The Work of the Woman's Club

IT would be interesting to know if the impulse to organize that first resulted in a Woman’s Club in 1868 had its basis in any fundamental and common need of the women of that period. That two clubs, the New England Women’s Club of Boston, and Sorosis of New York, were formed almost simultaneously, would point toward such a conclusion. That some of the leaders in the movement were suffragists, that the individual members were women who had been intellectually quickened and trained in practical experience by the events of the civil war, and that the time to enjoy the results of such organization had been gained by the improved domestic economy, will suggest some basis for speculation as to the underlying causes. The superficial and stated reason for being, in the constitutions of those early clubs, was unanimously “ for mutual, or general, improvement, and to promote social enjoyment.”

With this simple and egoistic platform, the club idea gained adherents very rapidly in New England and the Middle States. Study clubs were formed in large cities and remote villages, each with its encumbering constitution, and rules of order that seemed specially designed to retard the business of the day.

Outwardly, for twenty years, the woman’s club remained an institution for the culture and pleasure of its members ; but within, the desire for a larger opportunity was gradually strengthening. Parliamentary practice gave women confidence in their ability to lead larger issues to a successful conclusion. The inherent longing for power, coupled with confidence in the wisdom and beneficence of whatever woman should do, brought the leaders of the club movement to a conception of social service. To effect this, further organization was necessary. It was then, in 1890, that a union of individual clubs was formed into a chartered body, known as the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. Closely following this culmination, the women of Maine formed the first union of the clubs of that state into a state federation. Other states joined in the movement, each state federation as it organized becoming a unit of the General Federation. There are now represented in this body thirtynine states and territories and five foreign countries, with 3288 clubs having a membership of about 275,000 women.

The organization of the General Federation is complete, making it possible, given the responsible person in office, to get immediately into touch with every individual member. Its character is unique; racially heterogeneous, sectionally widespread, theoretically of no politics, it is pledged to work for the improvement of its members in every line of human culture and for all wise measures relating to human progress.

To be a member of such an organization must stimulate the imagination, deepen the sympathies, and go a long way toward overcoming that provincialism of mind with which our country has constantly to reckon. This subjective work was the early endeavor of the federations ; but for eight years, since the Biennial held in Milwaukee, and also since the state federations found their social consciences, the effort has been toward the concrete issue. “ Something must be done to justify our existence,” has been the constant cry of officers, federation bulletins, and committee reports. To see the general preparedness to do passing on to an active doing may well cause a certain dismay in the mind of the onlooker.

The amused toleration that has for long characterized the thought of those unfortunates who were outside the club movement is changing to a somewhat anxious curiosity, and not without cause. It makes little difference to the community that the club has set aside the colored lithograph in favor of a Preraphaelite photograph in carbon, or that it studiously regards the possibilities of Hamlet’s madness. Even vacation schools and college scholarships as an issue fail to arouse serious comment. But when the clubs begin to appear in legislative committee rooms, bearing yards of signatures, and when they question why the employees of bakeshops are permitted to work seventy or eighty hours a week, their potential power becomes a factor to be seriously considered.

The spectacle of 275,000 women splendidly organized, armed with leisure and opportunity, and animated by a passion for reform, assumes the distinction of a “ social force.” Forces must be reckoned with, and the work and the worth of the woman’s club movement are becoming important public interests.

The work of the woman’s club is threefold : to educate its members, mentally and morally ; to create public opinion ; to secure better conditions of life. Its worth, personal and social, is in proportion to its effectiveness in securing these ends.

The first clubs were study clubs; all clubs are in some degree study clubs, the culture idea having been the most tenacious. The early club, and the parlor club of to-day, would frequently devote a season to the study of one book, or one author, or some theory of economics or epoch in history. Their study may not have been either profound or judiciously chosen, but the woman herself really believed in it, and was being as studious as she could easily be.

The members took great interest in naming their clubs. The heroines of antiquity, the modern literary celebrities, Greek words that look so simple but mean so much, flowers of the field, all were pressed into the significant service of this organization.

