General Correspondence NAWSA Barth, Ramona S. Parker House SCHOOL and TREMONT STREETS BOSTON MASS. GLENWOOD J. SHERRARD President and Managing Director 1945 Alna Maine July 6 Dear Miss Blackwell- Persistency is supposed to be one of my virtues?? questionable ones. I was thrilled to know that noone has spoken (whom you have answered) to write your biography. I appreciate and admire your reticence naturally but I think the facts are very clear. Someone is going to write your biography by either now or after you die. From our correspondence I certainly think that you and I would agree upon the highlight s of your life and I would like very much to have the job. I think just a Christian Regis ter article nowhere near enough. Can I not woo you this way? I would have the introductory chapter on your mother; the next one on your father; perhaps the third one upon their great influence and the "Bunker Hill Monument" illustration which fits in beautifully in my picture. I suppose some psychiatrists will pounce upon me and say that sometimes such an influence and such adulation stifles initiative in the children but all I can do is point to this instance where it had the opposite effect. The rest of the book would be about you and I have a number of ideas for pointing up and making very timely your life-- the problem of Russia for example and your "little grandmother" and sympathies long before Russians were "our gallant allies." I think based on my emphases in Florence Nightingale, you can imagine what my slant would be. [*Mrs. Blackwell said "no"*] Parker House SCHOOL and TREMONT STREETS BOSTON MASS. GLENWOOD J. SHERRARD President and Managing Director You speak of no good biography of your mother. I think, of course, it would be hard for me to improve upon yours and this is a point which I should like to ad in contention for writing your life. I have a number of friends who constantly jump on me for writing about women in the past. "Who cares about them?" etc. Why don't you take some 20th century women?? A biography on you would satisfy the many who are interested in today and today only and yet with my very full treatment of your mother, we would get our historical licks in too. Another biography on Lucy Stone I am sure would be appealing and would sell and as a second choice I would like to try it with a number of closing chapters on you, but since we are living in 1945 and since you do symbolize the "nowness" I would prefer to have it on you with your mother very prominent in the introduction? Please answer that this outline does have appeal. If it does, wouldn't the next step be to have some contract with some of the good Boston publishing houses, Harvard, Little Brown, Houghton Mifflin and see if, based upon my Florence Nightingale, upon your recommendation that I write your life, they would make some kind of a commitment so that the length etc could be determined on their judgment, not mine?? Parker House SCHOOL AND TREMONT STREETS BOSTON MASS. GLENWOOD J. SHERRARD PRESIDENT AND MANAGING DIRECTOR I don't know exactly how to go about this, but I am sure that if I could say that I was your choice to write your life etc that I might have some word of assurance from one of them. You tell me your reactions. I would like so much to be able to see you before we leave these parts in September, get material, work on the book this winter, send you outlines and correspond with you about it from wherever I am. I hope you weaken and that the promise of much much attention to Lucy Stone in the beginning is good bait. I am sure that modern like to get their great figures of the past cloaked, either in novels or as through a present figure, like yourself in whom they are vitally interested NOW. Sincerely, your would-be biographer Ramona Bartb ALMH (Over) MAINE Sept 12 1945- Miss Blackwell asked Edna Stantial's advice. Others have been consulted & Miss Blackwell has been prevailed upon not to contact a publisher but to wait for such an author as Mark de Wolfe Howe. FIRST UNITARIAN CHURCH JOSEPH BARTH. MINISTER MIAMI 36, FLORIDA UNITARIAN HOUSE 1616 BRICKELL AVENUE PHONE 9-2140 Alna Maine June 29, 1945 Dear Miss Blackwell- We are safely established with the goat here in Maine for the summer. Thank you very much for your note which I received in Miami before coming here saying that you had written a letter to the Register. The review of Fiery Angel is coming out in the July issue and I hope they may print it then. The question of our conflict with the Unitarian hierarchy is one which in all fairness should take a lot of time to relay. In general, I still think you summed it up beautifully when you said Boston Unitarianism was "too respectable." We have tried to carry on the pioneer tradition that made Unitarianism such an influential factor in the last century and so the conflict. At the moment, it looks as if we may be turning our Unitarian church in Miami over to other hands. We have been there 7 years; it is a bad place to bring up children, racial segregation, poor schools, poor health standards etc. My husband has two possibilities which might interest you. One is the Berkeley California Unitarian Church in the midst of a University atmosphere, libraries etc which we have missed; the other is the offer from the President of the University of Puerto Rico to be his personal representative in the United States, working for the University, perhapsteaching. I, too, might teach sociology of the family in the University. Puerto Rico, too, is no place to bring up 3 children under 10 but I feel the compensations of their having to learn spanish, & a new country would be worth it. In light of these two alternatives for next year both of which would take us miles away from New England, I would like to tell you what I have had in my mind for some time. Your interest in my first published book, plus the sketches in the Register of your mother and others has made me wonder if you would not let me write your biography. I assume that dozens of friends have made this request and you may already have made your committments; there may be a biography in the making; but I am hopeful. I would love to somehow mould the dynamic influence of your father and mother into your life of humanitarianism, hoping that somehow it would inspire other parents to be exemplars in human service for the sake of their children as well as society. So many boring, modern, young mothers have I feel an unhealthy concentration on their children, use any free time for matinees and bridge and feel that they are living the best lives for their children. I maintain that example is is so very important and my hope is that our 3 children aged 5 8 and 9 are somehow absorbing something on the run. I would like to take a shot at smugh Boston Unitarianism through you, developing your religious point of view, using your very words about present day Unitarianism as "too respectable." I can think of dozens of angles I would like to develop from this distance, only knowing you through letters and one conversation with you. If you would like me to do your biography, I would like very very much to come down to Boston for a few days to talk with you, take notes etc. I am far from being an established biographer obviously. Perhaps Irving Stone or some of the outstanding writers in this field should do your life and give it the wide publicity it deserves. But I know one thing and that is that the spirit of your mother and her contemporaries stirs me as no other research does and If I can somehow put this spirit and yours which is so similar on paper so that others get some incentive to change their lives, I will feel as if my time is well spent. What ideally I would love to have of course, would be an assigment from Houghton Mifflin, Little Brown, The University Press or some of the others around Boston to do your life and specify the length etc. Perhaps this might be possible through making contacts with some of these firms. It will be difficult to come from Puerto Rico or California to Cambridge to see you if we move to either of these spots. I shall wait eagerly to see if this idea appeals to you, if you have not chosen your biographer and if you would consider me. Sincerely, Ramona Sawyer Barth [*note: 1- Miss Blackwell replied that no one has as yet proposed writing her biog. and that she was not sure it was worth doing. She would want to consult some friends who had helped her and that she preferred to have a good one of her mother! Note: 2 Miss Blackwell turned this letter over to Edna Stantial for advice. Various people were consulted. Prof. Johnson, Mrs. Park, Dr. Frederick Eliot, John F. Moors, Mrs. Ida Porter Boyer. All agreed that Mrs. Barth was not the one to write Alice Blackwell's Story. Sept. 12, 1945 Edna Lamprey Stantial*] 234 Bellevue St Newton, Mass April 5, 1938 Dear Alice Stone Blackwell- The circulars I am sending should be of interest to you. I mention your mother's name in practically every lecture and felt that you would be happy to know that someone is carrying on the fight she and her coworkers so valiantly started. In my lecture on marriage and a Career I state, in showing that career mothers produce more able children, "If Lucy Stone's outside work made her neglect her family then her famous, humanitarian daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell, who lives in Cambridge today, is an excellent example of the abused child." I wonder if I might have a chance to talk with you about your mother. Also I wonder if your publishers, Lucy Stone by ASBlackwell would feel it worthwhile to give me a copy of the book to which I might refer. My husband is a Unitarian minister and we are both unable to purchase the books we feel necessary in our work. I now use the library copy and I feel that it would be an advantage to the women to whom I lecture as well as to me, to be able to show a copy of the book I talk about. Particularly, however, I want this note to be a token to your mother, through you, of my appreciation for her pioneering spirit. I hope you may suggest some time that would be convenient for me to call. I want so much to meet you. Your articles in the Christian Register have interested me for the past two years. Sincerely, Ramona Sawyer Barth RAMONA SAWYER BARTH IN THREE LECTURE SERIES CONCERNING Women In A Changing World Married, the mother of a growing family, the lecturer is fast being recognized as a specialist in subjects of most vital interest to women who are aware of their changing status in a changing world. She has a Bachelor of Science degree (magna cum laude) from Tufts College and a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Meadville Theological School, Chicago. