1917-1918 THE LIBERTY BOND MOVEMENT AND THE 19TH AMENDMENT

During times of war, women have always been at the forefront of organizing and helping to stabilize the home front. They have also been on the battlefield where they have served as nurses, doctors and ambulance drivers. Some have even fought
along side men. Pre- 20Th century women worked hard to hold down the farms when their men folk were called into battle. They sewed bandages, socks, gloves, prepared medicine kits and visited wounded soldiers in hospitals. They gave birth, raised the children and managed to keep a society going which would have crumbled if they had not risen to the task. In some cases, they had to defend their homes from invading soldiers. They were not passive players to the events around them. They took a very active role.

Both the nature of war and the needs of the home front changed after the turn of the century. The Great War became a war based on the technological developments that had taken place at the end of the 1800’s and the beginning of the 1900’s. The home front consisted not only of farms and rural communities, but also of cities filled with industrial plants and factories. When the men were called off to do battle, someone needed to take their place. The government called on the next available source, women.

There were two separate issues confronting the government. Funding for the war and the stabilizing of the home front. Stabilizing the home front meant keeping the factories and industrial plants working to provide the soldiers with materials to fight. The same government that had tried to keep women from entering the work force and voting now needed them to stabilize the home front and work the factories. Women rose to the occasion on both fronts. They had a little secret up their sleeves, they knew they were not delicate and they were not imbeciles. The government had yet to learn that fact.

Much weight has been given to the role women took on the home front during WWII. Proportionately, the information about women during WWI is not the same. Yet, the role they played had a direct impact on men and society. In fact, the Liberty Bond Movement during WWII is extensively written about whereas the Liberty Bond Movement of WWI has little if any information to substantiate the role of women. Perhaps because women’s issues died after WWI and other movements did not come to fruition until after WWII there is little documentation. It may also be that the Great Depression, which followed the Great War, consumed the time, energy and emotions of society. Women were thrown back into a role they had just started to emerge from when jobs once again became scarce. Only this time it was due to economic forces rather then the dictates of the sexes. So many men were in need of jobs there was no place for women to fill the gaps. The fact was there were no gaps.

Government propaganda has always played an important part in shaping national identity. WWI was no exception. The government needed women to work and they needed women to stay at home to tend to the land and care for future citizens, namely the children. In the eyes of the government, women were still the delicate souls of morality. This image was depicted over and over again in posters and postcards. Women still needed to be feminine, but they needed to do men’s work. The government sought to capitalize the delicate female image with the strong mother who takes care of her brood. The soldiers on the battlefield, Uncle Sam and the American soil became her brood. Women were often portrayed as strong, but caring, beautiful, but capable and menacing, but feminine. In actuality, they were mothers who could multitask. This meant being what men did not think they were capable of achieving. The men were to be proved very wrong on all accounts.

The war was expanding and the government needed huge amounts of money to sustain the war efforts. The idea began in the drawing rooms of the rich society ladies of New York. When called upon by government officials to help with the organization, the wealthy society women stepped forward. The women who had been organizing balls and movements and addressing social issues not only took the reigns of the organizing horse, they hopped onto the saddle and rode into the sunset leaving the men behind in their dust. The Liberty Bond Movement began at the top of the upper crust of society. From there it expanded to the middle class educated women and finally to some extent their poorer cousins. These women organized and built the movement into a multi million-dollar industry, which expanded into multiple bond movements. Women from the industrial cities to the rural farming communities were at the front and behind the scenes all the way down to the grass roots. This meant women like Margaret were the forces behind the local community involvement in the Liberty Bond Movement. They organized both the home front and the women who marched, passed out propaganda, leaflets, and flyers and went door to door to raise funds. They encouraged women to rise up and become independent. This meant dipping into carefully saved money to invest in the war bonds. It meant giving women permission to feel an entitlement to being more then an apron and a baby factory. They worked the fields, the factories, and they rationed everything from sugar, meat, and metal and gave back to the country more then ten fold. When the war ended, the women had performed beyond the expectations of the men.

The same men who would not have considered themselves champions of women’s rights now found themselves singing their praises. And, women had not lost their femininity. They were still wives and mothers, who cooked, cleaned, mended, and loved, their husbands, their children and their homes. And they wanted to vote. It was their right; they had earned every penny of it, literally. The time was ripe for change and they would be silenced no more. The 18Th Amendment had already been ratified. The men did not have to fear women would vote for prohibition. Perhaps, if women could organize an entire nation, maybe they could be useful in garnishing votes for men running for political offices. On June 15, 1919 the 19Th Amendment was passed. Women had earned the right to vote. The War was over.

(digital photographs of WWI Liberty Bond material reproduced with permission and courtesy of Sandusky Public Library Archives. This material may not be reproduced or copied)