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by Michael J. McCarthy
22 October 1991

Keep the home fires burning,
While your hearts are yearning,
Though your lads are far away,
They dream of home.

There's a silver lining
Through the dark cloud shining,
Turn the dark cloud inside out,
Till the boys come home.

"Keep the Home Fires Burning," patriotic song in the United States during World War I. ⁽¹⁾

There is a certain significance, perhaps a certain indication of the extent to which our civilization has gone, when a Secretary of War can say to a conference of women, that the success of the United States in the making of this war is just as much in your hands and in the hands of the women of America as it is in the hands of the soldiers of our army.

Newton D. Baker, Secretary of War and Chair, Council of National Defense, at the Liberty Loan Convention, 1917.⁽²⁾

In looking over the mobilization of women in war time one must not forget that great line of defense, the women who keep the home fires burning. They do not follow the flag and fife, they have no public honor or applause, but a wonderful mobilization has taken place, the silent mobilization of the housewife (one may add this does not mean the mobilization of silent housewives).

Mrs. Nevada Davis Hitchcock,Pennsylvania State Chair, Home Economics, National League for Women's Service, July 1918.⁽³⁾

INTRODUCTION

    On 31 January 1917 Count Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff, the German ambassador to the United States, presented a note to U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing in which he announced Germany's resumption of unrestricted U-boat warfare in the waters around Great Britain, France, Italy, and in the Eastern Mediterranean. All ships--military or merchant, enemy or neutral--met in this zone would be sunk. Memories of the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 arose inside and outside Washington. Although Woodrow Wilson's declaration of war would not be delivered to Congress until more than two months later, many people viewed this resumption of Germany's U-boat policy as the Rubicon to war. The nation girded for battle.⁽⁴⁾

    When the call to arms finally sounded throughout America in early April 1917, the women of the country responded in force. Existing organizations for war relief, such as the American Red Cross, and nascent women's organizations, such as the National League for Women's Service and the Women's Committee of the Council of National Defense, sought to organize and educate the women of the country so that they, too, could help America obtain victory. In many cases these organizations also sought to demonstrate the capabilities of women in a time of national need so that women could obtain the right to vote.⁽⁵⁾

    The women of Cabell County, West Virginia, were quick to answer this call for female mobilization. This paper will examine some of the activities and members of women's organizations in Cabell County. It will seek to show how these women both shared a common, prewar ideology with women throughout the country and at the same time sought to expand the limits of that doctrine. Through this examination, one can see that the First World War provided the women of this community with a means of expressing their desires--both latent and conscious--to enter the sphere of public and therefore political life.

IDEOLOGY BEFORE THE WAR

    To a large but not complete degree, the local women volunteers shared a common ideological mindset with other women activists around the country. Historian Barbara J. Steinson seeks to understand the doctrinal context of women activists and volunteers prior to the American involvement in World War I. She claims that even though women as a group often focused their energies on divergent and sometimes conflicting goals, they habitually invoked the ideology of "nurturant motherhood" as a justification for their actions. The foundation of this credo was the notion that women's maternal and reproductive roles made them sexually distinct from males, not only physically but also in temperament, psychology, and intellect. The outgrowth of this belief was that woman's main purpose was to give unselfish devotion to the nurture and protection of life; the female function was sacrifice for and service to others.⁽⁶⁾

    This ideological mindset of nurturant motherhood was so pervasive in early twentieth century America that one can find evidence of it both in the suffragist and in the antisuffragist camps. As women began to demonstrate their abilities in the professional and educational worlds around the turn of the century, those opposed to the women's vote had to abandon the claim that women were incapable of grappling with political issues. Instead, the "antis" conceded equality and often argued that women were morally superior; so superior, in fact, that they could not be allowed to debase themselves in the world of politics. From this perspective, the "nurturant mother," much like the "republican mother" of the era immediately after the American Revolution, had the responsibility of raising and instilling moral virtues in her offspring. Her obligation, therefore, lay in the home, not in the arena of politics.⁽⁷⁾

    The suffragists used this same ideology to counter the contentions of the antis and to justify their fight for the vote. If politics were base, they argued, it was because of the lack of a pure influence. The inherent violence of men had created a society that praised war but ignored the value of human life. Women's duty to protecting and fostering human existence, then, required that they enter politics to exercise a positive sway. The expansion of female responsibility beyond the sphere of home and hearth would infuse the public sector with the virtues that only women possessed. Female participation in public life would yield a more peaceful and humane world, and it was the obligations of "nurturant mothers" to strive for that aim.⁽⁸⁾

    As the European Continent erupted in war and as the question of America's proper role in the conflict arose, women on both sides of the military preparedness issue also adopted the nurturant mother ideology. The Women's Peace Party (WPP) sought an end to the bloodletting in Europe. The war illustrated the failure of male-dominated politics, and according to the preamble of the WPP's constitution, women would no longer "endure without protest the added burden of maimed and invalided men and poverty- stricken widows and orphans" created by war. Women bore the responsibility for urging "each generation onward toward a better humanity, "and therefore the WPP claimed the right of political participation "as human beings and the mother half of humanity."⁽⁹⁾

    Spurred by stories of German atrocities in Belgium and by the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, those women who favored military preparedness also invoked the nurturant mother ideal. Since women had given birth to the very lives that would be risked in a war, the members of the Women's Section of the Navy League (WSNL) argued that the female voice, "raised in a cry for preparedness to protect the lives and homes [that women have been] the chief factor in building up, should be harkened unto."⁽¹⁰⁾ Thus, although they reached a conclusion markedly different from that of the WPP, the women of the WSNL employed the same ideological base for their beliefs. Once the United States entered the war in early April 1917, this same combination of the ideas of the nurturant mother and community involvement motivated many women volunteers both at the national level and in Cabell County.

IDEOLOGY DURING THE WAR

    One of the earliest war-related measures that sought women's participation was food conservation, an illustration of the nurturant mother ideal. The magazine World's Work admitted that there would be "war work for women to do," but assured its readers that it would not involve "putting on trousers or an unbecoming uniform and trying to do something that a man can do better."⁽¹¹⁾

    In June 1917 Secretary David Houston of the Department of Agriculture, for example, did not ask women to take to the farms and fields of America to help with crop production; such a proposal that early would have been rather threatening in its departure from the traditional responsibilities of women.

    Instead, he suggested they merely cook smaller portions of food: The housekeepers of the Nation control 80 per cent of the food expenditures of the Nation. In eliminating waste they may perform a distinct service. All women can serve the Government in conserving and utilizing to the best advantage existing food supplies. At this juncture, no service that women can perform is more important or more necessary.⁽¹²⁾

    Secretary Houston estimated that annual waste in foodstuffs in the U.S. "due to bad cooking and to putting too much on the table" was approximately $700 million. To be fair to Secretary Houston, there was no firm decision in June 1917 that the United States would send to Europe more soldiers than the single token division that had recently departed for the Continent under the command of General John Pershing⁽¹³⁾. Nonetheless, such a refusal to recognize the possibility of greater participation by women demonstrates a decidedly patronizing attitude towards women's work and a desire to limit the extent of that work to the walls of the American household.

