CATT, Carrie Chapman SPEECH, ARTICLE ,BOOK FILE Articles Untitled and by all her many friends, and a bright future is assured her. Our Association is especially fortunate in numbering among its friends, the ambitious, MRS. K SPAWTON, A LOYAL MEMBER OF MIZPAH REVIEW, BUFFALO, NEW YORK, AND HER DEAR LITTLE DAUGHTER those who brought in the member. Progressive Review is to be congratulated. May many more years pass before this happy circle is broken. The Ladies Review Maccabees. July 1916 About Our Cover Page Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt The subject of our cover page sketch is one of the brilliant, lovely women of our country, whose charm consists in a beautiful, refined character, enhanced by a fine intellect. Mrs. Catt has given of her best to the cause of suffrage, having lectured in every state in the Union and in many foreign countries. She is active in all suffrage associations and clubs, where anything can be done for the advancement of women. She was elected president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, when Miss Susan B. Anthony retired and served continuously four years. In 1904, at Berlin, Germany, Mrs. Catt was elected president of the International Women Suffrage Alliance, which office she still holds. She was the capable presiding officer at the 1906 convention held in Copenhagen, Denmark, 1906, and in Amsterdam, Holland, in 1908. Mrs. Catt was born in Ripon, Wisconsin, and was graduated from the Iowa State college at Ames, with honors. She was an ambitious girl and gave herself entirely to her studies with the reward of merit which made her superintendent of schools. Mrs. Catt took a special course in law, and this has stood her in good stead on many occasions. Her interest in the cause of women has grown with the years, and as a lecturer she stands high in the ranks on this continent. It was through her tireless efforts that a clause was secured in the Louisiana constitution giving tax-paying women the right to vote on all questions submitted to tax-payers. Of the suffrage question she has written the following: The woman suffrage movement meets with on powerful obstacle, sex prejudice. It is difficult to interpret the principle "God created man free and equal," to mean men and women, but let not Americans forget that women are people, and that in a government which is alleged to derive it just powers from the consent of the governed people, the ballot may not be consistently withheld from them. A portion of her masterly address, delivered after she was re-elected to the presidency of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1915, is well worth repeating for those of our reader who have not seen it. Her plans for work, are those advocated by our own Association, and have brought unqualified success: Whatever our creed, let us call upon those psychological sources of strength upon which we can draw, in order to enable us to get together. Let us try to be impersonal, I think that by nature I am rather an impersonal person; I never hate anybody at first sight; and I will do my best to cultivate that spirit in the work. Let us try to regard ourselves as if we were all of us little tin soldiers before our great cause. Organization has been my hobby for the last hundred years. Whether for congressional or state work, the only solid foundation is organization; and if you have in your state a thorough and far-reaching organization, you can switch it at short notice to any piece of work, state or federal, that needs to be done. We who have come down from the last generation are reformers. That is why we are suffragists. But reformers are usually very poor politicians. We need today the political mind, the gift for organizing in detail. We need the organized, disciplined, pigeon-hole mind. Our greatest lack has been the lack of leadership. Perhaps it is true, as Havelock Ellis says, that women are more on a smooth and level average than men. We have not many of what the Chinese call 'the Man Mountain.' Then let us strengthen our weakness by careful specialization. Find out what you can do best, and improve your gift to the top notch. Let us put out of our lives all the non-essentials, all the trivialities, and devote ourselves first and foremost to this great cause. Let us make our slogan for the coming year, 'Get Together.' Let us work harder this year than ever before. Let each one find a hundred women who have never worked before, and get them to work with all their might. I could not be otherwise than deeply touched by the confidence that you have placed in me. I will do my best not to disappoint you. La Pauvre Veuve Elle me prit sur ses genoux: Si bonne etait ma mere! Elle avait un regard si doux, Le plus doux de la terre! Elle me chanta ma chanson, Si bien chantait ma mere! Sa voix avait un si doux son, Le plus doux de la terre! Elle me dit: "Mon pauvre enfant, Helas! qu'allons-nous faire?" --Ma mere, quand je serai grand, N'ayez pas peur, ma mere! --Olivier. received. Texas members will work heartily under the new offer and the result will surely place this state in Class I for 1917. The sir knights were very helpful at all times and on all occasions, and much appreciation was felt for the many courtesies they extended. The Texarkana Rally The rally at Texarkana on April 3, was an excellent one in every way and Minerva Review left nothing undone in entertaining for the first time, visiting members and rally guests. The business of every meeting was transacted smoothly and promptly and Commander Cox was a most efficient and gracious presiding officer. There were beautiful flowers everywhere, the honor guests' rooms sharing in the kindness of the ladies, and so cordial was the hospitality of Minerva Review, that many were heard to remark upon it. Visitors were present from Marshall, Longview, Carthage, Paris, Memphis, Tennessee; Robeline, Vivian, Mansfield and Alexandria, Louisiana. The home review gave a delightful luncheon to all. In the afternoon, representatives form the mayors of Texarkana, Texas, and Texarkana, Arkansas, gave very cordial addresses, speaking in glowing terms of the work of our great Association. Minerva Review gave the ritualistic work beautifully, with an excellent captain in command. The captain of Unity Review, Marshall, also capably assisted and a fine class was initiated. Unity Review deserves special mention for bringing a fine delegation of 12, and much regret was felt that this was not quite large enough to win the delegation prize. Commander Atkins assisted at the initiatory ceremonies, District Deputy Bowen presided and Commander Butler of Alexandria Review, Louisiana, gave the secret work. Miss Partridge gave the special address and spoke on the hospital service work throughout the Order. At the public meeting in the evening, a fine program was given, many sir knights attending, who gave their closest attention and interest to the able address of the supreme record keeper. Mrs. Hart [?] addresses given by our own officers. Dr. Nora Donahoe, chairman of the Dallas hospital board, was present on this occasion, also Mrs. La Moreaux, Commander Hanson of Dallas Tent, and Mr. Cullom. Beautiful floor work was given by the guard teams, and each one received hearty applause. In the school of instruction, Miss Partridge found the officers well versed in their work and it was a great pleasure and privilege to answer the questions asked through the question box. A large class was initiated representing the faithful work of the Dallas members and prize awards were made to the following reviews: Big Springs, Cleburne, Terrell, Southland, Greenville, Heights, Bina M. West, Lamar, Oak Bluffs, and delegation prizes to Terrell and Gate City Reviews. Southland Review very kindly presented the supreme record keeper with a beautiful white lace fan, and Mrs. Hart with lovely silk hose, Mrs. Roach making the presentation. A luncheon at the Adolphus hotel had been arranged for, and this very lovely affair brought all together for a social session. Mr. Morgan Duke, Jr., state manager of the Fraternal Brotherhood, capably presided. Waco Welcomes Visitors The Raleigh Hotel at Waco was the headquarters for the rally on April 13-14 and District Deputy Botzler had everything all arranged perfectly. It was a pleasure indeed to meet the members and the visitors and hear their fine addresses. The opening ceremony was particularly beautiful, seven guard teams in white completely circled the room, and dear little girls with baskets of flowers preceded the guests. Mayor Dollins extended a most cordial welcome to all. Large delegations were present from Ennis, Mexia, Corsicana, Palestine, Temple, San Antonio and Lott, and the day's program was filled with most interesting events. Commander Holt of Waco Review made a most charming welcome address which was responded to by Mrs. Hart. Special mention is made of the very fine guard work presented by each review. This was source of great pleasure to the supreme visitors. Several fine papers were read, and excerpts from those for- [?] by San Antonio Review with the guard in full regalia, Miss Partridge welcomed the new members into the Association and impressed upon them the benefit and privilege of their protection. Smithville Review with Commander Sullivan, presented a fancy drill. A feature of this was the formation of the letters--"P" in honor of Miss Partridge, "H" honoring Mrs. Hart, and "L" in honor of District Deputy Lowe. The afternoon session closed with a question box, answers being made by Mrs. Hart and Miss Partridge. The events of the first day closed with a big public meeting at night in the ball room of the Gunter hotel at which about 500 were present. Mrs. Hart was introduced by Dr. H. V. Beardsley, state manager, of the Tribe of Ben Hur, as one of the great powers of the Woman's Benefit Association of the Maccabees, but Mrs. Hart responded that she was there only to introduce the other speakers and declined to make a talk. Mayor Brown made the address of welcome and was responded to by Record Keeper Algea of Beeville Review. At this meeting Miss Partridge made an address on the business of the organization, dwelling at length on the amortization of bonds and excess interest. Many business men of the city heard this excellent address and considered it a masterly effort. A program followed Miss Mildred Miller give a cornet solo in a very finished manner, and Mrs. W. P. Lobban, as usual, kept her audience laughing in two select readings, Madame Alicia Petticlerc, one of San Antonio's sweetest singers charmed her audience with her clear voice. The closing number was a fancy drill by Alamo Review. For more than thirty minutes, Captain Melber watched her team go through one figure after another without one mistake. For the closing event of the drill, the team escorted little Misses Tommy, Hazel Hall and Florence Boyd, flower bearers, to the stage, where baskets of roses and violets were presented to Mrs. Hart, Miss Partridge, Captain Melber, Commander Karney of Alamo Review, Mrs. Laura Lowe and Mrs. Sallie D. Botzler, as a token of love. Record Keeper Melliff of Alamo Review, made the presentation in original verse. (Continued in the August Ladies' Review) Written by Carries Chapman Catt [*article*] for Women's Home Companion (through Anna Steese Richardson) War costs too much, destroys too much, handicaps civilization, settles nothing, and leaves an aftermath of death, sickness, and financial distress more terrible than war itself. It must be abolished and public opinion can do it. Women are the world's best teachers. Go forth, I entreat you, and make the creation of public opinion the supremest effort of your lives. (The instruction to follow would include talks about war at the table, the chance meeting in the street, the circle meeting for any purpose, etc. It would be merely spreading common sense.) September 21, 1936. War is false in theory and brutally destructive of human welfare in practice. Nations will end it when public opinion gives the order. Every woman in the world, whatever her race, nationality, politics, or religion, should be a war-ender and never lose an opportunity to tell the world where she stands. Carrie Chapman Catt (This was presented to Mrs. Sporborg to be read by her at the Herald Tribune conference) April 19, 1925 Page 1 It is rarely possible to fix the exact date to which great human movements have begun. The woman movement is no exception to the rule. Affected by the stir of controversy concerning universal human rights which preceded the American Revolution, the rights of women became a lively and common topic of discussion among the intellectuals about 1760. Between that date and 1848 - 88 years - the records are complete enough to show that there was never a cessation of interest in this theme and that a steady extension of sympathy with the new ideas, a growing boldness of advocacy and a gradual acknowledgment of the definite wrongs of women slowly emerged. During the earlier part of this period, it must be remembered that no married woman could legally control her property or will it away. She held no guardianship over her children, and could not be a witness in court. If she worked for wages, they belonged to her husband. No organization of women existed, and attendance upon controversial or political meetings by women was as unheard of as public speaking. Women did not pray in prayer meetings, give testimony in the church, nor sing in choirs with limited exceptions. There was not yet anywhere in the world a college nor a high school open to women. It is necessary to recall this background in order to recognize the singularity of the fact that in the newspaper field women found an opportunity for expression afforded them nowhere else. It is alleged that the first daily newspaper in the world, the Daily Courant, was established and edited by a women, Elizabeth Mallet, in London, March 1702. This fact amazes me. The first paper in America was the "Mass. Gazette and North Boston NewsLetter". It was edited and published by the widow of the founder, Mrs. Margaret Draper, for two years after her husband's death and was the only paper which did not suspend publication when Boston was besieged by the British. This fact is startling. Page 2 The third paper to be established in the Colonies was "The Mercury" in Philadelphia, which, after the death of its founder, was continued by his widow, Mrs. Cornelia Bradford, for many years. The first newspaper in Rhode Island and the first in Maryland were established and edited by women, the first by Anna Franklin in 1732, the second by Anna K. Greene in 1767. The well known Courant of Hartford was edited by a woman in 1777. In New York City, Boston, Baltimore, and other cities, women edited papers during the earlier period, and between 1800 and 1848 such women as Frances Wright, Lydia Maria Child, and Margaret Fuller, edited and published newspapers. In proportion to the total number of publications at that date, the number edited and managed by women is the chief surprising feature of the period. The growth of the woman movement during this span of eighty-eight (88) years was climaxed by the first convention of women at Seneca Falls in 1848 wherein the grounds were laid for the long campaign that was to follow. Naturally, the newspapers sponsored by women greatly increased from that date, each paper making a desperate, but in all cases short struggle for existence. In 1868 a paper of more character and purpose, called the "Revolution" was established by Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Parker Pillsbury. Its slogan was "Principle not policy, justice not favors, men their rights and nothing more, women their rights and nothing less." This paper had some pledges of financial backing from men friends of the cause and was really a venture of men. This fact, together with the eminence and ability of its editors, gave the paper a prospect of success quite beyond any of its predecessors. It certainly aroused the nation and was widely commented upon by the press. It surely frightened the politicians badly and gave evidence that in time the threat of Abigail Adams to "foment a rebellion" might be carried out; Page 3 but, alas, in two years the brave undertaking came to a tragic end. Its backers found the demands for money embarrassing and withdrew, leaving the paper in debt, chiefly to the printer for $10,000.00. Although Miss Anthony's responsibility for this debt was no greater than that of other editors and the backers, she assumed the entire responsibility and undertook to pay off the obligation by lectures for which she received $25 and out of which she paid her travelling expenses. She received a few contributions toward the enterprise and these, plus her earnings, enabled her to wipe out the debt and thus re-establish the somewhat injured repute of women in business, for although it was really a venture of men, the penalty of its failure was visited solely upon women. In its brief existence the Revolution recorded two important items, both more significant than threats of rebellion. 1. The vote was extended to women in the territory of Wyoming in 1869 and was the first political victory of the movement. 2. The unorganized, groping movement cohered sufficiently at last to produce two national organizations - the National Woman Suffrage Associated, organized in May 1869 with Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton as leaders; and the American Woman Suffrage Association, organized in November 1869 with Lucy Stone and her husband, H. B. Blackwell, as leaders. Although the movement had been driving straight forward for a hundred years to the inevitability of a national organization which would write into law the principles the long discussion had clarified, there was a split among the leaders when the time came, and two, instead of one organization, entered the field. The National Association would have had the Revolution as its organ had it lived, but its untimely death left the new association without a medium of public appeal. Page 4 In 1869 Mrs. Eliza J. Eddy of Rhode Island bequeathed $40,000.00 to assist the cause of woman suffrage, giving $20,000 to Susan B. Anthony and $20, 000 to Lucy Stone. Mrs. Stone used her bequest to found the Woman's Journal, the first number appearing in January 1870. The printed files of the Revolution and those of the Journal, altho the editorship passed from one group to the other, show little break in the continuity or the character of the educational campaign. In the Citizen office, the complete bound files of its ancestors are to be seen dating from January 1868 to 1927 - a period of 59 years - a monument built with great personal sacrifice by women to faith and confidence in the final and full emancipation of their sex. The Journal became the organ of the American Association whose energies largely centered around it. Apparently it at no time reached a self-supporting stage. After the bequest was exhausted, the annual deficit was met by occasional small bequests and contributions of friends. From January 1870 to June 1917, a period of 47 years, it never paused nor faltered. It soon outgrew the American Association and circulated widely among the members of the National Association as well. In 1890 the two assoications united under the title of National American Woman Suffrage Association and although the paper was not adopted by the combined associations, it became the commonly acknowledged organ of the movement, daily growing in strength and numbers. Another paper, meanwhile, called the Women's Tribune, ably edited by Mrs. Clara Colby and carried on with great personal sacrifice on the part of the editor, had been the organ of the National Association for some years and as the claims of the two papers at the time of the union of the two national organizations in 1890 were in conflict, neither was made the organ. After many years of service, the Tribune went the way of all the others and came to an end, leaving the entire field to the Journal. Page 5 In 1917 The Woman's Journal was purchased from Alice Stone Blackwell by the Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission for the sum of $50,000.00. Instead of paying the debts which amounted to 50,000, a fictitious valuation was put upon the 500 shares and upon that basis it was bought, its debts paid, and the movement knew no pause. The form was changed from that of a newspaper to a magazine and its name changed to The Woman Citizen. It had long been a weekly when purchased and it was continued as such until the end of the suffrage campaign. It then became a bi-monthly and then a monthly. No number of the journal of the Citizen [has] has failed to appear in its total existence of fifty-seven years. Its editors and managers [have been] [were] have been illustrious. The best of the greatest have put their souls highest into this paper. Its lists of editors-in-chief tell a thrilling story. Mary A. Livermore, first editor, from Jan. 1870 to Jan. 1872- 2 years Julia Ward Howe, Jan. 1872 to Jan. 1880......................................