NAWSA SUBJECT FILE Gilman, Charlotte P. CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN WRITER AND LECTURER Author, Owner, Editor and Publisher of THE FORERUNNER. A Monthly Magazine CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN has been a marked figure in the field of social progress and reform since 1890 when her famous evolutionary poem, "Similar Cases," attracted attention throughout the reading world. When her first book, a volume of verse, "In This Our World," appeared in 1899, she had already won a reputation as lecturer and magazine writer; and the publication of "Women and Economics" later in the same year, placed her definitely as one of the leaders of modern thought along sociological and economic lines. This work is to-day used as a text-book in many schools and colleges, and has been translated into German, Dutch, Italian, Russian, Hungarian and Japanese. Other books followed in rapid succession, "Concerning Children," The Home," and "Human Work;" and at the International Congress of Women in London, in 1899, and again in Berlin , in 1904, she was one of the most prominent speakers on a program embracing the names of some of the most famous women of the world. In 1905, she was again called abroad and spoke in many of the leading cities of Europe to large and enthusiastic audiences. In 1909, Mrs. Gilman entered upon the production of a monthly magazine, written, edited and published wholly by herself. This publication which is called THE FORERUNNER, is now in its third year and has apparently won for itself an assured place among periodical publications. Just now Mrs. Gilman has been brought before the public with especial prominence by the publication of a startling new book, called "The Man-made World;" a study of the effect of unchecked masculine domination upon social life; and also, by the appearance of her first novel, "What Diantha Did," a story suggesting a permanent and scientific solution of the housekeeping problem. Her second novel, "The Crux," deals with one of the most deadly dangers of our time, for girls--and men also. "Moving The Mountain" is a short-distance, somewhat feminized, modern Utopia. As a lecturer Mrs. Gilman has rare gifts. She is a reformer with a sense of humor, a preacher who is never dull, a satirist who is still essentially a poet, a humanitarian who offers to the world a near and practical hope. Lectures Ethics What Is Right and Why Assorted Sins Our Three Duties The Real Devil Economics The Wealth We Might Have Our Wickedest Waste Work, as Heaven or Hell Education Our Brains and What Ails Them Brain Training for Grown-ups The School Invisible Home Effects on the Child Mind The Woman Question Men, Women and People Economic Independence for Women Homekeeping vs. Motherhood The Power and Duty of Women The Child Social Parentage A Place for Children A New-made Race Equal Suffrage Answers to Antis Old Arguments and New Conditions Woman and the State Facts Against Feelings Something to Vote For Socialism A Reasonable Socialism The Coming Change Why Women Are Socialists Socialism and Religion General Subjects America's Place To-day Our Need of Beauty Society's Body and Soul Things We Could Do Now MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD A special course of three lectures in which Mrs. Gilman gives the main points of her philosophy 1. Man On the Nature of Humanity, of Work, of Men, and the Androccentric Past 2. Woman On the Relation of Woman to Humanity, to Man, and Her Change in the Present 3. Child On Parentage, Physical and Social, and the Child's Place in the Future Mrs. Gilman also gives, for lighter entertainment, selections from "The Forerunner," Poems, and Dramatic Readings from her own plays, "Three Women," and "Interrupted." These addresses and readings are given to Equal Suffrage Associations, to Socialists, and to small Club Meetings, or in Parlor Talks, on special terms. This last is an easy and attractive method of arousing interest in communities where there is no public demand for such work; one woman engaging the speaker, inviting friends, and having a more free and intimate discussion than is possible in a public lecture. LECTURE FEE . . $50.00 NET Press Comments on Mrs. Gilman's Books "WOMEN AND ECONOMICS." Since John Stuart Mill's essay there has been no book dealing with the whole position of women to approach it in originality of conception and brilliancy of expositiion. -- -- London Chronicle. The most siginificant utterance on the subject since Mill's "Subjection of Women." --The Nation. It is the strongest book on the woman question that has yet been published.-- Minneapolis Journal. A remarkable book. A work on economics that has not a dull page,--the work of a woman about women that has not a flippant word.--Boston Transcript. This book unites in a remarkable degree the charm of a brilliantly written essay with the inevitable logic of a proposition of Euclid. Nothing that we have read for many a long day can approach in clearness of conception, in power of arrangement, and in lucidity of expression the argument developed in the first seven chapters of this remarkable book.--Westminster Gazette, London. "CONCERNING CHILREN." Wanted :--A philanthropist, to give a copy to every English-speaking parent.--The Times, New York. Should be read by every mother in the land.-- The Press, New York. Wholesomely disturbing book that deserves to be read for its own sake.--Chicago Dial. "IN THIS OUR WORLD." There is joyous superabundance of life, of strength, of health, in Mrs. Gilman's verse, which seems born of the glorious sunshine and rich gardens of California.-- Washington Times. The freshness, charm and geniality of her satire temporarily convert us to her most advanced views.--Boston Journal. The poet of women and for women, a new and prophetic voice in the world. Montaigne would have rejoiced in her.--Mexican Herald. "THE YELLOW WALL PAPER" Worthy of a place beside some of the weird masterpieces of Hawthorne and Poe.--Literature As a short story it stands among the most powerful produced in America.--Chicago News.. "THE HOME." Indeed, Mrs. Gilman has not intendd her book so much as a treatise for scholars as a surgical operation on the popular mind.--The Critic, New York. Whatever Mrs. Gilman writes, people read--approving or protesting, still they read.-- Republican, Springfield, Mass. But it is safe to say that no more stimulating arraignment has ever before taken shape and that the argument of the book is noble, and, on the whole, convincing.-- Congregationalist, Boston. The name of this author is a guarantee of logical reasoning, sound economic principles and progressive thought.--The Craftsman, Syracuse. "HUMAN WORK." Charotte Perkins Gilman has added a third to her great trilogy of books on economic subjects as they affect our daily life, particularly in the home. Mrs. Gilman is by far the most brilliant woman writer of our day, and this new volume, which she calls "Human Work," is a glorification of labor.--New Orleans Picayune. Charlotte Perkins Gilman has been writing a new book, entitled "Human Work." It is the best thing that Mrs. Gilman has done, and it is meant to focus all of her previous work, so to speak--Tribune, Chicago. In her latest volume, "Human Work," Charlotte Perkins Gilman places herself among the foremost students and elucidators of the problem of social economics.--San Francisco Star. It is impossible to overestimate the value of the insistence of the social aspect of human affairs as Mrs. Gilman has outlined it.--Public Opinion. "WHAT DIANTHA DID." This is Mrs. Gilman's first novel and will prove a surprise to those who have so far known her only through her sociological writings. . . . The story is laid in California, and abounds in color, atmosphere, action and keen characterization.--Publishers' Weekly. The interest . . . lies partly in the reader's continual questioning of the possibility of such results and the shrewdness with which Mrs. Gilman meets these inevitable questions with trenchant facts and incontestable figures . . . . The kitchen, whose sordid demands have thwarted the aspirations of so many women and prevented any measure of real life, has a real interest in the hands of such a serious and clever writer.--Chicago Evening Post. "What Diantha Did" is a sensible book; it gives a new and deserved comprehension of the importance and complexity of housekeeping. . . . We would not undervalue Mrs. Gilman's attempts to let some light in upon the distracting situation of woman in domestic work. It is needed there, if in any business in the world.--The Independent, New York. "THE MAN-MADE WORLD." OR "OUR ANDROCENTRIC CULTURE." The book must be granted originality of thought, audacity of conception, logical arrangement of facts, and a foundation in the theories which, however hotly disputed, nevertheless are scientific. . . . It is a book just loaded with dynamite. . . . It seems safe to proclaim it the first book of its kind ever written.--Sunday Times, New York. Many books have been written by men about women This is a book by a woman about men. It analyzes their essential traits and characteristics as males, and points out the effects that an exclusively masculine domination has had upon every department of human life. Without passion or prejudice, but with relentless logic and apt illustration, Mrs. Gilman traces to this condition many of the most crying evils of modern life, and indicates specifically in just what respects the particpation of women in all branches of human work will operate for the improvement of the world. BOOKS BY CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN POSTPAID In This Our World (Verse) .... $1.25 Woman and Economics .... 1.50 Concerning Children .... 1.25 The Yellow Wall Paper .... .50 The Home .... 1.10 Human Work .... 1.12 What Diantha Did (Novel) .... $1.10 The Man-made World .... 1.10 THE FORERUNNER, Bound Vols. I and II ... 1.40 The Crux (Novel) .... 1.10 Moving the Mountain .... 1.10 APPEARING IN 1912 Our Brains and What Ails Them .... 1.10 Mag-Marjorie (Novel) .... 1.10 67 WALL STREET THE CHARLTON COMPANY, NEW YORK SOME PRESS NOTICES ON MRS. GILMAN'S LECTURES AMERICA. Mrs. Gilman has won a reputation in Europe as well as in America as a woman of brilliant mind. As a thinker along ethical, economic and progressive lines she is one of the representative women of the world. The impression she gives a stranger is one of a healthy, happy, vigorous woman who has a purpose in life which she means to attain as nearly as possible.-The Daily News, Denver, Colo. Mrs. Gilman is one of the most magnetic personalities upon the lecture platform today. She has charms of manner and mind that interest and please her audience even when they do not entirely agree with her. As a lecturer and preacher Mrs. Gilman has an international reputation, standing always for social evolution along all lines.- Times-Democrat, New Orleans, La. Mrs. Gilman's gestures are perfectly delightful. They are the most descriptive and telling gestures I ever saw and would do for a lesson in expression. If she were not saying a word, one would almost know that she meant by the vital use she makes of fingers and hands.-Sunday Journal, Toledo, Ohio. Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a pioneer in the woman's movement. She is neither controlled by hysteria nor governed by momentary impulses. She is a thinker, a teacher, who has evolved her ideas from broad experience and calm judgment.-The Press-Post, Columbus, Ohio. Apart from the interest of the lecture, her engaging smile and her general charm of manner served her well in not only enlisting, but in holding the attention of the audience throughout.-Sunday Times, Minneapolis, Minn. Mrs. Gilman is a truly remarkable woman. She never says a dull thing, but her satire is so keen it spares no one. and the play of it is like the needle spray of ice water.- Journal, Chicago. ENGLAND. Mrs. Gilman's voice is gentle and low-an excellent thing in a woman. When she is making a good point- and she makes many-there is a delightful chuckle in her voice which is positively infectious. Finally Mrs. Gilman as a lecturer is fluent, epigrammatic, logical, humorous and exceedingly interesting. Her talk is full of meat. I don't think I ever heard any public man say so much in an hour, or say it so well.-London Clarion. America has sent us many able women who has undertaken a crusade on behalf of their sex in this country, but rarely one so gifted with oratorical power a Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who delivered an address at the Women's Institute in Victoria street yesterday afternoon upon the question, "Should Women Work?" At the back of her elocutionary power lies a rare charm of manner rare, that is, in the female orator-gentle, persuasive, feminine ; but lucid and logical. Small wonder then that her lectures upon the proper position of women in the world's work, of which this was one, have attracted large and attentive audiences.-Daily Graphic, London. GERMANY. The American woman's rights advocate and writer, already famous on account of the International Congress of Women in Germany . . . Mrs. Gilman, who had already charmed by her appearance, her small, classical shaped head, her great speaking eyes, and who accompanied her slow and clearly articulated flow of words by appropriate gestures, spoke as follows. Dresden, Anzeiger. AUSTRIA. Mrs. Gilman had by her spirited address in English fully justified the reputation that preceded her here. She has no radical Heaven stormer, but a practical thinking woman who studies social questions to their foundation and follows them in their practical development.-New Vienna Tageblatt. HUNGARY. The large audience which included every one of the ladies of the National Women's Movement, listened to the lecture with great enjoyment and expressed their thanks by enthusiastic applause. From the first word to the last she held their attention. She builds her arguments up with irresistible logic. It is to be expected that her lecture will deeply influence our Women's Movement. Every one that heard her is enthusiastic over her. She is winning golden opinions, not only in her capacity as an acknowledged poet and splendid orator, but also as a graceful woman without any pose.-The Vjsag, Buda Pest. This world-renowned authoress delivered a most interesting lecture. Splendid rhetoric, clever argumentation, convincing dialectics. The audience was large and greeted the lecturer and her mode of delivery most kindly.