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 98
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
We do not wish them to forget what they have learned at school, and so each girl is compelled to write her own name and address on the piece of lace made by her, as well as its price and the date when finished. They sing while they work, street litanies and lovely part songs, as well as the stirring war choruses of young Italy. They are visited twice a week by a chaplain and school-teacher, who recounts to them anec- dotes about the helpful lives which members of their class have led for others, and tells them of the great charitable organizations and institutions founded through their self-abnegation. Each morning they begin the day by united prayer, and if the priest is not expected one of the stories learned from him is repeated for the amusement of the others. If you asked Italia, our most lovable and industrious lacemaker, she would repeat to you the following in soft and modest accents:
"One day not so many years ago-alas! I forget the date, but I think it was about 1830-a priest in Sicily entered one of the most squalid houses of his parish just at the hour when the family was about to partake of its mid-day meal. He was politely invited to join, and what was his surprise, after the blessing had been asked, to see each cut off the most delicate part of his portion and place it on a plate in the center of the table. He asked for an explanation of this strange action. The father answered: 'You see we have no money to spare with which to help our neighbors, but we find that if each of us gives away a good big mouthful of his food, though it costs him nothing, it suffices to remind him of those who have no meals, and the united bits are ample for the nourishment of an old man who comes daily to get what we have saved for him.'" The priest marveled at the example of true Christian charity set by this simple household and went away full of the idea that what had been done by one family could be done by many. And at present, owing to his teachings, each day that the sun rises on Sicily six thousand poor people are fed with the mouthfuls of the poor.
Oh my compatriots, you and I grew up with tales of Mafia Camorra and blood- shed poisoning our hearts against the Sicilians, while their poorest were developing this noblest brotherhood which teaches to take the bread from one's own hungry mouth to feed a poorer neighbor.
700
THIE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
You and I were reading of the Sicilian vespers reeking with blood, while from the scanty dinners of the poor ascended to the Lord a sweeter savor than from our rich and dainty boards.
The lacemakers know scores of such stories. Learning thus daily of the great influence for good which even the lowliest can exert, let us also learn from them never to neglect the smallest opportunities, for they are the stepping-stones set by Provi- dence to bridge the deep chasm of egotistical selfishness which lies between our frail humanity and the great example, Christ. The little seven-year-old lacemakers will join the big ones in showing with pride their lace pillows. Each one is absolute pro- prietress of all she makes, and can even sell it herself. She must then charge a small percentage above the price paid to her and hand it in to the cashier to assist in defray- ing the expenses incurred for the lighting, heating and the administration of the lace school by which she has profited gratuitously to learn her art. The simple tools used by the lacemakers are loaned to them, but any wanton loss or destruction of these objects is deducted from their earnings. The accounts are settled monthly, and the price paid for the lace augmented up to a high percentage above the regular rate in proportion to its superiority to the sample, and a percentage is deducted if it falls below or is needlessly spoiled.
The scale of payment is governed by the money we can obtain for the lace. Hence we seek to originate new designs and have objects made which will attract the wealthy. Could we command enough work there are thousands of women in Fruili alone waiting to join our schools or organize into co-operative societies.
The race which inhabits Fruili and speaks its language is robust, handsome, intel- ligent and patient.
The women do not work as regularly as the men in the fields, but assist them there whenever necessary, and as they have the usual feminine fear of storms, one often sees when the thunder growls a posse of the weaker sex huddled together beneath a projecting bank, praying in abject fear. The women in the high-perched village are the first to spy the thunder-caps scudding along toward the quarter of the heavens which arches their homes, and they hurry to the church-tower and ring the bells to call the laborers from the fields and the old to their orisons. They ring with a will, for they believe that by establishing an aerial commotion through the swinging, reverber- ating bells the devastator can be warded off. As the storm approaches the prayer of the bells is heard ringing clear and strong between the gusts of wind. It increases to a wild entreaty in the on-rush of the tempest, and the wild clamor breaks in a frenzy of despair when the storm bursts.