- 8 years Lucy Stone (until her death) Jan. 1880 to Oct. 1893.................-13 years Henry B. Blackwell (until his death) Oct. 1893 - Sept. 1909...-16 years Alice Stone Blackwell, Sept. 1909 - June 1917.............................- 8 years Rose Young (first editor of The Woman Citizen) June 1917 - April 1921........- 4 years Virginia Roderick, April 1921 to present date...............................- 6 years Total...................57 years I know of no more heroic devotion to a cause than that of the Blackwells. Mr. Blackwell and Lucy Stone were the continuous managers and financial agents of the Journal from the first. When no more eminent editor could be found, Lucy Stone assumed it and there she served, assisted by husband and daughter, until her death. I visited her during [upon] her last [death] illness and she said to me "It pays to have a daughter; her coming and earliest years incapacitated me for [for] a time, but now I am going soon and the work isn't done. I am so glad she is here to carry it forward." At the death of Lucy Stone, her husband, one of the only two men in the world who gave their entire lives to the woman cause, took up the never ending grind where she dropped it, and, Page 6 sided by Alice Stone Blackwell, was editor in chief for a longer period than any other. At his death the daughter took it and carried the burden onward. She grew poorer in purse and frailer in health before [when] the Leslie Commission snatched the responsibility from her tired hands, but I must add that it has never been able to raise the standard of principle and honor any higher than it was maintained under the Blackwells for forty-seven years. The paper came to the Leslie Commission at the zenith of the suffrage campaign. It paid deficits cheerfully but heavily and as the end of its funds was approaching the Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission took new action in the hope that the paper might still lead on. The total which the Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission has paid for the purchase and the yearly deficits of the paper up to this date is $393,381.79. On September 15, 1925 the Leslie Commission, which has carried on its books as loans all payments except the original purchase price, voted to charge all the loans made from the time the paper came into its hands until after the vote was won, to suffrage campaign expenses. The sum thus written off was $155,277.06. This leaves the investment of the Commission as $238,104.73. Mrs. Brown, recognizing that no paper becomes self-supporting without the expenditure of much money in promotion, and seeing that the Leslie Commission could do no more than meet the deficit on production and could do that for a limited time only, proposed a promotion fund of $150,000 to cover a period of three years, the amount to be the contribution of women and returnable in stock. The Commission accepted this proposal with some incredibility and wishes to announce a humbled change of attitude plus a wondering amazement at Mrs. Brown's success in securing guarantors. She has put into the enterprise the same fervid faith, that insistence, that has kept the flag of liberal women's views Page 7 and hopes afloat for more than half a century. We meet, therefore, today, the Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission and the representatives of the 68 guarantors secured by Mrs. Brown. To each has been issued the pro rata of stock, one share for every hundred dollars actually paid. The guarantors and the Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission are, therefore, the present owners of the Citizen. The total number of shares thus issued is 2848 and that will be the total number of votes that may be cast in this meeting, provided each stockholder is present either in person or by proxy. This meeting of stockholders will elect eleven directors in accordance with the by-laws of the Citizen Corporation as filed in the State Department at Albany. All of these stockholders will naturally be members of the Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission or will be guarantors. It may be considered desirable to elect some directors who are neither one nor the other and they will therefore not be stockholders. It is desirable that the Citizen Corporation vote one share of stock to each of such directors with the understanding that these share of directors stock will be transferred to successors when and if they occur. When these things have been done, the Citizen is re-organized and further business will be undertaken by the directors. The question of paramount interest to us all are 1. Is the woman movement at an end, or is there still need for the further expression of liberal opinion concerning her status and her functions in the changing life of the world? The answer seems to be that so long as narrow-minded, intolerant and positively hostile attacks are made upon women in general in all departments of life, and especially in the political field, so long as newspapers exist which voice these attacks, some medium of defense is required. Page 8 2. Granting the need, the next question is:- Does the Citizen supply the need and can it become self- supporting or possibly profitable in order that it may continue as long as that need remains? Personally I believe the need and a very decided demand exists for such a magazine as ours is supposed to be. There is no rival of the Citizen in the magazine field. It stands alone and I believe is able to meet the situation. If anyone can make it pay, I believe Mrs. Brown and Miss Roderick will do it. At the annual meeting of the Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission held September 15, 1925, before it had been proposed that there should be any increase of the capital stock, the Commission, in order to make its investment in the Citizen appear a little less controlling, voted to write off from the investment the Commission had made in the Citizen an arbitrary amount to be set aside as the cost of the suffrage campaign. It was, therefore, voted to write off from the amount to be put into the Citizen the sum of $166,377.06. The dates chosen for estimating this amount were the beginning of our connection with the Citizen in 1917 and the date when Mrs. Brown took over the management in May 1921. Later the proposal to increase the stock from 500 to 5000 shares was proposed and the Leslie commission and the Citizen Corporation met to consider this proposal. It was accepted and the shares were increased from 500 to 5000 in order that stock might be offered to guarantors. In the preparation for this meeting, however, it was discovered that in the hasty action made necessary by the calling of that meeting, an important point had been overlooked. The Leslie Commission, up to this moment, has put into the Citizen $393,381.79. There remains $12,000 pledged to be paid upon demand. It was discovered that when so large a sum as $166.377.06 was written off from this total, the shares of the Leslie Commission were reduced below what is ordinarily known in Corporations as a control. It was therefore Page 9 voted at the Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission meeting yesterday, April 18th, that this action be reconsidered and the amount written off should be $155,277.06 instead of $166,377.06. By this action $11,100 was returned to the investment of the Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission in the Citizen and gives to the Commission at this time 2381 shares. When the $12,000 pledged by the Commission to the Citizen has been paid, 120 shares will be issued to the Commission, thus making 2501 shares. It was voted at the meeting of September 15, 1925 that Mrs. Brown and Miss Roderick should each receive 50 shares of stock for each of three years, although these shares were valueless at the time and the pledge was made when the stock was 500 shares. In order not to disturb the controller of the Commission in the Citizen, an additional motion was passed yesterday by the Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission and that is, that the stock pledged to Mrs. Brown and Miss Roderick shall be given out of the Leslie stock and not from the Treasury Stock and that this stock shall remain with the Leslie Commission until such time as the Citizen becomes self-supporting. It is not necessary for the Citizen Corporation to take any action in reference to the stock promised to Mrs. Brown and Miss Roderick. I am merely making the announcement that they will receive the stock when the Citizen becomes self-supporting and that they will receive it from the shares now held by the Leslie Commission. It is, however, necessary that the Citizen Corporation confirm the action of the Leslie Commission concerning the valuation of its own shares in the Citizen. Poiret Moeozive 1925 Circ Article Reply, Published Harpers From a crude garment fashioned of fig leaves by our alleged first parents, clothes have evolved into an international industry so huge and prosperous that great nations could depend upon it alone for the maintenance of armies, navies and air forces. Clothes, including the materials, provide millions of men, women and children with employment all the world around, and billions of dollars are involved in the annual business turnover of the trade. People of scattered islands and of backward nations where labor is cheap have been enlisted as contributors to the great world enterprise. Competition in the clothes commerce between countries, in consequence, has grown intense, definite international irritations have appeared, and already have tongues been run out, a sure sign of an impending fight between school boys, or war between nations. Within the past year, four well known officers in war or navy departments of our government, pleading earnestly for more preparedness, have predicted that the next war might well be caused by women's clothes and love of luxury. A fair interpretation of their point of view as presented indicates that at the proper moment patriotic American men will go forth cheerfully to fight and kill men of another nation who will be charged with attempts to obstruct the luxury trade and thus cruelly rob our women of their inalienable right to indulge their vanity undisturbed. To be sure, such a war would be approprietly explained to the stupid according to custom as a necessary defense of national sovereignty and national honor. One admiral particularly imaginative has defined the next war as a probable conflict between this country and Great Britain to decide by force whether Lancaster or New England shall have the privilege of selling manufactured cotton cloth to the Chinese where alone at the moment it is esteemed as suitable material for wearing apparel. Confronted by such dire possibilities Paul Poiret's announcement that within thirty years women will be wearing trousers appears of small consequence. As one of the French Fashion Trust that dictates what women shall wear he knows full well that trousers are coming and he probably knows every step of the route from here to there. Already panties peeping beneath the short skirt indicates the trend. Before allowing one's self to be startled it is well to recall that trousers were originally a female garment and without apology were deliberately stolen by men. As late as 1914 there were more women in the world who wore trousers than skirts and also more men who wore skirts than trousers. If now, having exhausted other sources of variety, the Trust decides to put women back into their own trousers for a while, there is nothing shocking about it, and certainly trousers would be far less offensive to the sense of propriety than bare knees, garters and stray underthings now unintentionally exposed to the public gaze by one's friends. A more exciting question is, will the London Trust put men back into their own skirts? There is reason to think it may try. The faster the changes of fashion whirl the more money finds its way into banks and the nation's treasuries. The trade has shown signs of resentment at the stability of the dress of men. The French Minister of Commerce last spring started a new movement to "restore former Parisian elegance to women's fashions". There was a luncheon, speeches and a promenade of mannequins displaying "back to elegance" designs. The campaign was continued with other teas and luncheons, more speeches and more parades of mannequins. For the first time the French government had lent its open influence to the Fashion Trust, in order to speed up the sale of clothes made in France. In December the 3. London Trust, not to be outdone, astonished the world with a similar tea, speeches and a parade of male mannequins wearing the latest and most correct styles for men. The advertisement of spring styles for men announce lavishness and colors ranging from horizon blue to bois de rose. One advertiser states that "The wisdom of Egypt, the art and culture of Greece, the power and glory of Rome" are combined in the coming styles for men. It may be difficult to get men into skirts, but there is the appeal of art and beauty yet untried and clearly the big industry is hoping for a fashion stir among men. Imagine Senator Borah declaiming Nicaragua for "Nigaraguans" clad in a Roman toga of "poppy colored velvet faced with scallops of gold", prescribed by Monsieur Poiret for the future fashionable woman; or Mr. Coolidge pleading for fewer cruisers in "canary yellow and blue diaphaneous scarf", or dress plumbers in tunics of scarlet, green or yellow, might not the love of color happily distract their attention from strikes of higher wages which now threaten the continuence of our precious water taps? Per chance these two trusts, at loggerheads for two centuries, may again conspire together to make the world gayer, even if more absurd. Time was when the designers of men's and women's clothes worked together to produce harmonious pairs of creations' and they may again. When, for example, in the 18th century panniers were ordered for women and a slender figure, who would now resemble as clothes pin, measured six feet in diameter as she stood inside her cage of willow and whalebone, the doors of houses and carriages had to be enlarged to let the dear creatures in and out, but during the same period men's breeches were stuffed out a foot or more with any material at hand, wool, rags or bran, and reached inordinate proportions. Instead of sensible statesmen commanding a legal halt in the absurdity those of England ordered the seats of Parliment enlarged, while in France a royal edict was issued forbidding the princesses to draw near the queen, as the [*28*] 4. interference of their panniers would disarrange that of royalty. When trains, containing nearly a bolt of cloth, swept the floor majestically, much to the avaricious delight of the manufacturers, the coat tails of men dragged behind them similarly. Again when corsets squeezed the waists of women until they resembled hour glasses, men were also strained into the same whalebone cages. Looking out upon a world seemingly gone made one might suppose governments of "best minds" would have found legal means of stopping so unreasonable a practice, but instead, several governments fitted out whaling expeditions in order to provide plenty of bones for the encircling horrors. The hennen (sugar loaf high headdress) raged to the restriction of women's comfort and men's freedom for some two hundred years, but at the same time the head of men were covered with huge curled and powdered wigs and although there was not enough gray matter in their two heads to make a good brain, the outside was so enormous that a fashionable husband and wife were forced to ride in separate carriages, and even then the women often knelt upon the floor and hung her head out of the window to find room for her bonnet horn three feet long. Meanwhile fashion accentuated the shoe, and men and women hobbled about together on heels six inches high. The elongated shoe was turned up at the toe in order to allow the victim of fashion to walk at all, and in time the points of men's footwear grew until the toe was fastened to the knee with chains of gold. These long, pointed shoes with their changing varieties, always obstructing normal movement, were worn for four centuries. "How is a fashion born? Who mothers it? Who nurses it to fame, an in whose arms does it die? High collar, low collar, short hair, long hair, boot, buskin, show - who wore you first? Who last condemned you to the World's Great Rag Market of Forgotten Fads." **1 There is no mystery about the origin of fashion. It grew as a vanity of courts, the king never the inventor, but the chief patron and protector 5. of any style he approved. Of what benefit was it to be divinely born to kingship unless the king could look as well as feel the"superiority complex"? Since he looked not at all divine, he created an artificial difference by a dress so costly and elegant that it could not be afforded by the common people. His queen and his court must be proportionately splendid. The nobility must keep pace with royalty, or be forbidden the Court. Together, men and women of the upper classes walked through life as though in attendance at a permanent masque ball. Napoleon would not allow a lady to appear in his presence in the same gown more than once, and Josephine spent much of her time and left much of the groaning tax payer's money with the dressmakers of Paris. Napoleon pronounced her "the goddess of the toilet with whom all fashion originates". After a dip into republicanism the Second Napoleon came to France and attempted to restore the former dazzling splendor of the French Court. When Eugenie went to the opening of the Suez Canal. the absence of a possible ninety days, she took with her 250 gowns.