- Magyar Hirlap, Buda Pest. THE FORERUNNER Charlton Co. 67 Wall St., N. Y. A MONTHLY MAGAZINE Written, edited, owned and published by CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN Domestic, $1.00 a year Canadian, $1.12 a year Foreign, $1.25 a year What is The Forerunner? It is a monthly magazine, publishing stories, short and serial, article and essay ; drama, verse, satire and sermon ; dialogue, fable and fantasy, comment and review. It is written entirely by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. What is it For? It is to stimulate thought ; to arouse hope, courage and impatience ; to offer practical suggestions, to voice the strong assurance of better living, here, now, in our own hand to make. What it is About? It is about people, principles, and the questions of every-day life ; the personal and public problems of to-day. It gives a clear, consistent view of human life and how to live it. Is it a Woman's Magazine? It will treat all three phases of our existence-male, female and human. It will discuss Man, in his true place in life ; Woman, the Unknown power ; the Child, the most important citizen. Is it a Socialist Magazine? It is a magazine for humanity, and humanity is social. It holds that Socialism, the economic theory, is part of our gradual Socialization, and that the duty of conscious humanity is to promote that Socialization. Why is it Published? It is published to express ideas which need a special medium ; and in the belief that there are enough persons interested in those ideas to justify the undertaking. Woman's Achievements Since the Franchise By CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN FEMINIST LEADER, AUTHOR AND LECTURER; AUTHOR OF Women and Economics, The Home: Its Work and Influence, the Man-Made World In the long effort to persuade that half of the adult population having the ballot to give it to the half who did not have it, it was natural that the petitioners should lay stress on the advantages to be gained by admitting them, and equally natural that the grantors should expect these advantages to follow immediately. During the scant seven years since the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, repeated demands have been made for some account of the various benefits so warmly promised. There is more than one line of approach in a study of the progress of woman in those seven years. Some gains are to be attributed to the general advance of the time, some to the rapid progress women were making without the franchise, some to the indirect influence of that new power, and a considerable number of achievements through legislation must be recorded. For direct political action we have the record of the League of Women Voters, the Joint Congressional Committee. Of the last, Maud Wood Park, in her "Organized Women and Their Legislative Progress," remarks: "Nothing like this Joint Committee exists for any other group of voters, certainly nothing like it represents men's organizations as such." Twenty-two national organizations of women, including such large ones as the General Federation of Women's Clubs, the National Council of Women, the National W. C. T. U. and Y. W. C. T. U., constituting many millions of voters, carry out their programs of Federal legislation through this body. It does not, as a body, either propose or indorse legislation, but when a bill is called for by five or more of the constituent organizations a subcommittee is formed from their representatives to promote it. In these early efforts it is reassuring to see that women are working not merely for advantages confined to their own sex, although these naturally predominate. In that valuable handbook, Women of Today, compiled by Ida Clyde Clark, issue of 1925, the aims of these subcommittees are listed as follows: The Child Labor Amendment, entrance of the United States into the World Court, amendment of Civil Service Classification act, adequate appropriation for United States Children's Bureau and Woman's Bureau, continuance of Federal work for social hygiene, action by Congress creating a Federal Department of Education and providing Federal aid to the States for eradication of illiteracy, for Americanization and for equalization of educational opportunity, promotion of home economies by increased funds and facilities under Vocational Education act. "Five acts of Congress already passed in the last three years," says Miss Clark, "have been due to the efforts of these women's organizations. They are: A statutory provision for the maintenance of the Woman's Bureau in the United States Department of Labor; the Shepard-Towner act, which was adopted as a means of reducing the high mortality of mothers and babies in childbirth by providing Federal aid to the States to be used through the State health authorities; the Cable act, providing individual citizenship for women irrespective of marital status; a compulsory education law for the District of Columbia increasing the school attendance period, and provision for a Federal institution for women prisoners." The League of Women Voters is a most valuable organization, doing needed work to promote political education and taking other action for the public welfare. In its 1925 convention the charge of political indifference among women was discussed, and it was shown that in the Presidential election of 1920, 49 per cent. of our total vote was cast, and in that of 1924, 50.92 per cent. If the admission of women raises the total percentage of votes scarcely one-tenth it at least shows that women vote in about the same proportion as men. If men, with all their years of political power, knowledge and experience, send only half their number to the polls, why should we expect the new voters to do more? Many women were 7 8 CURRENT HISTORY, OCTOBER 1927 totally indifference to the right and duty of voting; some were opposed. Indeed, there was in New York - perhaps there still is - one of the most pathetically absurd of organizations, the "Society of Women Voters Opposed to Women Suffrage." The matters under discussion at the Convention of the League of Women Voters show the league's major interests and purposes; as, efficiency in government, international cooperation to prevent war, child welfare, legal status of women, living costs, social hygiene, women in industry, public welfare in government. In four years the league has worked for thirteen Federal measures which were carried, and in the same period, in forty-five States, for 420 laws which were enacted. These activities were chiefly directed toward improving conditions for women and children, and were practically all for social betterment. They compare most favorably with special measures proposed during this period by the previous voters. WORKING FOR EQUAL RIGHTS The National Woman's Party is also a fine example of single-hearted devotion to one purpose, as well as of highly developed organization and efficiency. By no means satisfied with obtaining the franchise, the leaders of this party point out the many humiliating disabilities still legally restricting women, as vividly described by Edna Kenton in "The Ladies' Next Step." (Harper's Magazine, February, 1926). These disabilities they seek to remove by a "blanket" amendment to the Constitution: "Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and in every place subject to its jurisdiction." This measure is opposed by the League of Women Voters and by a subcommittee of the Women's Joint Congressional Committee, who consider it "self- defeating as to equality and destructive of valuable existing laws." So strongly is this felt that in the International Conference of Suffragists in Paris in 1926, the National Woman's Party was refused admission to the alliance. Nevertheless, the conference did adopt a resolution declaring that "no obstruction shall be placed in the way of married women in paid work, and the laws relative to women should be so framed as not to handicap them in their economic position." This is some degree takes the ground of the opposed Lucretia Mott amendment, but that measure covers it more thoroughly, and as the N. W. P. points out, "insures to women free choice among all occupations, equal opportunity for training in the professions, equal opportunity for advancement in professions and in industry, the basing of protective legislation on the character of the work, not the sex of the worker; and, further, will remove women from the class of children and tend to promote legislation in the interests of childhood." For the first four years of full suffrage the N. W. P. can list among its achievements the drafting and introduction into Congress of this amendment, the conducting of a thorough investigation of discrimination against women in the laws of all the States, the drafting of more than 500 equal rights measures for introduction into State Legislatures; the organization of professional and industrial councils to work for equal economic opportunities for women; the wiping out of specific discrimination in the laws of seventeen States and the conducting of first organized effort to elect women to Congress. It is quite beyond the limits of this brief study to examine the 420 newly enacted State laws worked for by the League of Women Voters, or the 500 laws drafted by the National Woman's Party, but "the traces of woman's hand" in one State may be taken as a sample of the general trend. The substance of some of the amendments and additions enacted in the laws in the laws of California since 1921 follows herewith: Married women given general right to sue or be sued without husband; creation of division of dental hygiene for children under State Boards of Health; stiffening of act to enforce educational rights of children; raising legal age of marriage to 18 for boys, 16 for girls, if approved by parents-- otherwise 21 and 18; punishment of father for failure to provide for legitimate or illegitimate child; abandonment of legitimate or illegitimate child, born or unborn, by father a misdemeanor; various amendments to Juvenile Court laws; domicile of husband not prima facie domicile of wife in divorce actions, in each case a question of fact; guardianship by will or deed, to take effect on death, may be made by either parent with consent of other, by the survivor, or in case of illegitimacy by mother; each may appoint a guardian of property which child will inherit from either parent; husband to provide for incompetent wife; in case of his inability, guardian of wife may pay expense in part or while out of her estate; wife must join with husband in conveyance or lease for more than a year of community, real or personal property; if husband conveys to innocent purchaser, wife has year WOMAN'S ACHIEVEMENTS SINCE THE FRANCHISE 9 to set conveyance aside; in the public school curriculum these additional subjects must be taught: "thrift, fire-prevention, the humane treatment of animals, the evil effects on the human system of tobacco, alcohol and other narcotics." In addition to the general statue that there shall be no instruction reflecting upon citizens of the United States because of race, color or creed, it is provided that there shall be "no amusements or entertainments in or about any school *** reflecting in any way upon citizens of the United States because of their race, color or creed." It will be seen even from the short list given above that the Equal Rights amendment would compel the wife to support an incompetent husband, and that the mother would be punished for failure to provide for her child or for abandoning it, and that kind of equality is not desired by all women. One historic failure the woman voter has already made: she has not used her power to compel the passing of the Child Labor amendment. The opposition of many States to further extension of the Federal power accounts for part of this failure, and the misconception of the amendment as mandatory, when in reality it was only permissive, is another excuse; but neither justifies the mothers of our country in failing to protect their children. It is true that most of the women's organizations stood behind the measure, while those against it, such as the National Association of Manufacturers, the Associated Industries of Massachusetts and the Southern Textile Manufacturers, were composed of men, but the women's vote should have been solidly for measure, and it was not. In elective and appointive offices women are gradually increasing in numbers. Dr. Hatcher, writing in Independent Woman, says that their proportion in political appointments is about one in fifteen. But when we consider the obstacles in sentiment and prejudice to be overcome, as well as visible inexperience, this is not so bad a beginning. President Coolidge has appointed Mrs. D. Tillinghast of Boston as Immigration Commissioner of New England; we have had one temporary women United States Senator, two Governors, and Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt states in an article on "What Women Have Done With the Vote" in The Independent that there were seventy women in State Legislatures in 1924 and 1925; also hundreds of women in State, town and county offices, many in minor judgeships and in Federal appointments to important [photograph] MRS. CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN posts, chiefs of bureaus and assistants to Cabinet officers. In the Postal Service there have been 23,715 women appointees, 13 of them in the class drawing salaries of from $3,300 to $6,000. The small number of women drawing large salaries in this field is paralleled in industry by the position of the trades unions, which still make it difficult for women to secure the apprenticeship needed to become skilled workers. Lorine Pruette, in an article in Independent Woman for June, 1927, says there is "a sub-zone given over to women where only routine and mechanical labor if required," that they are "the mental hewers of wood and drawers of water for our occupational system." One definite accomplishment of the new voters is the securing of much-needed new City Charter for Cincinnati. The only woman Alderman elected in New York City contributes an article in Harper's Magazine, May, 1927, on the utter uselessness of the Board of Aldermen. There are advances made by women during this brief period, not voted for, yet more or less influenced by the power to vote. Of these advances the most intangible is an increasing and much-appreciated respect for the new citizen's opinions and preferences. Another gain is in the tacit 10 CURRENT HISTORY, OCTOBER 1927 recognition by politicians that the private character of candidates must be considered more than it used to be; and still another, more practical and useful, is in the improved conditions in voting places. Questions of salary and of eligibility for appointment also are influenced to some degree; as, for instance, the action of a school board might be modified by a recollection of the voting power of thousands of women teachers. Especially we must consider the new impetus given to the previously organized bodies of women who were working for social progress without the ballot and whose efforts are formidably strengthened with it. The International Council of Women, for instance, which met in Washington, D. C., in May, 1925, had delegates from thirty-eight countries, representing 38,000,000 organized women, the large majority of whom are voters. This International Council is composed of national councils, and they in turn consist of great federated bodies, like the General Federation of Women's Clubs, the W. C. T. U. and many others. Since attaining political equality new groups have been formed and new purposes formulated. A Conference on the Cause and Cure of War held in Washington, D. C., in 1925 comprised nine organizations with a membership totaling some 5,000,000 voters. The deliberations of groups like this must have more weight than when they had no other weapon than appeal. To be compared, or perhaps contrasted, with this meeting was a National Defense Conference, including different bodies of women, not nearly so numerous, who were aiming at a nationwide educational campaign to show that in war-preparedness lies the best insurance of peace. (The peaceful influence of Germany's war-preparedness was probably not mentioned as an argument.) In world politics the establishment of peace is the largest single issue for which women are working at present, though they have various aims, as indicated by nature of their many international organizations, new and old. A comparatively new one is the International Federation of University Women, whose third biennial conference, recently held in Christiania, Norway, was attended by 300 delegates, representing twenty national branches. An international conference of women engineers, with forty delegates present, shows forcibly the widening in range of occupations open to women. The International Congress of Working Women has an immense membership. As to women in industry, the salient fact is the increase of married