    Obviously, women's participation in the war effort did not stop with measuring smaller portions for the dinner table.⁽¹⁴⁾ Nonetheless, much of the work that occupied the national women's volunteer organizations, such as the American Red Cross, the National League for Women's Service, and the Women's Committee of the Council of National Defense, can be seen as non-threatening extensions of the traditional responsibilities of women within the home. Many of these groups organized canteen services near military camps for the sake of the troops departing for or returning from Europe. These canteens served as nurturing stations for the soldiers. According to Mrs. Nevada Davis Hitchcock, Pennsylvania State Chair of the Home Economics Committee of the National League for Women's Service: "Many things are accomplished that supplement the care of the government for our men. The morale of a camp may be improved by the application of cake and ice-cream oftener than the commanders realize."⁽¹⁵⁾ Although these canteens increased the public profile of women's efforts, they were still an extension of work that was traditionally considered as belonging to the female sex. Even if the particular women who participated in these canteens may have never personally cooked a meal or washed a dish (perhaps due to their social class), they were still considered to have the obligation to do so in a time of need merely by virtue of their gender:

The canteen undoubtedly sees more of the new spirit of willingness in women volunteers than any other division. In it there are women who, before the war, had never washed a dish or cooked a meal, and today they enjoy cooking hearty meals for hungry sailors and soldiers and then washing the dishes when the meal is finished.⁽¹⁶⁾

Other organizations participated in similar extensions of home work. Even though the work of the Home Service Section of the Red Cross went beyond merely the supply of knitted goods and surgical dressings and into the area of the collection and dispersal of money, the primary purpose of this organization was to look after the families of the service men--to provide assistance in order to maintain the home. Therefore, its mission reflected the idea of the nurturant mother. The General Federation of Women's Clubs attempted to establish hostess houses in the South of France for American soldiers on furlough, but were forced to abandon this plan when General Pershing ruled that no civilian organizations could enter the field. Undaunted, the General Federation provided 100 volunteers (two from each state) known as "Victory Girls" to assist the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) in France. Thus, it too engaged in activity that, while perhaps radical in scope, was traditional in substance.⁽¹⁷⁾

    Many of the activities of the women's volunteer groups in West Virginia, and more specifically in Cabell County, also reflected the nurturant motherhood ideology. Throughout the state, the various affiliate groups of the West Virginia Federation of Women's Clubs participated in such organized committees as Food Conservation and United War Work; the responsibility for feeding American and Allied soldiers and for raising money for relief organizations fell largely on the shoulders of women.⁽¹⁸⁾ In addition, several of the clubs sponsored war orphans in Belgium and France, an extension of the traditionally female task of child-rearing. Four West Virginia women--double the state quota--served as "Victory Girls" and assisted with war relief in France and Belgium as part of the YMCA.⁽¹⁹⁾     This nurturant motherhood ideology can be seen on the local level as well. The Woman's Club of Huntington, for example, engaged in many war-related activities that fall into the category of extensions of home work. Between the summer of 1917 and the spring of 1918, for example, the club assisted with many relief efforts both in Huntington and abroad. The Huntington chapter donated $124.00 to help establish the furlough homes for the American Expeditionary Forces in France. In an expansion of the traditional female obligation to feed and clothe the family, the club sent 130 sweaters, at a cost of $240.00, and 260 glasses of jelly to military training camps, including Camp Lee in Virginia (now Fort Lee). Those members of the Woman's Club of Huntington involved in the War Gardens Committee, which at the prompting of Herbert Hoover's Food Administration encouraged city residents to plant small gardens in their yards, canned over 4,042 quarts of food stuffs. In addition, the Woman's Club's Urban Kitchen Committee had over 100 volunteers.⁽²⁰⁾

    The two other Huntington affiliates of the West Virginia Federation of Women's Clubs also aided the war effort. Members of the Current History Club served in the canteen located at the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad Station, and the Mother's Club provided twenty workers for the Urban Kitchen.⁽²¹⁾

    The Auxiliary Units of the local American Red Cross made surgical dressings under the direction of Mrs. C. L. Ritter, produced care packages called "comfort kits" under the supervision of Mrs. C. P. Donovan, and aided the families of servicemen through the Home Service Section under the leadership of Mrs. F. J. Waddell. The canteen, formed on 9 September 1918 and chaired by Mrs. Dan A. Mossman, served meals to 165,000 soldiers between the armistice and the conclusion of demobilization. Two fund drives conducted by the Red Cross in June 1917 and May 1918 netted more than $157,000.⁽²²⁾ These activities parallel the home work that was seen--by both the men and the women of the time--as the responsibility of women and thus served to augment the nurturant mother ideal.

    Although the work of these women's organizations in many ways embodied the nurturant mother ideology, it occasionally departed from the norm in significant ways. For example, many of the efforts of these local and state organizations were aimed at raising money not simply to provide war relief but rather to finance the war itself. Throughout the state, the organizations affiliated with the West Virginia Federation of Women's Clubs worked with the Liberty Loan and War Savings committees (the first War Savings Society in the state was formed at the Woman's Club of Huntington).⁽²³⁾ The Woman's Club's fund-raising drives yielded a total of $99,452.05, including $74,750 worth of Liberty Bonds and $23,551.75 in War Savings Stamps sold by club members (Huntington's was the first War Savings Society in the state).⁽²⁴⁾ In addition, the Current History Club and the Mother's Club, two other Huntington organizations affiliated with the West Virginia Federation of Women's Clubs, sold $11,800 and $7,200 worth of Liberty Bonds respectively. These activities are significant not simply because of the assistance they provided to America's war effort, but also because they moved beyond the nurturant mother ideal. Although fund-raising for social and reform causes was not alien to these women's organizations, there is no activity in the home or in their history analogous to raising money for the purpose of military policy. Thus, the activities of these women transcended merely carrying their home work into the public realm. Instead, they created an entirely new avenue for women to become involved in the public sector.

    Another activity of the local women's organizations illustrates that their work went significantly beyond that traditionally seen as belonging to women. Both the Woman's Club of Huntington and the Current History Club provided members for the Four Minute Men, who would give brief, patriotic, and motivational speeches to civic organizations, churches, theaters, and schools.⁽²⁵⁾ The female Four Minute Speakers usually addressed matinee movie audiences (which were themselves predominately female), but since they based their speeches on the same, government-published pamphlets as did the males, the contents of these speeches were probably similar.⁽²⁶⁾

    Even if their talks were aimed at rousing the patriotic fervor and thus the voluntarism of women, there is no activity in the home analogous to public speaking. Some of these women volunteers thus thrust themselves into the public sphere and engaged in non- traditional activity in a non-traditional context.

