USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > The Congress of Women : held in the Woman's building, World's Columbian exposition, Chicago, U.S.A., 1893 : with portraits, biographies and addresses > Part 44
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89 | Part 90 | Part 91 | Part 92 | Part 93 | Part 94 | Part 95 | Part 96 | Part 97 | Part 98 | Part 99 | Part 100 | Part 101 | Part 102 | Part 103 | Part 104 | Part 105 | Part 106 | Part 107 | Part 108 | Part 109 | Part 110 | Part 111 | Part 112 | Part 113 | Part 114 | Part 115
The home atmosphere is often changed, too, by the pretty colored things which are brought into it. Jennie carries home the red and white mat she has woven. The mother is delighted to see what " her Jennie" can make. She likes to show it to the neighbors when they drop in. But there is not a place worthy of this bright, clean mat. Perhaps the wall is washed to make a clean background for it, or the mantel is dusted. " My mother dusted the mirror," one child reported, " and she put my card in the frame." When the wall has been washed and the mirror dusted, the window must be cleaned, so that the light may come in better, and the stronger light shows the doubtful spots on the floor. So the floor is washed, and, at length, the dingy room becomes clean.
The "divine discernment" is bred within children, who are taken from dinginess and strife and surrounded for a portion of every day with an atmosphere of peace and
325
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
good will. The slums will not hold them, when the power comes to forsake the life of the tenement. The kindergarten to many children seems like a real heaven with blooming flowers and sunshine and singing birds. The warmth and light and kindli -. ness of the place first attracts, and then the love for it all comes "The kindergarten is the largest step forward yet taken in the race with poverty;" though the kinder- garten plays, the fancy is so filled with shapes of joy that the poorest and hungriest boy gains the power to create his own environment. In fancy he roams the daisy fields, or the green forests. Or, perhaps, the heat of the summer and the squalor of his surroundings are lost, as he personates the fish diving and darting along the clear, rippling stream. The songs and talks and plays have made " his mind a mansion for all lovely forms," and have given him a new environment. A new earth has been created around him, and he looks toward a new heaven. This heaven he finds within himself, as he is guided constantly to happy companionship, not only with the forms and voices of Nature which are pictured and presented to him, but with his fellows. He learns that there is a larger family than that dwelling within the attic room, of which he is a member. In the kindergarten he is a part of an embryo community, where all the duties and rights of citizenship are taught by daily intercourse. The law of this community is the Golden Rule, and all .actions are measured by its golden standard.
But every community must have its industrial life, and this child society is no exception. By making work beautiful it becomes interesting and a love of work grows up within this circle of children, where the hum of industry is as pleasant as the hum of the traditional bee. Idleness, which is the cause of crimes and woes manifold, finds an arch enemy in the kindergarten, where diligence in business is the ruling principle. The value of this training to work and to love work cannot be ignored by those who see the need of a better industrial development in our country.
The kindergarten, too, constantly contradicts the old dictum of Plato, that the useful arts are degrading. The work of the blacksmith, the cooper, the farmer, the miller, the clothier are represented in the games of the children. It is a joy to be a blacksmith and to hammer well, because we can then set a shoe for ahorse. Without the horse the farmer could not carry his grain to the miller, and the flour could not be ground and the children could not be fed. So the beauty and the honor of the work are made to depend on what it gives to others, and in his representative play the four- year-old may gain the great truth as a life possession, which we name the interde- pendence of mankind on the solidarity of the race.
"Everybody has to have everybody," exclaimed the child on whom this great thought had dawned through his play. Can any minister or teacher phrase it better? Can there be any better thought for the child, standing on the portal of the future, to carry with him into the undiscovered land? If everybody needs everybody, some- body needs him. If he accepts this universal relationship, he has already become an heir to his true kingdom He has come into possession of his own.
L
THE HIGHER WOMANHOOD .* By MRS. CAROLINE F. CORBIN.