**2 Elizabeth, whose London Court in the 18th Century was accounted the most brilliant in Europe "had 3000 gowns in her wardrobe when she died".**3 This glorified dress of the king and his court was common to all countries and all degrees of civilization. A perpetual inducement was thus given artists, designers, manufacturers, embroiderers, furriers, lace weavers and jewelers to produce something new, novel and costly. A fortune awaited the lucky one who succeeded in fashioning something the king approved for a considerable period. The man who invented the hoop skirt is alleged to have received $35,000.00 per month. Each court vied with every other in variety, elegance and extravagance. A style of shawl, fan, ruffle, pleat, crinoline, corset or heel devised in one capital became the fashion in all. Merchants and manufacturers grew rich in trade and imitated the gorgeousness of the Court. Kings attempted to prevent this encroachment [*28*] 6. upon royal prerogatives by denying the use of silk to the common people, reserving velvet for royalty, and satins for the nobility; or limiting the number of gowns of the merchant's wife, but no rule of this character was long enforced. Fashion spread, handsome dress advertising superiority of purse as it had of divine birth. "Dress makes the man, the want of it the fellow". This is poetry. While the imperializing ships of Britain and France were outstripping those of Spain, Portugal and Holland in the addition of territory to their fast growing empires, their courts wrested an unchallenged supremacy in fashion leadership we well, from all other countries and a hectic rivalry in extravagant madness was kept up between them for two centuries before republicanism took possession of France. "one of the first acts of the National Assembly was the abolition by solemn decree of all distinctions in the dress of the classes. ** The variety and splendor of men's dress before 1789 completely disappeared ** and every effort on Napoleon's part to revive them failed to check the democratic tendency to establish uniformity of dress for men in step with the new equality." **4 The noblemen who had selfishly usurped the wearing of feathers, embroideries and high heels, were now forced to see them despised by the very citizens they had been employed to impress. Unhappily an army of highly trained skilled workers and manufacturers of elegant cloths and trimmings were left stranded and impoverished by the sudden turn of events. In time that difficulty was solved by concentration upon the dress of women, since it was unaffected by the new rules. A nobleman, or man of wealth could vicariously feel like a peacock strutting on the lawn in the display of his wife and daughters. The French Fashion Trust thus grew by degrees to be the unquestioned dictator of styles for women. "Once the prevailing style was the reflection of the soverign will whose ideas and customs had the force of law", wrote Pierre Clerget. **5 "Today 7. the style is invented by leading modists and made public by mannequins at the race course, on the street, at the theatre and on the stage. It is Paris that decrees the sumptuary law of nations, since it is she that sells the models". The demi monde who live by display the actress who is promoted on appearance, and the rich woman who finds in extravagant dress a soothing salve for the "superiority complex", follow next to all together the fashionable shops and modistes pass the style to their patrons as the next step and soon among the well dressed it has become common. The big industry now takes a hand and puts the style into the work shop where with goods of fine quality and by workers of skill it is produced in quantities for those who can pay well. In poorer goods and workmanship it is then duplicated by the hundreds of thousands for the helpless masses. "An ancient fashion is always a curiosity, a fashion slightly out of date is an absurdity". **6 The serious woman with a family or an object that employs all her faculties discovers in time herself conspicuous because she is different and with protest in her soul, belated and unresigned, she too adopts the style and makes it universal. By the time it is worn by cooks and maids and the chauffeur's wife their mistress has long since passed on to a newer style. Woe to the woman who buys a gown and hangs it in her closet! Thus the machinery is set, and when the Paris Trust pushes the button it operates without friction, until from the lately upset Turkish harem to Indian reservations the women on six continents obey the order and pour their own or their husband's dollars more less cheerfully into the coffers of the clothes trade. Nothing short of united rebellion will break the vicious and silly circle of extravagance and vanity. It is as certain to come as did the rebellion of men. Alas, who can name the date? During the past century several organized protests against rapidly 8. changing fashion have been made by women, with temporary but never with lasting results. The church has always been an enemy of extreme styles and has frequently inveighed against them, but there is no record that any mode has been rejected because of its opposition. Pope Gregory X forbade trains and bade women to obey under the in junction that no priest would absolve them. **7 Popes and Councils strove in vain against the low necked gown and dresses terminating in the "serpent's tail". **8 The present Roman Pontiff on December 13, 1926, addressing a large body of men, urged cooperation against increasing immodesty in women's fashions, constituting "an ugly, ruinous catastrophic tendency", and in response to the Pope's appeal Catholic churches here and there have issued orders that no woman with neck, arms and legs exposed shall enter. Will these orders affect reform? When the "sugar loaf" headdresses were making the race ridiculous a Carmelite monk of Reimes was aroused to a sense of personal responsibility to make an end of them. He preached throughout France in the open air to great audiences of men, declaring the horned shaker a cause for all the ills of the nation. He took his cause to Rome, but observing a procession of Cardinals wearing their enormous red hats, he changed his target from women to prelates. Alas, the poor monk was promptly burned as a heretic and the styles for women and cardinals continued undisturbed. **9 The fashion has even played mischief with the stability of business, closing factories here and opening others there, turning workers into the ranks of the unemployed and robbing the thrifty investor of dividends, and these conditions have also led to organized protests with the same futile outcome. After the Napoleonic World War very fine cotton goods, muslins and gauzes were decreed for women's dresses. Against this fashion every protesting 9. influence was organized and set into activity, for the silk industry in France was completely ruined thereby, workers unemployed and factories closed. Between 1700 and 1780 seventy-two legal decrees were issued against the use of "India Cloth" **10 but to no avail. "Ladies insisted that their dresses should show every color and be of transparent fabrics and when damp, as they often were, the complete outline of the body was revealed." **11 Against this phase the church with all its power launched its anathemas. Physicians, too, joined the protesting army, one asserting that "he had seen more young girls die during the years of the reign of nakedness veiled in gauze than during forty years before it". **12. Yet gauze continued the fashion for a hundred years, and fifty years later these gowns had swelled so that 1100 yards were used in a single fashionable dress. Again physicians protested, this time for a new reason. At no time were so many deaths from burning recorded as when these enormous skirts made of flimsy materials were in vogue. **13 A century later another world war finds the French Fashion Trust securely organized and more patriotic; hence, nothing but silk is permitted the fashionable world. The tables are turned, and the American cotton textile industry is in ruins, the raisers of cotton are planting other crops and factories are running short time. An inquiry at several New York smart shops elicited the information that no cotton or linen dress had been in stock for more than a year, and examination of cotton stockings and gloves on sale revealed that they were "Made in Germany". In vain, do the American textile manufacturers confer and resolve. France is using her assets very properly to pay for the war, and perchance to strike mildly at the nation that is not in perfect accord with her in the matter of debts. She is permitting Germany a chance to pay her reparations, and thereby aid France in her difficulties. When last March the Department of Commerce reported that $1,500,000 worth of Easter 10. hats had been imported. it was revealed that the felt of which they are chiefly constructed was made in Germany. Stockings were first made by sewing pieces of cloth together. In 1559 Henry VII wore the first pair of silk stockings. For a considerable time thereafter great rulers "by Divine Right" amused themselves by presenting rare and costly gifts of silk stockings to their neighboring kings. Silk stockings have been the fashion off and on, for both men and women, since that date, but never so profitably as now. In the days of kings such styles would have been worn by a very few thousands. Now many millions of women are included in the constituents of the Trust. My lady, her household servants, and even the cotton grower's wife all disport them. So it comes about that the money of American women assist Germany to pay reparations and France to rebuild her fortunes at the cost of their own country's cotton. The militarists find a compensation in the fact that the tariff on silk stockings alone if the fashion lasts long will suffice to build a cruiser. This is of small comfort to the textile manufacturer in the United States or in Germany. The German textile manufacturers during the last year declare they have lost twenty millions of dollars worth of business because fashion prescribed short cloaks and overcoats, the shortening cutting down the amount of cloth required by four millions of yards. A German fashion expert then estimated that thirty-five millions of dollars had been lost because of short narrow skirts. **14 Even a poor rag man in New York was forced to retire because, "They don't wear enough clothes, these women, and men use their shirts to polich their automobiles." Certain fallacies prevail concerning fashion. "Capricious woman insists upon rapidly changing styles" we are told. The indisputable facts are that women never chose to wear corsets, panniers or hoopskirts, to dress hair long or short, to display legs in short skirts or cover them up in long ones, to 11. sleep in cotton or silk, to hobble on high heels or walk on low ones, to reveal bosoms in one period and back bones in another. As once these commands issued from the soverign will of the king, so they are no decrees of the Fashion Trust. So subtle are its methods, so perfect its publicity, so appealing its appeal to vanity, luxury and extravagance that it conquers the unthinking. The overpowering struggle for dollars has mobalized within a great industry every conceivable factor, from the unskilled slum worker to the highly gifted advertising writer whose business it is to create wants where none had existed before. In time any woman anywhere finds it less conspicuous to adopt the new style than to wear an old one. Women as a whole are, and ever have been, the dupes of the system. The Trust itself claims beauty and elegance as its aim. Both qualities have occasionally appeared, but neither beauty nor elegance are its common traits. The certain proof is found in any exhibition of styles out of date. Invariably derisive laughter is the greeting it receives, never artistic admiration. In the old classical dress of Greece and Rome there was beauty and elegance, but in the ten centuries of French direction these have been sacrificed to rapidity of change and multiplicity of variety. The Trust also claims to bring out styles appropriate to the spirit of the times. "In the wake of the war", says Monsieur Poiret "came a wave of independence for women new to Europe. So Monsieur Poiret, possessing the "anti suffrage type of mind "supposed independence to be synonomous with masculinity. The Trust defines masculinity as a combination of short hair, legs and trouser, therefore independence being masculine must be defined for women in the same terms. Fashion therefore decreed bobbed hair and set women's feet squarely upon the narrow path leading straight to trousers. The skirt grew shorter and shorter, as fast as the public mind could stand the strain, 12. and are destined to disappear at the waist, lost in the fluffy folds of a diaphaneous scarf. When women's brains were filled with new hopes, aspirations and visions the blundering Trust distracted attention from head to legs. Every woman might as well have carried a sandwich board bearing the advertisement "see my legs" as to wear champagne colored stockings. At a period when the spirit of the times demanded the inconspicuous, the surrender of body to head, M. Poiret and his misunderstanding comrades ordered the most noticeable, and at its introduction the most shocking style of a century. It was cruelly unkind that at the moment when mankind was painfully attempting to recover its stability of mind after the most upsetting of wars there should have been laid upon it the additional tax of a mental shock occasioned by the suddenly revealed sight of millions of women's legs. When a woman pacifist goes to a peace meeting decked out in a "Congo war bonnet"; or a missionary wearing a barbarous string of beads like those of the Soudanese appeals for help for the heathen, or a woman lawyer makes an eloquent plea before a jury who for the life of them cannot get their minds off of her fluttering chiffon fal de lais, or when an oratorical legislator fills her fellow members with awed respect by her speech then settling down unconsciously displays her bare knees it must be conceded that M. Poiret has missed the spirit of the times by some generations. Nor are the French fashions French. Items which compose a complete are and always have been gathered from ancient pottery, statues, pictures and records, or picked up from the usages of the present day. Just before the war a committee of the Trust, having exhausted available resources visited Asia, Africa and the Isles of the Sea photographing and recording the designs of the dress of the men and women among savage, primitive and so called backward peoples. Since then women have been wearing the adaption of these findings. 13. The champagne colored stockings are the reproduction of the bare legs of both sexes of the Negro, Malay and Polynesian. The hats are the piece of cloth thrown over the heads of men in Arabia and elsewhere, held in place by a twisted rope of threads, imitated in felt. The dress is the ancient Greek made somewhat longer. The fancy folded pleat at the side hanging slightly below the skirt is the Indian woman's scheme for holding her skirt in place. The long capes are Turkish. Hand bags have been revived from those carried by the women of ancient Greece. The bandeau of the tennis girl is stolen from the men of tropical Asia. The vanity case with its lip stick and rouge came from ancient Egypt. Beads and earrings are the universal decoration of savagry. At least half the items which united form the woman's dress were once parts of the garb of men. The men of Greece had their hair curled with hot irons and the plucking of the eye brown is a custom among the men of many barbarous tribes. Gathered into and ensemble these it[*] and customs are prescribed by the French and called French fashion, but there is nothing French and little European in the fashion of the day except material and the taste and skill with which the items are blended together. No relief from this excrescence upon known as fashion is offered by the Trust. Trousers are not even a way station. They are to be ruffled, embroidered and chiffoned with a change of style blown in upon every passing zephyr. The mother, M. Poiret's climax of womanhood in 1957, garbed in trousers, wears inching high heeled shoes which prevent her from utilizing the freedom of her legs the trousers give, and she is crowned with a top heavy hat three feet across formed of spun glass! Still concentrating upon legs when heads are leading! Women are just awakening to the ineptness of the styles you provide, 14. Mr. Poiret, and if you will listen you will hear the far off rumble of coming rebellion. Where it will break, or when or who will lead it, none know. It is bound to be supported by the masses of women who think the world has other uses for them than that of the mannequin. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, legislators, judges, mothers, house wives will swell the gathering army. Among their slogans will be this: "Leave the rouge to the demi monde, costly jewels and finery to the rich, we the masses demand the right to wear our own clothes, suited to our aims, and our station. Down with the slavish dictation of silly fashion." This rebellion will come with the force and the fury of all movements long overdue. It may precipitate the world into bankruptcy, close factories, turn millions into unemployment. It is possible that the church, the moralist and the doctors who have protested against the "vanity of women" for centuries will then pray them to return to fashion that the world may live; but in that day the woman emancipated, will turn a deaf ear to all entreaties to move backward. Liberty has never stopped to ask the price and will not then. Meanwhile Mr. Poiret, the rebellion it not yet here. By all means put women into trousers and men into skirts if you can. Give us one superlative demonstration of absurdity before the cenruries old custom of fashion goes down in a final crash. 14. Rewritten Mr. Poirot, and if you will listen you will hear the far off rumble of coming rebellion. Where it will break, or when or who will lead it, none know. It is bound to be supported by the masses of women who think the world has other uses for them than that of the mannequin. Doctors, lawyers, legislators, judges, mothers, house wives will swell the gathering army. They will plead that the abolition of artificial fashion will bring to the average family economy and calm, to the average woman a costume comfortable, healthful, becoming and adapted to her work; to all women an emancipation of brain, conscience, arms, legs and feet; to all the people a dress of beauty and elegance combined with utility and comfort; to business a stability heretofore unknown and to the world at large the removal of a distracting, artificial and menacing factor. This rebellion will come with the force and the fury of all movements long overdue. It will be ruthless and thorough. It may precipitate the world into bankruptcy, close factories, turn millions into unemployment.. No one has ever asked the price of liberty, and will not then. Meanwhile Mr. Poiret, the rebellion it not yet here. By all means put women into trousers and men into skirts if you can. Pray give us one superlative demonstration of absurdity before the age old custom of fashion goes down in a final crash. 