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. The lecturer also holds graduate credit from Harvard, The University of Chicago and the University of Munich, Germany. She has made a particular study of the status of woman in her travels in England, the Scandanavian countries and on the continent. Provocative, entertaining, educational, these lectures are the stimulating work of an expert in her field. FIRST SERIES WOMAN'S GREAT HERITAGE Woman––"the first human being which came into servitude." Her history from the time when she was a shrinking, primitive slave, sold as chattel to the day of her present emancipation. A vivid picture of the trials, tribulations, and victories of women through the centuries. FIRST LECTURE The Legacy of the Ancient Civilizations: The women of the Eastern world: Egypt, Babylon Asia Minor. Hatshepsut (1500 B.C.) Queen Nofretete, (1375-1358 B.C.). The women of the Old Testament: Miriam, Deborah, Esther. Lemuel's ideal woman. The general status of woman in Greece, the backgrounds of Aspasia, Sappho, and Cleopatra. An ideal Roman lady and the world she lived in–– Cornelia mater Gracchorum (230 B.C.) The women of the Caesars: Livia, Julia, Agrippina. SECOND LECTURE Women from the Early Christian Church to the Industrial Revolution: Christianity and woman; The backgrounds of Prisca; Paula; Hypatia; Woman in the Medieval church, The Lady of Chivalry. What happened to woman when knighthood was in flower? Woman in the renaissance; Our debt to the colonial mother of America––A pioneering spirit and woman. Anne Hutchinson, Anne Bradstreet and the world in which they lived. The beginning of the Machine Age and its effect upon woman. THIRD LECTURE The Woman's Movement Have we moved far enough? Significant steps in the feminist movement in the last two centuries. The memorable Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) Hannah More and the "blue stockings." Pioneers in higher education for women––Emma Willard, Mary Lyon, Catharine Beecher. "Votes for Women!"The "big four" [start of underline] of the American Suffragette Movement,––Susan B. Anthony; Lucy Stone [two arrows pointing at the name, and the name is circled] Elizabeth Cady Stanton; Lucretia Mott. The 20th century woman––her future––in home and society! SECOND SERIES WOMAN IN THE POLITICAL STATE A fresh and timely slant on current events! A series of lectures which give a cross-section of the 20th century political world and its effect upon women. FIRST LECTURE Woman and Fascism: Hitler has decreed that woman's sphere be confined to "kinder, Kirche, and Kuchen." Woman's worth in Italy is determined largely by her breeding capacities. Roumania hopes to take the vote from "women and convicts." The stifled spirit of woman in some countries of the world should be a challenge to the emancipated woman of America. SECOND LECTURE Woman and Communism: How does communism effect woman–– in theory and in practice. In Russia critics say there is a greater equality of the sexes than in any other country. Is this true? What, if anything, can we in America learn from this aspect of the Soviet Union? THIRD LECTURE Woman and Democracy: Does the democratic principle of "equality of opportunity" extend to woman? Was Woman Suffrage the final word? Why the Lucretia Mott Amendment now before Congress? What are woman's opportunities in the greatest democracy in the world as compared with those elsewhere? Woman's special rights and duties in a democracy. THIRD SERIES A PROCESSION OF FEMININE GREATNESS A new type of book review! Recent biographies of great women! History revealed through famous feminine figures, past and present. Educational and inspirational! FIRST LECTURE From the Ancients to the Renaissance: Cleopatra by Emil Ludwig; Theodora "the first feminist" (508-548 A.D.) by Rene Kraus; Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122-1204) by Melrich V. Rosenberg; Lucretia Borgia (16th century ) by Alfred Schirokauer. SECOND LECTURE Moderns: Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette before the Revolution by Nesta H. Webster; Catherine the Great of Russia by Gina Kaus; This Shining Woman–– The Story of Mary Wollstonecraft by George Preedy. Quaker Heroine––The Life of Elizabeth Fry by Janet Whitney; The Golden Sovereign––"Victoria Regina Marches On "by Laurance Housman' Unafraid–– A Life of Anne Hutchinson by Winifred Rugg; Dorothea Dix by Helen E. Marshall; Harriet Beecher Stowe by Catherine Gilbertson; Louisa May Olcott by Katharine Anthony; Lucy Stone by Alice Stone Blackwell [name inside frame] Mary Lyon Through her Letters, Edited by Marion Lansing. The Greatest American Woman–– Lucretia Mott by Lloyd C. M. Hare. THIRD LECTURE Contemporaries: Jane Addams by James Weber Linn; Madame Curie by Eve Curie; Her Majesty the Queen by Lady Cynthia Asquith; Autobiography by Charlotte Perkins Gilman; Living my Life by Emma Goldman; Last Flight by Amelia Earhart; My Fight for Birth Control by Margaret Sanger; I Change Worlds by Anna Louise Strong; Everybody's Autobiography by Gertrude Stein; This is My Story by Eleanor Roosevelt; Journalist's Wife by Lillian T. Mowrer; General Chiang Kai-Shek by General and Mme. Chian Kai-Shek. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– (Further representative biographies will be included in this series as they are published.) EXCLUSIVE MANAGEMENT A. H. HANDLEY 162 BOYLSTON STREET BOSTON MASSACHUSETTS Booked in Series Only. A. H. HANDLEY presents RAMONA SAWYER BARTH In a Series of Twentieth Century Subjects The daughter of a minister who is also the senior member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, the lecturer brings to her profession not only the heritage of public speaking, but through long training, an equipment for a clear, concise and colorful presentation of her chosen subject, in lucid English. Young, still under thirty, if we looked her up in a "Who's Who" it would have to say: Bachelor of Science from Tufts College, Mass.; Bachelor of Divinity from Meadville Theological School, Chicago. The Bachelor of Science was earned in the fields of Economics and Sociology (Magna cum Laude) with work of such merit as to receive Phi Beta Kappa recognition. Not content with this scholastic background, RAMONA SAWYER BARTH has done special work at the University of Chicago, the Andover-Newton Theological School and at the University of Munich, Germany, as well as special Psychiatric study under Doctors Lena and William Sadler of Chicago. She has graduate credit from Harvard in the Sociology of the Family. Married, the wife of a minister, and mother of a growing family, the lecturer has faced most of the problems she talks about. Indeed, both theoretically and practically, she comes well qualified to deal with her subject. SUBJECTS 1. A LIBERALIZING HOME A Home is to be judged by more than its distance from the railroad tracks; "The home is the attitude of its members, each towards the other and towards life itself." Has it kept pace with our other Twentieth Century Institutions? Is outworn convention stifling its spirit of growth? 2. MARRIAGE AND A CAREER Ann Hutchinson, one of America's greatest pioneering spirits was the mother of fourteen children; Elizabeth Fry had eleven children and yet revolutionized the prison system; Our leading woman engineer of to-day has eleven sons and daughters. A vivid portrayal of the accomplishments of many more women of history and of to-day who have contributed to society indirectly through their homes and directly in some meaningful work. An attempt to show that marriage and a career may be compatible and should be the ideal of the modern educated woman. 3. WOMAN—PARAGON or PARASITE Is John Erskine right when he says of woman, "Except for the one function of child-bearing society can get along without her." Who are the paragons and the parasites? What is a "lady" worth? The need for a"new husband." 