The club members of long ago did not bring ponderous dignity with them to their meetings. They were gay, girlish, and, it may be, frivolous. Their programmes and calendars reveal a schoolgirl’s indifference to the decorous habits of an older society. Happily there are still sections of our country where the president appears in the Year Book as “ Mrs. Bob,” or “ Mrs. Mayme,” and where the Recording Secretary naïvely writes herself “Mrs. Katie;” where the “Clio Club” devotes the season to the study of “ Robert Louis Stevenson and of Nature ; ” where “ Browning Clubs ” read “ Shakespeare and the Magazines,” and where a “ Current Events Class” studies “The Bible.”

The simple club, with its accessories of tea and poetry, has given way to, or been absorbed in, the Department Club, a club that needs no distinguishing title, but is, par excellence, the Woman’s Club.

The department club has taken unto itself the sphere of human knowledge, or, to be specific, and according to the records of 1902, it devotes itself in general to nine named lines of work : Literature, Music, Art, Education, Current Topics, Finance, Philanthropy, Household Economics, and Social Economics. The average scope of endeavor of all the clubs of the country is six departments to each club, the majority undertaking five subjects, and a goodly number being undaunted by the nine.

The theory that underlies the department club is, that the members will naturally gather around the standing committee with whose work they are in especial sympathy, study groups being thus formed ; while from time to time each committee will introduce some eminent person to speak to the whole club of his specialty. Practical work will be assigned to the group to which it belongs, and so all possible interests of society will have their hospitable centre from which community betterment will radiate. That the theory is workable has been proven by the efficient practice of such clubs as the Cantabrigia in Massachusetts, the Chicago Woman’s Club, and the Woman’s Club of Denver. The common practice is far from the ideal. The individual members do not cumulate, nor does the standing committee radiate. The season’s work consists, instead, of an expensive programme in which the amusement idea is overlaid by the serious character of the subjects presented. Few groups of study are formed, and these are likely to be on culture subjects. The concrete work of the club is spasmodic, and dependent for its performance almost entirely on the personnel of the standing committee, which is annually changing. The one permanent feature is the lecture ; that cannot be escaped, nor can it be related.

A succession of lectures on widely divergent subjects has the effect merely of awakening a transient emotion, buried by the keener emotion of the next intellectual opportunity. There can be no valid objection to listening to lectures when one is a mere listener; but the woman’s club listener has added to her receptiveness a vague feeling that she, by virtue of her position, must do something about it. Her passivity is aroused into convulsive but feeble volition; but before she has time to respond to the present claim, another blow has been struck and another purpose presented, to be vanquished in its turn by another claimant. The indefinite process of stimulation and exhaustion, without accompanying activity, goes on until the desperate club woman listens to all causes with equal stoicism and with mechanical interest.

Quite aside from the ethical import of the modern club lecture is its intellectual appeal. Unquestionably certain lectures arouse an eager desire to follow out lines of thought. I have frequently watched with interest the connection between the reading habit of a community, as evinced in the call for books at the public library, and the train of thought inspired by the last lecturer. One day in the poets’ alcove I missed the copies of the Odyssey and the Iliad. Their places had not been vacant before. I hurriedly went to the alcove where Philosophy reposed. Thomas à Kempis was not there. The last lecture at the club had had to do with “ literature and life.” The books were back in a day or two in their accustomed places. I fancied I perceived in them a certain dejection, as though they had failed to meet the expectations aroused by their eloquent expositor. Then I remembered the Audubon lecture of yesterday. Quickly I sought Natural Science. Every book of ornithology had disappeared. “ It may be butterflies to-morrow, but that is too nearly related,” I reflected; “it is more likely to be ‘Man’s Duty to his Neighbor.’ ”

The dubiety of thought that results from the mixed club programme is further complicated by the occasional mistiness of the club vocabulary. For instance, there is the term Social Economics. In 1902 thirty state federations and 369 clubs announced this science to be one branch of their work. Investigation does not reveal that the term means to any club a particular science. On the contrary, it seems to be a nebulous term covering a diversity of interests more or less misunderstood. A certain blunting of mental sensitiveness will result from such inaccuracy, even if clubs escape the criticism of intellectual dishonesty.

In a suburban car some years ago I became interested in two ladies, in whom I soon recognized those well-known people, Mrs. Arrived and Mrs. Arriving. Their conversation was an interesting commentary on the direct intellectual and ethical value of the woman’s club. Mrs. Arriving was directly opposite me, and her staccato, penetrating voice compelled me in this instance to be a willing listener.