    An examination of the family-oriented motivations for these local volunteers also illustrates that their work went beyond the nurturant mother ideal. Although this ideology allowed women to carry their work into public life, it still had familial ties and responsibilities as its cornerstone. The antisuffragists of the early twentieth century argued directly that the woman's obligation was to raise virtuous children, not to engage in public activities. Even those who favored the women's vote often incorporated appeals to direct family responsibility in their cries for suffrage--the positive outcome of female political participation would yield a better life for their children. In addition, both those women who favored and those women who opposed U.S. involvement in the war based many of their arguments on the special relationship to and responsibility for their offspring.⁽²⁷⁾ If such were the sole motivator for many of the local volunteers, then one should discover a correlation between volunteering and having a direct relative (son, husband, or brother) serving in the military. If no such correlation exists, then one may argue that these women were motivated by something in addition to a perceived obligation to their sons, brothers, or husbands. Such an examination lends itself well to a statistical analysis.

    An examination of the relationship between having a direct relative in the military and volunteering for a women's organization, at least in Cabell County, shows that no correlation can be inferred. The statistical measure of association shows that the relationship is extremely weak and slightly negative. In addition, the low value for the measure of significance prevents a relationship from being hypothesized in the population.⁽²⁸⁾ The conclusion from this statistical analysis is that these women were motivated by something other than only a perceived responsibility for their male kin, and thus something more than merely their ideological roles as nurturant mothers. IDEOLOGY AFTER THE WAR     Although the activities of these women volunteers during the war in some ways departed from the ideology of nurturant motherhood, they by no means repudiated this mindset entirely. These women viewed the war as an aberration, an inconvenient disruption in the work toward their proper goals. After the war ended, many of these women returned to the activities and agendas, and therefore the ideology, which had dominated their prewar lives.

    Although one might expect to see the involvement with America's war effort sparking a fundamental change in the nature or activities of the women's organizations in Huntington, these groups emerged from the war with both their pre-war goals and type of membership intact. Mrs. L. H. (Grace La Ferre) Cammack, President of the Woman's Club of Huntington during 1919-1920, wrote:

Our work will be vastly different and more arduous,
perhaps, than that of past years. We must gather up
the stitches that were dropped during the dark and
gloomy days of war-time; we must reckon with broken
hearts, blighted hopes, and discouraged souls; and we
must direct the tear-dimmed eye to that viewpoint from
which may be had a most wonderful vision of the
blessing of opportunity and the glory of service.⁽²⁹⁾

Such a desire to "return to normalcy" is discernable on the state level as well. In the Report of the Civics Department of the West Virginia Federation of Women's Clubs for the year 1919- 1920, Mrs. O. I. Woodley wrote:

During the period of intensive war work, club women in
a large measure devoted their activities from their
regular lives of endeavor in response to the 'Help to
Win the War' slogan, with patriotic fervor and a true
desire to help humanity in its struggle for free
existence. Now that this need no longer exists, they
are again taking up their civic duties where they laid
them down. . . .⁽³⁰⁾

In the report of the Director of the West Virginia Federation of Women's Clubs, Mrs. R. L. Hutchinson (of the Huntington chapter) wrote of the tasks that lay ahead after the conclusion of the war:

Inasmuch as the terrible world war which had torn our
hearts and demanded our time and strength was at an end
and our soldiers rapidly returning home, the time and
thought of both Board and Council was given over to
working out plans to aid in reconstructing our national
life.⁽³¹⁾

    An examination of the resolutions passed after the war shows, too, that the conflict had caused little change in the direction of the organization. The resolutions adopted at the state convention for 1919-1920 included such items as an endorsement for the Smith-Towner Education Bill's appropriation of $100 million for education, support for more strict enforcement of prohibition, and a reaffirmation of backing for suffrage. These were all issues that both mirrored those that the Federation discussed prior to the war and illustrated the nurturant motherhood ideology with their emphasis on moral and social standards. The only resolution that mentioned the war at all was the eleventh one adopted, which sought to honor those soldiers who had fought.⁽³²⁾ At the local level the Huntington women's organizations attempted to make the temporary coordination of their groups permanent in the form of the "Council of the Women of Huntington" immediately after the end of the war. No mention is made of this Council in following years, however, so it seems that interest quickly waned.⁽³³⁾ In terms of it goals, therefore, the war did little to cause permanent change within this organization.

    The war also caused little change in the type of women who volunteered, at least on the local level. The membership of these organizations before the war was clearly elite and white; involvement in wartime activities did little to alter this makeup. A statistical analysis of the socio-economic class of these women illustrates this contention.

    Preliminary data have yielded a sketchy picture of the class of women involved in these organizations both before and after the war. While the prewar volunteers owned a higher average amount of property than those who volunteered after the U.S. joined the fighting, the difference between the groups is not statistically significant.⁽³⁴⁾ Therefore, the Huntington Woman's Club seems to have drawn its postwar membership from the same lot as it had prior to April 1917.     A second way of determining whether the new volunteers were from a different class than the prewar volunteers is to compare the proportion of women in each group who had no deeds granted in their name, and therefore had, as far as can be determined, no property (at least in Cabell County). Using the preliminary data gathered to date, the proportion with no real estate is slightly higher for the second group, but again the difference is not statistically significant.⁽³⁵⁾ Therefore, while the ranks of women volunteers swelled during American involvement in the First World War, these new members were still drawn from the same class as their predecessors.⁽³⁶⁾     To the degree that involvement in the war did little to change the women's organizations in Huntington, such involvement might be seen as typical of women's efforts in the South. Southern women's groups often possessed two characteristics. First, the strength of class lines in the South, especially among women, made it difficult to create a truly representative women's organization. Since the efforts to mobilize women focused on existing women's groups, and since these groups in the South were dominated almost exclusively by the middle- and upper-classes, women of lower classes had little opportunity to become involved in the war effort in an organized fashion. Evidence suggests that the war did little to erode these class differences in the Cabell County women's clubs, and thus these groups conformed to the pattern of most Southern women's organizations during the war.⁽³⁷⁾     The second characteristic of these Southern women's groups was an overall institutional weakness, as illustrated by the quick return to the nurturant motherhood ideology after the conclusion of the war. At this time, the organizations were relatively young (the Woman's Club of Huntington being around twenty years old), and thus were unable yet to overcome the strength of other socializing factors, such as family and religion, which discouraged the formation of a network of women's groups.⁽³⁸⁾ It is unclear, however, whether the weaknesses of the Huntington and West Virginia women's clubs can be attributed to direct roadblocks erected by men in organizations such as the Council of National Defense, as was the case in some parts of the South, or to the extent to which these women internalized and thus seldom questioned the nurturant mother ideal.⁽³⁹⁾

CONCLUSION

    From this examination of volunteers in Cabell County, West Virginia, it seems that the ideology of nurturant motherhood served as an important, but not sole, motivator for their volunteer work. Many of the activities of these local organizations were indeed extensions of traditional women's work within the home. Also, since some of these women had direct relatives in the service, a perceived need to care for their husbands and sons probably spurred some, but not most, of them to engage in war relief work.

