NAWSA
GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE
International Woman's Suffrage
Alliance—1938-39

TELEPHONE : VICTORIA 0285
TELEGRAMS : VOCORAJTO
International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship.
HEADQUARTERS: 12. BUCKINGHAM PALACE ROAD. LONDON, S.W.1, ENGLAND.
PRESIDENT : MARGERY CORBETT ASHBY, 33, UPPER RICHMOND ROAD, LONDON. S.W.15. ENGLAND.
To Presidents of the Alliance Auxiliaries
May 24th, 1938.
Dear Madam,
STATUS OF WOMEN
As you know from our paper, Jus Suffragii, the Expert Committee on
Status of Women appointed by the League of Nations is anxious to obtain
the co-operation of the women's international organisations on certain
points in the Enquiry they are planning.  The Liaison Committee of
Women's International Organisations, of which the Alliance is a member
and which is co-ordinating this work, has been considering the best method
of ensuring this co-operation, and it has agreed that this would be to
form in each country a Special Committee of representatives of the national
branches or affiliated societies of the respective international organisations.  The work of these Special Committees would be:
1.  To make a careful study of cases in their own country where there is
a contradiction between actual conditions and the letter of the law, or
where the intention of the law is not applied in practice.  Such for instance,
as where laws or clauses in laws are in conflict with long usage;
where the text of the law has given rise to varying interpretations; of
where in cases before the Courts, a ruling has been given which has the
effect of nullifying the intended effect.  In some countries women may
have the right of access to all public functions, but are in practice
never appointed to important positions because this would be against use
and custom.  Or they may have the right to enter all professions, while
actually public services may demand that a woman resigns on marriage.
2.  To recommend either legal institutions or qualified legal experts
who could give help in stating the legal position of women, more especially
in countries where the law is not codified.
3.  To procure and study the volume which will be issued this summer
(1938) b the International Labour Office under the title of "The Legal
Status of Women at Work", in order to see whether between this enquiry
and that conducted by the League of Nations there may exist any gaps
which would need to be filled in order to produce an absolutely accurate
picture of women's status.
We attach a list of the International Organisations which are members
of the Liaison Committee, as you will surely know whether in your
country there are national branches or affiliated societies belonging to
these international bodies.  We hope that your society will without delay
get into touch with these organisations in order to consider how best
to set up a Special Committee as indicated above.  This question of the
status of women so definitely falls within the special sphere of our
Alliance that you will feel with us a responsibility for ensuring that
full and reliable information is available from your country.  If there
are in your country women's organisations which take an interest in this
question but which do not form part of an international group, it would
be very desirable to invite them also to take part in the Special Committee,
the object of which is to co-ordinate the work and avoid overlapping.
Clearly the actual members of the Committee should be women
lawyers, or those who have made a special study of how the laws affect
women.
It is in the interests of the woman's movement, both nationally and
internationally, taht we earnestly beg you to take u this matter without
delay, as the next meeting of the League of Nations Expert Committee will
take place on Ja[n]nuary 3rd, 1939.  If you will let us know what preliminary
steps you have been able to take to form a Special Committee for
your country, we shall be glad to send you for the use of that Committee
further suggestions as to the form of its work, or supply further infor[?]mation
as to the lines of the League of Nations Enquiry.
Yours sincerely,
[?u?lie Gou??]
Corresponding Secretary.


INTERNATIONAL ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FOR SUFFRAGE AND EQUAL CITIZENSHIP
Organizations represented on the
LIAISON COMMITTEE
of
WOMEN'S INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATIONS.
Equal Rights International.
International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal
Citizenship.
International Council of Women.
International Federation of Business and Professional Women.
International Federation of University Women.
International Federation of Women Magistrates, and Members
of the Legal Profession.
St. Joan's Social and Political Alliance.
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.
World Union of Women for International Concord.
World's Women's Christian Temperance Union.
World's Young Women's Christian Association. 
Alliance Internationale pour le Suffrage et l'Action
civique et politique des [?]Femmes.
Alliance Ste Jeanne d'Arc.
Alliance universelle des Unions Chrétiennes de Jeunes Filles.
Conseil International des Femmes.
Fédération Internationale des Femmes Magistrats et Avocats.
Fédération Internationale des Femmes diplomées des Universités.
Fédération des Femmes dans les Carrières et les Professions.
Ligue Internationale de Femmes pour la Paix et la Liberté.
l'Internationale des Droits Egaux.
Union Mondiale de la Femme pour la Concorde Internationale.
Union Mondiale des Femmes Abstinentes.