“ Were you at the club yesterday ? ” she asked with a certain eagerness, as if to bring the important subject forward before it should be conversationally sidetracked to make way for the regular traffic of servants and gowns.

“ No, I was too busy at home to think of going,” answered Mrs. Arrived.

“ Oh, it’s too bad to let trivial things keep you away. We had such an elevating lecture. Really, it gave me such an uplift!”

“ Indeed! I remember you were to have Mr. O-. What was his subject?” asked Mrs. Arrived in an indulgent tone.

“It was Lowell. You know, the one every one was talking about last spring. It seemed to me that every person I met asked me to put down my name for a small subscription. Somebody wanted to build a monument or do something for him in Cambridge. If I had heard Mr. 0-then, I believe I should have given something. But it is probably just as well. Mr. O-did not say anything about its having been done.”

“What did Mr. O-say?” Mrs. Arrived’s tone was still indulgent. “ Did he speak of Lowell’s poetry ? ”

“Oh no,—at least not much. He talked about, — let me see, I can tell you in a minute just what his subject was, — Lowell, the man, the American, and the historian,” answered Mrs. Arriving triumphantly.

“ But Lowell was not an historian,” interrupted the other lady.

“ Oh, was n’t he ? How foolish! Now I remember. It was Lowell, the man, the American, and the essayist. But he said a lot about the civil war, that’s where I got mixed up about history,” and Mrs. Arriving’s tone indicated no confusion.

“ I am very fond of Lowell’s poetry,” said Mrs. Arrived reflectively. “ The Commemoration Ode seems to me among the noblest poetry we have produced.”

“ You have read it, then ! Mr. Osaid something about it, and advised us all to read it. I made up my mind that I should just as soon as I could get it from the library. It’s such a bother to get a thing at once. Every one is sure to rush for it. By the time I can get hold of the book I have usually forgotten what I wanted to read.”

“ Why don’t you buy it, then ? ”

“ I buy books ! My goodness, my last dressmaker’s bill was three hundred dollars. I guess I shan’t waste any money on books as long as the public supports a good library.”

There was an eloquent pause, finally broken by Mrs. Arrived, who asked, “ Did Mr. Orefer to any other poem, or recommend any other to your notice ? ”

“ Yes, he said by all means to read the Fable for Critics. He read some screechingly funny passages from that; and he wanted us not to neglect Ulysses.”

“ Ulysses! Lowell did not write Ulysses ; that is Tennyson’s.” Mrs. Arrived was evidently annoyed.

“ Now I remember. I do get so mixed up. It was Columbus! But Mrs. R—, you know, the one whose husband writes poetry, she said, when we were going home, that whenever she read Columbus, her husband made her read Ulysses as an antidote. Was n’t that a funny thing to say ? That’s the way I got them mixed up.” Mrs. Arriving continued placidly, “ I don’t wonder that I do, there is so much to think about. Now there’s the topics of the day. You don’t go to Miss Informed’s Current Events Class, do you ? ”

“ No, do you ? ” Mrs. Arrived questioned curtly.

“I could n’t get on without it,” answered Mrs. Arriving. “You see, it takes only an hour and a half once a week. And she tells us everything that’s going on, so I never look into a paper, except for the deaths and teas. I just came from there this morning. Such an interesting morning, too! You know she talked about the necessity of having a Society for the Protection of the Motor Men from the Severe Weather. Yes, I joined. I think it is too cruel that they should be so exposed to the cold. I shall use all my influence, and make my husband use his, to have the cars vestibuled. Well, how I have talked! Now I must get off on this next block. You know I have to look up a new coachman. Ours won’t stay. He got perfectly furious yesterday because he had to wait for me for an hour.”

“ Well, it must have been rather hard to sit in that storm for an hour, unprotected,” interposed Mrs. Arrived.

“ What does one keep a coachman for ? I guess he could stand it if the horses could. Really, servants are getting so delicate one hardly knows what to do. Here’s my street. Good-by, dear, I ’ll come and see you if ever I get a coachman who can stand the weather. Oh, I do hope you ’ll help about the motor men. Good-by.” Her last sentence was wafted back from the platform of the car.

I glanced involuntarily toward the lady who remained. Our eyes met understandingly. “The club leaves us where it finds us,” I said to her.