Then begins the deep tolling of the great passing bell as the battered flowers and lascerated branches are carried along, tossed and torn by the blast and bruised by the cutting sheets of ice, fit emblems of the dying hopes of the hard-working peas- ants and the anguish of crushed naturc.
The voices of the village bells die away in a quivering sob, which seems wrung from their metal hearts in pity for the devastation around them. At the vesper hour they will rise again clear, despite the past, to praise God. Fit reminders of the Eternal Spring, the sunshine and the fresh budding and blossoming that lic beyond.
Since peasant and proprietor suffer alike from these terrific rain and hail storms, the gentlefolk of Fruili are seeking in every way to render their tenants familiar with all the means for rapidly substituting fresh crops for those destroyed. They also seek to supply them with other means of earning a livelihood in inclement weather so that they may maintain their families and meet their financial obligations with the proceeds of their manual industry.
About twenty-five years ago a gentleman farmer named Pecile died in Tagagna, a village which numbers about two hundred thousand inhabitants. He left an income which consists of five hundred dollars, to be spent yearly on agricultural instruction for the peasants, and in assisting any enterprise or industry started in the place which promised to add to their physical or moral development. Despite its modest propor-
701
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
tions this small sum has not only provided for the villagers admirable lectures on agri- cultural and economic topics and competitive prizes for the best crop of grain, etc., to the acre; it has also established an agricultural intelligence office for the peasants, to which is due a great improvement in the productiveness of the neighborhood. To this influence of Tagagna by means of discreetly placed loans for importing foreign stock is due a much finer race of cattle and pigs.
It has also donated to the village a model vineyard, tended by the peasants, in which experiments are made with every kind of grape vine to discover the one best adapted to the exigencies of the climate. Many co-operative establishments flourish under its guiding influence. All of these were founded by emitting small bonds worth two dollars each, mostly subscribed for by the peasantry.
One of these supplies the province with the seed or eggs for the silk-worm culture, prepared according to the system introduced by the great Pasteur when he lived in the province and studied the disease which was destroying the silk industry of Southern Europe. This establishment, with the exception of the director, is run entirely by about sixty peasant women, who perform the minute microscopic work, as well as all the other delicate branches of the culture, with such exactitude that the eggs from this co-operative establishment have reached the highest standard. The Pecile fund has also assisted the peasants to build the co-operative ice-houses which are filled by the people gratuitously every winter, and from which each has a right to free ice in time of necessity. It instituted the co-operative dairy, to which the villagers bring the surplus milk from their cattle, which is churned by dairy women into butter and cheese according to the most approved Swiss systems, or retailed to other members of the society. By its judicious initiative it rendered possible the opening of a splen- didly appointed co-operative slaughter house. It provides lessons in mechanical drawing, and it has founded a school of basket-making frequented by fifty or sixty peasants and children, which is now self-supporting.
See what a colossal work can be accomplished in twenty-five years by a paltry five hundred dollars well administered.
The gentlemen in the province have followed its example, and award prizes to their tenants for the greatest percentage of grapes or grain produced per acre under their cultivation, and for the greatest number of pounds of silk returned for the eggs distributed. But we all found that a greater stimulent and more extended competition was needed.
Many, yes too many, exhibitions for mechanics had been held in the cities of Italy. We knew all that could be known about their work but we were ignorant of our neighbors' in the country. They lived apart, and were reticent, modest, and clung to old worn out customs. They were doing little that was practical in their leisure hours-in the winter evenings-and while listening to legend and story, or joining in tender or merry part songs called "Vilotti," of which they were themselves the authors.
We decided to copy the English Cottage Garden shows in a broad sense. Instead of one village and a few cottages, seven great communes with a score of villages clubbed together. Each poor village can have a cottage garden show each year. Every inhabitant can bring a knit stocking, a neatly made frock, a pumpkin, a basket of peaches, a sheaf of wheat, a boot, a shoe, or a basket. The point is the emulation, the showing to each what others have done with no better opportunities than his DWn.