SENÁT
NÁRODNÍHO SHROMÁŽD[?]NÍ REPUBLIKY
[?]ESKOSLOVENSKÉ
Praha, February 1st 1939.
Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt,
Hon President and Founder
of Int. Alliance of Women,
120, Paine Avenue
N e w   R o c h e l l e.
Dear Mrs. Chapman Catt,
Our life is flying which such an excess of work - I
take the liberty of sending you some of the pamphlets we send to
all countries - so that only these days I remember with fright that
the day of your 80th birthday just passed away. I published some
words in our periodical "Ženská Rada" and shall be glad if your
eyes will rest on these lines.
Please allow me to express you - in the name of all
the Výbor pro volerbní právo žen and my collaborators with whom I
am in the National Women Council - our hearty joy how nicely you
have lived to see this significant day, as I see from your last
photo with dear Rosa, and the deepest wish, you may be with us for
long years and will live to see a durable appeasement of the world,
the warlike fevers of wich are so strange to us women of this cent-
[?/?]

ury and against which you have looked for explanation and means
in "The Conference on Cause and Cure of War".
God bless your days! Please keep us your friendship,
which is so dear to us
Yours most sincerely
F. F. Plamínková,
Senator
with her collaborators.
4 enclosures.

General Finance Committee
OF THE
National American Woman Suffrage Association
139
clippings
CCC+MAP picture + note on Elmira College visit 1937
picture CCC on return to NY after Tenn. Ratification
" CCC receiving Achievement Award 1930
[Xtrace?]. Sec Monitor Ardnt review CCC biog 1944
memorial presentation Library of Cong. 1/9/51
1915 NY Times photo NY city Suff. Parade
NY Times story placing SBAT Them Paine busts in Gould Mem. Lib. of NY Univ. 1952
Herald-Trib.] Review [C???] Biog. Sept. 10, 1944
Autograph signed letter [Raminkova] to CCC, Feb. [9]1st, 1939 Very rare

Some National and International Tributes to Carrie Chapman Catt
National Roll of Honor , League of Women Voters   1930
Memorial International Woman Suffrage Alliance, Stockholm.  1911
Memorial International Woman Suffrage Alliance, Budapest.  1913
First Honorary Degree conferred by University of Wyoming   1921
Honorary Presidency of I W S A conferred when Mrs Catt retired
as President, Rome   1923
Pictorial Review $5000 Achievement Award   1927
Memorial Women of Portugal supporting Mrs Catt's Protest against Hitler's Persecution of Jews and Liberals   1933
Scroll Women of Uruguay National Council   1933
Tributes from Women's Organizations, Uruguay   1933
Gold Medal Award National Institute Social Sc[?]iences U.S.A.   1940
United China Relief Mission Award (Mme Chiang [Kaish?k's] signature)1941
Award of the Order of White Rose of Finland   1941
Chi Omega Achievement Award at The White House   1941
Scroll of Honor General Federation of Women's Clubs   1941
Achievement Award American Women's Association   1944
Certificate as Patron of The Smithsonian Institution   1945
Commemorative Tree Planted i[?]n Palestine   1947


Among awards received by Mrs Catt
in recognition of her great service
to the causes of woman suffrage,
world peace and human rights. ;-
1920  LL.D. University of Wyoming
1920  LL.D. Iowa State College
1922  LL.D. Smith College
1930  Award Pictorial Review $5000
1933  American Hebrew Medal for Promoting
better understanding
between Chris[y]tian[?]s and Jews
1935  Turkish Government postage stamp
honoring Mrs Catt
1940  American Women's Assn. Woman
of the Year Award
1940  Gold MedalPioneer Award, General
Federation of Women's Clubs
1941  [Honorary Degree M]LL.D. Moravian College
for Women
1941  National Institute of Social
Sciences Award of Gold Medal
1941  Chi Omega Award Gold Medal in
ceremony at the White House
1942  Government of Finland confers
Order of the White Rose
1930  Mrs Catt's name placed on several
state and national ROlls of Honor
bronze tablets erected throughout
the nation by League Women Voters
1936  President Roosevelt receives Mrs
Catt at the White House and reads and
delivers in person his tribute to her
for her public services