workers. Lorine Pruette, author of 'Women and Leisure', states that: "Since 1910 there has been a total increase for all women in industry of only 7 per cent., while for married women the increase is 41 per cent." Also that: "In the professions married women have increased by 62 per cent., as against 38 per cent. for all women." We have now about eight and a half million women wage earners -- or, shall we say, wage getters? -- with over two million married. A study made by Virginia Collier for Bureau of Vocational Information gives instances of successful combination of motherhood and a career, in work including salesmanship, teaching, the arts, social work, law, medicine, research and administration, with salaries up to $27,000. Married or single, the women are becoming more numerous in industry, decreasing only in agriculture and domestic service. Over 5,000 are engaged in life insurance, many earning salaries from $5,000 to $12,000, some over $25,000. The establishment of the Women's Association of Commerce of the United States shows something of their number and importance. Miss Vail Anderson, recently appointed assistant cashier in the Chase National Bank, is said to be the first woman in an executive position in a Wall Street banking institution; but that financial stronghold has for years has a woman editor -- Mrs. C. G. Wyckoff -- on 'The Magazine of Wall Street', who has now acquired a minority ownership in the periodical. Another successful woman, Mrs. Lucy C. Thomas, now Mrs. Ament, owns and manages 'The New York Telegraph'. Mrs. Rachel Neill of Orange, N. J., personally runs a planing mill at the age of 70, and Mrs. F. M. Jones of Tacoma, Wash., has been elected head of the Northwestern Lumber Company at 77. Miss M. E. Dillon is Vice President and general manager of the Brooklyn Borough Gas Company, a $5,000,000 corporation; Mrs. L. M. Gilbreth, the mother of eleven children, is America's leading woman industrial engineer. EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS There is certainly a new spirit among women. A recent striking example in the educational field was given by Miss Rena Rockwell, head of the department of history in Elmira City High School. The Board of Education allowed a larger salary to a man teacher in her department, whereat she obtained a peremptory order of mandamus compelling equalization. The Judge held that the case showed discrimination on an account WOMAN'S ACHIEVEMENTS SINCE THE FRANCHISE 11 of sex, in violation of New York State statutes relating to equal pay for equal work. Gainsborough's portrait of an eighteenth century lady. “The Honorable Mistress Graham.” The picture is reproduced as an example of feminine personality and attire in long by-gone days, before the Feminist Movement had arisen In education women are making increasing progress, as students, as teachers and professors, as authors of textbooks and initiators of new educational ventures. Marietta Johnson's admirable and progressive schools in Fairhope, Al., and Greenwich, Conn., are showing their wide influence through the opening of many similar ones in other parts of the country. Cora Wilson Stewart of Kentucky, their "Moonlight School Lady," received the 1924 'Pictorial Review' award of $5,000 for her great service. Beginning in Rowan County, Kentucky, she opened the scattered public schools of the mountains for evening sessions for adults, the teachers giving their services voluntarily. Only on moonlight nights were the mountain roads passable. Men and women up to eighty years of age eagerly took advantage of the opportunity, and the work has now spread over a large part of the United States. In Germany, the first woman Professor has been appointed, Frau Baerting of Jena. In Japan, Dr. Tomi Wada is the first woman to receive appointment on the staff of the Imperial University at Fukwoka. In France, Miss Chloe Owings became a Doctor of the Sorbonne, her thesis being on juvenile delinquency, Miss Owings is now director of the Protective Measures Division of American Social Hygiene Association. A new step in education is the opening of the Institute for the Coordination of Women's Interests, at Smith College, under Ethel Puffer Howes, in recognition of the difficulties before the trained woman worker who wishes to harmonize marriage and motherhood with her career. Along the same line of development is the rapid increase of the "Nursery School" or "Play School," taking children at age as low as eighteen months. Smith has such a Nursery School, Vassar has a Summer School for same work, and Teachers College of New York is carrying on research in similar lines. This increased interest in child study and "pre-school" education marks an improvement in parental responsibility as well as the economic activities of mothers. How far the use of the ballot has directly affected this side of the problem must be determined from the extension of 12 CURRENT HISTORY, OCTOBER, 1927 such provision for children in the public school system. We find women also in unlooked-for lines. Miss Erna Fergusson, for instance, is head of a guide service in New Mexico; she is thoroughly trained in archaeology, geology and the history and customs of the Pueblo people. Other women are striking out new work for themselves, as two young women in New York who have made good in their "Book Post Service." An astonishing number are found in aviation, and Miss Helen Schultz, at twenty-three, owns and manages a sixteen-car 'bus line in Mason City, Iowa. Of women in science Mme. Curie remains the most notable--her income, by the way, being given in Time of Jan. 17, 1927, as but $1,500. In this field also we find Florence R. Sabin, physiologist of Johns Hopkins, the first woman honored with a life membership in the National Academy of Science; and Annie J. Cannon, curator of Astronomical Photographs at Harvard, who is the third woman elected to the American Philosophical Society and the first who has received the Oxford degree of Doctor of Science. Miss Cannon has found and catalogued 225,217 stars. In applied science we find an International Society of Women Engineers, which has already been mentioned. Miss. E. Clarke, transmission expert of the General Electric Company of Schenectady, N.Y., was delegate to a recent conference of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers and read a paper on high-power transmission. Among women explorers Mrs. Delia K. Akely stands high; she was formerly the wife of Mr. Carl Akely and traveled with him in Africa. She was a good shot, bringing down the biggest elephants, and once saved the life of her husband, whom later she divorced. She has since been across the Dark Continent alone with her safari of blacks. She is described as grayhaired, of slight physique, but competently pursues her way, securing specimens for the Brooklyn Museum. Largely similar is the work of Marguerite Harrison, who assisted in the preparation of that Persian epic "Grass," accompanying the daring procession; and of Mrs. Johnson, who accompanies her husband in his photographic adventures in wild places. In athletics also women are gaining. We have not only vigorous girls but stalwart mothers, as evidenced by the channel-swimming feat of Gertrude Ederle, who was soon followed by Mrs. Amelia G. Corson, aged 27 and the mother of two young children. Mrs. G. W. Wightman, who has five children, won three titles in the indoor championship tennis tournament of 1927, singles, doubles, and mixed doubles. In golf, in tennis, in long-distance walking, the record of women rises. There have always been women athletes from the days of ancient Crete, and the savage past, but they are being rediscovered now. Not only in strength but in courage are women gaining, as is reflected so sharply in current literature. Our heroines no longer faint on Reginald's breast, but frequently rescue Reginald when he needs it. They are no longer blushing maidens of sixteen, but unblushing matrons of all periods of life. In Rose Macaulay's delightful novel, Dangerous Ages, the charming "leading lady" who slips out in her pajamas for a bath in a woodland pool, and breakfasts in a tree, is forty-three; while the other ladies, all dangerous, are her young daughter and her middle-aged mother. The only age considered "safe" is that of the great-grandmother. LITERATURE, DRAMA, AND ART Literature has long been an art in which women have distinguished themselves, from the poems of Sappho to those of Edna St. Vincent Millay, whose Renascence, written before she was twenty, was the poetic sensation of the year. These recent years have shown much distinctly modern work in verse by women, as by Hilda Doolittle, leader of the "Imagists," or in distinctive work on more permanent lines. This poetic output covers a wide range, from the nonsense rhymes by Carolyn Wells to the deeply serious poems of the late Amy Lowell, distinguished both as poet and critic. Many names stand out, as Olive Dargan, Florence Wilkinson, Sara Teasdale, Winifred Wells, Anna Hempstead Branch and Alice Kilmer, whose Poor King's Daughter was even "a best seller" in non-fiction. But fiction is the main avenue of expression among women, as it is among men. Ann Parrish won in the Harper's Prize Novel contest for 1925, with The Perennial Bachelor; the year before Margaret Wilson won it with The Able McLaughlins; Inez Haynes Irwin won an O. Henry Memorial prize; and Martha Ostenso, for her novel Wild Geese, won the $13,500 jointly awarded by the Pictorial Review, Famous Players-Lasky and Dodd, Mead & Co. Doubleday, Page & Co. described as their "four aces" in one recent year So Big, by Edna Ferber; Love, by "Elizabeth"; Barren Ground, by Ellen Glasglow and The Constant WOMAN'S ACHIEVEMENTS SINCE THE FRANCHISE 13 Nymph, by Margaret Kennedy. Edith Wharton still holds her high place in American letters; Mary Johnston, Mary Austin, Gertrude Atherton keep up their output; Agnes Repplier and Ida Tarbell are putting out fine work. Anne Douglas Sedgwick has followed her charming Little French Girl by The Old Countess. Among later names is the delightful Eleanor Mercein, who has given us a fresh vision of romance and humor, beauty and honor, among the Basques; and Beatrice Demarest Lloyd, who has an exquisite literary touch. In other countries, also, women are doing fine work in literature. Selma Lagerlöf, once taker of the Nobel prize, lately produced her much-praised Marbaca; there are many in England showing new angles in modern thought. Here I should mention the late Ellen Key, the world-honored, of whom Georg Brandes said: "Ellen Key has influenced women as no one else," and whom Maeterlinck called "the good, the great, the noble Ellen Key." In France has been established Le Prix Femina, it being felt that the Academy was slow in doing justice to women. This new tribunal, which offers a prize of 5,000 francs for best work in verse or prose, has shown its impartiality so far by giving its award to but five women competitors. In dramatic writing we find again a wide range of work. Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote the "book" for Deems Taylor's new American opera, The King's Henchman. Elisabeth Marbury is both playwright and agent, and political manager as well; and, topping a list of others of varying degree, stands Anne Nichols, whose Abie's Irish Rose has brought her over five million dollars, not including movie rights! Acting is an art in which women have won high distinction, and the American stage gives them due honor. We have as yet no equal to Duse or Bernhardt, but we are proud of Mary Shaw, actress, lecturer and feminist, who has done so much to bring us the work of Ibsen and of "G.B.S." Minnie Maddern Fiske is still at work, not merely on the stage, but for the protection of animals. She wishes to have "outlawed" the cruelty of steel-jawed traps as used by fur hunters. "Humane" work among women is nobly meant, but so long as women are the unremonstrating market of the fur trade it does not get far. There are actresses of high ability in plenty, and as to the screen, never was there such a "cloud of witnesses" to the drawing power of beauty. Nazimova is even greater as a pantomimist than in what we now pathetically distinguish as "the spoken 14 CURRENT HISTORY, OCTOBER, 1927 drama," and another distinguished actress and beautiful woman is Pauline Frederick, who has lately returned to the stage, scoring a tremendous hit in Madame X in London, where she was compared to Ellen Terry and Mrs. Pat Campbell. A successful actress in both England and America is Eva Le Gallienne, who has recently founded the Civic Repertory Theatre in New York, "to produce fine plays in true repertory at low prices." This furnishes continuous employment to actors forty weeks in the year. The undertaking is so successful that there is a demand for similar theatres elsewhere. Jessie Bonstelle of the Community Theatre in Detroit, after sixteen years' experience in a stock company, has established six a nnual scholarships, two in dramatic courses, two in production and two in dancing. Dancing has become more widely popular as an art since Isadora Duncan showed us what may be compared to "free verse" in the formerly measured steps. It has new forms, new names, new freedoms. Agna Enters, for instance, calls her performances "compositions in dance form," described as "dance, pantomime, drama - something more." In music women continue to shine as performers, do increasingly well as composers, and are becoming conductors. Margaret Dessoff was leader of a concert of Schola Cantorum in New York City, February, 1927. Ethel Leginska, who played in concert at six, and made her professional début at sixteen, has conducted in such first-class orchestras abroad as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Munich Konzertverein, and the Orchestra of the Paris Conservatoire. On Jan. 25, 1925, she conducted the New York Symphony Concert at Carnegie Hall. There is a Woman's Symphony Orchestra of Philadelphia, founded by Mabel Swift Ewer, with Florence Haenle, violinist, as concert master; and as an instance of true American enterprise we have Mrs. A. M. Carter, who has given us the Hollywood Bowl. This majestic stadium at Los Angeles is on sixty- five acres, valued at $1,500,000, and in 1925 the attendance rose to 220,000. Mary Garden, eminent both as singer and actress, has become Director of the Chicago Opera House, and our latest star is the young and lovely Marian Talley of Kansas. Olga Samaroff, the great pianist, has risen to further heights by becoming musical critic on The New York Evening Post. Of her, at least, it will not be said that she writes of something she does not know and can not do. There is perhaps no outstanding work among women painters and sculptors, though we have good names in both arts, too many to count here, with Cecelia Beaux still holding her high place. As an achievement of youth we may mention Miss Marsue Burrows of New York, who, at fifteen, had two miniatures accepted at the Paris Salon - the youngest exhibitor on record. ATTAINMENT IN MEDICINE AND LAW Women in medicine would have shown more marked attainment but for the discrimination against them as internes in hospital practice. There are now five hospitals, staffed entirely by women, which will help to amend this. Dr. Florence E. Kraker has been appointed specialist in maternal hygiene in The Children's Bureau; Dr. Blanche N. Epier, the United States Public Health Bureau, has been given the place of contract physician for Coast Stations -the first woman so appointed. The practice of law seems more popular. We have some twenty-six hundred women lawyers, the youngest, apparently being Miss C. H. Buck of California, admitted at twenty-one. From these rise many judges, high among whom we must place Kathryn