Research questions

Pulling in combatants from every inhabited continent on Earth, World War One was a conflict on a scale never having been seen before. A conflict which ushered in the then modern era of warfare, it also marked the first major conflict in which the United States was the dominant global militant power, a position which had long been held by Great Britain and the British Empire. Using a qualitative research approach and narrative writing style, this dissertation will go beyond the battlefield results to look at some of the sociocultural aspects of the conflict. Since the 1840s and more so in the late 1860s, the efforts to grant the women in the United States the right to vote or suffrage became more common and more earnest. Even though protest efforts had swung a large percentage of states in favor of women’s suffrage by the early 1910s, a requisite attempt to get the appropriate constitutional amendment passed in the United States Senate fell one state short of ratification in October 1918. With the United States’ entry into the Great War in April 1917 and establishment of conscription in June, many war related jobs and efforts which would have typically been filled by men, suddenly became vacant. This led to women and children stepping into these vacant job positions, some of which women would prove to be more skilled at than men, like those the ammunition machinists at factories along the Black River in the Precision Valley region of Vermont. While women proved to be essential to the output of machine factories for the war effort, it was children who shouldered large parts of the sales of liberty bonds and war savings stamps in this region and others. For the Precision Valley region, the archival resources at the library and historical society of Springfield, Vermont will prove to be invaluable assets during the dissertation. Known as the “Woman’s Land Army, American women proved to be crucial to the logistics of the Stateside and overseas war efforts, with some working to implement the various food restrictions and logistics called for by Herbert Hoover and the United States Food Administration. Suffrage leaders would go on to use what many perceived as women’s role in “Total War” as the final means to justify women’s worthiness of suffrage via the passage of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1920.

Based on the combined efforts of women fulfilling countless defense related jobs while also assisting with the coordination of many of the war effort activities taken up by children, like the war bonds and victory gardens, suffrage leaders like Carrie Chapman Catt believed World War One finally gave American women enough of a case to convince the American Government they were deserving of suffrage. The expanded roles of women and children on the American homefront, and with women, overseas as well, when positions like nurses, ambulance drivers and telephone operators, also known as Hello Girls are considered, the reality of how much the term “Total War” can be applied to World War One becomes even clearer. This dissertation will demonstrate how underappreciated American women and children were in realms outside of the every home prior to World War One using examples of engagement in the physical aspects of warfare such as munitions work and mass agriculture. A case study of James Hartness of the Jones & Lamson Company will provide an example of one machine shop owner who believed in the capabilities of American women, a point which would be proven with many concluding that the women were more efficient at the jobs which had been vacated by men.

The activities of children excelled which this dissertation will look into include the sales of liberty bonds and war savings stamps; the growth of war also known as victory garden; and the engagement in music and songs in the form of activities amongst themselves as well as concerts for local communities and military camps. In the case of the efforts of America’s Girl Scouts, a group of songs known as contrafacta, will be used to demonstrate how music and songs played a key role in maintaining the morale of local communities by uniting them on a regular basis through a type of free and positive entertainment.

Having previously written about sociocultural aspects of World War One through an independent study as an undergraduate which was later published as a book, Front Porches to Front Lines; and for my master’s thesis at Southern New Hampshire University, I am uniquely qualified to research the aforementioned dissertation topic. The most notable historiographical problem with this topic is that no scholar has previously touched on it in quite the same way. However, this presents a golden opportunity to fill in a gap in the story of World War One, one which will require detailed research into multiple niche topics as well as visits to several archives and databases to investigate the available primary source materials. The places being considered for such visits currently include the national historic sites of Woodrow Wilson and Hebert Hoover; the Arts and Historical Society of Springfield, Vermont; and the National World War One Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri. Having made prior research trips to Springfield, Vermont, a plethora of primary source materials is already available to research. Springfield, as evidenced by its local newspaper, The Springfield Reporter, is a great starting point to demonstrate how the roles of women and children during World War One helped to pave the way for the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, granting women the right to vote, a right which their efforts during the war indicate they deserved much sooner.