We had our machinery hall full of spades, plows, thrashers and simple agri- cultural implements and furniture made by the peasants. We had our manufactures building full of coarse stuffs and garments woven and fashioned by the peasant women; full of spoons and utensils and ornaments made by the men. We. had our horticultural and agricultural display, and going out into the fields we judged the houses and the farms themselves as well as their productions which were brought to the Fair. We had our stock pavilion full of small animals. Besides this we had a
.
702
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
gallery containing the best foreign models for simple objects and a book in which all could inscribe their names and the number of the object they wished to copy. We had a band, a speech from the senator of the district, a distribution of prizes, when each worthy peasant, man or woman, was called by name and the class of his production and reason of his choicc announced. He answered and mounted the old stone steps of the castle terrace with a proud heart to receive his two or three dollars award; or the prizcs were graded according to the importance of the exhibit, and the man whosc farm was in the best agricultural and cconomic condition received decidedly more than the man who had grown an exceptionally fine cabbage.
Last evening I received a letter announcing that my lace school had just been awarded the gold medal at the National Italian Exhibition of agricultural industries at Cesena.
And whence this amelioration? First, because the sccing what others could do inspired a healthy emulation and a desire to outstrip those of the neighboring villages in the percentage of prizes carried off by the home community. Secondly, because we had judiciously used it to acquaint the peasants with fresh means of cmolument. Among others we had taught six girls in a fortnight how to make a simple bobbin lace; and as they worked merrily before their astonished neighbors who stood densely packed before them, they inspired all the girls with a desire to learn the dainty lace art and the children asked us to open schools. When the fathers saw that the girls were wisely directed and never kept from doing their field work, from caring for and leading the cattle to pasture, or from washing with their mothers at the brook, they willingly sent them to the school. When they saw that their little maids became ncat, respectful, contented, and brought home pretty stories to enliven the evenings in the stable and the bright silver coins to swell the family hoard -- then the whole country side was converted. For the chcapness of the cotton goods has discouraged the women from weaving and they waste their leisure hours in crocheting and tatting and gossip.
The pricsts and the heads of the households begin to appreciate that while it in no way interferes with their usual laborious tasks, it adds to the financial resources of the family.
Among our lacemakers we have hunched-backs and lame and deformed bodies of every kind, and some that have spent thirty years on rude bcds of pain. The lacc children, like the sunbeams, have penctrated everywhere and taught them the easy twists and delicate turns by which their unlovely fingers could evolve the soft white lacc. Think of the ignorant mind, as dark, as squalid, as miscrable as the roof chamber to which this useless member of a busy household was banished, where it was left alone to solitary repinings, filled suddenly with the inspiring thought that in its decrepitudc it could earn as much and be as uscful to the family as the blooming maidens out in the fields. Think of the room now filled with the pleasant clatter of the bobbins, the pleasant chatter of the children who have come to work beside their aunty and tell her what their dear maestra said of her work when they carried it in on last pay-day. Watch the women and children trudging through ice and snow for many a weary mile to learn the new art. See them yielding to the education of the heart, and spending their modest earnings to help their mothers or some dcar invalid to a simple comfort they would not have dreamed of getting for them a few months before. Hearken to the terrific roar of the vast ocean of thirty million Italian voices behind them, asking if I have fulfilled the mission on which I came.
In the silent watches of the night it awakens me to wonder if I am doing my best; to search for what means remains as yet untried to touch your hearts.
Above the roar in machinery hall, above the sharp crack of the fireworks, above the music of the bands, above the applause of the multitude, above the thunder of the storms in this White City, I hear it.
Like Heine, I would snatch the tallest pine from the mountains, and dipping it
703
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
in the crater of Etna, would write the name of my beloved (the laborious, patient peasant women) upon the skies, that it might compel the gaze of the whole world.
