Mother's Day, Inc.

Last week in honor of Mother's Day, Secretary of War Woodring urged every U. S. soldier to write a letter to his mother. Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt said that flowers on Mother's Day were "sweet and nice," but something ought to be done for the 14,000 mothers who die every year from childbirth. A Manhattan tobacconist displayed a selection of women's pipes and four men in Philadelphia were arrested for breaking into a greenhouse and stealing 2,000 Mother's Day carnations.

In Manhattan the Golden Rule Foundation * held a contest for American Mother of 1938. Mrs. Grace Noll Crowell of Dallas, Tex. just nosed out Mrs. Eddie Cantor. Mrs. Crowell has three children and has written 1,900 poems, a large number of them about the Home. Last week she arrived in Manhattan with her husband, was put up at the St. Moritz, given a medal, presented to Mrs. James Roosevelt, Mayor LaGuardia, Grover Whalen. Said Mrs. Crowell: "Womanhood is fundamentally sound."

Anna Jarvis is the 60-year-old Philadelphia spinster who invented Mother's Day. Whenever she thinks of what the flower shops, the candy stores, the telegraph companies have done with her idea, she is disgusted. She has even incorporated Mother's Day to help keep unscrupulous florists and confectioners from using her patented trademark for commercial purposes. But "nobody," she says, "pays any attention to law any more."

Once she was arrested for disorderly conduct for interrupting a Philadelphia meeting of American War Mothers, whom she accused of profiteering on Mother's Day carnations. In 1934 she kept James Aloysius Farley from putting "Mother's Day" on his special 3-c- Whistler's Mother stamp, which she said was just another racket. Last week on Mother's Day she contented herself with denouncing a Manhattan "Mother's Peace Day" parade and a "Parents' Day" meeting in Central Park. (One of her current slogans is "Don't Kick Mother out of Mother's Day.") Then she dedicated an eternal light to the Mothers of America and went to a service in her honor at the Church of the Saviour.

The idea for Mother's Day came to Miss Jarvis on the second Sunday in May, 1907, the first anniversary of her mother's death. She persuaded a Philadelphia church to hold a special service: in a few years every church in the land was holding special services. In 1908 the Governor of Florida issued a special Mother's Day proclamation. Before he died a few years ago he called Miss Jarvis to his bedside and asked her if he had been the first Governor to get aboard the bandwagon. Tenderheartedly she said yes, but actually the Governor of North Dakota, she says, beat him to it by several days. Then in 1914 President Wilson issued a National proclamation and the flower stores began to sense the possibilities. Miss Jarvis started her hopeless, 25-year fight against commercialism.

She is beginning to be afraid that Mother's Day has got completely out of hand. She still sends violent telegrams to President Roosevelt, occasionally walks round Philadelphia streets carrying a black satchel full of publicity releases and pictures of herself taken shortly after her mother's death. But mostly she stays behind the heavy curtains of her old red-brick house on North 12th St. Her telephone is not listed. Her letterhead does not have an address. Her sister, who lives with her, is almost blind; her Negro answers the doorbell only when it rings a certain number of times. Projecting from the third story is an old Philadelphia "busybody," an arrangement of mirrors so she can see who is at the door without opening the window. Nothing in the old house has been changed since her mother died. In the front room there is an urn containing palm leaves from the funeral. In one corner is a large portrait of her mother surrounded by holly wreaths. Before it is a bowl of fresh flowers. She listens to the radio passionately. One day, she is certain, she will be sitting quietly listening and she will suddenly hear her mother's voice, speaking to her.

* The Golden Rule: "Whatsoever ye would that others should do for your mother if she were in need, and whatsoever your mother would do for the needy if she had the opportunity, do in her name and in her honor for other mothers and their children, victims of present-day maladjustments."

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