Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/766

728 HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE (2) Food Production. The chairman, Mrs. Henry Wade Rogers, treasurer of the association, after speaking of the co- operation received from the Department of Agriculture, said in part: "We appealed to all State suffrage presidents to appoint chairmen and encourage their local leagues to cooperate in every way possible in increasing the food supply and a splendid response came. We urged the importance of enlisting women to undertake practical gardening or farming and to provide training for women to this end. We urged the opening in every State of two or three Farm Employment Bureaus for women through which graduates of Agricultural Colleges and others with less training could be placed on farms, and fanners who were progressive enough to want women's help could be reasonably sure of secur- ing it. We arranged with the largest overalls company in the United States to design and put out a suitable farm uniform for women, which was extensively sold and used. . . . The reports at the end of the season testified to the millions of gardens worked by suffragists, to the thousands who helped on farms or went to farm training schools, to canning kitchens and home canning on a scale hitherto unthought-of." (3) Industrial Protection of Women. The chairman, Miss Kthel M. Smith, said in part: "This committee was created by the National Suffrage Board to secure women workers to fill the places of men called for mili- tary service and it promised to 'protect the work of such women.' A letter was sent to five hundred Chambers of Commerce over Mrs. Catt's signature, asking for their cooperation in behalf of women workers against the danger of excessive overtime and underpay. The slogan of 'Equal Pay for Equal Work' was util- ized and vigilance committees were planned for each State to note the conditions in industrial localities and report back to Washington. The questions of equal pay for equal work and equal opportunity for women were then taken up with the Govern- ment departments, which have been quite as unfair to women employees as have private firms. The scale of pay is notoriously less than for men, and women have been excluded from the civil service examinations for many positions which they are well equipped to fill. We therefore sent a letter to the Departments