The Hartford republican. (Hartford, Ky.) 18??-1926, 1915-11-26
French Women DO Mems Work.

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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 fair
ly bursting with wheat. oats, hay and
a multitude of farm products, and the
fields are stacked with the straw-cov-
cred yield of potatoes, carrots, beets
and vegetables of all kinds--all these
crops a tribute to these Spartan peas
ant women of France, who in a way
are fighting the country's battle just
as much as the men in the trenches.
For three days correspondent of
the Associated Press has passed
through 500 miles of this farming re-
gion, 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 giving the OPP
portunity of seeing these French
peasant women cultivating the fields,
driving the oxen for the fall blowing,
picking. sorting and shipping fruit.
and gathering in the stores of veget-
ables and tobacco.
Women were to be seen every
where bending over the burrows or
with painters on their backs carry
ing the heavy loads Of carrots and
turnips; on top of straw-ricks pitch
ing 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
fiat cars; and in long, irregular COM
panies along the roads at night going
home from work with their dogs,
wheelbarrows, babies and armful of
| fagots.
In one thirty-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 a 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. Further 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
ing to the waiting carts. Each
group of women had yoke of oxen
and cart. They were heavy-set.
square-built women, like those paint
ed 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 wom
ell were putting on the fall fertiliz-
er before the winter set in. Some
were on the carts hauling in the ma
nure, and scores of others were scat
tered over the black earth leveling
and distributing the fertilizer. In
another field one woman alone was
doing the fertilizing, and sweep of
about ten acres showed what she had |
accomplished. The next farm had !
already yielded its crop of corn. and !
now the women were gathering the |
pumpkins from between the close
cut cornstalks. The bodies of the
women moved up and down with the
regularity of a windmill as they pick
ed up the big pumpkins and heaved
them up to other women standing on
the carts to receive them
Several times along the route there
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 detach-
ment had heavy field guns, and
stretched along the road for a quar-
ter of a mile: another had the light
French mitraleuse, or rapid-fire gun.
At one point whole division of
cavalury was encamped on a level
sweep of farm country, and columns
Of troopers were exercising on the ;
field of maneuvers. When these de-
.achments passed along the roads, all ,
he women in the fields would stop /
work and stand with arms akimbo ,
gazing intently at the spectacle of
heir men going forward for the
lighting. for in almost every case the +,
in the fields were the wives, i,
and sisters of the men re-
,ruited in this vicinity and now on
he march nearer the fighting line.
After the detachment of heavy +,
ield-guns had passed We stopped to :
the road to see II this splen- ;
lid macadam had been cut by the :
constant passing of artillery and the
ligging of cavalry hoofs. But there .
vas not a dent from the passing of .