Women's Land Army

This 1944 photograph shows Mabel Mack, supervisor of the Oregon branch of the Women’s Land Army (WLA). The WLA was part of a World War II national effort to supply desperately needed laborers to U.S. farms. Locally, the Oregon State College Extension Service established the Emergency Farm Labor Service to place women, children, and Mexican nationals on Oregon farms to thin and harvest crops. The state also paid Japanese American internees and German prisoners-of-war to work as farm laborers.