New Britain herald., 1915-11-19
FREVCh WObIEN
 HARVEST ALL CROPS.
Female Farmers in France Are
 Thoroughly Organized

"O~u v
 Correspondence of The Associated Press)
 Clermont- -Ferrand, Central France, Oct. 26.-The Women of France have gathered 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, hay and multitude of farm products, and the fields are stacked with the straw covered yield of potatoes, carrots, beets and vegetables of all kinds-all these crops a tribute to these spar tan peasant women of France who Tn a way are fighting the country's battle just as much as the men In the trenches.
 War Prisoners at Work.
 For three days a correspondent of The Associated Press has passed through 800 miles of this farming region, under escort of army officers assigned by the ministry of war, pro- marily for the purpose of seeing the thousands of German prisoners gathered in from Champagne and else where, but incidentally giving the op-
 
 peasant women cultivating the fields, driving the oxen for the fall plough ing, picking, sorting and shipping fruit, and gathering in the stores of vegetables and tobacco.
 " Women were to be seen everywhere bending over the furroughs or with - panniers on their backs carrying the heavy loads of carrots and turnips; on top of straw-ricks pitching the grain into place or loading it on wagons; in the freight yards near the stations bringing in the farm products 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 armsful of fagots.
 4 Women and Old Men.
 Tn one 30-acre field of turnips five sturdy matrons were at work and one young woman, with an old gray bearded peasant, evidently the father, in a chair under sheltering tree with the baby beside him. He was too old for the fighting line or for this other warfare of the women in the fields 7Further along a great sweep of fields was dotted with knots of women gathering potatoes into bags, and then throwing the filled bags over their shoulders to carry to the waiting carts Each group of women had g. yoke of oxen and cart. They were heavy-set, square-built women, like those painted by Millet, with coarse aprons and black dresses girt up to their knees, usually bare headed but at times with the big white headgear,- typical of this Auvergne farm country. On one large farm a party of worn- en were putting on the fall fertilizer before the winter set in. Some were on the carts hauling in the manure, and scores of others were scattered over the black earth leveling and dis .tributing the fertilizer. In another field one woman alone was doing the fertilizing, and a sweep of about ten acres showed what she had accom- plished. The next farm had already yielded it's crop of corn, and now . the women were gathering the pump kins from between the close-cut corn- stocks. The bodies of the women moved up and down with the regular 1ty of a windmill as they picked up the big pumpkins and feaved them up to other women standing on the carts to receive them.
 Peace and War.
  was a picture of the army of fight ing men on one hand, and the army of working women on the other, when a detachment 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 mile; an- other had the light French mitraleuse or rapid fire gun. At one point a whole division of cavalry was en- camped on 8 level sweep of farm country, and columns of troopers were exercising on the field of man oeuvres When these detachments passed along the roads, all the wom- en in the fields would stop work and 1 stand with arms akimbo gazing in tently at the spectacle of their mer going forward for the fighting, for ir almost every case the women in the fields were the wives, mothers ant sisters of the men recruited in thi: vicinity and now on the march near l CT the fighting line.
 k After the detachment of heav!