    This nurturant mother ideal, however, is not sufficient to explain all of the war-related work of such organizations as the Woman's Club of Huntington, the Buford Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the Auxiliary Units of the Huntington Chapter of the American Red Cross. Some activities--such as the selling of Liberty Bonds and the participation in the Four Minute Speakers--have no corollary within the context of traditional home work, and therefore illustrate a significant departure from merely carrying female family obligations into the public sphere. In addition, there seems to be no evidence that familial ties served as an important, general motivation for a woman to join a volunteer organization--at least in Cabell County. Further examinations of other regions would be necessary for a definite conclusion, but it seems likely that much of the impetus for the volunteer work performed by women seems to have come from outside the home and beyond the ideology of nurturant motherhood.⁽⁴⁰⁾     Perhaps these women were motivated by a sense of patriotism, the opportunity for expanded community involvement, or a shared conception of Wilsonian democracy; appeals to such values made by the Creel Committee (the Committee on Public Information) and the leaders of national women's organizations could easily have persuaded these women to join the war effort. Perhaps there were other motivations; one would probably find almost as many different reasons for involvement in these organizations as there were different members. Whatever the incentives for these volunteers, one can see that both the drive to action and the work performed were founded in a context of community involvement beyond the family. Working within the home or merely carrying home work into the community were insufficient both for the success of America's war effort and for the satiation of these women's desire to help.     The involvement of these women in support of America's war effort did not, however, cause them to abandon the nurturant motherhood ideal completely. When the task of demobilization was complete and most of America's soldiers had returned from "over there," these women lost no time in taking up their prewar work where they had left off. The significant difference, however, was that these women had tasted the addictive flavor of political power; they would not forget that they had answered their nation's call in a time of need, and they would not let those who had sounded the trumpet forget it, either.

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bibliographies and Indices: America: History and Life: A Guide to Periodical Literature. Santa Barbara, CA: American Bibliographical Center, Clio Press, 1963-. Nims, Marion R. Women in the War: A Bibliography. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1918.

Schaffer, Ronald, comp. The United States in World War I: A Selected Bibliography. Santa Barbara, CA: American Bibliographical Center, Clio Press, 1978.

Woodward, David R. and Robert Franklin Maddox, eds. America and World War I: A Selected Annotated Bibliography of English Language Sources. Wars of the United States Series, ed. Richard L. Blanco. New York: Garland Publishing, 1985.

Primary Sources:

Beard, Mary Ritter. Women's Work in Municipalities. National Municipal League Series. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1915; reprint, American Women: Images and Realities Series, ed. Annette K. Baxter and Leon Stein. New York: Arno Press, 1972.

An obvious example of "contribution history." Beard's work provides a clue as to the mindset of women social service organizations prior to U.S. involvement in the First World War. A valuable point of comparison to these same organizations during and after the war. Includes a brief mention of the difficulties in motivating Southern women to accept community activity beyond the context of the family.

Chamberlain, Mary. "Women and War Work." Survey 38 (19 May 1917): 152-54.

The author discusses the organization of the Women's Committee, Council of National Defense, and argues for equal pay for working women who have replaced men in industry.

Clarkson, Grosvenor. "What the Council of National Defense Is and What It Has Done." Scribner's 62 (August 1917): 182- 91.

The author, the Secretary of the Council of National Defense, describes at length the organization and activities of the various departments of the CND. His mention of the Women's Committee, however, totals a mere three column inches out of the entire nine page article.

Creel, George. Complete Report of the Chairman of the Committee on Public Information. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1920.

As the title implies, this document is the Creel's report of the work of the Committee on Public Information (CPI). A significant portion of the book is dedicated to the Four Minute Men, but its brevity is a bit disproportionate to the size of that division of the CPI. Nonetheless, this report should be the starting point for any examination of the Creel Committee.

Field, Louise Maunsell. "Women and National Defense." Bookman 46 (January 1918): 556-60.

The author describes the work of the Women's Committee, Council of National Defense.

General Federation of Women's Clubs. Fourteenth Biennial Convention, Hot Springs, Arkansas, 13 April through 8 May, 1918. Woman's Club of Huntington, 1201 Huntington Avenue, Huntington, West Virginia, 25701.

This report lists the daily schedules of the Fourteenth Biennial Convention.

Glenn, Mary Willcox. "Purpose and Methods of a Home Service Station." Annals of the American Academy of Political Science and Social Science 79 (September 1918): 97-105.

The author, Chair of the Home Service Section of the New York and Bronx County Chapters, American Red Cross, discusses the work of the Home Service Section as distinct from much of the foreign relief that is normally associated with Red Cross action in the Great War.

Hecker, Eugene A. A Short History of Women's Rights: From the Days of Augustus to the Present Time, with Special Reference to England and the United States, 2nd ed. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1914; reprint , Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1971.

Hecker's work is an argument for women's suffrage. Contains information on the legal status of women in each state of the United States in 1910, including data on age of consent, property rights, divorce and labor laws, and suffrage. Also addresses and counters the most popular contemporary arguments against women's suffrage.

Hitchcock, Mrs. Nevada Davis. "The Mobilization of Women." Annals of the American Academy of Political Science and Social Science 78 (July 1918): 24-31.

The author, Pennsylvania State Chair, Home Economics, National League for Women's Service, summarizes the work being done by several national women's organizations, including those of the NLWS and those associated with the Women's Committee, Council of National Defense.

Huntington Advertiser, April through June 1917.

The society pages of this newspaper provide sometimes detailed accounts of the activities or memberships of local women's volunteer organizations. The editorials also make some mention of the local relief activities.

Link, Arthur, ed. The Papers of Woodrow Wilson . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979-.

This extensive and ongoing project provides not only the full text of the President's papers, but also valuable entries of other key figures, such as diary excerpts from Colonel Edward House, the President's intimate friend and advisor.

Ohio State Council of National Defense. A History of the Activities of the Ohio Branch, Council of National Defense. Columbus, OH: F.J. Heer Printing Co., 1919.

This report examines the activities of the Ohio Branch, CND, including the county and community organizations, the Women's Committee, industrial relations and employment, food supply, and postwar activities.

Smith, William Winfred, ed. and comp. Honor Roll of Cabell County West Virginia: An Illustrated Historical and Biographical Record of Cabell County's Part in the World War. Chicago, IL: Severinghaus Printing, 1919[?].

This work contains the names, photographs, and brief biographies of each of the over 2,500 soldiers from Cabell County, West Virginia, who served in the armed forces during World War I. It also contains some brief descriptions of the work of local organizations, including the Huntington Chapter of the American Red Cross. Located in Cabell County Library, Local History Room, 5th Avenue and 9th Street, Huntington, WestVirginia, 25701.

Thorne, Florence C. "Women and War Service." New Republic (June 1917): 455-56; reprinted in David F. Trask, ed. World War I at Home: Readings on American Life, 1914-1920, 124-27. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1970.