4. "HONOR THY CHILDREN" The ideal of every parent. How best achieve it? Do our children belong to us or to society. The danger of a sense of possession. Wanted- a father in exchange for the breadwinner. Wanted - a "world mother." It is seldom possible to offer a lecturer of the calibre of Ramona Sawyer Barth. In her, audiences will find a woman of great mentality - a woman of great personality - a women who speaks fluently and in debate can truly be said to be "On her toes." Exclusive Management: A.H. HANDLEY, 162 Boylston Street, Boston, Massachusetts FIRST UNITARIAN CHURCH MIAMI, FLORIDA JOSEPH BARTH, MINISTER 1624 Tigertail Avenue Nov 28 Dear Alice Stone Blackwell -- Do you remember our afternoon in Cambridge two years ago? I used my autographed copy of Lucy Stone for the review given here in Miami. Dr Merrick got up & spoke of meeting you and your mother & father in Dorchester. Another lady, Mrs Thomas, brought a sewing basket which she has been using and which belong to your mother. I thought of you often and of our afternoon together. I am still as interested as you in the problems of the 20th century woman and am slowly building a library on woman. It is badly needed in Miami. If you have books on the subject which you feel you could spare for educational purposes - I will certainly put them to use. I am working with girls at the University and my husband and I are using whatever opportunities we can to educate the people on Woman in the newly organized church. This is not a stronghold of Unitarianism as you might well guess - but the society is progressing and a campaign for a much needed building is under way. I am doing all I can to bring the work & spirit of your mother to Miami. I am glad I had the chance to speak with you about her. Sincerely, Ramona Sawyer Barth 234 Bellevue St Newton, Mass Dear Alice Stone Blackwell - This morning's mail was a very happy occasion. The story of your mother's life has been added to my biographical collection and your autograph in the front of it makes me consider it one of my choicest books. I can best thank you by carrying Lucy Stones' spirit to the women to-day, and that I promise to do. Thank you. I still would like to do so in person. Would it be possible to see you for a few moments within the next or so? Sincerely, Ramona Sawyer Barth MIAMI FLA JAN 24 7 - 9 PM 1941 Alice Stone Blackwell [*1010 Mass*] Cambridge Mass Dear Alice Stone Blackwell_ 1624 Tiger Tail MIAMI Thank you for your card and letter. I am writing to ask if you will mail a copy of the play LUCY STONE by Park. I have a chance to conduct it at two huge high school assemblies in MIAMI. Over a thousand students will be reached. Do you think it can be adapted? Any publicity about its production in Boston would be appreciated. Ramona Sawyer Barth TWO-THREE-FIVE NORTH GREENBRIER STREET, ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA June 12. Dear Miss Blackwell- Did you receive a copy of my article on Famous Unitarian Women in the Journal of Liberal Religion?? I hope I mailed you one as I intended. I have chosen--Lucy Stone for a full length article in the summer issue of the same Journal..The editor said it was his favorite....I hope to give her wider treatment here than space allowed in the Register. With best wishes - Summer address, Alna, Maine Ramona Sawyer Barth ARLINGTON VA JUN 12 2-PM 1946 Alice Stone Blackwell 1010 Mass Ave Cambridge Mass [*The Journal of Liberal Religion VOL VII #3 - Winter - 1946*] 133 Unitarian Women of the 19th Century By RAMONA SAWYER BARTH Not for delectations sweet; Not the cushion and the slipper, Not the peaceful and the studious; Not the riches safe and palling, Not for us the tame enjoyment, Pioneers! O Pioneers! ––Walt Whitman Our Unitarian women of the last century in both England and America have had one virtue in common. They have been pioneers. Whether the goals they pursued were in literature, science, education, the arts, or reform, with supreme courage and indefatigable will, have they marched in the van. As one biographical writer suggests in her book, Great Women, (most of whom as in all such symposiums, were Unitarians) they were Ladies in Revolt. Unwilling to subscribe with their apathetic sisters to the axiom that "progress is automatic," they insisted with Justice Holmes that, "The way the inevitable comes to pass is through effort..." These women who have literally made history were not outstanding persons who happened to be Unitarians in their religion. Not at all. It was their dynamic religious liberalism which made them great. Theirs was a religion inspiring them to live in the real world, grim and ugly though they found it, rather than the dream world of orthodox Christianity. Little time and energy could they spend speculating on the pearly gates of heaven or the bowels of hell. There was too much to do on earth. Unitarianism which stressed the free spirit of inquiry and criticism made them seek and speak the truth. Their religion meant to them not theological quibbling but individual and social growth. It was the "elan vital" motivating them both in their inner lives and their overt deeds. With the "divine discontent" of Emerson they felt that patience, rather than virtue, was more often another name for cowardice. The Unitarian religion was in short, an ethical leaven, and the result was an era of "Feminine Foment." We find that women have been accorded more freedom 134 JOURNAL OF LIBERAL RELIGION among the Unitarians than in any other church group. In early America, Puritanism and male dominance went hand in hand. Man was a hopeless sinner according to the orthodox, but woman's depravity struck even lower depths. It took the new theology of Unitarianism to bring woman out of the Garden of Eden and elevate her to a position of individual worth. As dissenters emerged, women were encouraged not only to fill the pews but to make church policy. One of Boston's criticisms of the liberal Brattle Street Church, which was slowly paving the way for Unitarianism, was that it admitted "females to full church activity." Following James Freeman Clarke's heated insistence that women be represented in affairs of church, we find the name of Mrs. Lucretia Crocker among the Board of Directors of the American Unitarian Association. Other Unitarian ministers echoed Clarke's sentiments with similar results in individual churches. Such inroads made against orthodox theology opened new vistas for women. The liberal movement in religion in 19th century America was characterized by its humanitarianism. Whether they were founding The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals or breaking the prison chains of the insane, Unitarians were at the fore, Merely theorizing about human brotherhood was not enough; they would make it work. The Glorious Phalanx Members of the Unitarian Church were not the only philanthropists or reformers; but their quickened social conscience had behind it, in most instances, sufficient wealth and position to make their efforts as a group effective. No body of men and women has furthered so many practical reforms as the Unitarians. Speaking of the part Unitarian women played in the conflicts of the last century, the Rev. Octavius B. Frothingham writes: They all had a genuine desire to render the earthly lot of mankind tolerable. It is not too much to say that they started every one of our best secular charities. The town of Boston had a poor-house, and nothing more, until the Unitarians initiated humane institutions for the helpless, the blind, and the insane. UNITARIAN WOMEN, 19TH CENTURY 135 Many of the women who made a name for themselves in this work felt they must sacrifice home and family, dedicating themselves with singleness of purpose to human betterment. Flaunting the Victorian conventions of the day which limited woman's role to that of gracing her husband's drawing-room, they invaded the anthropocentric world. Theodore Parker referred to many of the crusading single ladies of his society as " the glorious phalanx of old maids." Divested of home and family, lacking personal love in their own lives, they threw themselves in with the lot of the unfortunate. Others epitomized the part of wife and mother, but refused to be limited to home duties alone. Married or single, the road of reform for women a century ago was a hard one. It was a vibrant and virile religious philosophy which gave them the courage to break both the chains of convention and of the oppressed. Dorothea Dix, according to James Truslow Adams, did more than any other person in Europe or America to ameliorate the conditions of the insane. It was a Unitarian minister who started her in her reform activities when John R. G. Nichols secured her as a teacher in the East Cambridge jail. Superstitious society had a simple explanation for the insane man; it was but the outbreak of the sinful in a fallen human soul! But Dorothea Dix was a spiritual child of Channing and knew better. There were no fallen, human souls. All human beings, sane or insane, were sacred. Unitarian Churches and their leaders throughout the country, with their financial and moral support, helped Miss Dix achieve her unbelievable goals. Louisa L. Schuyler, instigator of the Famous U. S. Sanitary Commission during the Civil War, might never have left her life of wealth and indolence if it had not been for the Unitarian Church. It seemed foreordained that she should lead a life of self-indulgence. Every pressure worked in this direction except that exerted by her minister, the Rev. Henry W. Bellows of All Souls Church in New York. His influence resulted in Miss Schuyler's life-long dedication to the alleviation of suffering. When Bellows, as organizer and president of the Sanitary Commission, enlisted her help he 136 JOURNAL OF LIBERAL RELIGION had started her on her great work which was to culminate in our present-day Red Cross. [*Livermore*] Mary A. Livermore, as president of the North West branch of the Commission, and with ardor similar to that of Miss Schuyler's, wrote reports and bulletins, made trips to the front and conducted Sanitary Fairs. In Massachusetts, Abby May, first president of what is now our Woman's