1923 Equal citizenship and the vote was added to the program of the Woman Movement in 1848. That campaign began with practically the entire world against it; it closed seventy-two years later with an organization of two millions of women at work within it. Today, no woman is uneducated for want of schools and every woman citizen has a ballot in her hand. Mrs. Hansl asks me, as one of the elders, whether I am satisfied with women voters. No, I am neither satisfied with women voters nor men voters. They make tremendous blunders, but it is no time to judge man or woman suffrage when tested in the aftermath of a terrible World War. She asks what should women now do with the vote. I answer that since all liberal institutions have been definitely retrograded by great wars, nothing can so certainly obstruct future progress as another war. Prevent it! Every civilized citizen should make the riddance of war his primary aim. The next aim should be to build a democracy so clean, honest and intelligent that it can be defended without question against any dictatorship the world around. The ideal government breeds no enemies within. It becomes the duty of every man and woman, therefore, to render the most effective service to these fundamental tasks. Any citizen who shirks his or her duty retards the progress of a nation. If -2- you, who listen, do not value your citizenship, then I pronounce you an enemy of your nation. If you do care, and wish to enjoy a still completer freedom than is yours today, [then] I beg you to give patriotic service to this great Republic. Imagine all the women who, in centuries past, have protested against the wrongs of women [are now] to be gathered around me and their voices joined with mine. Together, they would say: "Arise, women of America, lead on! A greater duty than women have ever known in all the ages past is now urging crucial action. We labored for your freedom. Use the powers gained to keep that liberty and to bequeath still great freedom to those [who] yet to come [after you]." CATT, Carrie Chapman SPEECH, ARTICLE, BOOK FILE Article: untitled CCC Progress of Women Perhaps nothing more clearly pictures the status of women of that time than the fact that the four women who wished to call the Seneca Falls Convention did not sign the call published in the paper and announced in the first paper that only women were expected to attend. When the time came, however, a number of men were in attendance and, after discussion, it was agreed to invite a man to preside. James Mott, husband of Lucretia Mott, tall and dignified in Quaker costume, was called to the chair. Many leaders were of the opinion at the Rochester Convention that a woman should preside and the Committee of Arrangements for that convention were ready to present a candidate, but the four Seneca Falls leaders were of the opinion that women with no experience in public meetings, no knowledge of parliamentary usage, had already taxed their powers to the utmost in writing declarations and resolutions for the convention. They were on the verge of leaving the convention in high disgust, but the local committee of arrangements assured them "that by the same power by which they had resolved, declared, discussed, debated, they could also preside at a public meeting, if they would but make the experiment." A majority vote settled the question on the side of woman and Abigail Bush took the chair. One of the chief reasons for doubting the ability of women to preside over a meeting was the charge that their voices were not strong enough to make themselves heard. This was uppermost in the minds of the delegates when the meeting opened and the continual cry of "Louder, Louder!" drowned every other sound, when the President rose and said: -2- "Friend, we present ourselves here before you, as an oppressed class, with trembling frames and faltering tongues, and we do not even expect to be able to speak so as to be heard by all at first, but we trust we shall have the sympathy of the audience, and you will bear with our weakness now in the infancy of the movement. Our trust in the omnipotency of right is our only faith that we shall succeed." During the procedure at Seneca Falls, Lucretia Mott had reported that the "Female Moral Reform Society of Philadelphia" had asked for the use of a church in that city in which to hold one of their meetings. They were allowed use of the basement on condition that no woman should speak at the meeting. Accordingly, a clergyman was called upon to preside and another to read the ladies' report of the Society. Oberlin College opened its doors to women and to negroes in 18 , Lucy Stone, afterwards an intrepid leader of the woman movement, was among the earliest women pupils. When she graduated with high honors, she was told that a member of the faculty would read her essay, since no woman had yet done anything of this kind in public. So it happened that in 1848, when no college and no high school in the entire world was yet opened to women, few married women in any land were permitted to own and control property, to collect their own wages, and were allowed opportunity to enter few occupations. When, as yet, popular opinion unanimously agreed that it was preposterous for women to hold public meetings, make speeches, or preside over them, there was a brave band of women who gathered out ot the scattered agitation, steadily moving onward during the previous century, and, together, crafted a program for the women's movement. -3- While the wording of that program was altered, somewhat, as time went on, many of the eighteen demands became, with subdivision and analysis, a large program in themselves. Yet the program remained practically unchanged through the coming years until the major portion of it became established rights for women. What is still unestablished of that program remains the program of the woman's movement which still moves on. In 1919 the National American Woman Suffrage Association, organized in 1869, set up a new organization within the old, called the National League of Women Voters and when the vote was won, all that remained yet to be done in the woman movement was turned over to it for completion. Times had so far changed that many new tasks arose to demand attention. With curious unanimity, leaders of organizations, struggling to push forward needed reforms, now called upon women to undertake the responsibility of these movements. Many of them were adopted as more important than the unfinished program of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and the work of the League took precedence over its primary aim. In October 1933 The National League of Women Voters presented to the public a report on "Women in Politics" for the first thirteen years since the vote was extended by Federal Amendment. -4- EXECUTIVE BRANCH Member of the Cabinet............................. 1 Minister........................................................ 1 Bureau Chiefs.............................................. 4 Independent Boards and Commissions....3 Assistants in Department of State..............2 Assistant Treasurer.......................................1 Assistant Director, Bureau of the Mint.......1 Department of War, Chief, Division of Coordination and Record..............................1 Department of Justice....................................3 Post Office Department Acting Postmaster at offices of first class...18 " " " of second and third classes.......412 " " " fourth class.........456 Department of the Interior.............................. 2 Department of Agriculture............................... 1 Department of Labor........................................ 3 Collectors of Customs....................................... 1 JUDICIAL BRANCH Judge, United States Customs Court...........1 LEGISLATIVE BRANCH Women in 73rd Congress of the United States (elected November 8, 1932 to take office March 4, 1933) Senate.................................................................. 1 House of Representatives................................. 5 " " " elected later to fill vacancy..............1 Women in Congress prior to 73rd Congress Senate.................................................................. 2 House of Representatives................................ 11 -5- LEGISLATIVE BRANCH, continued. The largest number of women's names carried at any time on the rolls of the United States Congress was during the short session of the 71st Congress when nine women were serving as members of the House of Representatives. WOMEN IN STATE LEGISLATURE Women now serving as legislators in 34 states.....135 (In addition, Hawaii has one woman serving as a member of its Senate).............................................. 1 This is eleven less than the number serving in 39 states in 1931, and a decrease of fourteen under the 149 women carried on the rosters of 38 state legislatures in 1929. The political representation of the 1933 women legislators are: Democrats 67 Republicans 60 Socialists 1 Non-partisan 3 Elected by both Democrats and Republicans 4 Total 135 Sixty of these were re-elected. Twelve women are serving as State Senators. States having no women as member of their state legislatures are: Alabama, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Tennessee. After the proclamation of full suffrage for women in the United States the following figures represent the annual return of women to the Legislatures. 1921 - 29 1922 - 33 1923 - 84 1924 - 86 1925 - 128 1926 - 130 1927 - 124 1928 - 126 1929 - 149 in 38 states 1931 - 146 in 39 states 1933 - 135 in 34 states -6- WOMEN IN THE FOREIGN SERVICE Diplomatic and Consular Service Women who have passed the State Department examinations and have been assigned to Foreign Service..................................... 6 Two of them are now serving as Vice-Consuls in the Foreign Service Four of them resigned after a period of service Trade Commissioners....................................................................... 2 Assistant Trade Commissioners...................................................... 2 Clerks to commercial attachers [in Paris]....................................... 3 WOMEN IN STATE GOVERNMENT Governors............................................................................... 2 Governor's Council................................................................ 1 Secretary of State (elected in 1932)..................................... 3 " " " ( " " 1931).....................................1 State Auditor........................................................................... 1 School Superintendents and States Boards of Education..8 Other Elective Offices Commissioner of Charities and Corrections..................... 1 Tax Research Bureau............................................................ 1 Reporter of the Supreme Court in Indiana.........................1 Clerk of the Supreme Court..................................................2 Land Office Registrar.............................................................1 State Librarian.........................................................................1 Appointive Offices [Secretary of State] Deputy Secretary of State...................................................4 Deputy Attorney-General................................................... 1 Assistant Attorney-Generals...............................................2 State Treasurer.....................................................................3 State Auditor.........................................................................3 State Health and Welfare Departments...........................19 State Departments of Labor..............................................16 -7- Appointive Offices, Cont'd. State Departments of Education… 10 State Board of Regents and State Board of Control… 9 Warden of State Reformatory for Boys… 1 Superintendent of Women's State Prison… 1 Member of Highway Commission… 1 Bureau of Vital Statistics… 1 Supervisor of Public Accounts… 1 Member of State Board of Tax Appeals… 1 State Historians or Librarians… 10 WOMEN IN JUDICIAL SERVICE Associate Judge of National Customs Court… 1 Member, Supreme Court of Ohio… 1 Member, United States Board of Tax Appeals… 1 Assistant,United States District Attorney… 1 Assistant, State District Attorney… 1 Clerkship in State Supreme Court… 3 Women in considerable numbers are serving as judges in many municipal courts. Los Angeles has three such judges in her courts… 3 Women are also serving as probate judges and juvenile court judges in nineteen cities… 19 Special Assistant, Attorney General of the United States… 1 WOMEN IN COUNTY GOVERNMENT County Superintendent of Schools… 465 (Seven states report that there are more women than men holding this office.) County Treasurers… 283 (in 25 states and 135 of these are in Texas) County Clerk or Clerk of the County Court… 172 WomenCounty Recorders… 94 -8- Women Registers of Deeds… 152 Registrar of New York County… 1 WOMEN IN MUNICIPAL OFFICES Several city councils have had women members… 10 Memberships on boards of education is an office frequently held by women. Connecticut reports 146 women serving in that capacity. Maine reports 136 women holding the office of town clerk, and 14 serving as town assessor. Many small towns have had women mayors. The most outstanding is the City of Seattle where Mrs. Bertha K. Landis was mayor for one term. Other municipal offices held by women are those of commissioner, auditor, selectman, tax collector, health officer, register of deeds, treasurer, superintendent of schools, clerk of city court, and chief probation officer. Two towns have city managers. [*1940*] Women in the United States have had the vote for twenty years. Three questions are continually asked suffragists. First: What benefit has the vote given women? It has made them more self-reliant, intelligent, and confident in their ability to secure what they want and need politically. Second: What good has the woman's vote done the country? It has put into the laws of the nation more protective care for family life, for children, for old and dependent persons. It has improved the process of taking the vote and driven from many polling places the corruption and indecency which existed before. Third: What should women voters do now? Our nation is imperiled by the sudden uprising of what we had supposed was an outworn system of dictatorships. Democracies mean governments by the people, dictatorships mean governments by one or a few. They oppose each other, They cannot exist at the same time or place. We must choose. Every woman voter will find here a new duty to perform. The meaning of democracy must be restated, the rights of men and women clarified, the principles of a republic revivified. There must be a re-baptism in the faith of governments by the people. This is a question so imperious that it overtops and underlies all others. No patriotic citizen should neglect it. Carrie Chapman Catt August 1, 1940 May 8, 1939 For publication in Jus Suffragii When I read of the coming session of the Alliance at Copenhagen, my mind wandered backward thirty-three years to the third meeting of the Alliance which was held there in 1906. The two preceding meetings had been preparatory to organization, plans of future work, aims, and objects. Now the first real Congress of the completed organization of the Alliance took place. We were very happy at that Copenhagen Convention. The Danish people were friendly and hospitable, their outlook was progressive and women delegates were in attendance from fifteen important nations. I have re-read the proceedings of the convention and have been astonished at two things. Of the seven officers elected, four have passed on and the three of us who remain have celebrated our eightieth birthdays. Thirty-three years is a long time, but what really surprises me are the happenings within those years. Russian delegates came to Copenhagen asking membership. A Duma had come to Russia. Women were beginning to speak and organize and hope was brightening. Finland asked for membership, but it came with organization already effected and the vote already won. All Scandinavian countries offered promising proofs of progress. North Europe was moving. What now? Italy had presented a woman suffrage petition to the Parliament of that year and several local organizations had been formed. An Italian delegate had come to the convention. Austria, too, had presented a suffrage petition to its Parliament and was beginning to organize. Evidence was offered that the movement was beginning in Switzerland and an organization had been re-formed in France. The suffrage movement in Holland was strong and able. -2- In every direction signs of progress in the woman's movement were evident. The President in her report, however, noted one curious fact. The only Republics of Europe, namely, "France and Switzerland, showed far less advancement of the suffrage movement than any of their neighbors." Review these facts of a generation ago and then ask yourselves: "Has the woman's movement, or the men's movement, progressed or receded during these thirty-three years?" What will you talk about at Copenhagen this year? What will be your aim? Can you say whither you are going? The Human Race always has and always will move onward. At present, world affairs bewilder, confuse, and worry men and women, but the race is not moving backward. It is a time when those who speak in public and write for publication should do so with caution. In 1906 we adopted a Declaration of Principles. Abridged, that pronouncement was: "Every man and woman should insist that each individual in every land is entitled to education, freedom of speech, thought, and assembly. Wherever laws, creeds, or customs restrict men or women to a position of dependence or when they impede the national development of their own destiny, those restraints have been based upon false theories and selfish ambitions." Can you say these things again? I hope so. Be unafraid! The three greatest things in the world are honesty, tolerance, and liberty. Can you not again insist upon these simplest of human rights as the guide of the Alliance and then calmly put your trust in evolution? To me, that seems a safe and direct path to human development and happiness. Carrie Chapman Catt Jus Suffragu Menen Kebo Article 1912 Although Dr. Jacob and I have been holding suffrage meetings in Sumatra and Java, I shall reserve an account of that work for the next letter. We have had a rare opportunity of making the acquaintance of a tribe maintaining matriarchale institutions and I want to share that interesting experience with the readers of Jus Suffragu. These people, the [Mivang? Rabous?] occupy a very large territory on the west coast of Sumatra and number about They are a branch of the [gral?] Malay race and are compare unmixed with alien blood The territory they occupy contains the most magnificent scenery I have found in a year of travel. The gem of it all is a lake, blue as a sapphire, within the old crater of Mt. Danau. It is 