The women of this generation have been busy with the intellectual and econom- ical development of the new era. In so doing they have acted under an inspiration as true as that which fashions the rocky crust of the earth before it clothes the crags with verdure or brings forth the flowers which embellish the plain. But when the birth throes of the new advent are over, the stir and excitement of it all past, and humanity shall settle down to the fully developed conception of woman as no longer a slave or an inferior, but the equal of man, a creature with her own needs, her own prerogatives, her own destiny, not indeed identical with man, but in every respect of equal worth and dignity, then will it be seen that even from the begin- ning the emotional and spiritual nature of woman has been God's crowning gift to the race; that even as a serf or slave, in Bedouin tent or Asian harem, fettered, circumscribed and despised, she was still the fountain of life, the helpmate and inspiration of man, the sybil, the seer, the prophetess, the exponent of that divine principle of love on which the progress and culmina- tion of the race wholly depended. The germ of her great destiny was there, biding its time in darkness and obscurity. The magnetic impulse of the woman MRS. CAROLINE F. CORBIN. soul was even then the promise of God to the race, of its future development and flowering, and that without it the career of man, even in the material and intellectual phases of life, must have been abortive, impossible.
I look abroad over the marvelous scenes of this Exposition, scenes never before equaled in fairy tale or dream of the Arabian Nights, which Shakespeare's fancy but faintly outlined in that wondrous scene of " cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces and solemn temples," which is such a description of our beloved Exposition and its final destiny, as no other hand but his could have written. I look, I say, upon this wondrous scene of enchantment which men claim as their unaided achievement, and I ask, is it in truth the work of man alone? I go back to the quiet homes, the studios apart from the noisy scenes of life, the work shops, the forges, and seeing these indom- itable toilers at work, these Cyclops, these peers of the ancient Hercules, I ask whence came the inspiration which fires their imagination, which nourishes their fancy, which expands heart and soul to these new and grand conceptions of form and life and achievement; and I find in the inner recesses of each man's heart the energizing force
Mrs. Caroline Fairfield Corbin is a native of Connectient. She was born November 9, 1836. Her paternal and maternal ancestry are well known New England families. She was gradnated from the Brooklyn Female Academy, since known as Parker Collegiate Institute of Brooklyn and Long Island. She has traveled extensively in this conntry and Europe. She married, in 1861, Calvin R. Corbin, Esq. She has had six children. Her special work has been in the interest of reform in the relations between men and women. Her principal literary works are " Rebecca, or Woman's Secret," "The Marriage Vow," and other works. In religious faith she is a Trinitarian Christian, and a member of the New England Congregational Church. In her early years Mrs. Corbin advocated Woman's Suffrage, bnt deeper study and experience convinced her that the doctrine implied a low materialistic idea of the value and destiny of women, and she has in recent years written many pamphlets in opposition to the political rights of women. Her postoffice address is 597 Dearborn Avenne, Chicago, Ill.
*The article as here given includes but the concluding portion of the address delivered in the Woman's Building.
326
327
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
of passion some gentle face of woman, some tender ministry of love which tempers the nerves of steel to greater endurance, and exalts and warms and quickens the whole nature. There is no worthy work of man which lifts itself to heaven over the broad earth today which has not behind it, giving it life, force and inspiration, the fecund, nourishing soil of womanhood. Nor, as the ages go on, and woman achieves grand and glorious successes in the outer world, shall we ever find that they can do this unaided by man. In every woman's work that is worthy of exalted fame, will be found the evidence of that strong support, that steady guidance, that supreme aspiration that man alone can minister.
In conclusion, I wish to give you the strong figure and example of what I have tried to say in this discourse. ' Go with me to the Midway Plaisance and look at the Samoan houses, the village of the South Sea Islanders, the huts of the Esquimaux and Laplander, and then stand with me in the Court of Honor, amid all its sublime and unearthly beauty, its gorgeous flower-encircled domes and its matchless fountains, its colonnades and porticoes, the grandeur of its Peristyle, the airy grace and beauty of its architecture, the stately columns, the majesty of its Statue of the Republic; meas- ure, if you can, standing under the blue of the sky, with the blue of the lake spread out before you, the progress, the achievement which humanity has made from the Midway to where we stand. I tell you as one who speaks from the inmost councils of nature and God that one undivided half of all this achievement belongs to woman. It is immutably, indefaceably here, and it is an exhibit of woman's work beside which every other exhibit of woman's hand-craft in this Exposition, noble and beautiful as many of them are, is paltry and insignificant.