Sellers, Judge of the Juvenile Court in Washington, D. C., who, after six years' valuable service, was recently re-elected. Judge Florence Allen, of the Ohio Supreme Court, is the only woman in the world to sit on a court of last resort. Judge Edith Anderson of Miami, Fla., has a husband who is also a judge-the only instance in the country. Miss Grace M. Eddy of Wisconsin is "Special Assistant to United States Attorney" in New York City. Miss Susan Brandeis, daughter of Associate Justice Brandeis, has been admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court; and so has Violette N. Andrews, a colored woman, after her three years' previous practice before the Supreme Court of Illinois. It is difficult to give figures in moral progress or regression, but if divorce is any indication of our moral status we show an increase which speaks volumes. Our average previous to 1922 shows a gain of 30 per cent. in five years, i.e., 6 per cent. a year; but census returns for 1923 show an increase of 11 per cent. over 1922. In that year we had one divorce to seven marriages. When besides the frequency of divorce we find the duration of the matrimonial experiment becoming less and less, in many cases not lasting a year, it is not surprising to go a step further and find that there are in Boston, besides the regular hospitals, five lying-in hospitals for unmarried mothers. *[Marked Copy]* EQUAL RIGHTS "MEN AND WOMEN SHALL HAVE EQUAL RIGHTS THROUGHOUT THE UNITED STATES AND EVERY PLACE SUBJECT TO ITS JURISDICTION" Amendment to the United States Constitution now before Congress Safeguarding Interests of American Women A Tribute to Charlotte Perkins Gilman 44-Hour Work Wee Law Contested In Pennsylvania July 1, 1938 NATIONAL WOMAN'S PARTY Washington, D. C. Vol. 24, No. 13 Price Five Cents 282 EQUAL RIGHTS July 1, 1938 Equal Rights Official Organ of the NATIONAL WOMAN'S PARTY Capitol Hill Washington, D. C. Phone Atlantic 1210 Published Semi-Monthly at 144 B Street, N. E., Washington, D. C. and Printed at 406 W. Redwood Street, Baltimore, Md. Entered as second-class matter at the post-office at Washington, D. C., under the Act of March 3, 1879. Subscription, $1.00 a Year Foreign Subscription, $1.50 HELEN HUNT WEST Editor CONTRIBUTORS ALMA LUTZ EMILY PERRY EDITH HOUGHTON HOOKER ETHEL ADAMS CROSBY, Circulation Chairman GERTRUDE I. GEORGE, Advertising Manager ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVES MACFARLAND AND HEATON, 287 Fourth Avenue, New York, N. Y. NATIONAL COUNCIL OF THE WOMAN'S PARTY Chairman, Mrs. Stephen Pell, N. Y. Vice-Chairmen: Gail Laughlin, Me. Anita Pollitzer, S. C. Jane Norman Smith, N. Y. Secretary, Mrs. Harvey W. Wiley, D. C. Treasurer, Laura M. Berrien, Ga. Ethel Adamson, N. J. Nina Allender, D. C. Edwina Austin Avery, D. C. Rebekah S. Greathouse, D. C. Elsie M. Hill, Conn. Florence Bayard Hilles, Del. Edith Houghton Hooker, Md. Inez Haynes Irwin, N. Y. Elizabeth T. Kent, Calif. Lola Maverick Lloyd, Ill. Alma Lutz, Mass. Burnita Shelton Matthews, Miss. Mrs. Frederick L. Ransome, Calif. Mary Murray, N. Y. Dora G. Ogle, Md. Alice Paul, N. J. Doris Stevens, N. Y. Betty Gram Swing, Conn. Anne Bayard Underwood, D. C. Margaret C. Williams, Conn. Clara Snell Wolfe, Ohio NATIONAL WOMAN'S PARTY OBJECT To secure for women complete equality with men under the law and in all human relationships-in particular to secure the adoption of the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, and the adherence of the United States to the Equal Rights Treaty. The Woman's Party also supports the proposed Equality Amendments to the Covenant of the League of Nations. THE PROPOSED EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT "Art. 1-Men and women shall have Equal Rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction. "Art. 2-Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation." Introduced Senate-By Senator Townsend (Del.) and Senator Burke, (Neb.), Feb. 5, 1937. (Senate Joint Resolution No. 65). House-By Representative Ludlow, (Ind.), Jan. 5, 1937, (House Joint Resolution No. 1). Present Status Senate-Before Judiciary Committee, recommitted May 5, 1938, on motion of Senator William E. Borah ; reported to Senate by Senate Judiciary Committee March 21, 1938 ; favorable report by sub-judiciary committee June 23, 1937. House-Before Judiciary Committee ; favorable report by sub-judiciary committee June 16, 1937. THE EQUAL RIGHTS TREATY "Art. 1-The contracting States agree that upon the ratification of this Treaty men and women shall have Equal Rights throughout the territory subject to their respective jurisdictions." Signed By Cuba, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Uruguay, at Montevideo, December, 1933. PROPOSED EQUALITY AMENDMENTS TO COVENANT OF LEAGUE OF NATIONS "The members of the League undertake that in their respective countries the right of vote shall not be denied or abridged on the ground of sex." "The members of the League undertake that in their respective countries there shall be no distinction based on sex in their law and practice regarding nationality." "The members of the League undertake that in their respective countries men and women shall have equal rights in all other fields." "The members of the League undertake that there shall be both men and women, with full voting powers, in all delegations to the Council and Assembly of the League and to all Conferences under the auspices of the League." Present Status Before the League of Nations Committee on Status of Women. Differentials In Justice ACCORDING to The Woman Worker, published by the Women's Bureau of the United States Department of Labor, Minimum Wage orders for men, women and minors were scheduled to become effective in Oklahoma on May 1 for nine industries-laundries, cleaning and dyeing establishments, hotels, restaurants, retail mercantile, wholesaling and distributing, office buildings (service occupations), automotive industry (sales and service), and retail drugs (registered pharmacists). "In spite of administrative efforts toward 'equal pay for equal work,' " says The Woman Worker, "lower rates have been set for women than for men in the six industries which are important employers of women." A scale of wages paid men and women workers in identical industries under identical conditions, except for the difference in the maximum number of hours they are permitted to work, shows a differential much to the disadvantage of women. The appointed board, it appears, is empowered to fix the hours of workers, regardless of Oklahoma State law. The board, although empowered to fix the same number of hours for women as for men, according to the Labor Department Bulletin, has preferred to fix the hours of women at 48 and those for men at 54. Illustrating, the Labor Department Bureau lists a scale of minimum weekly wages provided in Oklahoma by board orders for a standard week. In nearly all listings the minimum is less for women that for men, but at the same time, women are compelled by the board to work fewer hours than men, which undoubtedly accounts for the differential. Considering the situation in a practical light employers in restaurants, laundries, hotels or any other business, who employ persons for specified tasks to be performed at certain periods, will not employ women for these tasks if they are limited in the number of hours they can work, while their male competitors are allowed to work a greater number of hours. It is all very well to say that employers will or will not hire women or men. If an employer is in need of a worker who is free to work 54 hours a week, and only a man is permitted to work this length of time, it is the height of absurdity to say that he will hire a woman. Business is not run on that plan. Restaurants, for instance, do not close an hour or two earlier merely for the privilege of employing women, even though the boards set the minimum wage at less than that set for men. They hire those who are free to work when the restaurant can get the business. The fact that the board gives to men workers the advantage of permitting them to work 54 hours, and restricts women to 48 hours during the same period, gives to men an advantage over women in securing employment. Statistics are not required to establish the fact that these differentials as to hours, restricting women to fewer hours than the hours men are permitted to work, are detrimental to women. Anyone who has ever employed anyone and anyone who has ever been employed knows this to be true. How long will it take those interested in labor to determine the very simple fact that Labor is Those Who Work, regardless of sex ; that the same work is required to do the same job and should therefore be performed under similar regulations and paid for at the same rate? It is just a matter of common sense and justice. This combination has successfully solved more problems than have all the boards in the world. Woman's Journal Dec 31, 1904 p 417 Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman resigns her official connection with the Womans Journal, after a year of generous and unpaid service. Her department has been read with lively interest, both by those who approve her ideas and by those who do not; and we believe it has done good to both classes of readers. Mrs. Gilman will still be an occasional contributor to our columns. 286 EQUAL RIGHTS July 1, 1938 A Tribute To Charlotte Perkins Gilman SHE WHO IS TO COME: A woman––in so far as she beholdeth Her one Beloved's face; A mother––with a great heart that enfoldeth The children of the Race; A body, free and strong, with that high beauty That comes of perfect use, is built thereof; A mind where Reason ruleth over Duty, And Justice reigns with Love; A self-poised royal soul, brave, wise and tender, No longer blind and dumb; A Human Being, of unknown splendor, Is she who is to come! CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN. AGAIN we pay tribute to the memory of the valiant soul of Charlotte Perkins Gilman on the the anniversary of her birth, July 3, 1860. What her life and work has meant to thousands of women––unawakened before they knew her––there can be no way of measuring. She was inherently an awakener. The apathy, the bland acquiescence of women to their stifling subordination always puzzled and baffled her. "They cannot think new thoughts," she said often, musingly, "they have not the initiative, nor the courage nor the desire." In a fragment from her poem "Heroism" she writes : "But the best courage we have ever shown Is daring to cut loose and think alone. Our sun's wide glare, our heaven's shining blue, We owe to fog and dust they fumble through ; And our rich wisdom that we treasure so Shines from the thousand things that we don't know. But to think NEW–– it takes a courage grim As led Columbus over the world's rim." Advanced as we think we are today, when any woman may gain a college education, choose her profession and follow it––all of which was impossible one hundred years ago––there is still the great majority of unthinking women, unable to " think new thoughts" and who still feel that a woman's whole life must be limited to her home. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, that staunch Feminist of the days of early struggle, was often amazed by the inability of women to see the ignominy of their submerged lives and attributed it to their early religious training. But that training was only a small factor of their lack of mental vision. The real causes were custom and tradition. So the greatest work still needed is to sweep out those cobwebs and awaken women to the understanding that tradition has no claims on them. To this work Mrs. Gilman devoted her entire life. And her magnetism was so great that her listeners could not fail to be moved profoundly, could not fail to begin to think, to wonder and to question and finally, to awaken. It is thrilling to realize that thousands of women must have found their first dawning idea of what their lives might become, through her inspiring words and personality. In her inexhaustible zeal she had traveled and lectured in nearly every State in the Union, alone and paying her own expenses of which frequently the returns did not recompense the cost. That was not of the slightest consequence to her ; the purpose was––to awaken women. She was building a new world by teaching women what this world might be when women had their share in building it. Her finest memorial exists in the increasing number of advancing women and the publication of such an able and valuable periodical as our beloved EQUAL RIGHTS.––HARRIET HOWE. July 1, 1931 EQUAL RIGHTS 285 A Feminist Thinks It Over By ALMA LUTZ I WAS gratified to read a few weeks ago that that very dignified, scholarly organization, the American Association of University Women, had actually gotten stirred up over something relating to women. According to press reports, a great deal of righteous indignation was expressed because able women are not holding the important, higher-salaried positions in colleges and universities. The situation is really appalling, if studied at all. What surprises me is that this organization, of which I too am a member, has never before given this subject serious consideration. What focused attention on it was probably the appointment of a man last year to the Presidency of Mt. Holyoke, a college, founded by a woman, which heretofore has always had a woman president. There are many able, intelligent, scholarly women, well qualified to fill any of the higher posts in the education field. And why aren't they filling them? Simply because as a whole women have no self-respect, confidence, or expectancy of being accepted on an equal basis with men. They cling to their traditional handicaps, and in this respect the highly educated, well-to-do, who should know better, are often the worst sinners. In fact the way some college women shy at the word equality shows that they have a decided psychological handicap which needs to be handled before they can hope to have their share of higher educational posts or anything else. During the past hundred years, women have advanced remarkably in spite of themselves, but they could have advanced much farther and much more quickly, if more of them had not been afraid of being called selfish and militant if they looked after their Mrs. Valentine Winters The ranks of the stalwarts of the National Woman's Party have again been broken in the passing on June 13 in Dayton. Ohio, of Mrs. Valentine Winters, of the Woman's Party National Council. The news was received at Alva Belmont House in a telegram from her husband, to Alice Paul, founder of the Party and long a friend of Mrs. Winters. Miss Paul wired Mr. Winters as follows: "Please accept heartfelt sympathy from the many colleagues and friends of Mrs. Winters in the National Woman's Party. We counted her among those who have done the most in our generation in the movement for a better position for women. We loved her as a friend and admired her as a brave and generous colleague." Mrs. Winters, who in 1912 was a member of the Executive Board of the Dayton City Suffrage Association, affiliated with the National American Woman Suffrage Association, came to Washington in 1913 to participate in the Suffrage Parade. She became a member of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, which later became the National Woman's Party. In the final drive for Suffrage, she was a member of the Woman's Party band of women carrying the cause to the very gates of the White House--the White House Pickets. In 1928, with Doris Stevens and others, Mrs. Winters attended the Sixth Pan American Conference in Havana, where she launched the Equal Rights Treaty. This Inter American participation was probably the most dramatic of her feminist