11 miles long, 5 wide and 1500 ft above the sea The crater walls rise in steep slopes from 800 to 4000 ft above the water and are completely covered with luxuriant vegetation. An indentation in the wall affords a vista through which the little city of Padang and the Indian Ocean, many miles away may be seen. The wall collapsed on one side and was literally blown away. At this point a valley lying between two low mountain ranges, covered with coffee and rice plantations stretches to the shore of the lake It is dotted here and there with native villages whose quaint roofs peep out from groves of coco palms, banan and bamboo. On a clear cool morning we were escorted by a native chief to a hilltop which commands a view of the entire lake and surroundings and there we were completely enraptured by this rare combination of natures most picturesque features. At our feet lay beautiful blue Lake Manindjoe surrounded by green crater walls [it?], [???] sight, a peaceful highly cultivated vally in which groups of [hoppers?] clad in bright[ly] colors were gur??ing] the [?p???ed] harvest of rice [Tropical vegetation on every side and the great endless ocean in the distance, and brilliantly hued birds and butterflies [hovering] darting here and there in the distance] The great endless ocean [in the distance] on every side tropical vegetation [on every side] with grand creepers festooned from tree to tree and strange brilliant blossoms filling the air with perfume. Instinct told me that could I carry the memory of this wonderful scene, it would be a source of never failing joy and I turned my back upon it to learn how truly it was impressed upon my mind, when lo! before us lay a different scene. not so beautiful but grand [there?] [The two great volcanos which are the guardians of the territory of the [Murang Rabau?]] We were standing in the very shadow of the two great volcanoes which are the guardians of the territory of the Menang Rabous, Merape always active, from whose crater the blue smoke was rolling out in great clouds and Singgalang usually inactive clad in vivid green to their very summits they were silhouetted against a background of mountains, veiled in the bluest of blue hazes. Surely nature nowhere presents a more majestic scene! But this is not all throughout the country of these people, there are picturesque kloofs in the the mountains, pretty waterfalls, the great Lake [??karah] 52 miles long, covering 75 sq miles rocky noisy mountain rivers are wending their way to the sea while thousands of acres of fertile well watered land are scattered through the countless little valleys. For no one knows how many centuries, the Menang Kabaus have lived in the midst of these inspiring scenes and richly productive vallies. They have never known much of the struggle for existence, as the native coco palm banana and bamboo supply abundant material for shelter food and clothing. Generous nature has given them many additional fruits and edible plants and roots, and rice the staple food has been cultivated for unknown centuries Many sociologists believe that the matriarchate was a stage in the evolution of the race through which all [races] people have passed the common theory is that it occurred when sexual relations were promiscuous, and the family consisted only of [numberous?] children, the father being unknown. [War?] of primitive brutality established a custom of "wife capture" which eventually destroyed all vestige of the matriarchate, replacing it by a patriarchate in which women occupied a position of virtual slaving. A few tribes escaped from these rude influences and like relics of a long by-gone day offer valuable opportunities for ethnological study The Menang kabaus were never subjected to the trial of "marriage by capture" but they have been afflicted by two strongly patriarchate influences The Hindoos over ran Java & Sumatra in about 1300, leaving [behind there] among these people some of their arts, religion and and ideas. The Arabs came later with trade to the coast towns and converted them to Mohammadanism From the coast this religion crept into the interior, so that [???] the Menang Kabous in common with most of the natives of the Indies are Mohammadan in [?????], but the religion is not strictly orthodox. Something of their old nature worship, and something of Hinduism survive and are combined with the later faith [two main ideas] Polyagmy however, as a Mohammadan creed because [fiercely?] established, each man being allowed four wives. The institutions as they now stand are therefore a curious mixture of matrichate & patriarchice - the former still holding to its own. The land was formerly owned by women. Now some men have bought land from the women but they still own most of it and most of the houses. A woman called a nonna is the head of the house and the proprietor of the land which goes with it. When her eldest daughter is old enough to marry, there may be a love match, as intercourse between the sexes is [entirely] fine or as in Europe a match may be arranged for them by her parents. The parents when plans are complete "buy" the husband giving from 20 to 200 gulden for him. In most cases this money is used by the bridegroom for his "trousseau" and to pay for the festival which his family must give. Both families give festivals, the Mohammadan ceremony with variation is performed and the husband goes to live with his wife motherinlaw. Meanwhile the nonna has built an addition to her house [for each daughter] one for each daughter and then encloses the apartment of the young couples. [The husband is expected to help] [This] A portion of the family land is assigned to each [wife] daughter and the husband is expected to help her cultivate it. In the older time, he men were often away at the wars, or hunting Even yet there are elephants rhinoceros and tigers in their territory. Now, thanks to assn with Europeans new occupations have arisen and men often works at one of them, only helping his wife at harvest time. The profit from the land in such case belongs to the wife. The money made by the man in his private capacity is his own. Among the poorer classes the men have one wife only and live with her in the motherinlaws house among the richer ones, the man often has the four wives allowed him by the Koran and has been bought each time, the price being quite as high for the fourth wife to pay as the first If the man has four wives, he is expected to live in turn with her spending on one week [with ea] at the house of each wife. The motherinlaws [are quick to resent] with an eye to the family purse and quick to remind him that it is time for him to go when his week is up so no favoritism is permitted. When the nonna dies, her eldest daughter becomes nonna and her property passes to her children, but the management is more of the nature of community property It will be seen that when there are many daughters the family grows rich as the product of their united labor and that of the husbands accrues to the benefit of the family. When there are many sons, they take their labor to other families and their members remain poor. It comes about therefore been some families have much land and fine houses, jewels and money, while others have little and are poor. The family does not cease to exist however for if there are no daughters, the daughter of a [?????] sister may be adopted to perpetuate the family They are organized into clans at the head of which is a chief selected from a popular family and a council consisting of all adult males aids him in the administration of government. Several clans form a district presided over by a higher chief and the smaller chiefs meet with him in council once in three months When a child is about three months old it is taken to the river [and]bathed and given a name. It [usually] has no [connection] relation to his family. When it arrives at puberty there is a ceremony which gives the child the name of his clan and his family The clan name is the same for all who live in it, the family name passes on in the female line only when a man marries he takes the name of the clan and the family to which his wife belongs Divorces are not infrequent A man may leave his wife if he is not pleased with her and a divorce is granted by the clan council, the husband often being made to return the money paid for him. If the wife is displeased with her husband she invites him to leave her. If he does, divorce follows, but if the family is rich, he may [demur?] and sometimes [???] money is paid him to give the wife her freedom. They hold that when a husband has deserted his wife for 100 days and she has accepted no gift from him meanwhile, that she is free. The clan [courts?] have much work in the adjudication of such cases. 13 (For publication-The New York Herald Tribune) Sunday, January 10, 1936 Many believed in 1918 that the nations of the world would arise, altogether, with one glad Hosannah, and make an end of war forevermore. They believed this, because they were convinced that the nations were shocked into such action by the cruelties, the horrors, and all the follies combined in the Greatest of all wars. But human nature does not do things that way. No generation yet has made a right- around turn because the previous generation had been traveling the wrong way. Not at all. It insists upon going steadily forward in the same direction, but often announces that it intends to avoid the pitfalls into which the previous generation fell and nearly destroyed civilization in the process. It is this peculiarity of the human race which refuses to learn wisdom from experience that makes Peace vs. War the most stupendous of all problems in our day. Every nation has great problems and many of them today, but most of them are the normal results of the late war. Unemployment, bankruptcy, disturbed trade and commerce, shortage of money, increase of crime, lowered morality, and similar troubles which now beset us have probably resulted from the Great War, but these instabilities of human society have never failed to follow every considerable war. History tells the story over and over, but mankind refuses to see straight, think straight, or to act logically about it. The average American supposes that our country has indulged in little war in its national lifetime and he is convinced that we are a peaceful people. Yet, from 1789 to 1920, inclusive, the first one hundred and thirty-one years of our national history, the United States spent 78.5% of its total ordinary disbursements on war, past present, or future, and only 21.5% of such disbursements for the Civil Government... In the one peacetime year, 1932-1933, we spent for our war system, the army and the navy, the war veterans, and the war debts, six hundred millions more than our total receipts. The total -2- costs were $2,719,000,000; the total Federal receipts, $2,121,000,000." (Halt the Dead, page 69) If the war costs were greater than our receipts, how was the upkeep of the government maintained? By credit and additions to the National Debt as usual. War should be brought to an immediate end, because no nation can afford its expense were there no other reasons, but could the nations bear the costs of war without injury, it should be abolished because it is barbarous, criminal and wholly inconsistent with the aspirations of the Race to climb higher and grow better. It is usually claimed that wars are brought about by the political leaders of the nations. Perhaps, but when the voters, men and women, behind those political leaders, insist at all times, and in all ways, that war shall no longer be the policy of the nation, those leaders will readily enough find a way to keep out of war. The total abolition of war is the only way out. Carrie Chapman Catt March 31, 1936 No one knows when or where the bow and arrow was first invented, but its use was well nigh universal. The men of every continent, except Australia, were not only familiar with archery, but knew how to poison the dart, and feather it so that it would fly farther and also to roughen the shaft so that the wound became more deadly. When the Persians came in immense numbers to fight the Greeks at Marathon in 490 B.C. they came armed with bows and arrows. When, 2000 years later, the French and English engaged in a hundred years war, from 1337 to 1453, and the English followed it with a thirty years Civil war from 1453 and 1485 both sides were still armed chiefly with bows and arrows. The White followers of Christopher Columbus, believing themselves very advanced in civilization must have been greatly surprised when they beheld in the Western Hemisphere a race of men unlike any they had ever seen, armed with bows and arrows, poisoned and feathered. 2. Enormous varieties of bows and arrows show that these munitions of war have been in use a very long time. It is clear that they had been the chief equipment of soldiers for thousands of years before fire arms were discovered. How did this weapon find its way to five continents when no people had crossed the sea between. Pesians, Greeks, Assyrians, Scythians, Egyptians, Hindus, Turks, Chinese, Romans, the early English and French, Negroes and Hottentots, and American Indians all used them, and by these weapons the nations which had mastered the world fought their way to the power they gained by the bow and arrow. Apparently what we now call the competition in armaments between nations, and name it an important cause of war, began in the bow and arrow period and explains the surprising variety of these weapons which have been found. Undoubtedly in the first contests between men there were no weapons but fists. This meant a hand-to- hand encounter. The entire aim of men from that day to this has been to find weapons which would kill more men at a greater distance. The bow and arrow could strike their victims at distances varying from 300 to 1500 feet. The Christian Century Nov 18/31 [*Duplicate*] Thanksgiving and Hard Times "If You Were President, How Would You Proclaim Thanksgiving Day?" By W.J. Hutchins Oppressed with a sense of the difficult of giving adequate expression to the reasons for observing Thanksgiving day this year, the editors approached a number of leaders in American thought with this question: "If you were President of the United States, and were faced with the responsibility of writing a Thanksgiving proclamation, what would you say?" The answers are presented here. One or two of the writers have not cast their replies in the precise form suggested by the question, but we believe that these varied points of view will conduce to deep thinking in connection with the return of this national holiday. The closing year has been a year of revelation. We have seen the inadequacy of the machinery by which we have thought to assure our personal and social well-being. Our business acumen and our inventive genius have not availed to save men and women from unemployment, and from hunger in the midst of abundant harvests. Neither our education, nor our laws, nor our religious organizations have sufficed to maintain our civic honor or to preclude the possibility of war. The year has shown us the folly of our mental isolation, of our boastfulness and our soft lies. But the year has revealed to us anew the resources of the natural world to heal and to bless. We have witnessed anew the adventures of the brave, the victories of science over disease, the triumph of the human spirit over circumstance. Driven back to the ancient simplicities, many of our people have rediscovered the values which are enhanced as they are shared, the treasure-houses of the spirit, opened by the hand of faith, the permanent satisfactions which belong to the home, to human friendship and good will. Thus the closing year finds us sobered by the revelation of our impoverishment, made hopeful by the revelation of our resources. Our fellow citizens refuse to be whipped; they are concerned as never before in America's history to find the road to mastery and service. We do well then to follow the custom of our fathers, to join in an act of national gratitude and dedication. By Salmon O. Levinson It is customary to the point of being conventional to pour forth on this occasion our thanks for the blessings of the past year. The annual gift we lay upon the altar of Thanksgiving day is based upon what we see looking backward. And as life in our complex and magical civilization seems to depend more and more on material things, it is a bit difficult to avoid a touch of cynicism or irony in pursuing the beaten path of gratitude on this traditional American holiday. So I propose a toast of thanksgiving not to the lean year that is gone, nor yet to the fruitful year we pray may follow, but another, a different and a greater pledge. Let us give thanks to the coming year for the blessed test it furnishes of American character, of American will and power to ride the storm of depression and want, of American fibre that can rise superior to the exactions of panics and droughts, and while overcoming the handicap of material loss can cling to the ideal of life which gallant struggle against heavy odds serves but to exalt. The world is watching America, is looking to her for leadership in all the vexing problems of our time, the sanity of peace, the relief of the distressed, the fulfillment of the hopes of democracy at its best. This proud leadership we cannot earn or claim unless we can exhibit the same character and fortitude in our economic struggle that we so freely lavished in response to the vast demands of war. This recalling of our indomitable courage in wartime is most apt because the economic catastrophes now throttling the world were directly caused by the colossal and unprecedented waste of life and property in the great war. This inescapable fact should give us sustaining courage and hope. Can we not muster the same heroic qualities in coping with the dire economic results of the war that we showed in enduring the far more terrible hardships of the war itself? Here is true patriotism of the highest order - the patriotism of peace, of endurance, of physical and moral fortitude. Let us give thanks for this rare opportunity to prove ourselves worthy of our rugged ancestors; let us cease to cower before the mythical monster of fear, and though still striving for the boon of material welfare, let us take inspiration from our own souls so that in the contest between the material and the spiritual forces the spirits shall not surrender. By Carrie Chapman Catt Among us are men jobless and despairing, women and children hungry and desperate. The winter lies ahead and to them there is no joy or anticipation in its coming, only a shivering sense of cold. Be kind and charitable. Among the children there may be a Moses, a Lincoln, or an Edison, a great editor, artist, builder. Save them. Eat less, drink less, indulge in fewer luxuries, that they may have more. Be thankful that so many have a surplus to share. Preach optimism to your neighbors. Tell them better conditions are on the way. Times have been hard before, men out of work, and larders empty. They have passed and this depression will go. 1455 1456 THE CHRISTIAN CENTURY November 18, 1931 Watch congress, the forty-eight legislatures, and all the city councils, lest unnecessary appropriations be made. This is the time to economize and retrench. All