Can you wonder, with this great opportunity, the Congress of all nations, drawing to its close, each nerve is stretched to snapping, the flesh is forgotten, each heartstring is vibrating in the agonizing desire to make all these voices reach your ears through my one frail organ? They are crying to you for your friendship, for your patronage. It means to them their homes, their children, their all. They are not begging; they offer you their work, the product of honest manual toil which is being driven from the market by machines which can never be weary or hungry or ill, which can never die, but also have no souls to lose through the temptations of misery.
The frail fingers of these women and children are competing with iron rods and steam power, and yet have courage; for the laces, the homespuns into which are entwined their dreams, their prayers, their songs and their tears, are unsurpassed. What I am striving for I can never accomplish. But you can do it if you only will.
The storekeepers tell me if there was a demand for Italian goods they would place them in stock. They say to me: Create the demand, we will do the rest. I entreat you to ask in the shops for Italian laces, Italian silks, Italian homespuns. . Fashion will obey your summons, such is your power. I can speak, but yours is the nobler part,
you can act. Act, only act; the modest Italian women of the people in their far-off country homes will feel the benefit. Their loving, unforgetting prayers have borne me up in my hours of trial; their dear, blotted letters come to me across the waters full of confiding faith and longing to know what I am doing for them in my father- land. Poor, ignorant darlings, because they love me they think me omnipotent. To you I confide their future. It is safe if you grant my prayer, though it hangs upon a frail shred of lace.
God grant that you may never again set eyes upon a piece of lace, however mean, without being reminded of what you can do for the hardworking women of the people in Italy.
THE NERVOUS AMERICAN. By MRS. MARTHA CLEVELAND DIBBLE.
Nations, like families, usually develop certain traits and peculiarities which are recognized as characteristic and typical. The pugnacity, virile courage and beef-cat- ing capacity of the Englishman, the wit, vivacity, and alas! the fickleness of the Frenchman, the pains-tak- ing persistence of the German, the indolent indiffer- ence which veils the Spaniard's volcanic nature, have all been generally acknowledged. And though there may be an occasional protest at some pungent thrust, the nations themselves usually accept the universal verdict. Each nation colors for itself the legends which it inherits, and it is difficult to identify in the heroes of one people those whose acquaintance we have already made under far different guise and sur- roundings. Indeed, the Orient and Occident are not geographically farther apart than they are separated in habits of life and thought.
Conceding all this, I think we may not be aston- ished if the dwellers in these United States have gained the reputation of being a peculiar people. And when we read or hear of the nervous American, we recog- nize its allusion to ourselves and take it home as tol- erably descriptive. The word nervous is somewhat ambiguous, but we understand it to mean in this con- MRS. MARTHA CLEVELAND DIBBLE. nection that hurry and restlessness, that lack of repose, which seems to permeate not only our business circles, but social life as well.
Uncle Sam and Brother Jonathan have been so many times faithfully described and pictured that you can readily recall their personal appearance. Then the high- keyed voice, louder than your car quite relishes, the rapid jerking out of sentences at the risk of losing a part of the words, the direct, brusk manner which wastes no time in formalities-all these things are familiar to everybody. And then this nerv- ous American is so busy. No time to stop; the days all too short to carry out his plans; no leisure for home or friends or amusements.
Of course it is the American who revels in a trip around the globe in sixty days, and who yearns to whirl along one hundred miles an hour. Said a witty Russian: " The American seems to have a wager with Time, and I am really interested as to which will win."