Thorne promotes "equal pay for equal work" as an American war aim.

Toksvig, Signe K. "Women Volunteers," New Republic (5 May 1917): 18-20.

The writer decries the lack of structure of the several national women's service organizations. Although praising the appointment of Dr. Anna Howard Shaw to the newly created Women's Committee, Council of National Defense, the author suggests a scheme of drafting women for training and labor--at a pay rate equal to the men they are replacing--instead of relying on women volunteers. "Neither can good intentions and khaki uniforms take the place of a certain amount of training when it comes to the making of munitions."

Van Kleeck, Mary. "Women's Invasion of Industry and Changes in Protective Standards." Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science 18 (1918-1920): 141-46.

Kleeck examines the occupations which opened up for women due to the war effort. She argues for attention to protective standards for female employees and she promotes the continuation of these job opportunities after the war.

Van Rensselaer, Mrs. Coffin. "The National League for Women's Service." Annals of the American Academy of Political Science and Social Science 79 (September 1918): 275-282.

The author, Vice-Chair of the National League for Women's Service, provides a first-hand account of the relief work performed by that organization.

"War Work for American Women." World's Work 34 (June 1917): 142-44.

This article explains to women "how they can serve their country most effectively." It discounts the idea of women entering the work force to replace men entering military service, arguing that "our man-power is so enormous that it is hardly possible that women will be called upon in great numbers to do industrial work to which they have not been accustomed and for which they are essentially unfitted." Instead, it admonishes women not to waste food through poor cooking or "putting too much on the table."

West Virginia Department of Veterans' Affairs. Revised List of Deceased Soldiers, World War . Charleston, WV: W.Va., Dept.Veterans' Affairs: 1 January 1922; reprint October 1961. 8-50.

This listing divides deaths by service (army, navy, and marines), and cause of death (killed in action, died of disease, died on the homefront). The cause and date of death are listed for each soldier where known.

West Virginia Federation of Women's Clubs. Annual Reports of activities within the State of West Virginia, 1914-1920. Woman's Club of Huntington, 1201 Huntington Avenue, Huntington, West Virginia, 25701.

These annual reports give summaries of the activities of state committees, including special committees such as the War Work Committee. They also provide membership totals for the affiliated organizations throughout the State of West Virginia.

Woman's Club of Huntington. Woman's Club of Huntington, West Virginia, 1917-1930 . Bound copy of annual reports. Huntington, WV: By the author, 1201 Huntington Avenue, 1933.

This collections of annual reports of the Huntington Chapter contains messages from the individual presidents and rosters of active and associate members.

Secondary Sources:

Berg, Barbara J. The Remembered Gate: Origins of American Feminism: The Woman and the City, 1800-1860. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978.

The authors description of the "woman-belle ideal" prevalent in the nineteenth century provided a valuable point of comparison for the "nurturant mother" ideology of the early twentieth century.

Breckenridge, Sophonisba P. Women in the Twentieth Century: A Study of Their Political, Social and Economic Activities. Recent Social Trends Monographs. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1933; reprint, American Women: Images and Realities Series, ed. Annette K. Baxter and Leon Stein. New York: Arno Press, 1972.

In this book done for the President's Research Commission on Social Trends, Breckenridge depicts the role of clubs, unions, and professional organizations in advancing women's political participation. Although dated, the work contains valuable information on the several women's clubs which were part of the Women's Committee of the Council of National Defense during the war.

Breen, William. "Black Women in the Great War: Mobilization and Reform in the South." Journal of American History 44 (1978): 421-40.

The author examines the efforts and effects of the Council of National Defense's drives to create black CND chapters in the Southern states. He relates notonly the observations of Mrs. Alice Dunbar-Nelson, the black field agent of the national Woman's Committee of the CND, but also many of the opinions and reactions of the Southerners themselves.

_______-. "Southern Women in the War: The North Carolina Women's Committee, 1917-1919." North Carolina Historical Review 55 (July 1978): 251-83.

Breen illustrates both the difficulties that the North Carolina Woman's Committee faced (such as the lack of support from the male-dominated CND chapter in North Carolina and the lack of finances available for proper administration) and the successes that the organization achieved. He shows that even though most of the women involved in war work never envisioned involvement beyond the production of comfort kits, a few individuals were able to raise the overall social awareness and activity of North Carolina women. Their reform efforts would come to greater fruition in the 1920s.

Cambridge Women's Peace Collective. My Country is the Whole World: An Anthology of Women's Work on Peace and War. London: Pandora Press, 1984.

This collections contains excerpts from the writings of women who have opposed various wars. While it provides brief, biographical sketches for many of these women, and while it presents their arguments against militarism, this book does little to describe the activities of peace proponents or of those women who, regardless of their opinion of war itself, worked to support their country's soldiers.

Clarke, Ida Clyde. American Women and the World War. New York: D. Appleton, 1918.

Clarke relates the work of the several national coordinating agencies and discusses that work in a general sense on a state-by-state basis.

Coffman, Edward M. The War to End All Wars: The American Military Experience in World War I. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986 [1968].

Originally published in 1968, this work remains the single best military history of the United States in World War I. Although the author does little to tie the war effort to the home front apart from a brief description of the draft and of industrial mobilization, his in depth examination of the military both at the strategic and divisional levels is valuable.

Conner, Valerie J. "'The Mothers of the Race' in World War I: The National War Labor Board and Women in Industry." Labor History 21 (Winter 1979-80): 31-54.

Conner illustrates how the National War Labor Board (NWLB), although mired in a prewar legacy and mindset which excluded most women from industrial occupations, managed to adopt a significant, if short-lived, policy of equal pay for equal work.

Cornebise, Alfred E. War As Advertised: The Four Minute Men and America's Crusade, 1917-1919. Philadelphia, PA: American Philosophical Society, 1984.

The author, a professor of history at the University of Northern Colorado, examines the various Four Minute Speech campaigns organized by the Creel Committee. Although he relies heavily on the brochures published by the Committee on Public Information which formed the basis for the Four Minute Speeches instead of examining how exactly these speakers used or departed from these brochures, his approach is a valuable contribution to the understanding of America's propaganda efforts during the war.

Creel, George. How We Advertised America. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1920.

This book is the author's popular version of the Report of the Committee on Public Information and thus covers much of the same material as that official document. This work, too, should be a starting point for those wishing to examine the American propaganda campaign.

Cuff, Robert D. "Herbert Hoover: The Ideology of Voluntarism and War Organization During the Great War," Journal of American History 64 (1977), 358-72.

Cuff describes how the organization and work of Herbert Hoover's Food Administration paralleled Hoover's own view of the importance of individual voluntarism over direct, government involvement in social issues.

Dulles, Foster Rhea. The American Red Cross: A History. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950.

Although this work was written "under the auspices of the [American Red Cross]," Dulles states that the book itself and choice of material were entirely his own.

