USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 5 > Part 21
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Amy Lowell, "the poet of the external," belonged to an old Boston family, the members of which have played a notable part in New England in business, in literature, and in Harvard University. Her poetry excites violent comment, whether of censure or of commendation. She has been extravagantly overestimated and not less strongly condemned.
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SCULPTORS AND PAINTERS
Her posthumous poem, "What's O'clock?" was awarded the Pulitzer Poetry Prize. Her detractors criticize her lack of rhythm, and find in her a laborious rather than an instinctive poet.
Josephine Preston Peabody Marks, emotional, dramatic, and with a lyrical quality which gave high rank to her poetry, was perhaps on her way to reach the pinnacle of enduring fame when she died. In 1909 "The Piper," a poetry play in four acts, was published, which won against three hundred and fifteen competitors in the English play composi- tion at Stratford.
Katherine Lee Bates, of Wellesley College, writer of travels, poems and stories, has won a permanent place in the hearts of her countrymen by her national hymn, "America, the Beautiful."
THE ARTS
In sculpture, prudery barred women from sketching from nude models, so necessary to the artist's knowledge of anatomy. Harriet Hosmer, a Bostonian, one of America's first women sculptors of note, was obliged to move to St. Louis to pursue her study of anatomy, having been debarred from the medical school of her native city. In painting, women met the same obstacles as in sculpture. Today, these conditions have changed. At the Boston Museum School, the young women outnumber the young men two to one. Now that the bars are down, women flock to the ateliers.
SCULPTORS AND PAINTERS
In sculpture the works of Mrs. Maynard Ladd are in- cluded in the collections of the Art Museum of Boston, of the Gardner Museum, and many other galleries in Europe and America. When the war came in 1917, Mrs. Ladd was at the height of her power and reputation. At the sacrifice of her own personal ambition, she went to Paris to use her skill as a sculptress, making portrait masks for the hopelessly ruined faces of the soldiers in the Val de Grace and other hospitals. Her success, which was extraordinary, was due to her years of experience in making busts in bronze and marble of Eleonora Duse, Pavlowa, Lady Barclay, Prince Ito,
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and many others. She enrolled in the American Red Cross and the Service de Santé, and went from Pont à Mousson to Verdun, travelling from place to place wherever she was needed to help the mutilated in the war zone, continuing her ministrations until the Armistice.
Four of Mrs. Ladd's war memorials have been erected in Massachusetts: in Brookline, Manchester, Hamilton, and Beverly Farms.
In 1929, the Boston Art Club held an exhibition, the first of its kind, composed exclusively of the work of American women painters. Fifty-two canvasses represented as many painters; and of these, Massachusetts women artists pre- dominated. The exhibition as a whole showed the strength and weaknesses of women painters. Among those receiving high mention were Marie Danforth Page, Mary B. Hazelton, Lilla Cabot Perry, Alice Ruggles Sohier, pupils of Tarbell; Gretchen Rogers, Marguerite S. Pearson and Martha E. Crocker of the Provincetown School; the latter won especial recognition for her "Portuguese Boy." One of the few landscape artists noted was Marion Parkhurst Sloane, whose "Mount Equinox in Shadow" was included in the Collection.
ART COLLECTIONS
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (designed by Wil- lard T. Sears, and by many considered his masterpiece) stands in the Fenway in Boston. It contains rare paintings, sculptures and wood carvings by the old masters, and bro- cades and bric-a-brac of the choicest; but its rank is other than that of a mere museum. It is the palace of an American princess, an indulged and adored being, who with the caprice of a tyrant had such personal fascination that, as an admirer put it, "everyone who has ever talked with her declares that she is the most brilliant, charming and attractive woman on earth." Her ability to recognize essential beauty amounted to genius. A collector's unerring instinct, combined with wealth and generosity, made it possible for her to bequeath to the Commonwealth an ensemble of which Paul Clemen, Professor of Art History at the University of Bonn, wrote: "Certainly you have now the best private collection in the
From a photograph of Sargent portrait
Courtesy of Morris Carter
MRS. JOHN L. GARDNER
Expertise/
20058
From a photograph
COURTYARD AT FENWAY COURT, BOSTON
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THE SUFFRAGE CONTROVERSY
world-not the largest, but the noblest. . . . In your house one walks quickly through the centuries and through the leading art countries, and has always again quite a harmonious and round impression."