activities of later years. Until three years ago she was Ohio State Chairman, Woman's Party. Devoted to the cause of women and the task of raising their status nationally and internationally, Mrs. Winters contributed of her time, talents and funds to the cause in which she believed. In her passing the Woman's Party has sustained a distinct loss and its individual members have lost a friend. Janet L. Fotheringham October, 1939 EQUAL RIGHTS 117 Mrs. Wiley Received Honorary Degree Hanover College, Hanover, Indiana, has conferred on Mrs. Harvey W. Wiley, widow of the late Dr. Wiley of pure food fame, and a vice chairman of the National Woman's Party, an honorary M.A. Degree. The degree was conferred in appreciation for her contribution to the passage last year of the new Federal Pure Food and Drug Act, and for her many other activities including her work in assisting Dr. Wiley, called "the father of the Food and Drug Act" of 1906. Dr. Wiley was a graduate of Hanover and a member of the College Board for thirty years. The citation in connection with bestowing this signal honor reads: "Mrs. Wiley was graduated from George Washington University in 1897. From that time until her marriage in 1911 she was connected with the Library of Congress. In her married life she identified herself with the progressive organizations and institutions of Washington. Among other high honors she held that of President of the District of Columbia Federation of Women's Clubs, President of the Women's City Club, Secretary of the Washington Institute of Mental Hygiene. She was for three years Chairman of the National Woman's Party and at the present time is Chairman of Indian Welfare of the General Federation of Women's Clubs. For the five years preceding the passage of the recent Federal Food, Drugs, and Cosmetics Act, she gave unsparingly of her time in addressing organizations, speaking at every COngressional hearing on the Act and acting In Our Mail Bag From Cahavn Ranch, Cave Creek, Arizona, comes the following interesting letter to Caroline L. Babcock, Congressional Committee Campaign Secretary: Dear Mrs. Babcock : In the appendix, Congressional Record, February 16, I have read your statement on the life and work of Susan B. Anthony, printed by request of Senator Lynn J. Frazier, of North Dakota. I think the following statement may interest you. My father, Beverly Waugh Jones, Ed Marsh and Buell Hall were the inspectors of election who allowed Susan B. Anthony, Mrs. "Major" Maurice Leyden and other women to cast the first woman's vote in this country. That was in the early 70's, in the old 8th ward, Rochester, N. Y. The three inspectors were all young men under 25 years of age and were Civil War Veterans. The incident created a furore. The inspectors were arrested, lodged in hail, tried, and released on payment of a fine of $50.00 each. Susan B. Anthony published several books. She autographed and gave my father one. The Anthony family--old Colonel Anthony, Susan b. and sister Mary lived on Madison Street, just around the corner from West Avenue (formerly Buffalo Street) where I was born. Mary Anthony was my school teacher about 58 years ago. Quite often I visited in the Anthony home with Susan B., Mary and the Colonel. Years after this voting incident it became my pleasure to register and vote Mary Anthony in the same Ward and same Precinct where my father allowed her sister Susan B. to vote many years before. Mary, when asked her age, announced "over thirty," which of course was the truth, though at the time Mary was 70 or over. Susan B. Anthony and her sister Mary were splendid examples of our American women. Please believe me. Cordially yours, (Signed) THEODORE BEVERLY JONES. Publications Equal Rights Amendment, Questions and Answers............... $.10 50 for $1.50 Glimpse of Laws Shows Need for Equal Rights--- .05 By BURNITA SHELTON MATTHEWS I Appeal to Women for United Support................................... .05 By JOSEPHA WHITNEY 50 for $1.00, 500 for $5 Can Working Women Marry?........................................ .05 By HELEN ROBBINS BITTERMANN Working Women Speak-...................... .05 The Case for Women Jurors........................................................... .10 A Comparison of the Political and Civil Rights of Men and Women in the United States.................................. .20 By EMMA WOLD A Few Facts About the National Woman’s Party....................... .01 LARGE QUANTITIES AT REDUCED BATES You Can’t Do This to Women-....................................................05 By BYRON McG. WEST Dealing with proposal of Wage-Security Plan to “Put Married Women Back in the Home” 50 for $1, 500 for $6.00 Send Orders to NATIONAL WOMAN’S PARTY 144 B Street Northeast Washington, D. C. The Personality of Charlotte Perkins Gilman by Harriet Howe SEVENTY-NINE years ago, on July 3, there was born in Hartford, Connecticut, a while whose early on two continents. The first years were spent not only amid severe deprivations, but under what would now be considered - incredible - repressions of Puritanical rigidity of ideas and conduct. It may well be that there early restrictions were what led her ever active mind to weigh, consider and judge the enormous sufferings of our human kind and to discover by analysis ignorance and lack of though and reasoning, and that is it perfectly possible to renounce all these mistakes and learn to think clearly, behave intelligently, and live happier, at any moment that we chose to arouse ourselves to undertake our own recovery. Such a discovery as this was enough to fire such an eager soul as hers to high exaltation. So that at sixteen she consecrated her life to helping humanity to recover its blunders, from which purpose she never swerved for one moment during her lifetime. The result was, naturally, the development, of an extraordinary personality, dominated by absolute fearlessness, logical reasoning, profoundly just conclusions and an incredible amount of energy and determination. In discussing her youth she insisted that she was not born with this inexorable energy of purpose; she declared that, up to her sixteenth year she was a careless, "shiftless," indifferent, slouchy individual, but discovered her fault by overhearing adverse criticism which hurt her pride and stung her info rebuilding her character with sheer might and main, disciplining her own mind with greater severity than would have been tolerated from any other source. This, in view her of life work, is hard to believe, until one examines her portraits, of which there are many in her autobiography, where, even as early as eight years, her face gives a striking impression of dynamic intelligence and extraordinary will power. Added to all this, was in inherited aptitude for teaching and preaching. To these ends she looked forward--at sixteen--when most girls are absorbed in beau and balls--she looked forward happily to lifetime of study and social service in the widest sense, with no rewards whatever, in her belief that "life meant giving", as all nature gives and gives endlessly, and that one should give all and ask nothing. Her idea of the business and mankind was to forward evolution, we humans being the only creatures capable of doing so with intention and purpose, conscious of our powers. Paleontologists are delving into the "past" of humanity and learn our origins and find the devious ways by which we reached our present glory of walking on our kind legs and thereby getting indigestion, appendicitis, not to mention fallen arches, but how many are striving to map a path "ahead" and make it a matter of vital personal concern that we shall go "forward", instead of running in circles and getting nowhere? Human beings are self-conscious and sex-conscious to a morbid degree, but are almost devoid of race-consciousness, without which all human progress is left to accident or chance, or powers of upstart dictators. We need to have care and thought as to what effect our behavior "now, will" have to "future" lives. This race-consciousness was hers to absorbing degree. She saw that there was no hope for future world peace unless there was intelligent limitation of population with due regard to the resources of each country. she saw that human progress has been retarded for thousands of years by the submergence of the mothers of the race by limiting them to sex and housework. At the time her name first began to be known, the subject of "woman suffrage" was a burning issue supposed to mean freedom for women and therefore "dangerous," but she insisted that political freedom was not enough and that read freedom would only come through complete economic independence. to plodding minds her ideas were meteoric, fantastic. At her lectures, among the departing audiences were frequently heard whispers, "she is 200 years ahead of her time." She grieved over the helplessness of people unable to realize their own plight. "Would they but 'see'?" she cried aloud, often. She grieved greatly over the pitiful loss of so much genius to the world, the dead and buried genius in the living bodies of children misunderstood and mismanaged by untrained and incompetent mothers, guided only their 'mis'-guided "mother-love." The word valiant never had a more deserving object. It belongs to her life -- inseparably. MRS. GILMAN'S SCORN STRIKES 'MASCULISM' ——— Lecturer Admits That the Word, Like Some of Her Ideas, Is New. ——— DEPLORES TOO MUCH "HE" ——— At "His" Door She Lays The Three Greatest Evils of the World, War, Drink, and the Social Evil. ——— Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who last week completed her series of lectures on the Larger Feminism, began a second series dealing with the, till now, larger, "masculism," with a lecture on "Our Male Civilization" at the Hotel Astor yesterday. She approached the manly part of mankind with the same friendly attitude that characterized her talks in the earlier series, laying triumphantly at the door of the He house of humanity the three greatest evils of the world—war, intemperance, and the social evil. There were only two hes present to hear her do it. The shes—some fifty of them—applauded with the gleeful giggling of sympathetic womanhood. As in her earliest lectures, Mrs. Gilman deplored the fact that there was too much man in humanity. Art, literature, education, religion, and every feature of human development, she said, was monopolized by man exclusively. When woman's influence grew stronger in anything that object was said, in a ton of derogation, to be "effeminate"—having too much femininity; whereas men used the word "emasculate" in the same derogatory sense as signifying too little of the masculine. The world's literature was full of studies and comments on feminine aspects of life, but the masculine aspects were not discussed, they being considered innocently by man as merely male and therefore human. Word New to Printer. "Why, the very printer who printed the programme of this lecture," said Mrs. Gilman, "objected to the word 'Masculism'. He hadn't heard of it before, though he had of feminism. The word, like the idea, was new." To get at the distinctive qualities common to all males Mrs. Gilman selected a stag as representative of the higher mammals; a tiger (which, for the purpose of her argument, she later changed to a lion) as representative of the carnivorous animals; a stork as representative of birds; a frog as a reptile, and a cricket as an insect. Man himself, like woman without the ballot, wasn't represented in her illustrative male parliament. In every case, she said, the male of those species showed visible distinctions of secondary sex decorations not possessed by the female. The stag gloried in his splendid horns, the tiger— oh, we had better say the lion—in his majestic mane, the male stork and frog in something or other, and the male cricket in its musical apparatus. "Further," announced Mrs. Gilman, "the male makes a different noise, deeper and more of it, to attract the female. The male partridge drums on trees; the lion roars; the cricket sings; male monkeys in South America howl, and the unpleasant feline animal that wakens us at night is a male. Of course, I admit it is also the male canary bird and the male nightingale that sing. "The second male characteristic is the instinct of fight. It is not true that girls fight more than boys. You never find one girl meeting another on the street, squaring off, and announcing, 'I can lick you.' The male of all species has his belligerency. There is a marked distinction between belligerency and courage. The females will fight for their young or for themselves; but they do not fight between themselves, as do the males. You hear of a cock fight, but never of a hen fight—never of a game hen fight," she added in quick qualification. "Combat as a preliminary to mating was so universal that it developed the males' superiority of shoulder strength which we see to-day. "Another characteristic of all male creatures recognized throughout the world's literature has been the male's predominant desire for the female, which has become the dominant male characteristic. The three distinctively masculine traits are thus desire, combat, and self-expression, of which last sex decoration is but a form." Mrs. Gilman explained that she meant nothing invidious by her distinction between sex and race qualities—that it was "just as dignified and noble and necessary to be a male as to be a female —and no more so;" that both were "to be respected in their place and not to be respected out of their place." Taking up a study of our "civilization unchecked ultra-masculinity turned loose upon the world," Mrs. Gilman said that desire stood out "like the Peak of Teneriffe" throughout all history. Helen of Troy, "that well-known lady," was upheld through the ages as an ideal of feminine beauty and blamed for the fall of Troy. Nobody Blamed Paris—Only Helen. "Nobody thought of blaming the meddlesome Paris of the combative Menelaus," said Mrs. Gilman. "Yet Helen was but a figurehead, negatively attractive. They say most wars have been caused by women. Yes, because all men [?] mutual service and harmony in the world's business." Mrs. Gilman asserted that self-expression originated with women in the transition from woman's industries to woman's art, as shown in Indian basket weaving, ornamental pottery, and other primitive women's accomplishment. But what had the masculine element of self-expression done to the world of art? "So long as it was feminine self-expression, art was merely done for the pleasure of it," she said. "The name of the artist never figured. But there came a time when people asked not 'Is it a Minerva?' but 'Is it a Phidias?' Women never have had a line of names. Even when they boast of bearing their maiden names, why, they're only wearing their father's name, bless 'em! The name became a thing to immortalize, to gain glory for. That form of vain-glorious selfishness is a form of self-expression analogous to the self-expression of the splendid antlers of the stag or the singing of the male nightingale. Pride is essentially masculine, the bringing in of the spirit of personal pride in achievement instead of the spirit of human development along all those lovely lines. Women as a sex are quieter and more contented than men, though, of course, there are a thousand personal exceptions." Two of the women presently fell into a protracted and not very quiet wrangle as to whether the decorative work of some Indian women was art of handicraft; each said she had some of it and knew best. Mrs. Gilman warned them to desist, lest the newspapers print only the wrangle and forget the lecture. Her fears were groundless. ——— SOCIETY GIRLS SELL HATS. ——— Also Give Exhibition Dances in Aid of Yorkville Social Centre. The tea dance