WE, THE WOMEN. By MISS CARA REESE
We, the women of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, estab- lish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do here and now, in the glory of this great Columbian revelation of our strength, pledge heart, soul and mind in consecrated and contented service to our homes, our country and our God. To illustrate the virtues of her generation, and to set the seal of indestructiblety on the works that now do praise her throughout the land, there is need that woman now tarry awhile, and within the cloister of her soul reflect on that beginning which must necessarily find its birth in this triumphal close of the woman's century. No woman worthy of the name regards her personal existence as the chief fac- tor to be considered in all that tends to yield to national life its happiness and prosperity. No aggre- gate of women may claim the right of consideration as the great center in the adjustment of the affairs of the universe. There are leaders, there are followers. Those who follow today will be the leaders of tomor- row. Advance is general, development sure, whether gradual or spontaneous.
MISS CARA REESE.
In the belief that forces set in motion can never be recalled, shackles unbound can never be replaced, and that what may apply to one aggregate of women may apply to all-allowance made for laws, customs and beliefs, inherited or acquired, which may hasten or retard -- we, the women of the United States, with the grip of the universe on heart and hand, pause, in this the hour of triumph, and question with a thrill of pain, "What of the Future?" Years of effort have found culmination in a proper and befitting display. Never in the history of nations has there been such revelation of woman's capability and deeds as in this gala year. But con- mencement is almost over. Work has passed examination. Carefully prepared speeches have been delivered. The world has seen, heard, and applauded. With the end comes a beginning.
Conservative women, and there have been quite a number who have distributed their time to good advantage in the sessions of these various congresses, discern in the new beginning signs of coming defeat. The desire for supremacy, the wild rush for leadership, the greed for gain, the love of notoriety, the clamor for political recog- nition, are straws to them that point the way to loss of womanly dignity and refine- ment, the collapse of domestic tranquillity, and the moral weakening of the home.
Miss Cara Reese was born, raised, and is working out a successful career in Pittsburgh, Pa. She is the only daughter of Abram and Mary Godwin Reese, both natives of Pennsylvania. Miss Reese has been educated in the public and private schools of Pittsburgh, and graduated from the Institute Department of Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pa. Higher education was continued under special teachers, not forgetting the accomplishments of music and art. Her chosen profession is active newspaper work. For over six years Miss Reese has been identified with the interests of the Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette. Miss Reese is particularly happy in public addresses. She is a member of the Shady Avenue Baptist Church, Pitts- burgh. Is kind-hearted and womanly in disposition, and happy and contented in her chosen sphere. Her postoffice address is Commercial Gazette, Pittsburgh, Pa.
328
329
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
The enthusiasts "pressed down, shaken together and running over" with things seen and heard from their seventh heaven, predict another end. "We are living in the dawn of the millennium," they say. "What need of further conquest." "Behold the dawn of a magnificent future," cries the suffragist; "save Kansas, and we, the women live to rule, henceforth and forever."
With some hesitation, a representative of the wage-earning women of the day ventures to define a pathway through the chaos resultant from the general upheaval that is everywhere bringing women up to light and civilization, thankful, bewildered, dizzy or inflated with pride as the case may be, and, but for a growing conviction that a proper and rational settling of the condition of affairs would be a long and tedious process without laborers in the field, both tongue and pen would have maintained silence.
The new era is at hand, but not that of the perfection that bringeth into the king- dom, nor that, it is hoped, that means the reversal of the positions of men and women, nor that which may herald destruction or defeat. But an era, God grant, of equal rights, woman with woman, the home with the world, domestic tranquillity with the public wel- fare, God with the minds he has created. The day has gone by for the expression of that sentiment which surrounds the business woman with the halo of a glorified inde- pendence, and places her on a pedestal in the market-place, the envy and admiration of the stay-at-homes, a spectacle to beget jealousy, covetousness, heavy-heartedness and despair in her purseless sisters, and in the end the lever, perhaps, that overturns some happy home. The day has gone by for the expression of that sentiment that ignores the practical side of the life of wife and mother, and pleads only for that Divine calling, which, with its ceaseless panorama of pots and pans, cradles and tubs, butch- ers, bakers and mantua-makers, supposably heralds an estate but little lower than the angels.