Among awards recognizing her services to the
causes of woman suffrage, human rights and
world peace are the following ; - LL.D. Univ.
of Wyoming, Iowa State College, Smith College,
Moravian College for Women: Pictorial REview
$5000 1930: Am. He[?]brew Medal 1933: Turkish
Govt. postage stamp 1935: Am. Women's Assn.
1940: Gen. Fed. Wom. Clubs1940: Nat. Inst.Soc.
[Sei]Sei.1941: Chi Omega Award at the White House
[1941:] 1941 Gov. of Finland Order of White [?] ROSE 1942:
Pres. Roosevelt Received Mrs Catt at White House
and read citation of honor for her public services,
1936.
Among awards recognizing her servicees to the
causes of woman suffrage, human rights and
world peace are the following ; - LL.D. Univ.
of Wyo., Ia. S[?]Tate Coll., Smith Coll, Moravian
Coll. for Wom.: Pic. Review $5000 1930: Am. Hebrew
medal 1933: Turkish Govt. postage stamp
1935: Am. Wom. Assn. 1940: Gen. Fed. Wom. Clbs.
1940: Nat. Inst. Soc. Sei. 1941: Chi Omega 1941:
Govt. of Finland Order of White Rose 1942: [?]
received at White House by Pres. Roosevelt who
read citation of honor for Mrs Catt's extraordinary
public services, 1936.