And she, perhaps mistakenly, answered, “No, it carries us into an uncertain knowledge that is worse than ignorance.”

To stimulate and direct public opinion is a natural function of the woman’s club. Its members are curious about local conditions, and directly interested in the administration of civic affairs. They have experienced in some measure the power of organized and directed effort, and believe in the inherent rightness of their own theories. Lacking the means of direct authority, they seek to gain, by influence and persuasiveness, a determining voice in the conduct of public affairs. On the other hand, the fact that there is a woman’s club at all gives evidence to the community that women have time to give that special attention to civic problems which is denied to most men. Our domestic life has approximated the ideal of the ambitious husband in Miss Jewett’s story, — the one who had realized his keenest desire, that his wife “ could set in her rockingchair all the afternoon and read a novel.” Because American women have this leisure, the community looks to them, more and more, to hold the sensitive plate of public welfare, and to be responsible for the initiation of better methods and manners in civic life. Women’s clubs necessarily, then, find their chief scope of altruistic work in creating public opinion.

It is of singular importance that this should be a wise public opinion. The leaders of the club movement are recognizing this necessity, — a fact evinced by the precautionary advice with which they surround their plans for work. The elimination of the tramp is the special object of the Social Service committee of a prominent state federation. Once he might have been eliminated viva voce, or by withholding his morning coffee. But the new intelligence of organized women demands that the case shall be studied. Individual clubs are asked to collect local data. They are urged to undertake no public action without consultation with the committee. The help of able sociologists is invited, and the coöperation of organizations that make a special study of the “ Tramp Evil ” is secured. By these means the committee undertakes to prevent any hasty or unwise action, and to supply to each community some fundamental knowledge on which wise public opinion may be based. As a sign of the times in the club world, this is a significant incident. Nor is the action of this committee isolated; instead, the same method is coming to be adopted for each remedial measure authorized by the federations. It is yet too early to see definite, quotable results of this plan of work in individual clubs. Past constructive work has been too often due to the quiescent acceptance of whatever measures might be proposed, rather than to their intelligent consideration. Should the new leaven work, the worth of the woman’s club to a community would be tremendously increased. Its habits of study would be revolutionized. Its claim to be a “ promoter of the public welfare ” would be established.

But even without the personal enlightenment that counts for so much, women’s clubs have been a potent factor in determining public opinion. As organizations, they have realized that “ in public opinion we are all legislators by our birthright.” And in practice, they have found that they could actually legislate by means of this power. Legislative work is undertaken by all the state federations, in urging and securing the passage of laws that deal with the conditions of women and children. In Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Illinois, the state federations have promoted the passage of a bill giving joint and equal parental guardianship to minor children. The Juvenile Court Law has been secured in California, Illinois, Maryland, and Nebraska. The Louisiana Federation has worked successfully for the Probationary Law, and in Texas an industrial school has been established. Laws to raise the standard of public morality, to segregate and classify defective and delinquent classes, to secure the services of women as factory inspectors, police matrons, and on boards of control, are other measures for which women’s clubs have successfully worked.

While it is difficult to determine the degree of women’s participation in this large body of corrective legislation, careful investigation proves that they were, at least, an important single factor. In some instances, the officers of the state federation framed the bill and secured the necessary guidance at every step of its passage ; in others, petitions and public agitation were the agencies employed. An inland newspaper in describing the passage of a bill, whose sponsors had been the women’s clubs, said, “ It was passed in a rush of gallantry in which gush, good sense, and sentimentalism were combined.”

The reporter perceived a number of the elements that have entered into the support given by men to women’s measures. And while a more elegant exposition might be made of underlying motives, it is hardly possible to give one more discriminating. Whatever the psychical basis of their legislative influence may be, their success demonstrates the fact that politics is possible to a nonpolitical body ; that a third party, without vote or direct participation, may come, in a democracy, to have a determining authority in corrective legislation.

Securing the passage of laws is the extreme instance of what organized women have accomplished through the medium of public opinion. Many other concrete illustrations drawn from local conditions might be given; but they would all serve to illustrate that the woman’s club is determining the mind of the community in its relation to many educational, philanthropic, and reformatory questions. How important, then, becomes right thinking in the club, — not solemn, arrogating, feminine, selfinclusive thinking, but gay, self-forgetful, reflective, human thinking.