Alliance, presided over the councils of the Commission. Traveling from town to town, visiting hospitals and camps, she aroused New England women to noteworthy effort. Among the many Unitarian women influential in the general paths of reform were Mrs. Isabel C. Barrows, Mrs. Horace Mann, Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell, Helen Loring, Elizabeth Howard and Mary Lovell Ware. Charles Dickens, after carefully studying the charities and philanthropies of Boston, wrote home that he felt they were "as nearly perfect as the most considerate wisdom, benevolence and humanity can make them." Boston was largely indebted to Unitarians. As Mrs. Horace Mann wrote, "The liberal sect of Boston quite carried the day at that time in works of benevolence...They took care of the needy without regard to sectarianism." Religious Liberals and Women's Rights [*Adams*] It was religious liberals––men and women––who instigated the Woman's Rights Movement in America. John Adams voiced the popular sentiment of the day when he wrote to his wife, "Nature has made women fitted for domestic cares," but Abigail, one of our most famous Unitarian women, was to refute him in her immortal letter of 1776. As John framed the new constitution, Abigail wrote, I desire that you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than were your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husband; remember all men would be tyrants if they could. With uncanny accuracy Abigail predicted the feminist movement as she continued, If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation. UNITARIAN WOMEN, 19TH CENTURY 137 Angelina Grimke [underlined] raised another early voice in behalf of women when, in 1837, she wrote With Reference to the Duty of American Females. This work by a Unitarian preceded what is commonly considered the first written statement of feminism in America, Margaret Fuller's more influential Woman in the 19th Century. The "Big Four" of American Suffrage Movement who were to follow up Margaret's trumpet blast of 1844 were like her, Unitarians. Susan B. Anthony [underlined], Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucy Stone were to make indelible marks in this path of reform, with Julia Ward Howe and Mary A. Livermore, two more Unitarians working with equal zest. In 1850 Lucy Stone called the first national woman's suffrage meeting at Worcester. Among the many Unitarian women taking part were Catharine M. Sedgwick and Caroline Kirkland. In April, 1853, at the revision of the Constitution of Massachusetts, of the twenty-seven persons signing a petition asking for suffrage, over half were Unitarians. Louise May Alcott's mother, Abbe May, sister of Samuel J. May, was one of the signers and ardent workers for the cause. Caroline B. Dall was assistant editor of one of the first pronounced women suffrage papers in the country, The Una, begun at Providence in 1853. Among other Unitarian women contributors were Edna D. Cheney and Elizabeth Oakes-Smith. The Revolution, begun in 1868, had at its head Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Prominent Unitarians, too, guided The Woman's Journal begun in Boston in 1870. Lucy Stone, Mary A. Livermore and Julia Ward Howe were among the editors of this journal which had the longest period of existence of any reform paper. Among other less prominent but equally dedicated Unitarian women working for suffrage were Mary Grew, Celia C. Burleigh, Maria Giddings Julian, and Caroline M. Severance. Carrie Chapman Catt, veteran contemporary feminist, speaks highly of the part Unitarianism played in carrying Susan B. Anthony's work to its victorious conclusion: The Unitarian Church, from ocean to ocean, was warmly sympathetic and helpful to the woman's cause, not 138 JOURNAL OF LIBERAL RELIGION alone the suffrage but all the other aims the women had set themselves. I am not so sure about Boston, because for a time Boston was pretty conservative and the Unitarians were strong there, but farther West, there was no exception to such churches favoring woman Suffrage. Speaking of the Abolitionist Movement, Samuel J. May writes that the Unitarians had given to the anti-slavery cause "more preachers, writers, lecturers, agents, poets, than any other denomination in proportion to our numbers." Over a decade before the publishing of Uncle Tom's Cabin, two Unitarian women raised their pens indicting slavery. Catherine Sedgwick, queen of American letters in the early 19th century, published in 1824 Redwood, in which she preceded not only Harriet Beecher Stowe but Channing also, as she forcefully pointed to the double curse of slavery: the degradation of the slave and the demoralization of the master. Miss Sedgwick's feelings about the Compromise Measures of 1850 were typical of those of her fellow-Unitarians: "My hands are cold as ice; the blood has curdled in my heart; that work compromise has a bad savor when truth and right are in question." This concern of hers for the burning question of the day went hand in hand with her life-long fight against orthodox theology. A Calvinist until she was 12 years old, Miss Sedgwick joined the Unitarian fellowship, and with her two distinguished brothers helped to found the tabooed Unitarian circle in New York. Her first work in 1822, The New England Tale, giving her an immediate position in the world of American literature, was inspired by her religious tribulations as a Unitarian. Orthodox Christians tried to negate her words, but her liberal plea went out to thousands. Going back to her home in Stockbridge, after living in New York, she writes of the coolness of her friends: "After the crime of confessed Unitarianism nothing can surprise them." She longed to look upon a Christian minister who would not regard her as "a heathen and a publican." Typical of the bigotry she encountered was the remark of one of her relatives: "Come and see me as often as you can, for you know after this world we shall never meet again." Despite bitter estrangement, Miss Sedgwick never swerved from her liberalism UNITARIAN WOMEN, 19TH CENTURY 139 in principle or in action. Her proselytizing zeal continued to the end: "I do not despair of convincing the most prejudiced that I am not an atheist, nor even an apostate." The first ambitious American anti-slavery book armed with facts and statistics was the work of Lydia Maria Child [*underlined*] written in 1883, and called An Appeal on Behalf of that Class of Americans Called Africans. The Boston Athenaeum library which had opened its door to Miss [*?*] Child, the talented young literary light, took away her library privileges after the publishing of her anti-slavery work. Like her fellow-Unitarians, Mrs. Child learned to face all such ostracism. Great Causes Inspired Great Literature The work for woman suffrage was closely related to that of the abolition of slavery. The Woman's Rights Movement was an outgrowth of the Anti-Slavery Movement. Many women who later were to promote suffrage alone gave their public addresses on behalf of the black man. Angelina Grimke Weld [*underlined*] with her sister Sarah [*underlined*], both Hicksite Unitarians, left a wealthy plantation in the South to agitate for the freedom of those who had served them. One of the epoch making speeches of the day was that made by Angelina in the famous Independence Hall in 1837 before reactionary forces burned it to the ground. Mrs. Maria W. Chapman, called Captain Chapman because of her militant procedure, was one of William Lloyd Garrison's most faithful supporters, doing more than any one else to give financial aid to the cause. Eliza Lee Follen's devotion to the advancement of women was no less than that for the slave. Susan B. Anthony[*underlined*] was the Secretary of The Woman's National Loyal League which Elizabeth Cady Stanton [*underlined*] headed, a group devoted exclusively to freeing the slave. Lucy Stone [*underlined*] started her lecturing career working for the Anti-Slavery Society. Lucretia Mott [*underlined*] was known as "The Black Man's Goddess of Liberty." The problem of the exploited American Indian was crystallized by a Unitarian when Helen Hunt Jackson published her damning records records in A Century of Dishonor and Ramona. Congress was enraged, but a nation's conscience was stirred by her crusading pen. 140 JOURNAL OF LIBERAL RELIGION It is difficult to classify 19th Century Unitarian women as merely "literary", so predominant was their allegiance to causes. Helen Hunt Jackson, starting her career as poet and essayist, turned reformer. Catherine Sedgwick, though not a crusader in a technical sense, is as noted for the blows she struck for human freedom as she is for her place in American letters. Margaret Fuller is glibly classified as one of the leading literary lights of her day, but her passion for reform both in the slums of New York and among the downtrodden Italians in Europe is more indicative of her real character. Louisa May Alcott's fame as a children's writer is world wide. If it had not been necessary to earn money by her pen all indications are that she too would have thrown herself into a life of reform. Julia Ward Howe's Battle Hymn of the Republic made her an international figure and overshadowed her important role in 19th century causes. Alice and Phoebe Cary were called "the sweetest singers of our liberal faith." Their keen sense of justice makes them more than "literary women." Alice hated with a perfect hatred every form of slavery and tyranny. Respecting the rights of the meanest creature, she writes in My Creed, I hold that Christian Grace