Great Affairs

On the great steel pier at Atlantic City the General Federation of Women's Clubs last week held its 18th biennial convention. The Federation heard William Green, President of the A. F. of L. (against child labor), Governor Pinchot of Pennsylvania (for prohibition), Minnie Maddern Fiske (against the use of furs of animals* caught in cruel steel traps) and many another worthy man and woman. The Federation also passed resolutions for the beautification of highways, for a federal child labor amendment, for support of the 18th Amendment and Volstead Act./- In addition it decided to found a permanent "legislative bureau" in Washington, directed all its member clubs to study the "crime situation," and finally re-elected to office its President, Mrs. John D. Sherman.

In Paris took place a triennial meeting of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance. Its opening was enlivened by a purely American brawl. The National League of Women Voters represents the U. S. in the Alliance. The National Woman's Party was at hand asking admission to membership in the Alliance as a second U. S. organization. For a long time there has been a breach between these American societies over a matter of principle. The League contends for special legislation protecting women in industry. The Party opposes "protection" and demands absolute equality for women and men in industry as in everything else.

Mrs. Dudley Field Malone (wife of the famed Manhattan lawyer and social light) offered the allegiance of the National Woman's Party:

"We offer our strength, our devotion, and whatever practical spiritual forces we have at our command. . . ."

Miss Belle Sherwin, President of the League of Women Voters, replied : "The League objects to the admission of the Woman's Party on a ground which everyone concerned recognizes as a fact--that the Woman's Party and the League are opposed to each other in policy and in political action. This opposition has been demonstrated year after year at hearings on bills before the national Congress and before different State Legislatures."

The Committee on Admissions voted against admission of the Woman's Party; the Committee of Presidents of. the national groups in the Alliance did the same. Mrs. Corbett Ashby (English), International President, exclaimed:

"Girl mothers are dying like flies in Egypt and Persia through the lack of necessary legislation. In other countries girls are denied equal opportunities for education. Again, in many countries women are having a terrific fight for the vote. Yet the Woman's Party would make the issue of equal industrial rights of paramount importance under such conditions. It is ridiculous.

"To speak plainly and as an individual, I am perfectly furious at the Woman's Party and their tactics "*

The full meeting of the Alliance was given four reasons by its officers for refusing admission to the National Woman's Party: 1) That the League of Women Voters had objected to it; 2) That Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, founder of the Alliance, had objected; 3) That if admission were granted there would be a conflict of opinion in the American group; 4) That the Woman's Party had given news directly to the press in Paris without sending it through the official press bureau. The last objection was stressed, and the Woman's Party merely answered that it was "too trivial for consideration."

Sentiment in the meeting seemed almost evenly divided. The officials told the delegates that it would equal a vote of no confidence in their officers if they voted for the Woman's Party. Then the ballot was taken. The Woman's Party was refused admission, 123 to 48. Later the same day the Alliance voted down, 91 to 78, a resolution of the type favored by the Woman's Party:

"Any international system of differential legislation based upon sex, in spite of any temporary advantage, must develop into an intolerable tyranny and result in the segregation of women workers and impose fresh hardships upon their capacity as wage-earners."

Next day Mrs. Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont, sonorous and emphatic leader of the Woman's Party, had something to say:

"Mrs. Catt, with the great fortune left her by Mrs. Leslie, is by far the largest financial supporter of the International Alliance. I took Mrs. Catt out of obscurity and brought the suffrage movement to the front in the United States, but I finally had to leave Mrs. Catt nine years ago in the interest of the suffrage cause.

"I do not admire either the methods, advice or influence of Mrs. Catt. I think we should all work together and try to make the best of each other's views, but after working with Mrs. Catt for nine years I finally left her, believing it in the best interest of the movement.

"This is the first time since 1909 I have had anything to say about Mrs. Catt, but I see only her influence in the present situation. "Mrs. Catt, I am told, gave 50,000 francs to the present congress on condition that they raise another 50,000. This is very difficult for French women, because of their losses in recent years and I offered to give the other 50,000 francs. However, now they don't want us I cannot, of course, give the money."*

Mrs. Catt, who was in Manhattan at the time, merely said:

"After women won the vote in the United States, the Woman's Party preferred to work for a Federal amendment to give equal rights under the law to women with men. The Consumers' League and the Women's Trade Union League protested and the Federation of Labor sided with them. If such an amendment to the constitution became effective it would either take away from women the protective legislation they have secured or bring men under the same laws. The women workers have no such organization as the men and need protection.