When Fenway Court was completed, the New York World said, "the dream of Mrs. Gardner is almost realized, for she has raised in an ideal spot a wonderful building which is destined to be regarded as an important treasure of the city, like the Public Library, the Art Museum, Trinity Church, or the State House." By her will, she established Fenway Court as a museum for the education and enjoyment of the people forever.
INDUSTRY
The status of women in industry, the wage question and the minimum wage are discussed in the chapter on Labor and Labor Organizations. It should here be recorded, however, that in Massachusetts the beginning of the movement for the protection of women and children in industry was promoted by two organizations, the Massachusetts Consumers' League and the Women's Educational and Industrial Union. Among the leaders in this movement were Mrs. Mary Norton Kehew, Miss Mabel Gillespie, Professor Emily Greene Balch, and Miss Ann Withington.
In 1912, the General Court of Massachusetts passed the Minimum Wage Law, and the following year a Minimum Wage Commission was appointed to administer the law- Massachusetts being the pioneer in this form of progressive legislation.
THE SUFFRAGE CONTROVERSY (1870-1912)
The pioneers of the movement for women's rights were Massachusetts women, and the old Bay State was the first to hold a State suffrage convention.
The Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association was formed at a meeting held in Horticultural Hall, Boston, Jan- uary 28, 1870, with Julia Ward Howe as president. Among the vice-presidents were such distinguished citizens as Wil- liam Lloyd Garrison, John G. Whittier, George F. Hoar, A. Bronson Alcott and James Freeman Clark. This was the
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strongest of the antisuffrage associations. Suffragists and antisuffragists were both certain that the victory of the other side would spell misfortune to mankind. The opponents of equal rights never doubted that the entrance of women into political life would spoil them for their fundamental duties of motherhood and home making.
In this belief, they fought their aggressors, using the weapons to which women are most vulnerable-ridicule and social ostracism. They were fortified by press and pulpit, by lawyers and statesmen : the keenest intellects of the country uniting to crush what was honestly feared as a menace to society. The New York Herald, referring to a suffrage con- vention, said: "The assemblage of rampant women which con- vened at the Tabernacle yesterday was an interesting phase in the comic history of the 19th Century, a gathering of unsexed women, unsexed in mind, all of them publicly propounding the doctrine that they should be allowed to step out of their appropriate sphere to the neglect of those duties, which both human and divine laws have assigned to them. Is the world to be depopulated?"
NATIONAL SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT
Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, for many years president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, white- haired but still vigorous in all good causes, was chosen by the President to head the Women's Division of the National Council of Defense. Although born in England, Dr. Shaw lived and worked in Massachusetts and as a minister preached in Hingham, Dennis, and East Dennis.
Suffragists credit Dr. Shaw with transforming President Woodrow Wilson from a mere sympathizer into a campaigner for woman suffrage. A national convention was held at Atlantic City, to which President Wilson came, to be greeted by an audience numbering thousands. Dr. Shaw was chosen orator for the great occasion and, at the end of an address unrivalled in eloquence, she said : "We have waited so long, Mr. President. We have dared to hope that our relief might come in your administration and that yours would be the voice to pronounce the words to bring our freedom,"
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CAMPAIGN FOR RATIFICATION
From this hour, the suffrage movement moved swiftly on, impelled by its own momentum. Thus it came to pass that in the month of June, 1919, a group of women, worn with work and anxiety, yet with an expectant light in their eyes, stood in the presence of the chief executive of the United States. They held their breath as he put his signature to the parchment before him, and breathed a sigh of relief when he had signed the amendment to the Constitution of the United States drafted by Susan B. Anthony. The prophecy of Dr. Anna Howard Shaw was fulfilled.
The last suffrage convention was held in 1920. During the final scenes, tears of joyous happiness glistened in many an eye, speeches rose to high eloquence, flags were waved, cheers and unexpected bursts of song reverberated through the vast hall. Outstanding among the convention features was a beautiful and solemn service in memory of Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, whose magic voice, now still forever, had been the in- spiration of every previous convention for thirty years. Nothing now remained to prevent the Nineteenth Amendment from becoming a part of the Constitution, except the ratifica- tion by the requisite number of States.