abounds Where Charity is seen. When a man can live apart From works, on theologic trust, I know the blood about his heart Is dry as dust. A reserved reformer, she writes, I must work in my own way, and that is a very quiet one. My health, habits, and temperament make it impossible that I should mix in crowds, or act with great organizations. I must say my little say, and do my little bit, at home! History emphasizes Abigail Adams' knowledge of belles- letters and philosophy; yet the revolutionary implications of her life and work stand out in the making of America. On the walls of the First Unitarian Church of Quincy, there is fittingly a joint epitaph for both John and Abigail. The dynamic as well as the literary quality of Abigail's pen UNITARIAN WOMEN, 19TH CENTURY 141 was felt at the period when we were being urged to conciliate with Great Britain. She wrote to her famous husband: I could not join to-day in the petition of our worthy pastor for a reconciliation between our no longer parent state, but tyrant state and these colonies. Let us separate! They are unworthy to be our brethren. Let us renounce them. As New York Tribune commented a century later, "Here was a declaration of independence preceding by seven months that which has become so famous; and it was signed by a woman." One of the pioneer writers in the purely historical and philosophical fields was Hannah Adams (1755-1832) the first woman in America to enter upon a literary career. Engaging in the controversies of the day, especially between her own Unitarianism and the Orthodox Congregationalists, her book, The View of Religions, in 1784, afterwards changed to a Dictionary of Religion, was the earliest work ever attempted in evaluating all the religions of the world. It was followed by her History of New England, History of the Jews, Evidences of Christianity and Letters on the Gospels, all written from the Unitarian point view. Edna D. Cheney, noted Unitarian author, devoted much of her time to religious and artistic subjects. Studying in the Institute of Technology, lecturing before the Concord School of Philosophy, she later helped to found The School of Design for Women in Boston and also The Horticultural School for Women. Grace Greenwood, author, was one of the first newspaper women in the United States; her Washington correspondence inaugurated a new feature in journalism. Mary A. Livermore was the only reporter among 100 men reporters at the nomination of Abraham Lincoln for the Presidency in Chicago in 1860. Margaret Fuller, in her reports sent back from Europe to the New York Tribune foreshadowed the 20th century Dorothy Thompson. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, while pastor of the Unitarian church in Newburyport, by kindly counsel and generous encouragement, developed the dormant genius of Harriet Prescott Spofford another well known figure in American 142 JOURNAL OF LIBERAL RELIGION literature. Caroline H. Dall published several books and encyclopedias of historical facts as well as working upon numerous reforms. Among otters essayists and writers who were Unitarians are Caroline M. Kirkland, Eliza Lee Follen, Grace Greenwood and Mrs. Edna D. Cheney. Eliza Scudder's best hymns were written while she was a Unitarian. In brief, according to Professor Barrett Wendell in A Literary History of America, "almost everybody who attained literary distinction in New England during the 19th century was either a Unitarian or closely associated with Unitarian influences." In the field of education Mrs. Mary Hemenway, with other Unitarians, contributed to the Hampton Institute for the Colored People, then a struggling experiment. She also subsidized an archaeological expedition, established industrial schools and helped preserve the Old South meeting house. Mrs. Horace Mann, like her husband, was a pioneer in educational circles. The Anna Ticknor Library Association, encouraging studies at home, was founded by a Unitarian. Elizabeth Peabody and Margaret Fuller were the first women to become supervisors in the public schools of Boston and to be elected to the school committee. Miss Peabody, a staunch advocate of feminism, freedom of the slave and higher education for women, was one of America's great pioneer educators. In 1864 the first public kindergarten in the United States was opened through her efforts in Boston. It was Miss Peabody who introduced the principles of Froebel to America. In 1880 she wrote Reminiscences of Willam Ellery Channing, showing his lifelong influence upon her and her work. "Dr. Channing was a prevailing influence in all my intellectual and religious experience," she writes. Channing's idea of religious education was that it should open the child's affections to the "brother whom we can see." Eagerly did Miss Peabody work to thus develop the little child's mind. Maria Mitchell sums up the influence she in turn had upon Channing as she writes "How valuable Miss Peabody must have been to him. . . How many of Channing's sermons were instigated by her questions!" UNITARIAN WOMEN, 19TH CENTURY 143 Another great Unitarian, Bronson Alcott, inspired Miss Peabody's famous project entitled, Conversations with Children on the Gospels. Bostonians who were later to refer to her as "a female Pickwick" and "the grandmother of Boston" at the time strenuously criticized this work. Yet Elizabeth Peabody's pioneering spirit continued; she opened her house for Margaret Fuller's Conversations and in her writings, and teachings not only heralded but practiced her radical ideas on education. The First Women Preachers––and Doctors It was a Unitarian who became the first woman in America––and in the whole Christian world––to become ordained. She was Antoinette Brown Blackwell. Also noted for her preaching was Julia Ward Howe. Mary A. Livermore was given the title, "The Queen of the Platform," so noted were her forensic abilities. Mrs. Livermore's transition from orthodoxy to liberalism was the result of her contact with Theodore Parker. At first she would not listen to his addresses, so strong was the pressure against him as the orthodox condemned him from one end of the country to the other. "But," said she, "his gentleness and fairness swept away my prejudices." Speaking of Channing's influence, too, upon her religious life, Mrs. Livermore writes, "His essay, The Moral Argument against Calvinism, cleared the moral atmosphere for me forever." The noted Blackwell sisters, Dr. Elizabeth and Dr. Emily, the first woman physicians in modern times, were Unitarians. In the arts we find Unitarians leading the way, with Sarah Freeman Clarke, sister of James Freeman Clarke becoming the first woman landscape painter. Fanny Kemble and Charlotte Cushman received world acclaim for their part in the theatre. Harriet Hosmer, the noted sculptress, was at work at this period, on her little Puck, Zenobia and Sleeping Faun, now in our great art museums. The obstacles she faced in her chosen field were many; looked upon the disdain because she studied anatomy, Miss Hosmer never swerved from her chosen path, laboring at home and abroad, chisel n hand, for ten hours a day. Her commissions brought her 144 JOURNAL OF LIBERAL RELIGION such fame and fortune that some of her male rivals asserted in the Art Journal that her masterpieces must have been created by men. Not only her works of art but her poetry and prose articles on sculpture published in the Atlantic were indicative of her free, inquiring and creative spirit. Lady Byron's "Paradise of Saints" Among our English Unitarian Women of the 19th century, we find the same crusading zeal. In the field of philanthropy, Mary Carpenter's "Ragged Schools" were to pave the way for modern social work. Working with her was Anne Isabelle Milbank, afterward Lady Noel Byron. Lady Byron's support of all good causes was a direct application of her religion. Her devotion to the Unitarian leaders of her day was great. In 1838 when Dr. Gannet was in London, Lady Byron followed him from chapel to chapel, taking notes on all his sermons. For many years she attended Essex Street Chapel. Once she sent an engraving of Dr. Channing to her good friend Lucretia Mott as a mark of her "grateful regard," telling Lucretia that, "his writings have done good to more than one of those whom I love best." Lady Byron's philanthropy was more than alleviative; she contributed 1000 pounds so that Mary Carpenter might buy Red Lodge to make over for urchins; 200 pounds was offered as a prize for the best essays on reformatories; long before agriculture and domestic economy were accepted as branches of education, Lady Byron instigated courses in the schools she started for the poor. Higher education for women was also one of her goals. It was her financing that made possible the heretical Unitarian publication in Great Britain, The National Review, and but a few days before her death she became a liberal subscriber to the "Garibaldi Fund." Lord Byron's description of her was "a poetess, a mathematician, a metaphysician." Even the orthodox Harriet Beecher Stowe could forgive her her Unitarian theology, writing, "There was in her so much of Christ that to see her was to be drawn near to heaven." Lord Bryon's grandson well summed up Lady Byron's real life purpose when he sneeringly spoke of "her anxiety (as he UNITARIAN WOMEN, 19TH CENTURY 145 put it) to transform the world into a paradise of Unitarian saints." Florence Nightingale, one of the world's most heroic figures, was a Unitarian. Exposed early to liberal ideas, as a child she attended the Unitarian Chapel at Lea built by her