Second Edition THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR Saturday, February 19, 1955
'Women alone could not have won...'
A February anniversary underscores gains made by women as citizens--aided by men
By Jessie Ash Arndt
Woman's Editor of The Christian Science Monitor
There is probably no school child in this country who does not know of Washington and Lincoln, but how many can tell who Susan B. Anthony was and what she did?
Perhaps the day will come when her birthday, Feb. 15--like Lincoln's on Feb. 12 and Washington's on Feb. 22--will be observed as a national holiday.
This year there are 304 women serving in the state legislatures of the United States; there are 17 women in Congress including one woman senator; there is a woman in the President's cabinet, and there are two women ambassadors serving in American embassies. Susan B. Anthony is one of three intrepid women who led the long, hard battle which laid a foundation for all this.
Today women are heads of banks and businesses, they are distinguished members of the professions, they constitute the great buying power of the nation, and their influence on public thought is a factor to be reckoned with.
Yet had Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and those with them, not had the courage to carry on their campaign for women's rights in the face of rebuff, ridicule, slander--and even rotten eggs and tomatoes--in the 1850's, girls and women of the 1950's could not count such present gains. There might have been none to count.
The stir for women's rights came with the antislavery and temperance movements in America and gained impetus from women's efforts to work for these causes. But this urge for justice was not confined to America.
It was what Carrie Chapman Catt, the woman suffrage leader who carried the American campaign through to final victory, once described as "an idea which has come to its time and cannot be restrained." Similar awakening was stirring in England and was to come in other countries, although the first women's rights convention was held here.
Means to an End
However, women demanded the vote not as an end in itself but as an indispensable tool for making a contribution to human welfare.
This idea came to grips with age-old traditions; it ran head on into bitter prejudice and firmly entrenched masculine assumption of superiority. Supreme courage and self-sacrifice characterized women of the 19th and early 20th centuries who carried the banner for the cause of women suffrage which so many women of 1955 take for granted.
But there is one important point to remember:
While women's struggle for the right of citizenship challenged the very foundation of the concept of the man as superior to the woman, women alone could not have won the fight.
It was the men in legislative halls who yielded to the women's demands for justice and a fair hearing. It was often the counsel, encouragement, and financial aid of the husband of an ardent suffrage leader which enabled her to carry forward her work.
One of these was Henry Stanton, husband of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a lawyer whose advice she frequently sought but did not always follow. James Mott, Lucretia Mott's husband, presided at the first Woman's Rights Convention in 1848 in Seneca Falls, N.Y. Henry Blackwell, husband of Lucy Stone (who retained her own name as a symbol of independence) was another. He worked with her throughout her lifetime of devotion to the suffrage cause.
And, in later years of the suffrage campaign, there was George Catt. Mary Gray Peck says in her biography of Carrie Chapman Catt, "No contribution to the feminist movement ever exceeded that of George Catt, who during his life enabled his wife to devote her genius as a free gift to the cause and prolonged his priceless grant after his death by leaving her financially independent."
Quaker, Teacher
But Susan B. Anthony, who was outstanding in the early Anthony-Stanton-Mott triumvirate of suffrage crusaders, was unmarried. She had neither the encouragement of a husband sympathetic with her ideals, nor the responsibility of family ties which might have restricted her activities.
A Quaker and a teacher whose home was in Rochester, N.Y., she espoused both the anti-slavery and temperance causes as a young woman. In this work she first became associated with Elizabeth Cady Stanton of Seneca Falls, who, with Lucretia Mott--also a Quaker--and a few other brave women, called the first Woman's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls.
Miss Anthony did not attend this epoch-making conclave, nor did she attend the meeting designated as the First National Women's Rights Convention, called in Worcester, Mass., in 1850 by Paulina Davis, launching the movement on a national scale and attracting such women as Julia Ward Howe and Mary A. Livermore. Not until 1852 did she actively ally herself with the cause of women's rights.
Like Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Mott, she was convinced, by repeated rebuffs that, as a woman, she could not make the contribution to society which she felt it her responsibility to make unless the status of women was altered.
Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Mott had gone with their husbands as delegates to the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840. After two days' debate on the question of seating women as delegates, this convention decided against it. The two women were seated, instead, in the gallery behind a curtain!
Mrs. Stanton, who was a bride, and Mrs. Mott, 22 years her senior, promptly resolved to arouse the world's women to correct such injustice. The women's rights convention eight years later was their initial move.
In the meantime, Miss Anthony had been facing similar hurdles. Perhaps they culminated in 1852 when she rose to speak at the meeting of the Sons of Temperance in Albany, N.Y., to which she had been elected a delegate, and was informed "the sisters were not invited to speak but listen, and learn!"
That same year, she attended the Third National Woman's Rights Convention called at Syracuse and was put on the nominating committee. She was direct, practical, and outspoken. Her 56 years of work for the suffrage cause had begun.
Campaign Begins
Years later, in August, 1890, Miss Anthony welcomed Mrs. Catt to the suffrage headquarters in Huron, N.Y., for her first campaign. In the same month, in 1920, Mrs. Catt, by then a veteran leader of many hard-fought campaigns, saw the Tennessee legislature ratify the 19th Amendment, the final ratification needed to give votes to American women.
With characteristic vigor and foresight, Mrs. Catt, who saw the culmination of this great struggle in the United States, also saw beyond it. Women had the vote, they must now learn how to use it. She founded the League of Women Voters but declined to become its president. Younger women, she said, must carry on.
The work of this organization speaks for itself today in communities throughout the nation, education both men and women in the democratic practices of good government. Also through the Carrie Chapman Catt Memorial Fund, it is extending such service in the United States and offering cooperation to women in other lands who are seeking to learn more of how to use the tools of true democracy.
Miss Anna Lord Strauss, now president of this fund, and past president of the league, is following in the footsteps of her great-grandmother, Lucretia Mott.
Now women, with the tools of government in their hands, are pressing further toward equality and guarding gains already won. Constituting one-third of the labor force of the United States, they are seeking equal pay for equal work and supporting with increasing strength the passage of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution. This has been sponsored for many years by the National Woman's Party under the leadership of Alice Paul, founder of the World Woman's Party, which has the same objective for all countries.
The trail had only to be blazed--millions of courageous, able women have surged forward. It is now a worldwide highway of progress.
[*Four Women Who Helped to Make History
Mrs. Adelaide Johnson poses behind her work, "The Women's Movement," commemorating three famous American suffragettes (left to right), Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucretia B. Mott. Mrs. Johnson, a pioneer American sculptress who is now 108 years of age, donated the statue to the nation in 1921 and it is on view in the Capitol. The imposing characterization in stone climaxes Mrs. Johnson's long artistic career.*]

Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.