CAMPAIGN FOR RATIFICATION OF THE SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT (1919-1920)
Massachusetts was also the first State to receive a National Suffrage Convention in 1850. After the submission of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1919, Massachusetts was the eighth State to ratify; and nowhere was there more re- joicing among suffragists than for the victory in the rock- ribbed old Commonwealth, where the first shot was fired in the Revolution against taxation without representation. A work- ing corps had been gradually evolved in which the leaders were specialists in their respective lines.
Maud Wood Park, executive and public speaker, a woman of super-refinement, shrank at no ordeal-not even at that of mounting a soap box in Boston Common, from which she answered with equanimity the jibes hurled at her from a mob audience.
Margaret Foley, one of the best stump speakers in the
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State, if not in the United States, won the industrial workers of the State by the thousands: the ringing tone of her rich Irish voice reached to the outer edges of the crowds' which gathered to hear her, as she alternately used her powers of invective against the opponents of suffrage and stirred her hearers to laughter at the witty sallies which embellished her speaking.
The women lawyers-Teresa Crowley, Mary Agnes Mahan, and others-gave generously of their time and their talent for convincing audiences. Women' born to lead and to organize-such as Anna C. M. Tillinghast and Wenona Osborne Pinkham-placed a suffrage captain with a corps of volunteer workers in the political districts, not only of the cities, but even in the hill towns and Cape villages.
Every known device was used for money raising. Mary Hutchinson Page, a past master in political expediency, also had a rare gift for securing large contributions from wealthy women who were sympathetic to the cause. The yearly bazaar at the Copley-Plaza Hotel, under the direction of Mrs. Benjamin F. Pitman, not only brought thousands of dollars into the coffers of the association, but was a gather- ing place for inspiration and the building up of esprit de corps.
MASSACHUSETTS RATIFICATION OF THE SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT (1920)
On a hot July morning in 1920, women were seen coming from every direction to the State House, where a great ques- tion was to be decided. Would the legislators of the General Court vote yes or no on ratification? Some wore yellow roses, marigolds, or knots of yellow ribbon, while others were decorated with American beauty roses or crimson badges. The reds and yellows touched elbows in the galleries as they listened for the final vote. Both sides were hushed in tense expectancy as the yes vote, with but an occasional no, soon made it evident that suffrage had won. As the result of the vote was counted, the silence still continued-with no applause on the part of the suffragists, but with a few muffled sobs from the sincere and brave leaders of the antisuffrage cause.
The night before the first election in which women had a
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FEDERAL OFFICIALS
part, a procession of the new women voters marched up Beacon Hill in the face of a driving rain storm, their rain- coats glistening with raindrops. Among the faces illuminated by the light of the torches which flared along the line of march was that of a slender little woman who, undaunted by the storm, marched unfalteringly up the long hill past the State House. She had been Massachusetts' first lady, but later was claimed by the entire nation-Grace Anna Goodhue Coolidge.
FEDERAL OFFICIALS (1920-1930)
In the Federal government for the first time a woman, Anna C. M. Tillinghast, has received the appointment of a Com- missioner of Immigration-that of the New England port, the second in importance in the United States. Mrs. Tilling- hast is in fact the only woman commissioner of immigration in the world. A leader in the short-lived Progressive Party in 1912 and later the executive secretary of the Women's Repub- lican State Committee, she formed a complete organization of Republican women, organized forty local political clubs, and founded the Business and Professional Women's Repub- lican Club of Massachusetts with a membership of upwards three thousand and local branches in the fourteen counties. Her long years of service in executive and administrative work in many fields fitted her for the administration of the immigration laws, making her appointment by President Coolidge one of eminent fitness.
In the United States Department of Labor the first woman to hold a position in the Conciliation Division was Anna Weinstock Schneider, of Boston, often referred to as the "woman Gompers" of the trade-union movement. She was chosen for her fair-mindedness to employers as well as her understanding of the problems and aspirations of the workers. She went to work as a stitcher in a neckwear factory when she was fourteen years old. In no other period than our own could a woman of such humble beginning have risen to so high a position. One of the laurels recently won by Mrs. Schneider was the settlement of a bitter rayon-silk strike at Elizabethton, Tenn. Some of the foremost strategists and conciliators of the American Federation of Labor tried their
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hands at settlement and failed. The strike had cost $500,000, and feeling had run so high that the State troops had been called out as a precaution against possible violence, when Mrs. Schneider, almost single-handed, achieved a settlement satis- factory to both employer and employee.