A club to which I belong at one time concentrated its very serious efforts to prevent the further destruction of song birds. We interested the children in the public schools. We argued with the husbands and fathers, and particularly with the bachelor sportsmen. We wrote columns in the local paper, and succeeded in arousing much public sympathy for the songsters. Soon after we bought and appeared in our new millinery. An irreverent joker counted fifty aigrettes floating from fifty new bonnets, and proposed to our president that he come to do a little missionary work in the club in behalf of birds. It was fortunate for our club that its president had a sense of humor, else we might be still wearing aigrettes and distributing pamphlets for the protection of song birds.

The federation of one of the more enlightened states has recently undertaken to enter the field of direct politics. I quote the advice it gives to its constituents : —

“ Before senators and representatives are even nominated, it is very essential that club women look up the record of the various candidates in their districts, and satisfy themselves as to their position regarding women upon boards of control of state institutions. Find out how they voted last year. Information will be gladly furnished by members of this committee. Then strive to create a sufficient public sentiment in your own locality to defeat, at the party caucus, any nominee known to oppose women representatives upon Boards of Control.” It is this partial, local, and partisan type of mind that the woman’s club supposedly tries to correct. That it has not succeeded, as yet, in doing this, may be due to the greater attention given to objective causes than to subjective conditions, or it may be an expression of the mere femininity of the movement.

The field for constructive work in the women’s clubs — work in which they have direct and controlling authority — is limited. To create better conditions of life means for them commonly to use the indirect agencies we have been considering. In philanthropy and public education, they have found their chief opportunity for responsible effort, and in both fields women’s clubs have been of conspicuous service. They have been hospitable to all forms of philanthropy, creating, by their aggregation of nonsectarian people, a new centre of public beneficence. They have added frequently to the educational equipment of a community, the kindergarten, manual training, and domestic science ; and this not always by persuasion, but through the establishment and support of these branches of education, until such time as the community should be convinced of their usefulness and voluntarily assume their responsibilities. More than in any other way, the women’s clubs have benefited the schools by creating better hygienic and æsthetic conditions in school buildings and grounds. They have made it possible for the children to become familiar with good art, with the beauty of cleanliness, and with the charm of a growing vine or flower.

But it is in the work for the extension of libraries that women’s clubs have most fully demonstrated their ability to further an educational project. Many states in the Union have made no provision for the establishment of free libraries, and in others, where there is the necessary legislation, local conditions prevent their adequate establishment. Realizing keenly what a dearth of books means to a community, women’s clubs have promptly initiated in many states systems of traveling libraries to satisfy the needs of the people until free libraries could be established on a permanent basis. In Oklahoma and Indian Territory the federation collected one thousand volumes. These were classified and divided into fifty libraries, and each was sent on its enlightening pilgrimage. Kansas is sending to its district schools and remote communities 10,000 books divided into suitable libraries. The women of Ohio circulate 900 libraries; Kentucky is sending sixty-four to its mountaineers. In Maine the traveling library has become a prized educational opportunity. Its success has secured the appointment of a Library Commission and the enactment of suitable library legislation. This movement is extensive ; and as an indication of what organized women can do, when the issue is concrete and appealing, it is significant. At a recent federation meeting in Massachusetts, no orator of the day made so eloquent an appeal as did the neat and convenient case of good books that invited our inspection before it should be sent to a remote community in the Tennessee Mountains.

Except in the two lines of work we have just considered, women’s clubs are not zealous in undertaking to create better conditions of life by direct and authoritative measures. To many causes they give tacit assent. A veteran club officer said to me recently, “ I am ashamed to bring a petition before my clu ; the members will sign anything.”

“ But do they do everything ? ” I asked.

“ No,” she answered, “ they seem to think that to sign a petition is tantamount to securing the end desired. Having signed, the matter is closed so far as they personally are concerned.”

An instance which will illustrate this curious personal apathy toward causes that are furthered by the federations, and to which the club members abstractly assent, is found in the history of their relation to industrial conditions. Six years ago the General Federation undertook to help the solution of certain industrial problems, notably to further organization among working-women ; to secure and enforce child labor legislation where needed ; to further attendance at school; and to secure humane conditions under which labor is performed. State federations have acted in accordance with the General Federation’s plans to appoint standing industrial committees, procure investigations, circulate literature, and create a public sentiment in favor of these causes. In Illinois this indirect power was of much aid in securing a Child Labor Law. In other communities something has been accomplished by way of enacting new laws or enforcing existing ones, showing that organized women readily avail themselves of the chance for indirect service in promoting the intelligent efforts of the federations.