and hat sale yesterday for the Yorkville Social Centre Club at the Plaza brought out a large number of society women and girls as workers and buyers. Mrs. J. Henry Alexandre, a bride of last November, who recently returned from abroad with Mr. Alexandre, disposed of one hat through selling chances at $80, and the lucky winner, a man, presented it to her. The hats attracted much admiration, and those who supplied or sold them included Mrs. Archibald McCrea, Mrs. Lawrance Dilworth, Mrs. Rene de Milhau, and the Misses Lydia Coit Butler, Ellen Parks, Celia Walters, and Marguerite Janvrin. Miss Helen Frick was Chairman of the committee. The dancing was in the large ballroom and tea tables were placed around the room, leaving the centre for dancing. Those who did exhibition dances were Mrs. Roger Minton, Mrs. J Victor Onativia, Jr., Miss Margery Shannon, Leonie Bispham, Miss Nadine Rubens, and Alfred de Villars. There were six girls in Pierrette costumes selling cigarettes under the management of Miss Helen Rich. Among the girls selling flowers and at the tea tables were Mrs. Bertram Taylor, Miss Gertrude Bovee, and the Misses Margaret Dunlop, Beatrice Raymond, Abby Morrison, Marjory Dodd, Sybil Young, Peggy Kemp, Katharine Oakman, Elizabeth Greene, Mildred Holmes, Anna Carrere, Harriette McAlhin, Amy Bradish Johnson, Barbara Loew, Adelaide Gardiner, and the Misses O'Gorman, daughters of Senator O'Gorman. Mrs. Alfred Bossom headed the Tea Committee and Mrs. Lorenzo Armstrong, and Mrs. George G. Bourne were on subcommittees. The patronesses, most of whom were present, included Mrs. Benjamin N. Duke, Mrs. Archibald H. McCrea, Mrs. Richard Trimble, Mrs. Henry Villard, Mrs. W. R. Bacon, Mrs. C. B. Alexander, Mrs. H. C. Frick, Mrs. H. S. Harkness, Mrs. John Hays Hammond, Mrs. Edwin Holmes, Mrs. George A. Morrison, Jr., and Mrs. R. A. C. Smith. The club, for which the tea and sale was held, holds its meetings four evenings in the week in Public School 66, 415 East Eighty-eighth Street, and children and young people attend it. There are classes for girls, a dancing club, a civic forum, gymnasium classes and amusements. [?]T IS WOMAN VOTERS' PARTY ——— Public Ledger Aug. 9th Represents an Enfranchised Power of Womanhood Sufficient to Turn the Tide of a Presidential Election ——— By CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN Copyright, 1916, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The planks in the national Republican and Democratic platforms this year indorsing the principle of woman suffrage are evidence of the power wielded by the new national organization of women voters of the suffragist States. The subjoined statement of the motives prompting this organization to "hold up" the great voting manhood parties, by a leading woman writer, who champions the "hold-up," is of significance to all professed and casual students of politics. AS A news item we have been told of the formation of a new political party, composed entirely of women voters from the 12 States wherein they may now vote for President. As matter for editorial comment it has been condemned, ridiculed, patronized, approved. The cartoonist has hailed it joyfully, one pleasing picture showing us elephant, moose and jackass, their eyes bulging with astonishment as they note the arrival of their new companion—"a little deer." Nowhere, however, is recognition given to the full importance of this simple and natural step, so quietly taken. A conservative New York paper regards it with horror, as indicating "a sex war," and as justifying "the worst that has ever been said about the danger of giving votes to women." Yet even this alarmist sees only an imaginary portent, not the looming impressiveness of the fact. One can hardly expect of a driven editor wide historic perspective or deep sociological appreciation; nor is the hurried headliner likely to grasp them. Yet this event is so signal an advance, so great a change, a movement of such immense implications, that it deserves our most careful attention. One-fourth of our States now enjoy equal suffrage. This is by no means one-fourth of the population, but it gives a voting power, even of the women alone, sufficient to turn a presidential election. Also the equal suffrage States are largely in the "doubtful" class, not being "solid" like the South, but still in a fluid state— open to conviction. It is a quite conceivable thing that enough of the enfranchised women join this party to cast a deciding vote next November. In view of this possibility the alarmist before quoted, hesitating between extreme abhorrence and a wish not to overestimate the danger and so encourage it, calls the proposed action of the women "political blackmail." This is misuse of language. Blackmail, in our modern usage, is making a victim pay for silence as to his previous record; sometimes with a freshly manufactured record made for the purpose. Now, the woman's party has but one plank—the demand for a Federal amendment granting equal suffrage—and but one method—to vote against the party which does not promote that amendment. This method is precisely that of all men's parties. It is the one simple, legitimate, obvious, necessary way of using the power of the ballot. A body of voters says to a body of legislators, "We want this measure passed. Support it and we [will[?]] support you. Oppose it and we will oppose you." How else can an electorate impose its [?] on its elected public servants? Men have always used this method and it has not been called blackmail. Why is it blackmail merely because women do it? Furthermore, the measure urged is in no way "a sex war." If it was proposed to give the ballot to women and take it away from men that might be called a sex war, not this effort to remove an artificial distinction and bring men and women into closer understanding. Neither is it against the interests of men. It does no harm to men to have women vote, but does them good by helping to establish better conditions for both sexes. The only generalization that can safely be made about the women's vote so far is that women generally favor progressive moral and reform measures. Does any one wish to claim that men generally are opposed to progress, morality and reform? Surely not. The best men and the most women vote in harmony for the best things. The serious side of this new step in politics is quite above such minor bickerings. Here is woman, who hitherto has accompanied man in his upward journey as an indispensable assistant, often a loved and valued one, even sometimes influential, but never an equal in the main work of world improvement. She lived and suffered, or enjoyed, with him according to his methods of government, his ideas of economics, his legal and judicial authority, his methods of education and his social customs. Her position relative to the march of civilization was negligible; her position relative to him varied and improved in proportion to his real progress. In recent times in the most progressive nations women have been coming closer and closer into direct contact with and responsibility for the management of the world. In securing the ballot they hold new power, but the real tool of democracy is organization. It is not as scattered individuals that we promote a desired measure, but by the direct pressure of a large organized solid vote. That is the real seriousness of the woman's party. It marks an epoch in history; an epoch of more importance than many a change in dynasty or geographical discovery. Here we have not only women voting as individuals, but, for the first time on earth, a large organization of women—with power to act. Individual women have had power to do things themselves or to influence a few other persons to do things; but the power of a body of women acting together is a new thing under the sun. Some say that women cannot organize. The superficial answer to that is "See them do it!" The deeper biological answer is that the female is better fitted by nature for combination and mutual service than is the male. The most perfect social groups known are those of the bees and ants, instances of organized motherhood, proofs of the combining power of the female. Let us not fail to observe the crowning glory of this new party. Its single plank is wholly for the benefit of others. The women who are free propose to use their power to enfranchise their sisters. History can show no parallel. 000613 masculine. The world's literature was full of studies and comments on feminine aspects of life, but the masculine aspects were not discussed, they being considered innocently by man as merely male and therefore human. Word New to Printer. "Why, the very printer who printed the programme of this lecture," said Mrs. Gillman, "objected to the word 'masculism': He hadn't heard of it before, though he had of feminism. The word, like the idea, was new." To get at all the distinctive qualities common to all males Mrs. Gillman selected a stag as representative of the higher mammals; a tiger (which, for the purpose of her argument, she later changed to a lion) as representative of the carnivorous animals; a stork as representative of birds; a frog as a reptile, and a cricket as an insect. Man himself, like woman without the ballot, wasn't represented in her illustrative male parliament. In every cause, she said, the male of those species showed visible distinctions of secondary sex decorations not possessed by the female. The stag gloried in his splendid horns, the tiger— oh, we had better say the lion—in his majestic mane, the male stork and frog in something or other, and the male cricket in its musical apparatus. "Further," announced Mrs. Gilman, "the male makes a different noise, deeper and more of it, to attract the female. The male partridge drums on trees; the lion roars; the cricket sings; male monkeys in South America howl, and the unpleasant feline animal that wakens us at night is a male. Of course, I admit it is also the male canary bird and the male nightingale that sting. "The second male characteristic is the instinct of flight. It is not true that girls fight more than boys. You never find one girl meeting another on the street, squaring off, and announcing, 'I can lick you.' The male of all species has his belligerency. There is a marked distinction between belligerency and courage. The females will fight for their young or for themselves; but they do not fight between themselves, as do the males. You hear of a cock fight, but never of a hen fight—never of a game hen fight," she added in quick qualification." Combat as a preliminary to mating was so universal that it developed the males' superiority of shoulder strengthin which we see to-day. "Another characteristic of all male creatures recognized throughout the world's literature has been the male's predominant desire for the female, which has become the dominant male characteristic. The three distinctively masculine traits are thus desire, combat, and self-expression, of which last sex decoration is but a form." Mrs. Gillman explained that she meant nothing invidious by her distinction between sex and race qualities—that it was "just as dignified and noble and necessary to be a male as to be a female— and no more so;" that both were "to be respected in their place and not to be respected out of their place." Taking up a study of our "civilization unchecked ultra-masculinity turned loose upon the world," Mrs. Gillman said that desire stood out "like the Peak of Teneriffe" throughout all history. Helen of Troy, "that well-known lady," was upheld through the ages as an ideal of feminine beauty and blamed for the fall of Troy. Nobody Blamed Paris--Only Helen. "Nobody thought of blaming the meddlesome Paris or the combative Menelaus," said Mrs. Gillman. "Yet Helen was but a figurehead, negatively attractive. They say most wars have been caused by women. Yes, because all men wanted women and warred to get them. To blame women for that is akin to blaming pie for indigestion after raving over 'lovely pie' and eating too much of it. "Woman as the object of man's desire has been blamed for all the evil of man's excessive desire. They never thought of blaming his excessive desire or curbing it. Considerations of justice, honor, peace, and human service, all have been as naught compared to that. That desire has been the predominant chord in a purely masculine culture. " The element of combat, too, has been marked in a broad crimson line throughout our civilization. Solely has a means of sex selection on a purely physiological basis, that is all right; it is better for a race to have the victor as father than the vanquished. But that method of selection fits only the lower stage, where it is valuable; it is wrong when it enters into the higher plane, where physical combat is no longer the real criterion of superiority. It is no longer to the advantage of civilization to use the brutal method of stirpicultural to weed out the unfit and leave a few victors to be the polygamous and promiscuous fathers of the race. Education and constant improvement rather than elimination now brings about the survival of the fittest." "What are the three worst evils of civilization?" asked Mrs. Gillman. And before any of the women philosophers could mention gossip, tale-bearing, envy, malice, or Easter bonnets, she answered: " They are war, intemperance and prostitution. Can any of you question whether any of those are predominantly masculine?" Satisfied feminist laughter showed that none of them could. "War has been defended by men, because its defenders were men," continued Mrs. Gillman. "Its gloried are masculine. Through long association throughout the centuries the pain of war has become associated with the pleasure of love, to which it was usually a preliminary. For uncounted ages struggle and pain were the accompaniment of masculine desire. That accounts for the stern, rugged rapture of war to men. Yet war has been more harmful to the human race than to any other race for animals; for while animals merely fight to kill, man alone not only kills but wipes out entire civilizations. Moreover, the men who go to war are the fit. They leave the unfit, the old and weak and defective at home to breed the next generation. "Sex combat has no place in an economic system. There is no sex value in one grocer's destroying another, though there may have been in one father's destroying another. Who will say that the best business men are the type most fit for civilization--physically, socially, intellectually? "Sex combat, as competition, introduced into business, has been a discordant jarring not all through our civilization. One reason why the other half of humanity should be introduced into the business of the world is because they, the women, lack that instinct of sex combat and have instead an instinct of The dancing was in the large ball-room and tea tables were placed around the room, leaving the centre for dancing. Those who did exhibition dances were Mrs. Roger Minton, Mrs. J. Victor Onativia, Jr. Miss Margery Shannon, Leonie Bispham, Miss Nadine Rubens, and Alfred de Villars. There were six girls in Plerrette costumes selling cigarettes under the management of Miss Helen Rich. Among the girls selling flowers and at the tea tables were Mrs. Betram Tayor, Miss Gertrude Bovee, and the Misses Margaret Dunlop, Beatrice Raymond, Abby Morrison, Marjory Dodd. Sybil Young, Peggy Kemp, Katherine Oakman, Elizabeth Greene, Mildred Holmes, Anna Carrere, Harriette McAlpin, Amy Bradish Johnson, Barbara Loew, Adelaide Gardiner, and the Misses O'Gorman, Mrs. Alfred Bossom headed the Tea Committee and Mrs. Lorenzo Armstrong, and Mrs. George G. Bourne were on subcommittees. the patronesses, most of whom were present, included Mrs. Benjamin N. Duke, Mrs. Archibald H. McCrea, Mrs. Richard Trimble, Mrs. Henry Villard, Mrs. W. R. Bacon, Mrs. C. B. Alexander, Mrs. H. C. Frick. Mrs. H. S. Harkness, Mrs. John Hays Hammond, Mrs. Edwin Holmes, Mrs. George A. Morrison Jr., and Mrs. R. A. C. Smith. The club for which the tea and sale was held, holds its meetings four evenings in the week in Public School 66, 415 East Eighty-eighth Street, and children and young people attend it. There are classes for girls, a dancing club, a civic forum, gymnasium classes and amusements. [?T] IS WOMAN VOTERS' PARTY Public [?] [?].