Ferrell, Robert H. Woodrow Wilson and World War I , 1917-1921. The New American Nation Series, ed., Henry S. Commager and Richard B. Morris. New York: Harper & Row, 1985.

Although this book focuses mainly on the political and diplomatic downfall of Woodrow Wilson as a result of the failure of Senate ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, Ferrell does give attention to some of the efforts of mobilization for the war.

Friedman, Jean. The Enclosed Garden: Women and Community in the Evangelical South, 1830-1900. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1985.

Friedman examines the pervasive and bonding manifestations of Southern devotion to the evangelical kin-based ideology. She argues that the lack of organized women's organizations in the South can be traced to the strength of these religious and kin-based ties.

Greenwald, Maurine Weiner. Women, War and Work: The Impact of World War I on Women Workers in the United States. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1980.

Greenwald's examination, a series of case studies of women workers during World War I, explores the war's direct effects on women wage earners in the context of fundamental long-term social and economic changes in the nature of work in the U.S. The author explores the ways in which women reformers sought to use the war situation to promote the interests of working women and seeks to explain why a watershed event such as the First World War--which "changed the boundaries of many nations, transformed economies, disrupted political systems, and severely strained social life"--did not fundamentally alter the nature or location of women's wage work.

Kennedy, David M. Over Here: The First World War and American Society. New York: Oxford University, 1980.

Kennedy's wide-ranging, interpretive study seeks to examine how participation in the Great War formed a turning point in American history. An excellent source for understanding the home front in the United States.

Kraditor, Aileen S. The Ideas of the Women's Suffrage Movement, 1890-1920. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1965.

This work provides the ideological context of the pro- and anti-suffrage movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although the author shows that there was no single, official ideology of the feminist movement, there were certain themes that pervaded the major ideas of the feminists toward home life, religion, and suffrage.

Martelet, Penny. "The Women's Land Army, WWI." In Mabel Deutrich and Virginia Purdy, eds. Clio Was a Woman: Studies in the History of American Women. Washington, DC: Howard University, 1980), 136-46.

Martelet's article tells of the work of the Women's Land Army--those women who took to America's fields to augment agricultural production during the war.

Mock, James R. and Cedric Lawson. Words that Won the War: The Story of the Committee on Public Information, 1917-1919. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1939.

Although published nearly twenty years later, this work closely parallels both George Creel's Report of the Committee on Public Information and his book, How We Advertised America. This work does, however, provide greater detail in terms of the context of the Creel Committee's efforts, and therefore is valuable.

O'Neill, William L. Everyone was Brave: The Rise and Fall of Feminism in America. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1969.

Purnell, Idella. "The Women's Land Army." Westways 72 (1980): 38-41, 80.

Purnell briefly relates the activities of the Women's Land Army during World War I.

Steinson, Barbara J. American Women's Activism in World War I . Modern American History Series, ed. Frank Freidel. New York: Garland Publishing, 1982.

This work gives wide coverage to several aspects of women's activism during the First World War, including the various women's foreign and domestic peace and relief organizations. Extensive documentation and bibliographic references.

_____. "'The Mother Half of Humanity': American Women in the Peace and Preparedness Movements in World War I." In Women, War and Revolution, ed. Carol R. Berkin and Clara M. Lovett., 259-84. New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1980.

Steinson discusses the ideological context of women's activism in the First World War--one of "nurturant motherhood," an early twentieth century ideal of the "Republican Mother" as illustrated by Mary Beth Norton. Through her examination of the Women's Peace Party (WPP) and the Women's Section of the Navy League (WSNL), two groups with divergent views on preparedness, Steinson shows that this idea of the nurturant mother was a prime socializing agent for women activists throughout the political spectrum. Extensive bibliographic essay.

Zeller, Richard A. and Edward G. Carmines. Statistical Analysis of Social Data, 5th ed. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1978.

This work provides detailed explanations for various statistical analyses as well as appendices with tables of statistical values.

A-1

APPENDIX A

Bivariate Measures of Association and Significance

Phi and Chi Squared

This analysis uses a 2 x 2 table and cross tabulation to discover if a correlation exists between the two variables of having a direct relative in the service and volunteering for a women's organization. The nature of historical research, namely the limited available sources, makes applying such methodology inherently difficult. The researcher cannot use a completely random sample to gather data, since a list of every single woman volunteer in Cabell County does not exist; but from the rosters that are available--those of the Woman's Club, the Buford Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and some of the Red Cross Auxiliary Units--one can gather a sufficient number of names to perform the test. The true question on the validity of the sample is whether or not there is a chance that the names available would be inherently more or less likely to have sons or husbands in the service during the time period than those names that would not be in the sample. Since conscription for the First World War did not allow many of the exemptions permitted in the Civil War--namely the option of paying someone to take a draftee's place--there seems to be little chance that the women in our sample were any more or less likely to have relatives in the service.⁽⁴¹⁾ Therefore our sample, although hardly random, is probably valid.

The data, as mentioned above, were gathered from the rosters of the Woman's Club of Huntington between 1916 and 1919 and the society pages of the Huntington Advertiser between the months of April and July 1917. The Huntington Advertiser listed the names of those women who volunteered for some of the Red Cross Auxiliary Units that were formed specifically in response to U.S. involvement in the war. The names of the women volunteers were cross-referenced with the names of the soldiers from Cabell County to discover who among the women had a husband or son who served.⁽⁴²⁾ If the name of the soldier or the soldier's mother

A-2

or father matched the name on the roster of the women's organizations, that soldier was considered a relative. Since the unmarried volunteers were listed by their own names and not by the names of male relatives, it was often (but not always) impossible to determine whether or not they had relatives in the service. To compensate, the significance level will be lowered from .05 to .20.

Table 1, a 2 X 2 table, shows in vertical columns the numbers of the sample that did and did not have a relative in the military (x), and in horizontal rows the numbers of women who were already members of volunteer organizations before the war started (old volunteers) and the numbers of women who joined after the U.S. entry into the war (new volunteers):

A-3

Table 1.
Relative in Service?

This number includes one member of the Woman's Club who, although joining before the U.S. declaration of war, did so after her son joined the service in 1916. For the purpose of this comparison between volunteering and having a relative in the service, she will be considered a "new" volunteer, since she joined after her son entered the military.

In this table, = -.052097 and ^2 = 0.429. The critical value for Chi Squared at the .20 significance level with one degree of freedom is 1.642.⁽⁴³⁾ Since 0.429 < 1.642, the data in our table do not show a significant relationship, meaning that they do not show any type of correlation between the x and y variables in the population. The data here do not even pass the critical value test at the .50 significance level (0.429 <0.455). The null hypothesis that there is no relationship, therefore, cannot be rejected, and thus no correlation between having a relative and volunteering for a women's organization can be found.

