cars4 receiving saplings this product for telegraph poles, rail the men are away. In the country inns. too. women are doing everything not only cooking but running the es- te blishment, and even taking the places of the garcons in the village cafes.
 Occasionally few men are seen in the fieldsh but they seem out of place