The new era finds women divided into two great classes, wage-earners and home- makers. Upon the proper adjustment of these depends future serenity. The limit of tension is now at hand. Relations have been strained to the utmost. Surface indica- tions prove the wage-earning class the stronger. The flaunted dollar is proving the magnet to draw the wife from the husband, the mother from her children, and fair young girls from the safe shelter of the home. Nay, more. The signs of the times prove that husbands, 'fathers, sons and brothers are not averse. The husband makes room for the desk of his wife, the father finds place for his daughter's typewriter, brothers skirmish for positions for their sisters, the small boy greedily fingers the pennies that mother has earned, and the home goes to destruction. What need of detail? Thousands of roomers in the large cities, cramped housekeeping in apart- ment flats, bear silent testimony. The dusty parlor, the cluttered kitchen, the half made beds, the hurried meals are familiar objects today in the homes where the women have gone over to the hustling world, while for her pains, the thrifty stay-at- home, who has planned and worked and ordered affairs in true gospel fashion, must smother a sigh as within her own household she hears the commendation bestowed on the money-making women on the other side of the wall, and her home-loving daughter creeps to her room disheartened and discouraged at the thinly veiled hint of father or brother- go thou and do likewise.
The unappreciated home-makers of today, and, oh men and brothers, how many there are! watch the career of the wage-earning woman with hungry eyes. The wage- earning woman sighs for the comforts of home, but views home-life with distrust. Both are discontented, and in that discontent lies the leaven that will work future destruction. This discontent, so universal and so widely recognized as the one evil that threatens the success of the women of the future, owes its strength to the sharply defined line that exists between the earner and the home-maker. Not the dividing line of caste, as formerly. Everywhere the working woman is compelling the atten- tion and respect of the women of so-called leisure. She finds cordial recognition in the homes of wealth. She is an honored guest at public functions. Her opinion is
330
.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
asked on affairs of moment. Her name graces committees and boards. She is sought after, consulted and socially accepted. But the still sharper division, all the more distinct in that it is largely imaginary, with pocketbook and independence on one hand and unappreciated home work on the other.
All honor to the woman, who, when necessity compels, will bravely take up the burden of business. All honor to that consecration that will force woman from the home in order to better protect that home. All honor to her who feels that she could not give a satisfactory account of her stewardship in the great day if her talent be not put to usury. But there are other things to be taken into consideration before such a line of action becomes universal. On entrance into the business world woman becomes conversant with much that was to her a scaled book before. Knowledge at first startling soon becomes commonplace, womanly reserve wears away, feminine graces vanish, the cold practical atmosphere in time dulls the sensitive nature, and the woman worker becomes a money-making, fame-seeking machine; an ingrate, often forgetful of friends and favors; a cold, selfish, calculating automatum, and above all a chronic discontent.
On two things the woman-heart thrives. Love and ambition. The first the nat- ural woman prefers. The second is an educated preference, against whose craving the first becomes flat, stale and unprofitable. The first means limited homage; the sec- ond the plaudits of the world. Into the circumstances that have led up to the edu- cated preference it may be best not to inquire. Years of suffering and sacrifice, of oppression and suppression, had driven the woman of the past to the wall. In her desperation she turned and fled to the world, her one cager thought to secure com- fort for those nearer and dearer to her than life itself. Now the aim is largely selfish, and as she views the passiveness with which her labors are accepted by those who should be her protectors, and notes the tendency to effeminacy in those who should be the strong ones of earth, discontent is keeping pace with her every stride, and play- ing havoc with homes and happiness. Satan finds mischief for idle women to do is applicable no longer. The women are being educated to death, organized to death and worked to death, and the stronger the pressure in any one the greater the discon- tent and dissatisfaction.
To no class of women, perhaps, is this state of affairs more apparent than to those connected with the daily press. Brought into intimate relationship with all classes and conditions of women; those in all stations of business, from the shop-girl to the head and brains of some mammoth establishment; from mistresses in homes of hum- ble degree to those of princely scope; and standing as they do on the outside, view- ing with unbiased mind the movements in all departments of life, noting now the advance and now the backward step, impartially they weigh the condition of affairs and sum it all up in the words, "social unrest."