citizens with a surplus should be free to contribute to the solution of the problems of the unemployed. Let no legislator rob them of it by increasing taxes. Help the President to eliminate the deficits and balance the budgets. Be thankful that these problems are not overwhelming. Help the President to curtail needless military expense by maintaining the year's proposed military truce which thirty-three nations have already, on this date, agreed to support. Help him to name a delegation to the Geneva disarmament conference that will stand steadfast for the reduction and limitation of the world's armaments. Be thankful that we live in this period when nations are turning from war and bloodshed to courts and round tables in their search for justice, and be especially thankful that we have a peace President to lead the way. Be thankful for the abundance of our schools, colleges and universities, our libraries and hospitals, and for each and every agency striving to uplift, energize and ennoble our great people. By Edward Scribner Ames OCCASIONS for gratitude to God outrun the most searching thought, for he works through the manifold ways of nature and through the mind and heart of man. The gifts of sun and rain and wind have made the fields to yield their fruits; the devoted labor of millions of hands has nourished the growing grain and gathered its ripened sheaves, while other millions have transformed it through mill and factory for better and more varied use. United with their fellows through companionship of toil and sense of power, men have enlarged their sympathies and their dreams of fuller life. The great institutions--homes, schools, churches, industry and the state--through the fidelity and intelligence of their servants have fostered in this year with new energy the rich inheritance from the past and fitted it anew to the needs of the day. Human relations, from the love and care of little children to the growing sense of neighborliness for the whole world of human beings, have gained new meaning and importance. Knowledge has been expanded and made more instrumental to human needs. Inventions and discoveries have continued to enrich men's life, and to still further increase the hope of more significant control of the resources of nature. Even calamities have brought their blessings. They have turned the nation's thought to deeper things. The halting of business has made men question whether life does not demand something more than bread. It has forced consideration of human welfare and the requirements of social justice. Widespread suffering in a land of plenty and in the presence of unprecedented wealth has centered attention upon the interdependence of all social classes and upon the need for better opportunities for the underpriviliged. Lawlessness and crime have created intense public indignation and given birth to a new civic conscience. The spiritual values of life have been revealed in new light and have made a wider and deeper appeal. Therefore there are abundant reasons for a great day of thanksgiving. By George Fort Milton IN THE midst of economic travail, with its accompaniment of hunger and heartbreak, America has just cause to return thanks for a growing willingness to adopt intelligence rather than chance as her chart of destiny. In this changing national mind, one discerns growing evidence both of a searching of soul and realistic examination of mind into the obscure causes of the nation's immediate economic difficulties, and of an increasing willingness on the part of those who sit in the masters' seats to be socially-minded in coping with the problems which oppress us. The present crisis is not the first to strike us. In the past, there have been other crises, with men haunting bread lines, and bankruptcy courts running overtime. But it is cold comfort to tell a hungry man that time will bring prosperity to the coming generation. Neither America nor the world can afford to employ drift and chance as the physicians for our economic Ills. Much better a physician is intelligence, careful planning, foreseeing great social dangers and preparing shelters for the storm. Traditionally, we Americans believe in private profit, in unrestricted individual initiative, and in the due reward of honest toil. But desirable as these things are, they cannot justify themselves, unless they can take care of the millions on the bread lines. We must cure this situation, publicly if not privately, if our experiment is to succeed. The economy we must work for is one in which every person with a body and a mind and a will to work can do so. More than this, every man and woman who can and will work is entitled to comfortable living quarters, good clothing, tasteful food, and a chance for cultural and intellectual development. This way lies the future of America and the world. Our people deserve the elements for a free and satisfying life. They need good homes, good books, and clean amusements. They need the chance to listen to good music, to admire works of art. They need an open world in which they can sun their souls, and indulge those higher aspirations which best make life worth while. The path is forward, and not backward. The problem of America and of the world is to enable an enduring people to gain these elements which must be had if our freedom is to be complete. To all our liberties of law and our privileges of politics, and our economic gains, we must add that greatest and most essential freedom, the freedom of mind and soul. IT IS FOLLY TO BE IN AMER By MRS CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT as told to ELIZABETH HOLMES I AM often asked how I manage to keep my health and maintain my productive energy. Well, that sounds like a question that used to be asked of my husband's aunt, who at the age of ninety was still the center of an active group. And the answer she always made will make you smile. She said it was because she had had doughnuts and coffee for breakfast all her conscious life. While I cannot attribute my good health to anything quite so startling or perverse as "doughnuts and coffee," the things that happened to me are almost as amusing in retrospect. In my early life as a lecturer, even in quite large cities and always in small towns and country-places, the churches were used as lecture halls. Often they had the only acceptable auditorium available, and always there were no social reasons why women might not come to hear me there. Along with the use of the church there usually went the generous and hospitable spirit of the members of the church and its auxiliaries. Since meetings often lasted all day, a noon-day lunch was usually served. In the summer this was a picnic lunch and even in the winter it was of a picnic type. Almost invariably in those early days this lunch consisted of baked pork and beans, pickles, coffee and cake. Conferences late in the day and often an evening meeting together with the inadequate train schedules of those days made it necessary to remain in the same town over night. Of course most hotels were out of the question. They were either so inadequate or unclean that no one could not support the idea of spending the night in them, or they were the kind whose reputation did not permit. Besides this negative side, the local hospitality made no arrangement possible other than entertainment in the home of one of the members of the Committee on Arrangements or someone representing them. Since the family had usually had its warm, or at least its principal meal at noon, the evening meal was "supper," and consisted almost invariably of canned salmon served cold just as it had slipped from the can, baker's white bread, pickles, jelly and tin-canned peaches, from the grocer. Of course, to a family that usually had home-made bread and home-canned fruit, and usually served fresh fish caught by the menfolks in the local streams and lakes, this ""bought" food seemed like a sophisticated meal in honor of the guest. That there ever was a time when intelligent persons thought this seems incredible now, but when food first began to be prepared outside of the home it was scarce and expensive and so considered very exclusive. These two meals with the slightest variations came upon me so regularly that I began to expect nothing else, in fact I got little else. Well, you can see that for the family and the Church Committees with whom I shared these meals, no great damage could come from once-a-year that it happened, but for the lecturer who had to endure them day in and day out for a tour of several months it was something quite different. I began to feel like a counterpart of my husband's aunt and her "doughnuts and coffee for breakfast every day." Even though we did not know a great deal about nutrition in those days, my home economics college training raised a warning hand and I took refuge in apples--all I could eat. On the basis, too, of "An apple a day," this probably saved me some serious consequences. In my thirty years of public work in this country I have seen an almost incredible rise not only in the standards of living but of the intelligence with which women meet and solve their problems in the home. I was born in a small town--Ripon, Wisconsin, but my parents moved to a farm in Iowa when I was a child, and I went from there to Iowa State College. Here, among our other studies, girls took courses in the new subject called Domestic Science. Looking back on it 12 Good Eating This is the first of two papers by Mr. Wharton. His long years of association with the protection of the public from violations of the Food and Drug Acts especially fits him for a long range view of the ways in which Dr. Wiley's Act has been outgrown by an actively developing commerce. THE CANDY! the present light fines as no more than license fees) insure more faithful observance of the law and correspondingly greater protection for consumers. The bill is intended to plug these loopholes and to make the statute a more effective instrument against modern abuses. It preserves all worthy features of the present law and contains in addition the following new features: 1. Jurisdiction over false advertising. Many foods and drugs bear no false statements on their packages but their advertising is blatantly deceptive. Legal actions under the present law against false labels result merely in correcting the label while continued deception of consumers may be accomplished by advertising the false claims formerly made on the labels. 2. Inclusion of cosmetics. The health of many persons is impaired by poisonous cosmetics, and false labels and advertising are frequently employed for these products. The present law has no jurisdiction over cosmetics. 3. Better control of poisonous foods. The present law contains no provision against poisons in foods unless they are added. This bill prohibits the sale of dangerous foods regardless of whether the hazard is caused by added poisons or otherwise. Under the present law the testimony of expert toxicologists must be introduced in every case to show the quantity of added poison in the food may be harmful to health. The bill authorizes the Secretary of Agriculture to acquire expert advice and then to fix a safe tolerance for all poisons. 4. Authorization to establish definitions and standards for all foods. The present law authorizes the establishment, in the limited field of canned goods only, of one standard of quality for each generic group of canned food. This bill authorizes the establishment of standards of identity and definitions of quality for all foods. 5. Permits may be required for the manufacture of food that may be injurious and against which the public can not be effectively protected by other provisions of the bill. Some foods are susceptible of dangerous contamination in unsanitary factories. The detection of such contamination by examination of samples from interstate shipments, the only procedure authorized by the present law, is often (Turn to page 27) [INSET] Lead poisoning is so insidious that painters get it by absorption through the skin of their hands and from the lungs. How much more serious then, is the lead- poisoned candy sold for children to eat! [INSET] CANDY CONTAINING "PRIZES" MAY INJURE THE TEETH OF CHILDREN, OR MAY BE ASPIRATED INTO THE CHILD'S THROAT OR BRONCHIAL TUBES. IN A RECENT CASE THE COURT HELD THAT THE ADDITION TO CANDY OF A COIN DID NOT CONSTITUTE A VIOLATION OF THE FOOD AND DRUGS ACT. LEAD FROM THE TRINKET HAS BEEN DEPOSITED ON THIS CANDY Courtesy Federal Food and Drug Administration [INSET] Copy July 17, 1930. Article prepared for the New York Times by Carrie Chapman Catt on 10th Anniversary of Woman Suffrage, August 26, 1930. When scientists are continually adding fresh and undubitable evidence in support of their claim that the human race has occupied this earth at least a million years instead of a few thousand, as we were taught in our youth, it follows that no human institution can be tested by its operation in a mere decade. Ten years ago the women of the United States were enfranchised by the final ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution. Our suffrage birthday is August 26, 1920, the day upon which, at 4 o'clock in the morning, the certificate of ratification of the thirty-sixth state, signed by the Governor of Tennessee, arrived at the State Department in Washington where the solicitor had been sitting up all night to await its arrival. At eight o'clock the same morning, without ceremony, the amendment was proclaimed by the Secretary of State, Bainbridge Colby, and thus some twenty-five million women of this great Republic were enfranchised. Beginning with January in this tenth anniversary year, newspapers and magazines have given unlimited space to widespread and varied comment upon its operation, many writers taking the attitude that the ten years have settled all the important questions that will ever arise concerning the value of woman suffrage. Yet what is a decade? A mere drop in the ocean; a small part in a century; a small incident in a long story. More, this particular decade is the only one in all human history which fell at the end of the largest, cruelest, and most foolish war the world has known. As a wit said quite truthfully: "Even yet no one knows who caused it, who won it, or who will pay for it." The thing everyone does know is that the nerves of all the world were unstrung by it, national governments upset, minds and judgments confused, jealous -2- hostilities aroused, and public opinion and policies based upon misinformation. In this decade the first trial of woman suffrage unhappily fell. One comment upon it may be made that is undeniably true. Any conclusions drawn by friend or foe from observations upon woman suffrage in its first decade are likely to be overturned in decades yet to come. Men have been voting some one hundred and fifty years. Excellent, remarkable, brave things have been achieved by them with their vote, but also many unbelievably ridiculous things have been done. To sum up the merits of man suffrage for a visitor from Mars after fifteen decades would even now be difficult, for no one can know what noble proposal may be offered at any moment and manfully carried out, nor what recrudescence of the Stone Age may suddenly appear under the united protection of the male vote. The brief trial of woman suffrage, therefore, should be considered as dealing with temporary situations and leading to no permanent conclusions. Even so, some questions of the curious may be asked and answered. "Have women really voted en masse?" ask many idle-minded. Yes, many millions of them voted at the last presidential election. Men voters at the same election, it must be admitted, exceeded the number of women voters, but until we hear from the new census, we may believe that there are still more men than women in this country as there always have been. Further, the political machinery, slowly built and brought into definite operation through a century and a half, has been largely directed to the aim of getting out the male voter on election days. No such effort has yet been expended upon getting out the female vote. The number of women who have actually voted is at least five times the number of men, women, and children composing the entire population of our country at the date when the most radical extensions of the vote were made to men and is nearly four-fifths of -3- the total women of our present population. The number of women actually voting increases at each important election. A long list of well known American patriots, highly distinguished for their conservatism in the State Constitutional Conventions when consideration was under way of granting the vote to men who owned no taxable property, may be imagined as turning uneasily in their graves at the news that millions of women in 1930 are actually living in this country and voting like any other citizen. Yet these somewhat smug statements are of no dependable value. "Have women, in view of what may happen in decades ahead, done any good with their vote?" asks another. In many a city, town, and countryside, they have so thoroughly cleaned up the precincts that there is no resemblance to their character a few years ago. Probably, in scattered places, some election precincts have managed to escape the cleaning up process, but in the main, the drunkards who habitually blocked the sidewalk before each voting place have disappeared. To be sure prohibition must have taken a hand in this result, but in New York women voted three years before prohibition came and the sidewalks were cleared at the first appearance of women voters. From many districts the reports have been returned from questions asked that the old-time watchers for candidates or parties are no longer seen in the residential districts, the honesty of the election being adequately guaranteed by the capable and alert women election officers. These facts, were there no others, make a sufficient basis for pronouncing the political service of women an important contribution to the efficiency of self-government. "When will a movement arise, such as is now stirring against the 18th Amendment, to repeal the 19th Amendment?" asked a silly man recently. Such a movement would be welcome, should it ever come, -4- because two interesting things would result. First, there would be Senatorial and Congressional oratory flying farther skyward than any heard of late, the central astonishment of which would be the shocked questions: "What, shall we, whose government is proclaimed as 'of the people, by the people and for the people', now silence one-half the people'. Shall we, the glorious leader of self-government, do this in the face of the amazing fact that more than half the nations of the world have enfranchised their women, the last being South Africa in 1930, thus completing the number of thirty-five nations where women vote side by side with men? No, we cannot afford to be jeered at for going backward while other nations go forward." Probably the oratory would quash the movement of repeal, should one arise, but that would be a pity, for the second scheduled thing to happen would be more entertaining and amusing. The 19th Amendment will never come out of the constitution, but another may go in. Something new was discovered in our generation-morons. A moron is a person with