[?] Represents an Enfranchised Power of Womanhood Sufficient to Turn the Tide of a Presidential Election By CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN Copyright, 1916, by Charlotte Perkins Gillman The planks in the national Republican and Democratic platforms this year indorsing the principle of woman suffrage are evidence of the power wielded by the new national organization of women voters of the suffragist States. The subjoined statement of the motives prompting this organization to "hold up" the great voting manhood parties, by a leading woman writer, who champions the "hold-up," is of significance to all professed and casual students of politics. As a news item we have been told of the formation of a new political party, composed entirely of women voters from the 12 States wherein they may now vote for President. As matter for editorial comment it has been condemned, ridiculed, patronized, approved. The cartoonist has hailed it joyfully, one pleasing picture showing us elephant, moose and jackass, their eyes bulging with astonishment as they note the arrival of their new companion--"a little deer." Nowhere, however, is recognition given to the full importance of this simple and natural step, so quietly taken. A conservative New York paper regards it with horror, as indicating "a sex war," and as justifying "the worst that has ever been said about the danger of giving votes to women." Yet even this alarmist sees only an imaginary portent, not the looming impressiveness of the fact. One can hardly expect of a driven editor wide historic perspective or deep sociological appreciation; nor is the hurried headliner likely to grasp them. Yet this event is so signal an advance, so great a change, a movement of such immense implications, that it deserves our most careful attention. One-fourth of our States now enjoy equal suffrage. This is by no means one-fourth of the population, but it gives a voting power, even of the women alone, sufficient to turn a presidential election. Also the equal suffrage States are largely in the "doubtful" class, not being "solid" like the South, but still in a fluid state-- open to conviction. It is a quite conceivable thing that enough of the enfranchised women join this party to cast a deciding vote next November. In view of this possibility the alarmist before quoted, hesitating between extreme abhorrence and a wish not to overestimate the danger and so encourage it, calls the proposed action of the women "political blackmail." This is misuse of language. Blackmail, in our modern usage, is making a victim pay for silence as to his previous record; sometimes with a freshly manufactured record made for the purpose. Now, the woman's party has but one plank--the demand for a Federal amendment granting equal suffrage--and but one method--to vote against the party which does not promote that amendment. This method is precisely that of all men's parties. It is the one simple, legitimate, obvious, necessary way of using the power of the ballot. A body of voters says to a body of legislators, "We want this measure passed. Support it and we will support you. Oppose it and we will oppose you." How else can an electorate impose its will on its elected public servants? Men have always used this method and it has not been called blackmail. Why is it blackmail merely because women do it? Furthermore, the measure urged is in no way "a sex war." If it was proposed to give the ballot to women and take it away from men that might be called a sex war, not this effort to remove an artificial distinction and bring men and women into closer understanding. Neither is it against the interests of men. It does no harm to men to have women vote, but does them good by helping to establish better conditions for both sexes. The only generalization that can safely be made about the women's vote so far is that women generally favor progressive moral and reform measures. Does any one wish to claim that men generally are opposed to progress, morality and reform? Surely not. The best men and the most women vote in harmony for the best things. The serious side of this new step in politics is quite above such minor bickerings. Here is woman, who hitherto has ac companied man in his upward journey as an indispensable assistant, often a loved and valued one, even sometimes influential, but never an equal in the main work of world improvement. She lived and suffered, or enjoyed, with him according to his methods of government, his ideas of economics, his legal and judicial authority, his methods of education and his social customs. Her position relative to the march of civilization was negligible; her position relative to him varied and improved in proportion to his real progress. In recent times in the most progressive nations women have been coming closer and closer into direct contact with and responsibility for the management of the world. In securing the ballot they hold new power, but the real tool of democracy is organization. It is not as scattered individuals that we promote a desired measure, but by the direct pressure of a large organized solid vote. That is the real seriousness of the woman's party. It marks an epoch in history; an epoch of more importance than many a change in dynasty or geo graphical discovery. Here we have not only women voting as individuals, but, for the first time on earth, a large organi zation of women--with power to act. Individual women have had power to do things themselves or to influence a few other persons to do things; but the power of a body of women acting together is a new thing under the sun. Some say that women cannot organ ize. The superficial answer to that is "See them do it!" The deeper biological answer is that the female is better fitted by nature for combination and mutual service than is the male. The most per fect social groups known are those of the bees and ants, instances of organized motherhood, proofs of the combining power of the female. Let us not fail to observe the crown ing glory of this new party. Its single plank is wholly for the benefit of others. The women who are free propose to use their power to enfranchise their sisters. History can show no parallel. Dr. Addison, Chief Government Organizer, Describes Work All ing Nation to Produce Material for Bombardment Such as on the Somme Associated Press Correspondence LONDON, July 26. WHEN the British forces in France began their great offensive bombardment on June 27 and for days hurled into the German lines such an avalanche of steel and lead as the world had never known before, even the people of Britain expressed wonder that it should have been possible to assemble so vast a store of munitions. The story of how these supplies were created constitutes one of the most important chapters in the history of British achievement during the war. At the outbreak of hostilities two years ago there were only three important government munition factors in the British Isles. Today some 4000 government-controlled firms, employing more than 2,000,000 workers, are turning out virtually all of the tremendous amount of war material which has gone to equip the 5,000,000 British soldiers in the field. The organization of this great industry has been accomplished in a little more than one year by the Ministry of Munitions, established in May, 1915, under the leadership of David Lloyd George. In that time every available resource of the country has been built for the production of munitions. Some idea of the scale upon which this organization has been carried out may be gathered from the statement that the largest of the new plants covers an area nine miles long and from three to four miles wide. A staff of 5000 people has been required to supervise the work. At the head of this staff and responsible only to the Minister of Munitions has been a man whose organizing ability has been accorded widespread recognition. He is Dr. Christopher Addison, internationally known for his medical research work. For some years he has devoted his attention to politics, and besides holding a seat in the House of Commons, had been Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education before entering on his present duties as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Munitions. Every detail of the munitions production is known to Doctor Addison, and during an interview with a representative of the Associated Press he told as much of the story of the creation of this industry as could be made public at this time. Independent of U. S. Production At the outset he disposed of the statement made in America to the effect that if it were not for the munitions furnished by the United States Great Britain would have to quit the war. "I heard that statement made," said Doctor Addison, "and it is preposterous, of course. The United States has furnished, and is furnishing, many raw materials which we are anxious to get for the manufacture of munitions, but so far as the actual production of shells goes, America has provided us with only a very small percentage of those which we have used." Turning to the manufacture [?] munitions in this country, he continued: "At the beginning of the war there were only three important munitions factories in the United Kingdom. In addition, there were a number of large private munitions and armament firms. At the start, reliance was placed mainly in these national factories and experienced firms, and at that time they were full of orders. "In the early stages of the conflict more attention was paid to field guns and their equipment than to heavy guns, but as time went on the requirements for heavy shells greatly increased. In June, 1915, we made an inventory of all available machinery in the country, and it was evident that it was entirely inadequate to meet the demands. There were, however, a great many private firms which could be brought in to make munitions, and it was decided to mobilize them for national service. To do this we created an organization embracing the entire country. The country was divided into districts, in each of which a working board of management was set up. By means of this scheme of local organization thousands of firms have been brought in, many of which had never seen a shell body, or a fuse, or a grenade, or a bomb before, much less than made them. Now munition-making in some form or other has extended well nigh to every considerable town—indeed, to large numbers of villages. Many Trades Adopt Shell-Making August. Altogether there are now 90 [?] tional factories which have been equi[pped[?]] with machinery, and in most cases built [?] [dur[?]]ing the last 12 months. "We can now produce in less th[an[?]] month as many of the lighter shell could have been turned out in the year of 1914-15. In less than a fortnight can make more heavy shells than we have done in the year 1914-15. We can turn out in a week far more shells, and complete, than were used in the battle of Loos, which extended over a night, and they had been saving ammun[ition[?]] for that battle for a month. We could a battle of Loos every week now an wouldn't touch the shell reserve stock. "The manufacture of guns, which did lend itself to the process of subdivision ammunition, has had to be concentr[ated[?]] largely in the hands of experienced f [?] but new factories under the direction these firms have been made for 'single pose' work. "Regarding our present capacity for production, as compared with the capa[city[?]] in June, 1914, before the war, we are making, in the case of the lightest g more than ten times what we were the[n[?]] the case of medium-weight guns more [?] 20 times, and in the case of heavy [?] more than 50 times. Make Grenades in Back Yard "The production of trench warfare supplies has meant the creation of an indu[stry[?]] of which there was virtually no experie[nce[?]] in this country. Now grenades are b[eing[?]] made in back yards and in all sorts of s[?] shops, as well as in the big factories, hundreds of thousands are being prod[uced[?]] weekly. In the early days of the war trench mortar was a weapon which had[re[?]]ceived little attention and undergone l[?] development, and there was a mere handful of these weapons in existence. They now being produced in immensely impro[ved[?]] types in hundreds where they were previously in units. And the output of h[?] ammunition has had to keep pace, output of bombs where it previously reckoned in hundreds has now reache[d[?]] total of scores of thousands weekly, production of trench warfare munition most miscellaneous collection of worksh[?] has, of course, necessitated the provision many assembly and inspection stations. "One of the earliest steps the Ministry [of[?]] Munitions had to take was to acquire control of every machine toolmaker in United Kingdom and also to bring in manufacturers of machine tools. Ev[ery[?]] machine tool made during the last months has been disposed of as directed the Ministry of Munitions. The tools [?] been sent where they were most needed the making of munitions. "One of our most anxious problems been the supply and distribution of sk[?] labor. There was not enough skilled la[bor[?]] to go round. This fact was recognized the trades unions, and the Government received their hearty assistance through in the distribution of skilled labor and in dilution of skilled labor with unskilled. introduction of unskilled labor into the [?] of skilled labor is a sacrifice of skilled la[bor[?]] to which no too high a tribute can be p[?] Skilled men have trained and instructed skilled workers and in thousands of ca[ses[?]] have willingly been moved from piecew[ork[?]] to day wages, with the result that they h[?] earned smaller wages than at the people t[?] had trained have received at piecework. The position was rendered more diffi[cult[?]] by the fact that many skilled work[?] crowded into the army. More than 43, highly skilled workmen have since b[?] withdrawn for munitions work. They where they are sent. This has given Ministry of Munitions control of [?] body of skilled workmen who can be m[?] as required. 2,000,000 Workers Controlled "Apart from the manufacturer aeroplanes, etc., which do not fa[?] the charge of the Ministry of M there are now employed about 2,000 sons, of whom several hundred thous[and[?]] women. It follows that there has much labor expended in housing muni workers. Whole villages have been [?] and we have provided accommodations 60,000 people in 12 months. "People from all classes of society h[ave[?]] joined in the manufacture of munitio[ns[?]] There is, for example, on the staff of Apr. 13-[?]