IN CONGRESS (1920-1930)
The only Massachusetts woman thus far elected to Con- gress is Edith Nourse Rogers, of Lowell. She was educated at Rogers Hall School in Lowell and finished at Madam Julian's in Paris. Mrs. Rogers was elected to fill the vacancy caused by the death of her husband, John Jacob Rogers, and it is interesting to note that she was reelected to the Seventieth Congress in 1926, receiving 46,464 votes against 18,846 for the Democratic opponent. An over-seas worker during the war, Mrs. Rogers was the personal representative of President Coolidge in the care of disabled veterans, having been ap- pointed to this office first by President Harding.
The first major piece of legislation ever put through Con- gress by any woman was the Hospitalization Bill for the veterans, of which Mrs. Rogers had charge, securing an ap- propriation of fifteen million dollars for this purpose. Mrs. Rogers is one of the pioneers in asking for trade commissions to go into foreign countries under the Department of Com- merce and develop markets for our goods; the first to ask for trade commissions for certain industries; the first to ask for a machinery survey. She takes a great interest in pro- moting aviation in the United States and was the first to take up with the State Department an embargo on planes entering Mexico from; this country. As a result, the embargo was re- moved from such planes in 1927. Mrs. Rogers is also deeply interested in the Merchant Marine as a means of benefiting industry, and in having an adequate army and navy, not to wage war, but as a matter of protection for ourselves and for the security of the weaker countries of the world.
MEMBERS OF THE GENERAL COURT (1920-1930)
An increasing number of women are chosen to represent their districts at each successive election of the General Court.
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PUBLICISTS
No woman has as yet been made State Senator, but in 1929 there were five women representatives: Dr. Marian Cowan Burrows, of Lynn; Mrs. Emma E. Brigham, of Springfield; Miss Martha N. Brooks, of Gloucester; Mrs. Mary Liver- more Barrows, daughter of the distinguished Mary A. Liver- more ; and Miss M. Sylvia Donaldson, who was the first wom- an in history to exercise the privilege of presiding at a session of the house of representatives.
JUDICIAL OFFICIALS (1920-1930)
Emma Fall Schofield, assistant attorney general of Massa- chusetts, is the first woman in the Commonwealth to serve in that capacity. Prior to her appointment as assistant at- torney general, Mrs. Schofield had served four and a half years as a commissioner on the Massachusetts Industrial Ac- cident Board, sitting in a judicial capacity on disputed cases under the Massachusetts Workmen's Compensation Act, hav- ing been appointed to that position by Governor Channing H. Cox in 1922.
PUBLICISTS
Mrs. Esther M. Andrews, after long service to the State, was made a member of the Governor's Council, which con- firms all appointments' to public office and passes on all recommendations for pardons and commutation of sentences.
The prohibition movement has been vigorously projected in Massachusetts. Mrs. Elizabeth Tilton, of Cambridge, adored by her fellow workers and execrated by her opponents, is nationally known for her skillful legislative engineering in the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitu- tion and also for its ratification by the legislature of the Commonwealth.
The Division of Immigration and Americanization of the Commonwealth has a woman as its chief-Mrs. Pauline Revere Thayer, who received her appointment from Calvin Coolidge, at that time governor of Massachusetts.
Massachusetts was the first to appoint a woman member of the State Board of Labor and Industry. The woman chosen for this honor was Mrs. Davis R. Dewey, of Cam-
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bridge, who filled this position for seven years, during which time she constantly stressed the betterment of laws and their enforcement for the protection of women and children.
The State Department of Labor has a woman assistant com- missioner, Ethel M. Johnson of Boston, who is the first and only woman to hold the office, having been appointed by Ex- President Coolidge when he was governor. Miss Johnson is the director of the Division of Minimum Wage, which in- volves expert knowledge of labor laws and their interpreta- tion. 'She is a trained statistician and an accurate and inter- esting writer on all subjects connected with the problems of working women and children.
POLITICAL ORGANIZATION
A woman who did not want the vote, Mrs. Frank Roe Batchelder, took first rank as a political leader; her experi- ence and her State-wide acquaintance in other lines of work make her a recognized asset to the party organization.
The first School of Politics, for the purpose of studying the principles of party government, was organized and carried on by Mrs. Frank Roe Batchelder together with the chairman of the Political Department of the Women's Republican Club of Massachusetts in February, 1928.