"The League of Women Voters indorses the industrial program of the Women's Trade Union League and the Consumers' League, and is opposed to the amendment sponsored by the National Woman's Party."

Later the National Woman's Party held a rally with other feminists sympathetic with them, including Lady Rhondda, who withdrew her delegation from the Alliance. Lady Rhondda declared:

"There are two types in the woman's movement today, feminists and social workers. The social welfare people think about infant care, etc., while the feminists are out all the time for equal rights. Therefore, the sight of you makes tho social welfarers shiver. Keep these women out. You are dangerous they say, and so you were barred We all know now where our spiritual homes lie and we are one body. We are the feminists of the world."

Carrie Lane, Carrie Chapman, Carrie Catt, name her what you will, an Iowa farmer's daughter (born however in Wisconsin), was thus denounced, and, her spirit certainly held sway in the meeting of the International Suffrage Alliance not only because of her financial contributions (as Mrs. Belmont mentioned) but because she was its founder and President from 1904 to 1923 when she retired (TIME, May 28, 1923).

There are reasons for Mrs. Catt's influence. Born on a farm, she worked her way through a four-year course at Grinnell College in three years, and the entire cost to her father was only $100. At 22 she was Superintendent of schools at Mason City, Iowa. At 25 she married a struggling country editor, Leo Chapman, and worked with him until his death less than two years later. At 30 she was soliciting advertisements for a trade paper in San Francisco. At 31 she married George W. Catt (who died 15 years later), and most of her work on behalf of women dates from her second marriage. In 1900 she succeeded Susan B. Anthony as President of the American Woman Suffrage Association and labored untiringly for the 19th Amendment until its adoption in 1920. Composed, forceful, direct, she has faced many stormy situations, and now at 67, though retired from many active concerns, her name is still a word to conjure with in women's circles.

In recent years women leaders have become more diverse than they once were, just as their activities have become more diverse. The U. S. now has such diverse organizations as the National Woman's Party, which desires to be a real political party and set up a bloc to demand absolute equality for women; the League of Women Voters, content to work through existing parties for more modest political ends; the General Federation of Women's Clubs, with more general cultural aims, an amateur in the game of politics; and a host of societies intent on improving the world -- the Junior League through charity, the W. C. T. U. through morals, church organizations through religion, still others by abolishing war, tobacco, etc.-- not to mention organizations for women of special interests, such as the National Federation of Business and Professional Women, the Women's Trade Union League, the Association of University Women--associations of all kinds, touching one another on certain points and widely divergent in others.

The gamut of organizations is matched by an equal variety of women leaders--leaders of political causes, such as Maud Wood Park, Belle Sherwin, Mrs. Belmont, Alice Paul; leaders in practical politics, ranging from Ruth McCormick and Harriet Taylor Upton to Congresswomen Kahn, Rogers, Norton, Governesses Ross and Ferguson, who are really not leaders of women's movements at all; leaders of "social" movements such as Edith Rockefeller McCormick; leaders who have distinguished themselves in their own professions, such as Judge Florence Allen, Mrs. Mabel Walker Willebrandt, Jane Addams; women who have approached public life from poverty, from the bourgeoisie, from wealth and from social distinction. But one must credit Mrs. Catt with having gone the furthest as a leader of women as women. Despite her advancing age, she is most likely to be named when an oldtime suffragist is asked, "What woman could be President of the U. S.?"

*Last week Actress Fiske wrote a long letter to the New York Times protesting against cruelty to mules in Arkansas.

/-The meeting was marked by the passage of the following resolution: "Whereas, reducing body weight has become a national mania, and "Whereas, many women and girls have injured their health by reducing nostrums and wrong and injurious methods of dieting, and by bringing themselves below their normal healthy weight, while others are dangerously overweight, and "Whereas, there are at present no adequate tables which tell women what they ought to weigh, therefore be it "Resolved, that we urge the women of America not to imperil their health and that of future generations by reducing methods other than those advocated by reliable physicians."

*She referred to the fact that members of the National Woman's Party delegation had made statements directly to the press instead of leaving all publicity to the officials of the Alliance.

*She later changed her mind on this point.