-4 WANTS NAMES FOR WOMEN ——— Mrs. Gilman Says They Should Not Have to Take Those of Husbands. "The effect of our male civilization upon the family, the child and the home," said Charlotte Perkins Gilman this morning in the third of her series of "Studies in Masculism" at the Hotel Astor, "has been to keep women too feminine and not enough human; to govern and dominate children instead of allowing them to normally develop, and to make the home a place kept by one-half of the world for the comfort of the other half instead of making it a place of rest and joy for every one." Mrs. Gilman feels very strongly on the subject of names, although she suggests no immedaite remedy. "It is a gross injustice," she says, "a ridiculous absurdity, for only one-half of our communities to have names and the other half no names at all. Women before marriage have their fathers' names; when they are married they have their husbands' names; they never have a name of their own to keep and pass down to their children." In tracing the growth of the institution, the family, Mrs. Gilman said that originally it was motherhood and the woman who was worshipped when the family was purely matriarchal. Since then there had been the proprietary family. "Now," concluded Mrs. Gilman, "we are coming into a new period of family life, and marriage is becoming more and more an equality between friends and companions as well as lovers. Men and women are meeting on more equal grounds and understanding the terms of the agreement better. Choice is the original feminine function, not the choice of a master, but the choice of a father for children. Ancestor worship is dying out, and it is being found better to worship posterity than ancestors." TOPICS OF THE TIMES ——— [Nov 9/15] [NY Times] Dignified Woman Debaters. That Mrs. CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN demonstrates that a woman can be as restrained and able in argument as man, eschewing personalities and confining herself to principles, must be the impression of every reader of her brilliant article in last Sunday's TIMES. Those who have read further the "Case Against Votes for Women" by Mrs. ARTHUR M. DODGE must have had this good opinion of straightforward reasoning by woman in debate corroborated. Half a century of liberal opportunities provided for the higher education of women —opportunities obtained away ahead of any privileges wrung by the ballot— might be expected to produce just such results as are exemplified in these excellent articles by women. While taking opposite sides, Mrs. GILMAN and Mrs. DODGE are agreed on one essential point. What the practical public of this State wants before it decides whether it will extend the vote to women "is clear reasoning and plain facts," Mrs. GILMAN says. Deciding wisely on question is a matter of information. Mrs. DODGE agrees; and, if woman suffrage is to benefit the State, it must be shown beyond doubt that it has benefited the States where it has been in effect for a generation or more. WOODROW WILSON has pointed out that the Western States are valuable experimental laboratories in politics. Even if most of their experiments in novel forms of government turn out badly, some of them may be useful enough for the States which have vastly more important interests to copy. The question of the political status of women in this State, in New Jersey, Massachusetts, and, probably, in Pennsylvania, is to be decided by the voters this year. If the laws of the suffrage States protecting women and children, providing for sanitation of homes and factories, the purity of food, and the healthfulness of social conditions, generally have been better drawn and enforced in them than in the Eastern States, that would be a good argument for the further participation of women in voting. The whole case hangs on this state of facts, which is quite capable of ascertainment. The facts will [?] gotten at, and the voters will know [?]. [ *Newton (Mass) Graphic 1915 Vol. XLV #[?]0* ] FEMINISM Newton South Community Forum Hears an Interesting Talk by Charlotte Perkins Gilman At the meeting of the Newtown South Community Forum held Sunday afternoon at Lincoln Hall, Newton Highlands, Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman gave an interesting talk on "What Feminism Is and Isn't." Mrs. Gilman said in part: — You remember that over the entire history of human life, through the very early stages up to the latter part of the modern century the status of slavery existed and we were the last to hold it. You remember too, how throughout all history and still today the status of monarchy exists. You will notice in regard to either of these or any other human relationship that most of us can see individual points to criticise. The harm of slavery was not in individual criticism but the wrong was in the ownership of human beings. There was a time when it was the only process by which men were made to work. You know work began with women. The primitive mother was the mother of industry. She began basket work, bead work and the making of moccasins besides doing her cooking and looking after the young. Then after that had lasted for a hundred years labor was developed by male and now it is very much easier for men to make a living than for women. Women do fancy work rather than sit around idle but you cannot see a man doing anything fancy. He does real work and then rests. The necessity to keep busy is stronger in the female than in the male. There was a time when monarchy was the only kind of Government which we could grasp. We were content to have one person to keep hold of us and tax us in peace and lead us in war. Gradually democracy came and we saw that the rule of monarch was selfish and that a larger relationship was higher. One of the great changes is this change in the status of women which has been going on since the French Revolution. It is a change which not only effects men but the State. She has always been a female relation. In relation to importance she is regarded as a preposition, to and for, but never it. He is man, a noun. These ideas in regard to women are held ever since we have been able to think. The difference between the savage and the educated people of today is, the savages always educated their boys but not the girls. Education is one of the most important basic processes of the social development and that process was monopolized by men. They didn't share and share alike. He goes on spreading his branches of work developing society, trade and science, everything that makes this civilization while she remains the same relation of man, no more a member of society that she was in the beginning. Let us suppose that all the women on earth were dead and all the men left. Of course some of them would be broken hearted for a while, but they would all go on with their business just the same and also with their pleasures. All the great games in the world are men's games. All business could go on. The greatest dressmakers in the world are men, the greatest milliners in the world are men, the greatest cooks in the world are men. Let us reverse this little illustration if the women were the only ones left, what would we lose. Every railroad would stop all the great business in the world would stop, all religious institutions would stop. We can go to church but are not master there, they preach and we practice. All the whole business would stop. That is the difference between status, a question of social development of man and woman. Female is efficient, loved and honored as a female not as a human creature, she does not love in the same age. The relation of women to human life is changing, previously she has had no relation with human life, her purpose on earth has been man's slave. The difference in the way the squaw did her cooking and the way the women of today do it is, the modern women has a cook stove instead of a fire place. In five hundred years this war will be nothing compared with this change of women all over the world. Female is the sum of life, maker and moulder. Male is a distinctive class all by itself, and so long as civilization is predominately male, they will still be fighters. All is fair in love and war is their motto. And so long as the world is made, ruled and managed by man they will be fighters. And while any children in the country are being injured no woman is a good mother. Will anyone say they have more coverage, will anyone say they have more power to stand together then men. They can as well. Women are no better than men but fully as good, although at the present time they are inferior. Men and women together make a better world than they could make separate. Question—Is there any part of the world where there is a practical demonstration of women taking part in everything? Answer—You find in the early stages women doing their part. When you come into the later stages you find it in most every liberal country from the orient to the more liberal countries. In the foreign countries you find more human relationship— more so in France than in Italy and so on as you go from one country to another. We are as far along as any. Question—If these things develop will the men have to do the house work? Answer—Here we have in our minds the irresistible fact, women cannot be women without being cook. The men want women to wait on them. Question—I believe male and female started on this world about the same period, I would like to ask how man got the upper hand rather than woman? Answer—He didn't get it at the start, she did. This change occurred during a period which we cannot find any evidence of. The human race brings with it characteristics of prolongation of infancy which means a prolongation of motherhood. Human race had motherhood to baby little children and big children. This enlarged motherhood found expression in industry, in doing things for children. She began to make clothes for them and to prepare food. This was the first time that process of motherhood became advantageous to the male, when she learnt how to cook it made him good. Very soon he was taken in and cared for like the children. Question—Do you conceive a higher civilization without the home life? Answer—I do not. Question—Isn't the use of women in foreign countries at the present time in industries going to mean economic development? Answer—Yes. It has also given millions of unattached women a great opportunity to do some splendid work. And it will prove to millions in that country that women are human beings as well as female beings. Question—What does the speaker about the momen in Australia, they have had the vote for a few years? Answer—To give the women right to vote is a matter of justice. These Australian women take their part but they remain just as much as a female relation as before they did. Question—Does the speaker think that women should be financially and economically self-supporting? Answer— I believe all women should be self-supporting. This new home which I have in mind is a house without a kitchen. This change does not involve a waste but a saving of money. Question—The speaker has told us what Feminism Is. I wish she would give us a little idea of what Feminism Isn't. Answer—Where you have a great many people together many of them are fools. In Europe, according to the teachings of Ellen Kay they should go into free motherhood, they just have a child of their own and devote their lives to bringing up that child. She thinks it is the right of every woman to have a child. She does not consider the right of every child to have two parents. The future demand will be a more broader partnership than at present. Charlotte Perkins Gilman The Time…The Place …The Story Wash Post 8/20/35 [The Present.] PASADENA, CALIF. Preface to Death. STATELY, white-haired Charlotte Perkins Gilman, one of the world's foremost women writers, killed herself three days ago and left an amazing memorandum "to promote wiser views on suicide." The death was not revealed until yesterday. Ill, she ended her life in the home of her daughter, Mrs. Katherine Beecher Stetson Chamberlain, a chloroform-soaked handkerchief over her face and a typewritten note beside her bed, explaining her action. In brief, unemotional sentences, the 75-year-old feminist, rated by Carrie Chapman Catt as the foremost woman in America, explained that she ended her life because she "preferred chloroform to cancer." The suicide was made known in a formal statement from the family, who "desired no autopsy and no other information except the note which Mrs. Gilman intended for humanity." The note; written on plain stationery and signed by Mrs. Gilman, was delivered to police by Mrs. Chamberlain, without comment. It was entitled "A Last Duty" and contained a dramatic defense of the right to end life by suicide "when usefulness is over." "Human life consists in mutual service, the note said. "No grief, pain, misfortune or broken heart is excuse for cutting off one's life while any power or service remains. "But when all usefulness is over, when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death, i t is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy path in place of a slow and horrible one. "Public opinion is changing on this subject. The time is approaching when we shall consider it abhorrent to our civilization to allow a human being to lie in prolonged agony which we should mercifully end in any other creature. "Believing this choice to be of social service in promoting wise views on this question, I have preferred chloroform to cancer." Born of a distinguished line— her great-grandfather was Lyman Beecher and she was related to Henry Ward Beecher, noted pastor, and Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin"— Mrs. Gilman's life was devoted to social service, particularly feminist movements. Mrs. Gilman asked, in her will, that there be no funeral. "I wish to be cremated," she wrote, "and my ashes distributed at my daughter's convenience." Among her most widely known works were "Women and Economics," "In This Our World," and "The Yellow Wallpaper." She wrote a score of books, poetry and lectured widely. Mrs. Catt Defends Right of Suicide New Rochelle, N. Y., Aug. 20 (A.P.)— Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, seventy-six, said today that "suicide is justifiable when one has an incurable illness and can no longer be of service." At her home here, the champion of peace and women's rights upheld the action of her lifelong friend, Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, seventy-five, who committed suicide Saturday in Pasadena, Calif. afte rdeciding her value to society had ended. "I don't defend suicide," said Mrs. Catt. "I think suicide generally is cowardly. "It has no justification except when one has an incurable illness and faces a long experience of suffering, during which there is no opportunity for helping one's self or others. "In that case, I think it is justifiable." MRS. CATT DEFENDS MRS. GILMAN'S SUICIDE Woman Leader Says Friend's Act Was Justified Because She Had an Incurable Disease. Special To THE NEW YORK TIMES. NEW ROCHELLE, N. Y., Aug. 20.—Suicide is justifiable in the case of a person suffering from an incurable disease, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, woman leader declared here today in defense of her friend, Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Mrs. Gilman's suicide at the home of her daughter in Pasadena, Calif., became known yesterday. Mrs. Gilman, who was 75 years old, left a note saying that she had preferred "chloroform to cancer." Mrs. Catt, who is 76, declared that she did not intend to defend suicide in general. "I think it is cowardly in general when people take their lives and dodge all their responsibilities," she said. Mrs. Catt once named Mrs. Gilman on her list of twelve greatest women in America. "But she was afflicted with an incurable malady, and the doctors said she might live two months. What she did was not to take her life, but merely to cut it short by a very brief period. "It was not cowardice as suicide is when people are afraid. She would ahve gone on as long as she could have been of any service to the world. She was a great woman." Mrs. Catt said she was shocked at her friend's act, but not surprised, as a "woman of her vigor would do exactly that thing to avoid trouble to her daughter, with whom s he lived, and pain to herself." Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.