B-1

APPENDIX B

Difference of Means (t) Tests

The most difficult aspect of analyzing the makeup of these organizations is operationalizing class. Again due to the nature of historical research, sources are limited. A mere examination of wealth over a brief period would be insufficient, since socio-economic class includes factors such as community status which develop over long spans of time. For this study, class will be operationalized as the number of property deeds granted in the name of the woman or her husband between 1808 and 1922.⁽⁴⁴⁾ The actual dollar value of these deeds will be ignored, since such values could fluctuate. The assumption of this measure will be that, on the whole, the larger number of deeds a person is granted, the higher that person's socio-economic class. Table 2 below shows the data for each group:

TABLE 2.

Average Number of Deeds for Women Volunteers

                                     Volunteers                              Volunteers
                                       Pre 1917                                 Post 1917

On first glance, the difference between the two means looks rather large (17.308 vs. 3.667). Due to the large standard deviations for each group however (greater even than the means, indicating a distribution enormously skewed to the right), a difference of means test is needed in order to compare the groups.

With these data, d.f. (degrees of freedom) = 27.081, which will be considered 27 for the purpose of this study. The critical value for 27 degrees of freedom in a two-tailed test at the .05 significance level is 2.052.⁽⁴⁵⁾

With these data, t =1.683. Since 1.683 < 2.052, the difference between the two means

B-2

is not significant.⁽⁴⁶⁾ Therefore, there is no statistical difference between the mean amounts of personal property, and therefore socio-economic class, of each group.

The critical value for a one-tailed test is 1.703, which is still greater than 1.683. Therefore, the data is not significant with a one-tailed test, either.

C-1

APPENDIX C

Difference of Proportions (z) Test

Another way of determining if the new volunteers came from a significantly different socio-economic class is to test the proportion of women in each group having no property in their or their husbands' names. Here, a difference of proportions test is useful. Table 3 below shows the relevant statistics for this test:

TABLE 3.

Proportion of each group having no deeds
Volunteers Volunteers

                               Pre 1917                      Post 1917

Using the data in Table III, z = -0.466. The probability for a z score of -0.466 using a two-tailed test is 0.638.⁽⁴⁷⁾ Since 0.638 > 0.05 (significance level), these data do not show any significant difference between the proportions of the two groups, and thus again, there is no statistical difference between the class of each group.⁽⁴⁸⁾

1. Report of the Fourteenth Biennial Convention, General Federation of Women's Clubs, Hot Springs, Arkansas, 13 April through 8 May, 1918. The song, of course, was widespread and not limited solely to the Women's Clubs.

2. Louise Maunsell Field, "Women and National Defense." Bookman 46 (January 1918): 560.

3. Mrs. Nevada Davis Hitchcock, "The Mobilization of Women," Annals of the American Academy of Political Science and Social Science 78 (July 1918): 30.

4. The text of Bernstorff's memo to Lansing, 31 January 1917, is in Arthur Link, ed., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), Vol. 41 (January 24 - April 6, 1917), 74-79.

5. For a detailed account of women's activism, both before and during the war and both in favor of and opposed to American involvement, see Barbara J. Steinson, American Women's Activism in World War I. Modern American History Series, ed. Frank Freidel (New York: Garland Publishing, 1982).

6. Barbara J. Steinson, "'The Mother Half of Humanity:' American Women in the Peace and Preparedness Movements in World War I," in Women, War, and Revolution , ed. Carol R. Berkin and Clara M. Lovett (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1980): 259-60.

7. Aileen S. Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement, 1890-1920 (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1965), 12- 26, 38-45. Eugene A. Hecker, A Short History of Women's Rights: From the Days of Augustus to the Present Time , 2nd ed. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1914), 236-61. Barbara J. Berg, The Remembered Gate: Origins of American Feminism, The Woman and the City, 1800-1860 , (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 75-94.

8. Kraditor, The Ideas of the Women's Suffrage Movement , 36- 57. Steinson, "'The Mother Half of Humanity,'" 260. Hecker, A Short History of Women's Rights , 236-261.

9. Steinson, "'The Mother Half of Humanity,'" 262. Steinson cites: WPP, "Preamble and Platform, 10 January 1915," WPP Papers, Box 1.

10. Ibid., 266. Vylla Poe Wilson, "Women to the Front," Seven Seas 1 (October 1915): 36.

11. "War Work for American Women," World's Work 34 (June 1917): 142-144.

12. Ibid., 142.

13. Ibid. Michael J. McCarthy, "'Lafayette, We Are Here:' The Formation of U.S. Military Policy for the First World War, 1917," M.A. Thesis in progress, Marshall University, Huntington, West Virginia.

14. For a discussion of women's work in industry, see Mary Van Kleeck, "Women's Invasion of Industry and Changes in Protective Standards," Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science 18 (1918-1920): 141-146; Valerie J. Conner, "'The Mothers of the Race' in World War I: The National War Labor Board and Women in Industry," Labor History 21 (Winter 1979-80): 31-54; Maurine.

15. Hitchcock, "The Mobilization of Women," 27.

16. Mrs. Coffin Van Rensselaer, "The National League for Women's Service," Annals of the American Academy of Political Science and Social Science 79 (September 1918), 279. Weiner Greenwald, Women, War, and Work: The Impact of World War I on Women Workers in the United States (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990 [1980]). For information on the Women's Land Army, which involved women in agricultural production, see Penny Martelet, "The Women's Land Army, WWI," in Mabel Deutrich and Virginia Purdy, eds., Clio Was a Woman: Studies in the History of American Women (Washington, DC: Howard University, 1980), 136-146; and Idella Purnell, "The Women's Land Army," Westways 72 (1980): 38-41, 80

17. William L. O'Neill suggests that the government fully endorsed these women's volunteer activities because of their non- threatening nature: "After awhile, it became evident that the government viewed the Woman's Committee as a device for occupying women in harmless activities while men got on with the business of war." See O'Neill, Everyone was Brave: The Rise and Fall of Feminism in America (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1969), 191. See also David M. Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society (New York: Oxford University, 1980), 284-87; Mary Willcox Glenn, "Purpose and Methods of a Home Service Section," Annals of the American Academy of Political Science and Social Science 79 (September 1918), 97-105; Hitchcock, "The Mobilization of Women," 29.

18. The Food Conservation Drive was begun by Herbert Hoover, Director of the Food Administration. It consisted at first of campaigns to persuade women to sign pledge cards promising to take measures to conserve food. Eventually, Hoover organized meatless and wheatless days and publicized reminders to both farmers and consumers that food conservation was necessary to the war effort. See Robert D. Cuff, "Herbert Hoover: The Ideology of Voluntarism and War Organization During the Great War," Journal of American History 64 (1977): 358-372; and Robert H. Ferrell, Woodrow Wilson and World War I, 1917-1921. The New American Nation Series, ed. Henry S. Commager and Richard B. Morris (New York: Harper & Row, 1985), 91-97.

The United War Work campaign was formed at President Wilson's request in September 1918. Several organizations agreed to cooperate in a fund drive and share in the proceeds: YMCA 58.65%, YWCA 8.8%, Knights of Columbus (a Catholic fraternal organization) 17.6%, Jewish Welfare Board 2.05%, War Camp Community Service 8.8%, American Library Association 2.05%, and Salvation Army 2.05%. See Alfred E. Cornebise, War As Advertised (Philadelphia, PA: American Philosophical Society, 1984), 100.