a grown-up body and an ungrown-up mind. We know now that every nation, town, and village has its morons, but we do not yet know what percent of the race are morons, nor whether one sex exceeds the other in the number of its morons, nor do we know what proportion of every human mind is moronistic. While we await with anxiety the coming statistics of scientists, we suffer from grim suspicion of our neighbors and men and women in high places. There is another type of humans, about which scientists know even less; those with uncontrolled tendency to immorality and crime. The mental moron is a little boy or girl in a man's or a woman's body, often dressed in London or Paris clothes, with hair correctly cut and the ensemble decorated daintily with appropriate jewelry. The second unnamed type is a barbarian, belonging to the -5- Stone Age in a modern civilized body. He cannot shake off the brutal tendencies of his long ago ancestor and may be a murderer, a robber, a grafter, a bootlegger, or all four combined. The intention of our forefathers was to establish a government by grown-up, honest people. Decency and developing civilization in a future day will certainly call for a sovereignty adjusted to situations caused by new scientific knowledge and mental and moral morons will have to go. Nations ruled by their grown-ups will be the universal order, but they will follow common sense, which indicates that no nation can be ruled safely, calmly, and efficiently when a possible large percent of those grown-ups are only little boys and girls mentally, or wild savages morally. It follows that women voters will stay in the Federal Constitution, but men and women deficients will pass out together. We are beginning to think that all political misdemeanors have been committed through the activities of morons who looked like normals. When this is proved, there will be more hurry to prevent their equality with the normal grown-ups. Now that this vote has been extended to all classes, the next step is to save civilization by raising the standard of voters through subtracting the incompetent, and this will undoubtedly be done by amendment or otherwise and by all nations as soon as the scientists can teach us how to pick out a moron without making a mistake. It is not easy to outline the path this next development will follow, but its coming is clear enough. Women will stay in; morons of both sexes will go out. How have women responded to political duties? How do they behave in the political committee and the convention? How many of them come forward as candidates; do they get elected, and how do they honor their sex, their party, and their nation when they take office? Ah, here's the rub. By slow degrees a political machine, habits and -6- customs grew up. The mechanism has been managed by men trained to special action and called politicians. Politics was their game, their amusement, and often their source of glory and of income. The questions so casually asked ought to be reversed. How have the established political processes yielded to the coming of new women voters? Has there been a hospitable partnership? The truth is that the most painful experience the machine politician ever endured has been through his contacts with women voters. He has not been willing to share his game or teach its subtleties, and the presence of women has taken much of the joy, although not the excitement, out of politics for him. Yet he manages to protect his ancient rights rather well. When a woman enters a committee or goes to a convention, it is through his "advice and consent". She is pretty certain to have been recommended by some one as a peaceable, timid, and quiet person, with no tendency to burst forth with embarrassing behaviorisms. The women invited into the more sacred party precincts are well disciplined partisans and thoroughly convinced that all mental or moral morons floating about the country will be found in the other party. Yet this great mass of women voters, moving in and out of party lines, sitting on the grand stand with their eyes open, studying the party handbooks, listening to party speeches and political conversations, asking questions and occasionally performing the unexpected, are doing something to politics that no one decade can diagnose correctly. They are analyzing that political machine, learning its history, how it operates, and who operates it. Through political spy glasses they are admiring heroic statesmen and "viewing with alarm" certain types of politicians and, quite out of sight and hearing, they are doing a great deal of talking. Meanwhile, the big Federation of Women's Clubs, the younger League of Women Voters, and many other women's organizations are keeping on with their programs. The coming of the vote found them with -7- much unfinished business. They decided to complete it and to go on doing good in more or less womanish ways. They hesitate to quarrel where unbroken friendship has long prevailed and, therefore, find it a happier policy to steer clear of big emotional issues. They remain remarkably united although they do divide on Prohibition, Naval Treaties, and Courts, and occasionally betray a bit of temper. Very many women could pass fair examinations as to what is meant by pending events and they are not so indifferent as some observers pronounce them. You have seen a kitten wiggling its tail with body atremble as it spies an imaginary mouse. It is proclaiming what it is going to do when it grows up. So women voters with wrinkled brows are looking on - indignation mounting here, aspiration growing there, and determination everywhere. Some day these voters may well be grown-up enough to pounce. There are many things in this big Republic in need of repair and these women mean to assume some of these tasks. Their eyes turn oftenest toward that political machine. Enormous campaign funds with neither source nor disbursements clearly accounted for bestirs distrust, and the frequent revelations of graft arouse suspicion that there may be much more concealed. It is here, in the centers of City or County machines, that the morons are thickest and the normal woman voter dreams oftenest of this source of political wickedness as the first place to strike. At present they do not know just where to begin nor how to proceed. Men have not known how to accomplish this purpose either. When men and women, together, find the way and come down on this greatest of our political menaces, it will probably take a generation to finish the job, but when it is done, as it will be, women will enjoy a greater political self-confidence and more dignified positions in the party, at which time a better story may be told than the first decade warrants. -8- In conclusion: 1. Woman Suffrage has come to stay. 2. The returns from the first decade promise well, but are of too temporary a character to be safely regarded as a reliable record. 3. Women have certainly been engaged in these last ten years in a preparedness for future action, but no human could predict its exact nature. From the talk among them, one may judge that its aim will be higher and wider and better organized than those of the first decade. 4. The fact that foreign countries have elected more women to parliaments and city councils than our own is somewhat explained by the general use of proportional representation abroad, although the question as to why so few women want to take office here and so few men urge them to do so is as yet inexplicable. Quite possible is the supposition that in Germany seats in parliaments of the new Republic, in comparison with restraints under the previous dictatorship, may appear to offer fascinating promise, while here, long intimacy with politics in practice has made office holding appear boresome to women. 5. The big problem affecting man and woman suffrage is how to secure genuine, patriotic, honest cooperation between the two sexes in all political policies. Women have a long way to go before being well enough qualified with self-reliance and initiative to take places on a 50-50 basis with men. That does not mean that men may not fall behind in some future decade. Who can tell? 6. The one thing that women rejoice over most is that the vote is won, for were it not so, they would still have -9- to work for it. That was an undertaking job they were sworn to complete. Now they are free to move on and they think they are moving on. Probably they know. 7. There is evidence aplenty that however long this Republic lasts, it will produce problems enough to keep its citizens alert and busy, and victories enough to furnish occasions for frequent celebrations. It is certain that men and women citizens will like and respect each other better as time goes on and that under their joint administrations the Republic will become more resplendently glorious. No really intelligent American is worrying over the future of woman or man suffrage. We have foresworn kings and our loyalty to self-government is unswerving. THE NEW YORK TIMES "All the News That's Fit to Print" Times Square, New York TIMES BUILDING TIMES ANNEX July 29, 1930. Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt 120 Paine Avenue New Rochelle, N.Y. Dear Mrs. Catt: In the absence of Mr. Turpin I am writing to express our thanks for your article upon the tenth anniversary of woman suffrage. As you point out, August 26 is the correct date of the anniversary which means that your article will appear Sunday August 24. Owing to space consideration it may be necessary to cut your article. In that contingency would you be willing for us to cut your discussion of "Morons"? I am holding your article awaiting your reply. Very truly yours, S.T. Williamson S.T. Williamson For the Sunday Editor STW:PP [*Copy*] [*about 1929*] Two remarkable women have passed into the Beyond within the last few days. A mixed feeling of sorrow for their going and gratitude for the service of their lives stirs those who have known them. Mrs. Millicent Garrett Fawcett, for many years chief of the National Suffrage Association of Great Britain and always a leader in the feminist movement, was a stateswoman in every sense of the word. Her judgment was calm, deliberate, logical, and so correct in its conclusions that to follow it gave safety and security to the woman movement. She knew no fear, hesitation, nor caution when once she knew that she was right, and her followers never failed to march forward with confidence under her banner. The woman movement went through many discouraging times in Great Britain. There was a very long stretch of years when the stubbornness and indifference of men and women seemed impossible to overcome and the movement went down into the slough of despond with little promise of ever returning. Through all this period Mrs. Fawcett was cheerily certain that it would rise to final triumph and converted an ever increasing army of believers to carry on. Militancy was an exceedingly trying time in England. On one hand people said that nothing worth while had ever been done before and on the other, a very large number declared that if that was the way women behaved, they would have nothing more to do with the feminist movement. Mrs. Fawcett steered her campaign into the middle of the road and kept it there. She was fair in her judgment of the value of the contribution of the militants, but was never misguided into the belief that they would be able to complete the campaign. When the militants had closed the doors of their headquarters, dismissed their staff, and Mrs. Pankhurst was preaching conscription, Mrs. Fawcett, none the less patriotic, did not forget that other things besides war were in progress Page 2 and boldly led on.to the inevitable climax. Suffrage for women at thirty years of age was gained in 1918 and was regarded as a resting point only. Valiantly did her organization continue the struggle until even the House of Lords had yielded to the demand for equal voting qualifications for men and women. Over eighty years of age, Mrs. Fawcett leaves behind her a lifetime of constructive history making, a generation of achievement so fundamental that the world she now leaves is a totally different one from that into which she was born. Always a heroine, always right, always a gallant leader, she passes into history as one of England's greatest women. All the world around, wherever the British flag flies, women enjoy a liberty and opportunity which, fifty years ago, any British citizen would not imagine possible. Across the sea another woman, of Jewish birth, the daughter of a doctor, began her earliest career as a leader and did for the Dutch women what Mrs. Fawcett did for the British women. She was the first girl in Holland to go to a high school and in order to secure this right, it was necessary for a minister of the Cabinet to give his consent. It was a matter which had to be carefully thought through, for it opened the door to other girls who would come after. A little later she decided to follow her father's profession and study medicine. There was no school in Holland to admit her, so she went to England and when she came back with her degree and her diploma, she became the first women physician in that country. Later the feminist movement began to stir in Holland and, naturally, she was one of its earliest leaders. For very many years she was the president of the Dutch Woman Suffrage Association. The Dutch, like the British, are a slow moving, conservative people and the Church of the country was opposed to new ideas for women. Dr. Jacobs talked, preached, lectured, wrote, organized, and laid awake nights to plan, always bravely leading forward, Page 3 always confident, always knowing that some day her cause would win. Holland, long before the United States, had ratified its federal amendment, granted the vote to women. Women now sit in her Parliament, Municipal Councils, and hold many high offices; all schools have long been opened to them; women practice all the professions, and there is not a woman in Holland who does not know that these opportunities were largely due to the perseverance and clear thinking of Dr. Aletta Jacobs. She passed away unexpectedly a few days ago at about seventy-fice years of age. These two women were as unlike as two human characters could well be yet, the same unswerving conviction had seized both in early life which guided every step in their careers. That common faith shaped their lives and altered the destiny of their nations. Great Britain owes much to Mrs. Fawcett; Holland owes much to Dr. Jacobs; but every woman the world around owes a debt to both. When these countries yielded to the appeal of the women and granted the vote, together with many other rights long withheld, they set a standard which most other nations were quick to follow in order to keep step with the world's progress. Brave, sagacious, valiant souls; with bowed heads let joy and thankfulness that they have lived take the place of tears we would shed. [*circ 1928*] At the moment when the Acting Secretary of State was announcing the official legality of the 18th Amendment on one hand, certain official heads of the organized and united distillers, brewers, consumers and supporters, announced that violation would begin at once and continue with such unabated flagrancy and scandal that soon the public would rise in protest and demand the repeal of the law. It therefore happened that on the day following the establishment of the amendment a fresh battle began with the same wets on one side, the same drys on the other, which had long been engaged in contest, the wets aiming at repeal, the drys at support of the amendment. It is curious that this organized threat of insurrection has been so far forgotten and overlooked that throughout the past eleven years every successful violation of the Amendment has been charged to the frailties of the law rather than to the sharp practice of organized lawlessness. In truth, the new battle was far easier for the wets and harder for the drys than the preceding one. An army of officers and workmen, now unemployed by the close of distilleries, breweries, and saloons, together with a considerable host of criminals, drunkards, prostitutes, drug addicts, and political henchmen, trained by the worst variety of the saloon, composed a ready force from which could be drawn any variety of servitor required in the business of organized law nullification. The enforcement of the law did not lie with the drys, but with the government. An immense staff of enforcing officers was necessary. These were often supplied by party patronage, and were frequently designed to violate rather than to uphold the law. Many men had little sympathy with the law itself, many were incompetent, others were weak and bribable, and others were in secret connivance with the law rebels. -2- Thus, for eleven years, the United States has muddled along under prohibition. To repeal the amendment now would be a cowardly and ignoble surrender to a minority who, at the beginning, announced their intention. Other facts have also been overlooked. In the times of primitive men the discovery of a fermented beverage filled a man with hilarious joy and led to the increased manufacture and use of drink. No tribe was so happy as when it was drunk. After some millions of years there were groups or nations who experienced a faint dawn of intelligence and observed that drunkenness brought crime, murder, war, and other catastrophies and they made a feeble effort to restain drink, the original cause. At this moment, all so-called civilized peoples are in this stage. No such country is trusting itself to free and uncontrolled drink. Each is making some kind of effort by custom or law to restrict the manufacture and the use of alcoholic drink. Prohibition did not originate in this country. Marco Polo recorded one Chinese state which had a law much like the 18th Amendment, but no one knows if this was the earliest example, or how long it lasted. The law longest in operation and most successful appears to be the total abstinence of the largest group of Asiatic Mohammedans. All the world around laws and customs are now in existence, each aiming to restrain drunknness. No two laws are alike and no law is well enforced or popular. No law which limits drink is liked by those who enjoy unlimited drink. Each law is praised by its friends and condemned by its There is one common attitude of a portion of the citizens of every country toward its liquor law, and that is an earnest desire to get rid of it. Dealing with liquor control began in this country as soon as the first white man stepped on American soil. As the journeys by sail boats were long, the passengers had religious services and prayer meetings twice every day -3- and I suspect many plans were made before Plymouth Rock was sighted. The first attempt was to clean up the habits of the church itself. There was a strange repugnance to the use of drink by ministers. I've heard my grandfather say that when he was a boy there were only three uses for money among the common people, one was for purchasing whiskey which was passed to the minister when he called. The Quakers began zealously by forbidding drink being passed at a funeral more than once. These agitations and general soul cleanings eventually led to the making of laws, the first appearing in 1642, punishing drunkenness