grandfather. While in the Crimea, she not only had to fight rats, typhus and jealous governmental officials, but home opposition as well, because of her religious beliefs. Yet her allegiance to the cause of liberal religion continued to the end. She worshipped at Essex Street Chapel under the ministry of Thomas Madge; and at the age of ninety we read of her sending two ladies there to make purchases at a large bazaar being held to raise funds for new Unitarian chapels in London. Among the leading literary lights in England who were Unitarian was Frances P. Cobbe whose works were considered by Theodore Parker the greatest written by a woman's pen. Her books ranged from political economy to Workhouse Girls and Destitute Incurables. Miss Cobbe went through years of doubt and discouragement until she read Theodore Parker's Discourse of Religion which she described as "the epoch-making book." She was not converted from orthodoxy to Parker, having arrived at his conclusions herself, but the "ideas she had hammered out" were not found "welded together in lucid order." After Parker's death she edited all twelve volumes of his works and wrote a lengthy introduction. Parker had awakened her from the hideous nightmare of "eternal hell." For her as for the Protestant world he had, in his own words, "knocked the bottom of hell." Miss Cobbe needed no longer spend her energies on theological speculation, but upon bettering the world she knew. It was a Unitarian minister, too, who raised her interest in "The Woman Question." Hitherto apathetic on this issue, Rev. Samuel J. May stirred her to action as he proddingly asked, Why should you not have a vote? Why should not women be enabled to influence the making of the laws in which they have as great an interest as men? One of the most interesting and important figures in the literary world at the turn of the century was Mrs. Humphrey 146 JOURNAL OF LIBERAL RELIGION Ward, niece of Matthew Arnold. Unlike him, she refused to stay in the orthodox church. Matthew Arnold, to the end of his life, was a contented member of the Anglican Church feeling the institution should be modernized from within. But Mrs. Ward's sympathies were for those who went out as evinced in her great novel, Robert Elsmere. Distinctly a work of religious propaganda, the authoress features a rector in the Church of England. Robert, a sensitive and noble character, throws off the orthodoxy of his day. Catherine, his wife, abandons herself for weeks to immitigable sorrow over his departure from the faith in which he had been ordained to preach. At last, however, light breaks in: she enters her husband's presence one morning a transformed woman. Mrs. Ward's convictions are well heralded as Catherine says, "Robert, I have thought that God speaks to all people in one voice. But He has shown me that I am mistaken, and that He speaks to different people in many different voices!" Readers in 1888 thought the sale of the book should be prohibited, and copies already purchased removed from circulating libraries. One fond mother, fearful of its effect on her daughter's growing mind, marked all the worst passages and then told young Alice she might read it, provided she skipped all the blazed places! Gladstone took time out from one of his great parliamentary fights to combat her opinions in The Contemporary Review. Mrs. Ward, first with John Ward, Preacher, and then with Robert Elsmere, not only established herself as a master hand in English literature, but struck the strongest blow of her time for liberal theology. In the letters of Lucy Aikin, we find a similar zest for liberalism. Miss Aikin was a member of an old Non-Conformist family which, despite its unpopularity, faithfully adhered to liberal opinions. Sparing no pains in Lucy's education, her father instructed her himself, skillfully transferring to her his own abhorrence of injustice. Miss Aikin' correspondence with Channing was later published in bo[?] form. Channing considered her one of his most cosfideti[?] European friends. Her letters reflect not only the politic[?] UNITARIAN WOMEN, 19TH CENTURY 147 theological and social questions of the day but a deep liberal spirit. "It has often grieved me," she once wrote to Dr. Channing, "to observe how extensively the popular system of theology operates to degrade and distort men's moral sentiments, and their views on human life." Again, "The best and most sensible women of my acquaintance are, with very few exceptions, converts to your views."... The High Church are nearly all Tories, and Unitarians almost unanimously Reformers." Biographers, Hymn Writers, Scientists Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson, more popularly known as Mrs. Gaskell, in her Life of Charlotte Bronte, received a high place among English biographers. Her husband and her father were Unitarian clergymen. Mrs. Gaskell found time from her literary work to conduct classes for factory girls at her home on Sunday afternoons, to find employment for discharged prisoners, and to work for the freedom of the slave in America. Sarah Flower Adams' hymn, Nearer my God to Thee, translated into practically every language in the world, is called the most popular hymn of Christendom. Mrs. Adams' parents were dissenters in religion, subscribing to the Arian school of theology. Her father, Benjamin Flower was known all over England as the great friend and eloquent advocate of civil and religious liberty. Helen Williams, hymn-writer and poetess was known in her times as "the English historian of the French Revolution." She writes of passing the winter of 1793 in Paris "with the knife of the guillotine suspended over me by a frail thread." An ardent devotee of free inquiry in all fields, love of liberty was for Miss Williams a passion, and her political writings exerted a powerful influence. Maria People, besides being a hymn writer, was the author of many theological articles and devoted her life to disseminating Unitarian viewpoints. Jane Marcet was the first writer to make political economy [?]opular. Her Conversations on Political Economy had a [?]reat influence upon her more famous successor, Harriet 148 JOURNAL OF LIBERAL RELIGION Martineau. When Miss Marcet first sent out her scientific manuals her name was believed to be fictitious, so little faith was there in those days in female capacity for intellectual work. For thirty years England and America used Miss Marcet's Conversations in Chemistry as a general textbook. Working in a kindred field was Mary Somerville, a member of the Royal Astronomical Society, who was to achieve world fame as a scholar and scientist. Miss Somerville in her own words, "very early shook off all that was dark and narrow in the creed for her first instructors for a purer and happier faith." Dr. Johnson, in speaking of a celebrated English scholar, said that he "understood Greek better than any one whom he had ever known except Elizabeth Carter, another Unitarian, noted as a poetess, and a translator of Epicteuts. Mrs. Sarah Austin's work on the version of Ranke's Popes of Rome established her fame as a classical scholar. Anna Swanwick was noted not only for her translation of Aeschylus and Goethe's Faust, but for her philanthropy and her devotion of liberal causes. In 1861 she was one of the first to sign John Stuart Mill's petition to parliament for the political enfranchisement of women. Poets, crusaders, hymn-writers, feminists, scholars, educators, the procession of feminine greatness in the Nineteenth Century seems never ending. Summing up women's role in this era one commentator aptly notes: Historic forces are a moving escalator. On the moving stair some women walked ahead and were prepared to welcome the oncoming stream, to assist them to land with equanimity. The women who walked ahead were, with few exceptions, Unitarians. Historical tempering is all too apt to make us forget their brilliance and their daring. They need to be portrayed, not as conventional Sunday School saints, but as religious liberals––in action! Moreover, the future of liberal religion rests on the collective action of individuals of this century, who, like their distinguished predecessor, dare to be pioneers. GOINGS ON RAMONA SAWYER BARTH, biographer extraordinary, –––––––––––––writes in Winter issue of "Liberal Religion" the leading article "Unitarian Women of the 19th Century". The list she gives of the lenders of every field of thought and intellectual activity is amazing. Dorothen Dix, Louisa L. Schuyler, Mary A. Livermore, Isabel C. Barrows, Josephine Shaw Lowell, Helen Loring, Elizabeth Howard, Mary Lovell Ware, Abigail Adams, Angeline Grimke, Margaret Fuller, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, Catherine M. Sedgwick, Caroline Kirkland, Abbie May Alcott, Caroline B. Dall Edna D. Cheney, Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Susan B. Anthony, Carrie Chapman Catt, Lydia Maria Child, Helen Hunt Jackson, Louisa May Alcott, Alice and Phoebe Cary, Hannah Adams, Grace Greenwood, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Mary Hemenway Antoinette Brown Blackwell, her sisters, Dr. Elizabeth and Dr. Emily, Sarah Freeman Clarke, Fanny Kemble, Charlotte Cushman, Harriet Hosmer - these are some of the American Unitarian women who have been pioneers. Mrs. Barth gives also a summary of English Unitarian women. Her style is even better than in "Fiery Angel". You can see the article at Unitarian House. DIG UP Judy Snyder, head woman of the Fair and Bazaar, lists the following donations so far: Silver and brass candlesticks, pewter dishes, andirons, painting by Leonardo da Vinci*, cigarette lighter, bakery goods, handmade aprons, etc., (here he comes!) art glass, antiques, electric appliances, hand-decorated bowls, ties, potted plants, cameras, carpet sweeper, etc. Bring yours Unitarian House. *Not guaranteed original. THOUGHTS The attendance at our Washington Unitarian ––––––––––––– church averaged 846 in February, on March 10 saw 1150 people. In the Community Church at New York City, John Haynes Holmes fills Town Hall with 1200 most Sundays. Preston Bradley in Chicago has three capacity audiences (about 4,000) on Easter and Christmas. In Miami there are 5,000 Unitarians but only 320 know it. Let's tell the rest of them. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– QUESTION BOX Deposit question with name and address in Question Box at Mayfair Theater. If question is of general interest it will be answered in the News Letter, otherwise by private letter. ? What edition of the Bible do you recommend ? A. The American Standard Version. ? Is it true that the New Testament is anti-Semitic? A. Yes, in about fifteen per cent of its contents. It is not as anti-Semitic as the Old Testament is anti- Gentile. ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– The Fair and Bazaar will feature a dinner served by the ladies of the Alliance. HAVE WE KEPT FAITH?- T.C CLARK No trumpet note can wake them from their dreams; Beneath these simple stones they calmly sleep. Above their laureled graves we stand and weep. Athwart the shadows morning sunlight gleams-- But not for them; their light went out at dawn! We called them from their play to fight the foe; They could not understand why they should go, But questioned not. We glibly bade them "On!" "Go save the world," we cried, "though you must die!" (We sent them forth that we might have our ease!) They heard our call - themselves they could not please. They marched, and fell - and here in sleep they lie. Have we kept faith with them? Still crieth Peace: "O men of earth, when will your warfare cease?" [X] marks the spot, the spot in our brain which told us to call Miss Sara Comins EX-president of the General Women's Alliance, when she is a very live and doing President. This is her third fruitful year. She is a member of AUA directors, and a dozen other distinguished things. WOMAN AND THE POSTWAR WORLD By RAMONA SAWYER BARTH THE crisis of today's war is breaking down many taboos and prejudices concerning women. One of the questions which the religious liberal is asking is: how can the temporary gains in this specific field be solidified into our social mores? The hand that rocked the cradle is now being proudly upheld by our advertisers–– who are a graphic reflection of the public mind––as the hand that's rocking the Axis. It is the hand that's loading shells, running lathes, driving tractors and welding steel. True, that hand must still be well lotioned in anticipation of a coveted furlough but, fundamentally, it must be useful. If we but thumb through a cross section of prewar magazines, we will realize how sharp the contrast is between the role of women before this war and that of women today. Social disapproval of so-called "masculine" roles for women changes overnight to social approval. "Be fragilely feminine," "Be like dresden china" the prewar advertiser writes as he pictures a sheltered female with a perfectly balanced teacup displaying a pure silk hostess robe. "Wife, mother, hostess"–– but not business women––is the sales appeal of one life insurance company; before Pearl Harbor the business world was the essence of all that was cruel and harsh and "unwomanly." "Slap the Japs efficiently in blue denims," is the caption over today's full-page advertisement for tough and sturdy garments. "Be beautiful" was, in general, the slogan before the war. To be sure, beauty is still a woman's prerogative, according to the makers of Revlon nail polish, but now, as the fair but capable sex is urged to buy a new military brush fluff permanent, the emphasis is "be beautiful and dutiful." Our daughters are being subjected to an entirely new conditioning for American girls which, if it is permanent, will make the bridge club as remote in the future as candle molding is today. A mother who pulls her seven-year-old daughter to the store window which displays dolls and tea sets is likely to be yanked away again with an insistent "I don't want a doll. I want a welding set." Yesterday's women, in general, were urged to buy our many timesaving gadgets for the leisure and freedom they would give them. They should mortgage their husband's pay check monthly for the new Bendix because then they "would be free to shop or work or play," the promoters of that article insisted. Not so the woman of 1943 who can't buy a Brillo pad, let alone a washing machine, no matter how much money she has to spend. She is still reminded of the freedom General Electric affords her but it isn't freedom for the matinee or prolonged unnecessary shopping orgies; it is for some kind of meaningful work––long hours given voluntarily at the canteen or eight-hour paid jobs in the factory. This change of social pressure is certainly good if we take seriously our liberal gospel that each individual, regardless of sex or color, should be free to develop unhampered by prejudice and custom. It leads the way to the feminism so well defined by Carrie Chapman Catt as "the world-wide movement of revolt against all artificial barriers which law and custom have superimposed between woman and human freedom." The war is making Americans who have forgotten the suffrage struggle realize that certain ways of life we used to think were unnatural for women were merely uncustomary. Foremen in our airplane factories from coast to coast make affidavits showing woman's efficiency in all types of mechanical jobs, heretofore considered "masculine" work. Women by the thousands who before this war thought themselves capable of running only a vacuum cleaner are discovering they can run a business or a printing press just as well as anyone else! The war, in short, is showing us how unscientific was our prewar thinking about woman's role. Will woman in the postwar world keep her present state of resourceful womanhood? This is the question that must be answered before we can tackle others such as: "How can women remake the world? Can women help win the peace as well as the war?" I maintain that today's woman who is choosing work instead of shopping and playing is better equipped to talk, think and plan peace than the woman rightly featured before this war by the advertisers as the sheltered, pampered lady. She is a responsible, integrated, purposeful being, instead of the useless dilettante of yesterday. Will these women be legendary characters after this war? Will they continue in a peacetime equivalent of Ramona Sawyer Barth, lecturer and author, familiar to Register readers for her recent articles on Lucretia Mott and Lucy Stone 353 what they are now doing? Or will they go back to a parasitical or semi-parasitical existence? There are two types of postwar world possible for the American woman. One is a return to our economic system of scarcity––scarcity of goods and scarcity of jobs––a system which insists that profits are more important than human capabilities crying to be used. If we return to this type of social order, the little girl now crying for a welding set will be conditioned to sob for her dollie instead––and she will get it. She will be urged as she grows up to concentrate upon consuming, whether it be real silk hose for her feet, Bayer's aspirin for her head, or a Packard Eight to show how much money her husband makes. She will not be urged, as she is in today's crisis of wartime, to produce. Dorothy Dix will tell her that concentrating on a home and husband and family is a full-time job, just as surely as today's Ladies' Home Journal proudly says a woman can work and run her home too! All the social pressure will be directed toward sending the women home. The women will think they should be happy in their "natural" role. But they won't be. The give and take, the sense of responsibility which comes from being out in a world larger than the four walls of the home will be part of their inner make-up. They will subconsciously miss the vitality and productivity of their wartime life. They won't know why rearranging the living room furniture is no longer zestful and the proverbial new hat no longer gives a lift. Then the conflict, the nervous breakdown and the crowded offices of the psychiatrists, many of whom are predicting this state of affairs. There is another world which woman could have after the war––one where she will not only be free to use her potentialities other than those of wife and mother but where society will urge her to do so. Modern technological changes are coming into their own after this war. The running of a home will be even simpler than G.E. devices make it now. Whether meals will be reduced to dehydrated capsules is still a debatable issue, but wartime methods of communal kitchens and simplified cooking will be available for every housewife without the complications of point systems and rationing books. Methods of child care, communal nurseries and kindergartens, adopted now because it is imperative, could be continued, freeing even the most devoted mother from her family for certain hours without having her conscience trouble her. Part-time jobs, fewer hours of working––these could become a reality enabling women to have their homes and children, and some form of work, volunteer or paid, that