On the other hand, there are three opportunities by means of which women’s clubs and their members can directly effect in a limited and local sense that industrial amelioration for which as federations they work so zealously. The first is found in the industrial conditions of the South, where it has been proved that the establishment of schools that offer manual training combined with some study of books, and with practical work in gardens and kitchens, will offset the attraction the factory has had for the children in its vicinity. These schools are called “ Model Schools,” and have been successfully inaugurated in Georgia. Their need is financial, and Southern women have brought the nature and needs of this work, which is, in a broad sense, an industrial reform, to the notice of women’s clubs in the North. In 1903 the clubs of Massachusetts established their first school at Cass, Georgia, and assured its maintenance for two years. But there is no other evidence that this significant opportunity for industrial amelioration has received that prompt and direct support that might warrantably have been expected.

The Child Labor Committee of the General Federation has furnished individual clubs with a second direct opportunity. This committee finds that the argument most frequently encountered while attempting to enact Child Labor legislation has been that the earnings of little children are needed to support widowed mothers. Therefore the committee requests clubs to investigate local conditions, and whenever an apparent case of this nature is found, “ to persuade the children thus employed to return to school, undertaking to pay the amount of the weekly wage, which the child formerly earned, to his widowed mother.” This money is to be called and regarded as a scholarship. The plan resembles one that has been carried on successfully by the state authorities in Switzerland for twenty-five years ; therefore it is neither a visionary nor impracticable scheme, but one in which women could realize their traditional responsibilities toward the children of the community, and in which women’s clubs could find a beneficent opportunity for direct and constructive work toward industrial amelioration. Eight such scholarships have been established in Chicago. There is no further evidence that any woman’s club has undertaken to carry out this plan.

The third instance is comprised in the unique opportunity for individual, as well as united, service offered to women by the Consumers’ League. This is the case of the individual purchaser, and of the product in one line of manufactured goods. For some years the Consumers’ League has urged upon the community the righteousness of buying only such goods as have been produced under humane conditions, believing that the final determiner of these conditions is the purchaser. But the claims of the Consumers’ League are well known, and it is also known to all women that “white goods ” bearing the League’s significant label can be bought in open market for prices that are entirely fair. Many state federations and the General Federation are pledged to further the work of the League. Single clubs give exhibitions of white goods, and form small local groups of membership. But the next step, the step that concerns the individual and makes the 275,000 members of women’s clubs consistent purchasers of these goods, is not taken. The “ bargain counter ” is the same scene of conflict as of yore ; and the woman who belongs to an organization pledged to industrial reform is a lively participant in this warfare of questionable economy.

The weakness of the club movement is this lack of real contact of ideals between the federations and the single club. The latter is satisfied, selfish, absorbed in its own local concerns; the federation appeals are a disquieting interruption to its orderly programme; while the federations, counting on their numerical strength, and believing in the ultimate awakening of the club, flatter it into an acquiescence that is mistaken for coöperation. In undertaking to awaken interest in so many lines of work, the federations jeopardize all interests, and minimize the value of each. If the women’s clubs of 1904 could come together on the platform of some common and fundamental social need, as did their progenitors, the club writ large in its federations would no longer be an elaborate organization for the dissemination of propaganda, but would at once become that which it now may seem to be, — a social force. Its incoherencies would be explained, its complex methods and motives would be simplified, and its institutional rank might be assigned.

I asked my grocer recently what he thought of our woman’s club. And he, with careful precision, answered me, “ I think your lady’s club is very dressy.” While I was still revolving the grocer’s answer, I chanced to see these words of an eminent educator: “ When the history of this period comes to be written, it will be recognized that from 1870 to 1900 was a period of greater significance than any former two hundred years ; and out of that whole time of thirty years, that which will be recognized as the most significant, as the most far-reaching, will be the movement that is represented by the women’s clubs.”

The adjudication of the two points of view — the club woman and the club movement — may still furnish scope for the altruistic endeavor of the Woman’s Club.

Martha E. D. White.