by a fine of one hundred pounds of tobacco. The law was violated in a troublesome way, the drinkers making comfortable speakeasies in hay stacks with bootleggers in the distance. This happened in Maryland, which has been uneasy in its mind on the drink question ever since. Were there an enterprising searcher for facts to tell us how many liquor laws have been passed in colonies, states, and nation, since that first one, it would greatly add to our useful knowledge. Glancing over the long record, I should say the number would be over a thousand. Certainly new laws were passed and old laws rescinded in most years. The general agitation began to shape itself into the form of prohibition legislation about 1840 and became a definite trend in 1852 with the establishment of the first "Maine law". The changeability of the American mind of this question might be illustrated by the history of many states. One will do. Rhode Island, now a vigorous leader in the movement to repeal the 18th Amendment and one of the two states that did not ratify that Amendment, is an excellent example. -4- In 1647 the Colony prohibited drunkenness and also the sale of liquor to Indians. It was somewhat discouraged with the difficulties of enforcement. In 1851, a Democratic Legislature established a prohibition law. In 1853 the State Court pronounced the law unconstitutional. In 1855 a new prohibition law was passed by the Legislature. In 1863 a Republican Legislature repealed the law. In 1874 the Legislature prohibited the sale of intoxicating beverages and passed a constabulary act for its enforcement. In 1875 the prohibitory law and the constabulary were repealed. In 1866 the Legislature voted to submit a state prohibition amendment to a popular vote (men only) and by a three-fifth majority it was carried. In 1889 the amendment was rescinded at the polls. A High License was adopted, the plan then sweeping the country. Thus Rhode Island passed from law to law through 242 years, rarely remaining under any law long enough to give it a fair test. Now "Little Rhody" wants to repeal the 18th Amendment. At no time has she done other than signally fail in her early determination to restrain drunkenness. Now she offers no hint as to what experiment she will try next. Like her neighbors, she merely changes her mind or flounders about like the proverbial "chicken with its head off". Like Miss Tarbell, most people find the present situation a predicament and "see no straight way out of it." She hesitates to meet the question "If not prohibition, what?" Most political parties dodge that question and most candidates for Congress evade it. -5- Yet I want to say with all the force I can muster that it is the only question outstanding in the situation at this moment and that to avoid it is a cowardice unworthy of a self-respecting country. A practical, logical people will insist upon that question being completely answered before the 18th Amendment is dropped out of the constitution. Every conceivable law and regulation in this or other countries has been already tried and all have been pronounced a failure by a large number of citizens of the country. Why should this country pick up a law half discarded by another country and experiment with it? With the kind of moral character now developed in this country no liquor law will be enforced or respected. Miss Tarbell would like to return to local option. Whew! She cannot have read the tales of weary campaigns whereby the struggling reformers reached the top and then more tales of bootleggers, speakeasies and lawlessness, and frequent repeals, another victory, another repeal. She longs to return to 1918 when all was peaceful. Perhaps one of the greatest difficulties now in adjusting themselves is that so many people have not noticed previous conditions. In 1918 high license was at its most glorious peak. A high power competition in selling was in fullest swing which planted new saloons in every available spot. Respectable saloons there were, but there were more with their back rooms, upper rooms, and cellar rooms. Here addicts, prostitutes, gamblers, and the lowest type of politician joined in a common headquarters and the wicked shamelessness of these lower types were the real cause of the last bound taken by the nation into constitutional prohibition. The common sense procedure is to find the substitute, adopt it, slip the substitute into the vacancy and then repeal the Amendment. This would save some nerve racks and worries of the millions of Americans who tremble now at the uncertainty before them. The Amendment can be repealed by the same process that established it. It is a -6- long and tortuous process, yet it can be done; a temporary measure could be substituted while the change was in operation and somehow, somewhere, a new experiment could be devised. Buy why experiment? Why not stick fast to the 18th Amendment until it is proved or disproved, or get a substitute with all the pieces fitted together and quit this ridiculous side stepping. Is there a substitute? Certainly no authority with the right to speak has yet proposed one, but an interesting prospect has arisen. Dwight W. Morrow, candidate for Senator from New Jersey, recent ambassador to Mexico and Commissioner to London, has an idea. All over the country he is pronounced by some a hero; by others a parity splitter. He would repeal the 18th Amendment, then introduce another amendment "which will restore to the States the power to determine their policy toward the liquor traffic and vest in the Federal Government power to give all possible protection and assistance to those States that desire complete Prohibition against invasion from the States that do not." Like Miss Tarbell, Mr. Morrow, in rather an indeterminable way, would go backward, but his plan will please few wets and few drys and when he gets appointed political leader of letting out one constitutional amendment and letting in another, he will have more trouble than he has yet met. It is difficult to imagine a distiller or brewer making sufficient additional profit in such a scheme to attract him or any dry finding helpfulness in a prohibition state with bootleggers, spys, and smugglers sitting in a row all the way around on the frontier. If the United States cannot enforce a Federal prohibition amendment now, how can it be expected to protect scattered prohibition states with liquor bases plentifully disclosed? What will it do when fuels of air planes carrying forbidden beverages fly over the frontiers and defy the nation? Why not clean up all the frontiers instead of a few? How queer are men! -7- Many of us see advantages in prohibition that we like. We do not drink nor associate intimately with people who do. We do not serve liquor in our homes and turn down our glasses on other tables. We are pleased to pass along the street where we see no saloons and smell no ranced liquor issuing from the swinging doors. There are no tippling men who enter our doors and we see no drunken men. We do not discuss prohibition nor the detestable character of the modern social class which finds in its violation of the law the chief charm of life. Whatever the law, we shall live in the same quiet law abiding, simple and civilized way. I, for one, shall stand by prohibition as long as it is there, and thousands and thousands of Americans will so live to the end. There are other things about prohibition I do not like. It seems out of place to regulate drink in the constitution and I do not like laws in the form of "Thou shalt not". Yet, after all, the commandments and most laws are in this form and so I reconcile myself to these facts even though I do not like them. In the present situation, I, for one, am not disturbed by the irritation and uncertainty the wet propaganda is arousing. It seems in accord with all the history of liquor law making; - whatever is, is wrong. Nor do I find anything upsetting in a man of foreign birth, little or no education and no American training, who joins the half criminal forces engaged in organized violation of the law. What shocks me is the American man or woman who defies a law honestly made in the regular way by a majority of fellow citizens. Drink and drunkenness was not respectable before the 18th Amendment was put in the constitution and no change of the law can make it so. The ladies joining the drinking forces and organized to repeal the 18th Amendment can never make drink decent nor themselves a moral force. -8- The trend of a thousand years is in the opposite direction and it will continue in that direction. I predict that the United States will stick to prohibition, but I do not say that it may not repeal the 18th Amendment a few times as it passes along its ever changing way. In the end it will return to the law which has called forth its hardest fight and aims at the highest decency. CATT, Carrie CHAPMAN SPEECH, ARTICLE, BOOK FILE Article, Untitled [*Prohibition article sent to Mrs. Peabody for publication.8} April 11, 1931. Scarcely had the first American Colonists been set ashore, before it became obvious that the conditions were calling for a liquor law. The Indians loved rum and discovered a new delight in getting drunk. They were ready to barter the skins and meat of wild animals and anything else they could steal or find for more rum. A few white men entered boldly into the profitable liquor trade. The business was hidden behind piles of rocks, hayricks or brush. The white bootleggers often stole the rum they sold and the red bootleggers often stole the skins with which they paid for it. Other whites found a drunken Indian frequently transformed into a thief robber or assassin and demanded a protective law forbidding the sale of rum to Indians. This rule became the law and spread over all the Colonies. Colonies followed Colonies, each with its own liquor law . Eventually forty-eight states appeared. Each state, county, city, town and village had its liquor laws also. Hundreds of them have come and gone. Never a single spot has there been without its liquor law. None of these laws have been popular. The thirsty have always wanted more liquor to drink and more opportunities for getting drunk. The producers have wanted more liquor to dispose of and more profits to add to their money bags. Page 2 These so-called wets have always wanted the law repealed, the reason being [the] that they wanted greater facilities for the liquor trade. The so-called drys have often joined in the petition for repeal of existing laws upon the ground that the law could not be enforced. For two hundred years our entire country has been covered by liquor laws. No law has ever been enforced; no law has been popular or approved. This has been the history of temperance procedure in our country for the past [two hundred years] from the beginning. Other countries also have experimented with liquor laws with the same result. No law has been enforced and an attempt to repeal every and any liquor law has been the [rule] experience everywhere. When, therefore, a minority desires to repeal the 18th Amendment in our country, they do what other minorities have done since the first liquor law was established. Wets never approve liquor laws because they think them too severe; Drys like liquor laws but never find them drastic enough. What, then, would happen if the 18th Amendment were repealed? Another law would replace the present one. What law? No one knows. Some say, "It will not, it shall not be the saloon." Who knows? The party politician likes the saloon. There is a commission to be collected; Page 3 a headquarters for party discussions; a handy addition to political machinery. Who knows what that law will include? The drinker will put drink in the next law if he can. The dry will keep it out if he can. The facts are that a controversy has been continuous for two hundred years as to the best way to suppress drunkenness and alcoholic crime. No one has come forward with the answer. The controversy will undoubtedly continue for a long time to come, but no one can predict when drunkenness or alcoholic crime will terminate. The safest policy is that recommended by the Wickersham Report, the slogan being taken from the W.C.T.U., that is, "Observance and Enforcement - not Repeal." Let the difficulties in executing the prohibition law be whatever they may, they will be no greater than those for enforcing any other law. Dr. T. F. Murphy, of the census bureau, published statistics showing the total deaths from alcoholism in the United States for the years 1928-1929. "It reveals that the greatest number of deaths from alcoholism are in the wettest states, where enforcement of the prohibition law is least efficient. For instance - Page 4 Illinois 240 Maryland 110 Massachusetts 298 New Jersey 153 New York 817 Pennsylvania 464 Wisconsin 118 Total 2200 This is a showing quite as good as the enforcement of the law against thieving, robbery and murder. I give this personal testimony. I have lived under many liquor laws; I have visited many states and foreign lands over which different liquor laws were in operation; I have never observed a liquor law that was enforced; I have never known a liquor law that was liked by the people. Personally I believe in prohibition because it is a better law and better enforced than any other liquor law I have observed. I shall continue to think it is the best law for this land until a better law appears. No such law has come as yet. CCC. CATT, Carrie CHAPMAN SPEECH, ARTICLE, BOOK FILE Article, Untitled By Carrie Chapman Catt November 2, 1931. Among us are men jobless and despairing, women and children hungry and desperate. The winter lies ahead and to them there is no joy or anticipation in its coming, only a shivering sense of cold. Be kind and charitable. Among the children there may be a Moses, a Lincoln, or an Edison, a great editor, artist, builder. Save them. Eat less, drink less, indulge in fewer luxuries, that they may have more. Be thankful that so many have a surplus to share. Preach optimism to your neighbors. Tell them better conditions are on the way. Times have been hard before, men out of work, and larders empty. They have passed and this depression will go. Be thankful for the assurance that these hard times will be brief. Watch Congress, the forty-eight Legislatures, and all the City Councils, lest unnecessary appropriations be made. This is the time to economize and retrench. All citizens with a surplus should be free to contribute to the solution of the problems of the unemployed. Let no legislator rob them of it by increasing taxes. Help the President to eliminate the deficits and balance the budgets. Be thankful that these problems are not overwhelming. Help the President to curtail needless military expense by maintaining the year's proposed military truce which thirty-three nations have already, on this date, agreed to support. Help him to name a delegation to the Geneva Disarmament Conference that will stand steadfast for the reduction and limitation of the world's armaments. Be thankful that we live in this period when nations are turning from war and bloodshed to Courts and Round Tables in their search for justice and be especially thankful that we have a Peace President to lead the way. Be thankful for the abundance of our schools, colleges and universities, our libraries and hospitals, and for each and every agency striving to uplift, evergize and ennoble our great people. -2- marines and bombing airplanes and where the American flag has been falsely flown by ships carrying contraband of war. Even stiffer and more illiberal rules might be called into existence and thus bring still more inconvenience to personal liberty and freedom of speech and press, but they would be small, indeed, compared with the restraints put upon the people of a nation at war. There would be loss of profits, too, through interference with trade and commerce and this would not be borne patiently nor without efforts to break down the barriers. Given a majority, convinced that war is an outworn, barbarous and indefensible custom which it is the duty of civilized people to abolish, and no power on earch could break our neutrality. Carrie Chapman Catt CATT, Carrie CHAPMAN SPEECH, ARTICLE, BOOK FILE Article: Untitled [*1928*] The multilateral treaty for which the statesmen of [fourteen] fifteen nations wil search for an appropriate title in Paris, on August 27 is neither a beginning nor an end of the process of recovering war from the habits of [civilized?] nations. It is the climax of ten years of the best thinking the world ever did, but it leaves problems enough still unsolved to give occupation to statesmen yet unborn. Fifteen [fourteen] nations are about to say to each other. we formally agree, let come what may [will] that we will never to go war with each other and when and if disputes arise among us we solemnly pledge ourselves to find peaceful ways of settling them. [These nations leave the door wide open and invite all other] [lands to affix their signatures to the same compact. Thus the treaty [?]] fair to include the [civilized?] world in a pledge renouncing war among themselves] The two most significant facts about the treaty are not to be discovered in its wording. The first is that six of the initial signatories are known as Great Powers. Why? Because they possess the man power and the money power to outfit a war. They possess the ship, submarine airplane, munitions and poison gas power to equip a war and have men [whose] trained to organize plan and conduct [such] a war. These are Great Britain (her dominions Canada South Africa Australia New Zealand India and the three states of Ireland are included in the fifteen nations) Germany, France Italy Japan and the United States. The other signatories are Belgium Poland and Checkoslovakia. These three were included at the request of France because they were parties with her in the Locarno treaties. The competion and rivalry among this big six in ships munitions and war [movement] gestures, in threatening [editorials?] and war eloquence put forth by military gentlemen, have kept the rumors flying of another and greater war. When therefore these nations agree not to go forth and shoot each other's citizens when they chance to desagree about tariffs or debts or what not, tax payers may begin to dream of a time when they will not be called upon to pay for mysterious equipment with which to undo their neighbors The second fact is that the United States joins other nations in a compact not to war with them. All the other [signature?] nations are members of the League of Nations and have already committed themselves to arbitrate their differences. The United States has stood out an isolated [and] factor regarded as dangerous [factor] because her attitude in case of war has been unknown That she now joins the chorus of great nations renouncing war has filled the souls of peace makers the world around with a fresh hope. The renunciation treaty would never have been possible had there been no League of Nations, and steps yet to follow [in turn] would never be [been possible] taken had there been no Kellogg Compact. The world is moving unmistakably and moving fast in the direction of the biblical ploughshares [are ????] hooks. Transcribed and reviewed by volunteers participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.