realizes their potentialities as they are today being realized in war jobs. The little girls of tomorrow could be conditioned to want a doll and a welding set too! If we utilize our unlimited resources for the economic, social and ethical well-being of all our people, there need be no reason for relegating women in America to the sphere of "kinder, kirche, kuchen." Which type of postwar world does woman want? At the moment it looks as if women in volunteer work will return to Ma-Jongg and gossip fests after the war is over. All hands point to the disemployment, not the 354 employment, of women on paid jobs in the postwar world. President Roosevelt has assured the men in uniforms of jobs. What about the women? We have not set up, as the British have, a "Male Protective League" whose express function is to oust women from their jobs, but unspoken sentiment is all in that direction. A Committee of the American Association of University Women, with Pearl Buck as its leader, states that at the moment no planning board in the country is concerning itself with the postwar world and women. At the present time it looks as if woman will be urged to be merely beautiful after the war. We will forget she is even capable of being dutiful. Mary Jones, now considered a heroine as she successfully takes a man's place felling logs in Portland, Oregon, building battleships in Bath, Maine, and dismantling autos in Ohio, will be considered a brazen unpatriotic wench if she tries to keep that job when Johnny comes marching home. Is it a sin for today's woman, who is realizing that she can be queen of more than her own kitchen, that she can run a business as well as a carpet sweeper, to want to continue to use her God-given abilities? Is it a crime for the modern woman to want to be of service to her family and the world in spheres beyond the icebox and the tea table? Instead of adjusting themselves to the postwar world, whatever it is, women today should be demanding an adjustment of the postwar world to them. This is not a selfish request. In the long run, the woman herself, her children, her husband, and society cannot help but benefit when hitherto unknown human capabilities are unleashed for the public good. Shall woman's talents now apparent the country over be "on the market"after the war, or once again hidden under the bushel of convention and prejudice regarding woman's sphere? Is today's emancipation real––or merely for the duration? CHARM FOR A YOUNG PRIVATE Say goodbye to all you love, Kiss all you love goodbye; And take with you as you go All you love, compressed, to keep, Whether to live or die .... The rule of war will throw All you love in a play with chance, And death will fall from the air. Come back from the nightmare sleep, Survive, if you may, the nightmare And find all you love in a trance - All you love: and the new world fair. (The world we make for you fair.) GENEVIEVE TAGGARD [*Boston Herald April 8, 1938*] Our Mail Bag Working Wives' Bill Bad for Women To the Editor of The Herald: The report of the legislative committee on civil service prohibiting the future employment of married women in state civil service jobs unless their husbands cannot support them, and ousting women now holding positions within six months for the same reasin, is an act of bar- barism. The committee members, excepting Sybil Holmes and Rep. Fletcher, are the exact counterparts of Germany's minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, who announced a few years ago: "We Nazis have put women out of public life. Nature has fitted women for life behind the four walls of a house not for life in the open." We have organized serious protests against many Nazi measures; Jew-baiting, persecution of political prisoners, suppression of culture, but no powerful voice has been raised against the wholesale dismissal of women workers and relegation of women to a dependent existence. This sin of omission is alarming. But the sin of commission in the working wives' bill here in Massachusetts is more so. It is alarming that bands of women themselves have marched to Beacon Hill to vote themselves back to the sphere of "children. church, and chafing dish." It is alarming to see the members of the legislative committee victims of the outworn convention of "male dominance." The working wives' bill has all the reactionary tendencies of any fascistic measure. It seems to reflect no intelligence regarding the industrial revolution and its effect upon woman. Perhaps it, too, sanctions a feudal set of tools in the home to replace labor-saving devices. "The domestic hearth with its undying flame has given way to the flickering evanescence of the gas-range," Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote a few years ago. The gas range is a symbol of a machine age which has stripped the modern woman of the manifold functions of home-making. It leaves her free for some useful work in addition to, not necessarily in substitution for, her home; it also leaves her free to become a general community dabbler, a useless dilettante. The economic situation may be temporarily alleviated by forcing her to dissipate her time and energy outside the home, but any system based upon the stifling of her potentialities for some social contribution can, in the long run, lead only to degradation. It is as valuable for her to contribute her work as for a man to contribute his. Our 20th century does not allow her to be indispensable in the home. She must become an integral factor in the world outside or become to some degree useless, except for her breeding capacities. In the capitalistic world where the measure of the value of achievements still to a great degree depends upon money, it is as essential to her sense of worth that she be paid, as he. The working wives' bill reduces work to a mere method of subsistence. What a pleasant prospect! Women may work provided only that they have to support themselves, this elastic state, to be determined by one person, the civil service commissioner. Work cannot be an interest, a form of contribution, a sense of social worth, but a burden, an economic necessity. If the male members of the legislative committee, excepting the emancipated representative from Springfield, who already sees the light, would ask themselves if they would want to give up work if they had private means for a wife to support them, they might realize that there are other elements in work beside the financial one. Work is as natural to woman as to man. Time-killing, laziness and the search for distraction are abnormal, The bill in question encourages woman's lowest qualities. It encourages her to emerge from the home, not to some useful occupation, worthy of all her potentialities, but to the bridge table and other soul-destroying anti-social female pursuits. The bill is an insult to the pioneers of the American suffragette movement. If "the big four," Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott and Lucy Stone, could rise up in their graves now, the road to Beacon Hill would hum with a spirit in keeping with a democracy. The bill is a short-sighted solution if a solution, at all, of the economic problem. It is a veiled display of man's wish to to be economically dominant. It is an earmark of a backward civilization, its eyes closed to the changed status of women. It threatens the moral fiber of women. It encourages them to be parasites. RAMONA SAWYER BARTH. Newton. THE MIAMI HERALD [MONDA]Y, NOVEMBER 25, 1940 Women Recall Early Fight Anniversary Program Of Progress Arranged Here, In Other Cities Local club and organization women will observe the one hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the "Women's Progress Movement" at 2 p.m. Tuesday with a lecture review by Ramona Sawyer Barth on the lives of three great women leaders. The meeting, sponsored by the Women's Alliance of the First Unitarian Church, will be held in the Southern Dairies hostess room, 62 N. E. Twenty-seventh street. Will Review Books Mrs. Barth will present a review of three recent books: "Lucretia Mott, The Greatest American Woman" by Lloyd C. Hare; "Created Equal," a biography of Elizabeth Cady Stanton by Alma Lutz; and “Lucy Stone" by Alice Stone Blackwell. The Women's Centennial Congress is being held in New York throughout the coming week. Carrie Chapman Catt is general chairman of the convention at the Commodore Hotel. Celebrating one hundred years of women's progress, the movement dates its origin from the first international anti-slavery convention held in London in 1840, in which women delegates from America were admitted only as spectators and concealed behind curtains in a balcony. Returning full of indignation, but conscious of their restricted privileges in their own country, they organized a campaign for emancipation of women which reached legal recognition in the nineteenth amendment to the constitution. Florida Is Represented Florida is represented at the New York convention, while district conferences are being held in various large cities. Mrs. Barth appears under spon- sorship of the Women's Alliance, which is conducting a season program of "Speech In Action" for improvement of women's status in Florida. She has been closely affiliated with the progress movement and she spent considerable time with Mrs. Catt in organization of the women's clubs of the New York area. The alliance has issued a special invitation to the recently elected officers of the Miami League of Women Voters, whose history connects it closely with the suffrage movement. Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.