On the Democratic side, one of the prominent suffrage leaders, Susan Walker FitzGerald, at once plunged into the vortex of the campaign against Harding in 1920. She was appointed temporary national committeewoman before the permanent organization of the party took place, and was elected alternate-at-large to the Democratic National Conven- tion in San Francisco. She was one of the first women ever to make a nominating speech for President of the United States.
Another Democratic woman of note is Mrs. Helen A. MacDonald, vice-chairman of the Democratic State Commit- tee and the Massachusetts woman member of the National Committee, a delegate-at-large to the conventions of New York and Houston, a public speaker of note who has received many honors at the hands of the party which she serves.
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INTERNATIONAL
THE INTERNATIONAL PEACE MOVEMENT
Recently, 1,742 Radcliffe graduates were circularized as to what, in their opinion, was the most important forward move- ment in which women can be of service. Religion and ethics received 176 votes, the smallest number cast; 232 women divided their votes equally between politics and civic respon- sibility; marriage and the family took fourth place, with. 275 votes; social welfare, 290; education, 330; while the largest number, 398, gave first place to the international problem.
The largest organization of women, having branches in Massachusetts-such as the General Federation of Women's Clubs, the National League of Women Voters, the American Association of University Women, and more than twenty other national organizations-are working actively in the peace movement.
Lucia Ames Mead, author, lecturer and traveler, is perhaps the most widely known of the pacifist group, her yearly visits to Europe having given her a wide acquaintance on both sides of the Atlantic with those especially interested in the promo- tion of international peace through world organization.
Dr. Fannie Fern Andrews, Ph.D., of Boston, was among the thirty men and women who represented twelve different countries to perfect a plan for the permanent peace of the world at the International Confidential Meeting at the Hague. In 1919, she was appointed by the United States Government to attend the Peace Conference at Paris. She was also ap- pointed by Ex-President Taft as a delegate to the League to Enforce Peace; and she was a delegate of the Council of Women of the United States to attend the Inter-Allied Group of Women that held meetings during the entire period of the Peace Conference. Dr. Andrews received the Harvard University Ph.D. degree in International Law and Diplomacy.
Another important student and writer on international af- fairs is Sarah Wambaugh, alumna of Radcliffe College and a student at London University and at Oxford. She has been a member of administrative commissions and the minorities sections of the League of Nations Secretariat,
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1920. Miss Wambaugh has made a special study of the re- gions in Europe where international plebiscites have been held since the World War, and was expert adviser to the Peruvian Government for the Tacna-Arica plebiscite at Lima, Arica and Washington in 1925-1926. A Research Fellow of Radcliffe College, she made a tour of the United States, speaking on the League of Nations and other international subjects, and lectured at the Académie de Droit International, The Hague.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
ADDAMS, JANE, BALCH, EMILY G. AND HAMILTON, ALICE .- Women at the Hague; the International Congress of Women and Its Results (N.Y., Macmillan, 1915).
BABRITT, MARY KING .- Maria Mitchell as Her Students Knew Her (Pough- keepsie, Enterprise Publishing Co., 1912).
BARTON, CLARA .- The Red Cross; a History of this Remarkable Interna- tional Movement in the Interest of Humanity (Washington, Am. Na- tional Red Cross, 1898).
BARTON, CLARA .- A Story of the Red Cross; Glimpses of Field Work (N. Y., Appleton, 1904).
BARTON, WILLIAM ELEAZAR .- The Life of Clara Barton, Founder of the American Red Cross (2 vols., Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1923).
Boston Evening Transcript (November 24, 1928)-See the article "Rad-
cliffe College but an Idea Fifty Years Ago," and portrait of Mrs. Elizabeth (Cary) Agassiz.
BROWNE, WILLIAM HARDCASTLE .- Famous Women of History (Phila., Ar- nold, 1895).
CANNON, ANNIE JUMP .- "A Provisional Catalogue of Variable Stars" (Harvard College Astronomical Observatory, Annals, Vol. XLVIII, pp. 91-123, Cambridge, 1903).
CANNON, ANNIE JUMP, AND PICKERING, EDWARD C .- The Henry Draper Catalogue Oh, 1h, 2h, and 3h (Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College, Vol. XCI, Cambridge, The Observatory, 1918). CARTER, MORRIS .- Isabella Stewart Gardner and Fenway Court (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1925).
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