Social unrest! Oh, women of America, aim for suffrage if that will bring con- tentment. Pray for the millennium if that will bring a reign of peace. Educate, organize, but ever hand in hand and heart to heart for home, country, and God. Home for the wage-earning woman as well as for the wife and mother. Home for her who, out in the busy world, is so fast losing those graces which, like fragrant blossoms, should twine about the woman's soul. Home for the young girls with their pure hearts and innocent minds. Join hands. The business woman needs the sym- pathy and counsel of the home-maker, not her wail of discontent The home-maker needs the broadening glimpse into the sunlight and shadow of life which the business woman can give, not the aggravating taunt of independence or boast of fame and for- tune. Each is responsible for domestic tranquillity ; and domestic tranquillity generally assured, the public welfare will take care of itself. In this growing discontent woman is fast losing that happy, sunny disposition, once her greatest charm. The "sweet " woman of today is the artificial one. The " lovable woman " is the one with the stereo- typed smile and caress; and while now and then a thoroughly happy and contented woman is found who may be placed in the category of #motherly," she comes like angel visits, few and far between, and does not belong to the younger class.
331
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. ,
Seek contentment. Crave not worldly rush. Better the pinch of occasional sac- rifice than the loss of womanly dignity and reserve. Be natural. Be what James Whitcomb Riley, the Hoosier poet, in his "Neighborly Poems," beautifully accords to his friend, Erasmus Wilson:
Jest natchurl, and the more hurraws You git, the less you know the cause ---- Like as ef God Hisself stood by, Where best on earth hain't half-knee high, And seein' like, an' knowin' He 'S the Only Great Man really, You're jest content to size your height With any feller-man's in sight.
Courage, women of America. You have fought great battles, you have won great victories. Now look to the homes and firesides. The present is yours, the future belongs to God.
1
HOME SIDE OF PROGRESS. By MRS. CLARA HOLBROOK SMITH.
It is granted that we have eclipsed all other national efforts in the mammoth placing of our exhibits side by side with those from the Old World; I long to know if it will be the world's verdict that America leads in ยท all that is largest and latest. Some phases of these evidences of progress call out many questions as we compare our national life with the life of advanced cultured nations which have preceded us, but whose glory now has departed. The statement on the cover of Dr. Strong's oft-quoted book, says our country is God's last opportunity for the human race. If this is true, are we to progress far beyond any of the nations that have preceded us, or is it in the Divine plan for all natural life that it is " thus far and no farther?"
Is the new Jerusalem to come from the sky, or is it to be an carth renovated? Professor Drummond seems to banish the sky idea, and says: " It means a new London, a new Chicago, a new Jerusalem, all of the cities lifted by spiritual thought and effort to the plane of a heavenly city. In the light of the history of past nations, are we ncaring the age of ripeness that precedes decay, or are we nearing the renovation period ?
In this White City have we delineated the highest MRS. CLARA HOLBROOK SMITH. that has preceded us in art, or is the art of the classic days of Greece the limit of human ability in that direction.
Historical research proves conclusively we have not equaled that period in liter- ature, and it leaves us with the mortifying certainty that there have been but five men produced in the past two thousand years that could equal the twenty-eight men pro- duced in the two centuries between 500 B.C. and 300 B.C .- only five. Neither can we boast of our orators, when Rufus Choate asserted that if Demosthenes were here today the only ones who would be able to follow and comprehend him would be the lawyers and judges of the supreme bench. In your thought can you place one of our states- men by the side of Pericles? If we then are still on the lower rounds of the mental ladder, is it not time the homes of the land were questioned and challenged? No cult- ure can go beyond the capacity of the one to be cultured. We are generally beating all around the bush. We study very carefully the condition of the house in which the home is to be located. We talk glibly of sanitation, of hygiene of foods chemi- cally considered. The wise home-makers have placed on exhibition all the latest implements -the model nursery, the kindergarten, the kitchen-garden, the gymnasium,
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.