19. Mrs. A. L. Lehman, "Report of War Work of West Virginia Federation of Women's Clubs," in the Annual Report of the West Virginia Federation of Women's Clubs (Huntington, WV: 1201 Huntington Avenue, 1920), 84-90.

20. Annual Reports of the President, Woman's Club of Huntington, 1916-1919, in The Woman's Club of Huntington, West Virginia, 1917-1930 (Huntington, WV: 1201 Huntington Avenue, 1933). Due to Pershing's rejection of the plan for furlough houses, the $124 raised for that project was instead used to help fund the "Victory Girls." Ibid.

21. Miss Mary McCulloch, "Report of the Fourth District," in Annual Report of the West Virginia Federation of Women's Clubs, 1919-1920 (Huntington, WV: 1201 Huntington Avenue, 1920), 56-59.

22. While these fund drives did not exclusively involve women, females were important both to its organization and its success. William Winfred Smith, ed. and comp., Honor Roll of Cabell County, West Virginia: An Illustrated Historical and Biographical Record of Cabell County's Part in the World War (Chicago, IL: Severinghaus Printing Co., 1919?), 23-7.

23. The four Liberty Loan drives were designed to persuade Americans to purchase war bonds to help America fight the war. See Ferrell, Woodrow Wilson and World War I , 86-90; and Cornebise, War As Advertised , 67-87.

24. Annual Reports of the President, Woman's Club of Huntington, 1916-1919, in The Woman's Club of Huntington, West Virginia, 1917-1930 (Huntington, WV: 1201 Huntington Avenue, 1933). The War Savings Committee organized the drives to promote War Savings Stamps, certificates used to supplement the money raised by the Liberty Loan which were priced at a little below five dollars and bore an interest rate of four percent. Cornebise, War As Advertised , 74.

25. Lehman, "Report of War Work," 86 and McCulloch, "Report of Fourth District," 57. The Four Minute Speakers formed the largest division of George Creel's Committee on Public Information. Originally intended to speak during the brief intermissions in movie theaters, the Four Minute Speakers grew and began speaking to other crowds concerning topics such as selective service, the Liberty Loan drives, the American Red Cross, and America's reasons for fighting the war. The Committee on Public Information estimated at the end of the war that these individuals had delivered 755,190 speeches to 314,454,514 persons (three times the U.S. population). George Creel, Complete Report of the Chairman of the Committee on Public Information (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1920), 21-32. See also Creel, How We Advertised America (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1920); James R. Mock and Cedric Lawson, Words that Won the War: The Story of the Committee on Public Information, 1917-1919 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1939), 113-131; and Cornebise, War As Advertised

26. Cornebise, War As Advertised , 55-59.

27. Steinson, "'The Mother Half of Humanity,'" 265-66.

28. See Appendix A for a detailed discussion of these statistical analyses.

29. Mrs. L. H. Cammack, "Message from the President," 1919-

1920. Woman's Club of Huntington, West Virginia, 1917-1930 , 3-5.

30. Mrs. O. I. Woodley, "Report of the Civics Department,"

1919-1920. Annual Reports of activities within the State of West Virginia, 63.

31. Mrs. R. L. Hutchinson, "Report of the Director of the WestVirginia Federation of Women's Clubs," Ibid., 41.

32. Ibid., 37-40.

33. "The Year's Work," 1918-1919, Woman's Club of Huntington, 1917-1930 , and subsequent annual reports.

34. See Appendix B for the statistical analysis of these data. Note that this analysis is based on preliminary data, so the conclusions are tentative.

35. See Appendix C for the statistical analysis for this conclusion. This analysis, too, is based on preliminary data, so these conclusions are also tentative.

36. It is unclear whether or not African Americans made any inroads into the organized volunteer efforts in Cabell County or even in West Virginia. Although William Breen discusses the efforts of the Women's Committee of the Council of National Defense in encouraging state organizations in the South to mobilize minorities in the war effort, he makes no mention of

West Virginia. See William J. Breen, "Black Women in the Great War: Mobilization and Reform in the South," Journal of American History 44 (1978): 421-40.

37. William J. Breen, "Southern Women in the War: The North Carolina Woman's Committee, 1917-1919," North Carolina Historical Review 55 (July 1978): 280. Breen cites one commentator, Frederick Lewis Allen: "In the Southern states, class lines made a really representative organization difficult." He offers the following citation: Frederick Lewis Allen, "The Council of Defense System: A History Submitted to the Director of the Council of National Defense, May 1919," typescript (392 pages), in Record Group 62, 17-B.1, National Archives.

38. Jean Friedman, The Enclosed Garden: Women and Community in the Evangelical South, 1830-1900 (Chapel Hill, NC: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1985).

39. Breen, "Southern Women in the War," 280-81. Breene examines North Carolina's Woman's Committee of the Council of National Defense and contrasts its weakness with the strength of the Illinois Woman's Committee. Breen attributes much of the North Carolina Woman's Committee's weakness to the patronizing attitude of the men in the state, especially those involved with the Council of National Defense.

40. It is not clear from this study alone whether the women of Cabell County alone marked an aberration of this nurturant mother ideal, or whether this ideal is insufficient to explain the motivations of women volunteers during the war. If it can be shown in other examinations that women throughout the country engaged in similar activities, then perhaps the latter seems the more reasonable conclusion.

41. Edward M. Coffman, The War to End All Wars: The American Military Experience in World War I (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin, 1986 [1968]), 25-29.

42. The names of the soldiers came from two sources: Smith, ed. and comp, Honor Roll of Cabell County West Virginia , and West Virginia Department of Veterans' Affairs, Revised List of Deceased Soldiers, World War (Charleston, WV: W.Va., Dept. Veterans' Affairs: 1 January 1922; reprint October 1961) 8-50. Since the latter source only listed those soldiers who died during the war, it was used to verify Smith's listings when possible.

43. Richard A. Zeller and Edward G. Carmines, Statistical Analysis of Social Data 5th ed. (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1978), Appendix F, "Table of Chi Squared Values," 371.

44. The source for these data is the Grantee Index to Deeds No. 1 (1808 - 31 December 1922) (Cabell County, West Virginia), Cabell County Courthouse, 8th Street and 4th Avenue, Huntington, WV. The time span was obviously chosen because the index contains deeds for this entire period in one single volume.

45. Zeller and Carmines, Statistical Analysis , Appendix H, "Values for t," 376.

46. The critical value for a one-tailed test is 1.703, which is still greater than 1.683. Therefore, the data is not significant with a one-tailed test, either.

47. Zeller and Carmines, Statistical Analysis , Appendix E, "Values for z," 370.

48. The probability for a one-tailed test is lower (0.3192), but still greater than 0.05. Ibid.