Night travel is nowhere so popular as in this country. To retire at night to one's Pullman couch and awake the next morning in a distant city with a full day's work before him, is great gain to the average American, and if he can repeat the perform- ance and be ready for business at home on the following day, his happiness is doubled. Any possible fatigue is not to be counted in the transaction. Now all this
Mrs. Martha Cleveland Dibble is a native of Bath, N. H. Her parents were Rev. Edward Cleveland, a Congregational clergyman, a graduate from Yale, and Mary M. Lang, a very cultured lady. Mrs. Dibble is a graduate from Iowa College, Grinnell, Iowa; later studied medicine in this country and in Europe, and holds a diploma from the Woman's Hospital College, of Chicago. She has traveled quite extensively through this country and in Middle and Southern Enrope. In 1878 she married, in Michigan, Dr. LeRoy Dibble. Her special work has been in the interest of hospital atd reformatory effort for women. Her profession is that of medicine, to which she gives most of her time. In religious faith she is Protestant. She is a member of the Protestant Episcopal Church. Her postoffice address is Kansas City, Mo.
704
705
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
is, according to popular verdict, nervous; and it is quite pertinent to ask the cause of such a trait-whether it is a permanent characteristic, and its probable effect upon our welfare, present and future.
It has been somewhat widely discussed, and various causes assigned. Some hold that it is due to the dryness of our climate; others consider the electrical currents of this continent especially stimulating, and that their great prevalence affects our tem- perament. Still others believe that it depends on the large quantity of meat which forms so prominent a part of the diet of our people. Again it is held to be indicative of a defective nervous development, an irritable unstable condition which accompanies a weak organization. This is a favorite theory with those who believe in the poor, frail physique of the Americans.
It may be that all these contribute to the same end, though they are somewhat contradictory.
We know that food and climate have a powerful influence upon the general con- dition of a race; its wealth, its physical development, its mental and moral status. The immense amount of work which has advanced this nation so rapidly could never have been done except by a people well fed. Our relatively small population, dis- tributed over a large and fertile territory, has made food cheap and plentiful, so that even our poorest classes, as a rule, have had an abundant and nourishing diet. Mental quickness and ingenuity, large brain power, and equally great muscular activity and endurance, are a legitimate result. And it is true that muscle without the propelling, directing vitality or nervous force would have been useless. Our nervousness, then, is what has done it, and if it has been sometimes over-stimulated, there is a comfort in knowing that, up to date, it has made an unparalleled record.
The question whether the perfected American type has been reached must cer-' tainly be answered in the negative. We are yet in the formative stage, and conditions tend to keep us there. While our advancement in business methods, in manufactures, agriculture and scientific research, shows great precocity in this infant nation; we must remember that we have inherited much, and that we have been continually receiving from outside both brawn and brain, so that what we might be if left to ourselves is yet to be determined. Successive generations of a homogenous people are necessary to perfect a type, and only during our colonial period, before the Revolution, was there a century in which our evolution was comparatively undisturbed, and what is distinctively American belongs to the influence of that time.
The handful of men and women who set their faces westward builded better than they knew. They braved undreamed of perils in the wilderness, but they conquered a new world. Before them, waiting for the magic touch of intelligent toil, was a conti- nent with limitless forests, mighty lakes and rivers, golden, swelling prairies, treasures of precious metals, and all the harvests which were garnered in the bosom of mother earth for the future blessing of her children.
The star moved westward; they followed. Through blood and flame, in poverty and distress, they fought their way; beaten back only to advance farther tomorrow, stronger for the rebuff, discovering new resources which lured them forward, even though the way was beset by a new foe; ever on, till they reached the shore of the sunset land and gazed on the waters of a new ocean.
I need not bring statistics to show you what has been the result of that pioneering. This great Exposition, which holds the world by sample, as one might say, brings us into very favorable comparison with the older countries, and if the American bosom swells with pride and complacency, and if American lips utter words of self-congratu- lation, and, perchance, of self-laudation, there is surely sufficient material excuse to free us from the charge of mere bombast and save us from ridicule.
Those who share in our triumphs today are not all descended from the Revolu- tionary forefathers. Fair Columbia, holding aloft her liberty cap, and lighting with flaming torch the path across the deep, has smiled a welcome to millions of eager helpers. Not from the ranks of the rich and happy, certainly, but largely from the (45)
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.