USA > Rhode Island > Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. II > Part 89
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The Rhode Island State Federation of Women's Clubs consisted in 1929 of fifty-two federated, three affiliated and five junior clubs. The membership of federated clubs exceeded 6000, and of affiliated clubs 3600. The federated clubs, in the order of their joining the state federation, were : Rhode Island Women's Club, 1894, founded 1876 by Elizabeth K. Churchill,
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to promote educational, literary and benevolent objects and special philanthropic work; Cov- entry Women's Club of Anthony, 1894, founded 1890 by Carrie Winsor, for general culture ; Current Topics Club of Newport, 1894, founded 1892, to study literature and current events and promote philanthropy ; Sarah E. Doyle Club of Providence, 1894, founded 1894 by Stella C. Allen, for mutual assistance and culture of its members, and work for the blind; Woon- socket Fortnightly Club, 1894, founded 1889 by Helen M. Wiggin, to become a center for social and mental culture ; Woonsocket Round Table Club, 1894, founded 1893 by Elizabeth D. Mowry, for intellectual and social culture; Ardirhebiah Club of Providence, 1896, founded 1886 by Miss H. F. S. Irons, to promote mutual and social culture, literature, art, federation interest, historical research, and philanthropic work; Bristol Fortnightly Club, 1897, founded 1897 by Mrs. Charles B. Rockwell for social and literary purposes ; Oliphant Club of Middle- town, 1898, founded 1897 by Flora A. Chase, for study and social culture, and to sew for Newport Hospital; Providence Fortnightly Club, 1898, founded 1897 by Rev. Willard C. Selleck, for charity, intellectual development, and social culture; Read, Mark and Learn Club of Providence, 1898, founded 1897 by Julia Ashley Rich, to study old New England houses, nature, music, literature, and to support Home for Aged Colored Women and federation inter- ests ; Embreaso Club of Providence, 1899, founded 1897 by Mrs. Ira Winsor, for literature, art, and philanthropy ; Pawtucket Women's Club, 1899, founded 1899 by Mrs. Edward L. Johnson, to study civics, education, music, and conversation, and for philanthropic work; Providence Mothers' Club, 1900, founded 1897 by Abby L. Marlatt, to secure for women and children better physical, intellectual and moral conditions; Edgewood Women's Club, 1903, outgrowth in 1903 of Edgewood Chautauqua Circle, for literature, historical research, music, philanthropy, and needlework; Providence Branch I. S. S., 1904, founded 1901 by Mrs. Charles H. Beach, for philanthropy; Cranford Club of Greenville, 1905, founded 1905 by Orra A. Angell, for mental and social culture, special philanthropic work, village improvement, and sunshine civic service; Providence Federation of Women Teachers, 1905, founded 1905 by Stella C. Allen, to strengthen the influence of women teachers in educational matters; Providence Section of National Council of Jewish Women, 1905, organized 1894 as study circle by Mrs. David C. Fink and Rev. David Blaustein, reorganized 1905 by Mrs. Caesar Misch and Nissim Bebar, for special philanthropic work and immigrant aid; Fruit Hill Woman's Club, 1907, founded 1904 by Mrs. Robert Russell, for social culture and community service; Rhode Island Ex Club, 1907, founded 1907 by Margaret H. Irons, for social inter- course ; E. O. W. Club of East Providence, 1908, founded 1898 by Mrs. George H. Sparhawk, for various community services, including aid of Riverside Free Public Library ; Rhode Island State Nurses' Association, 1908, founded 1905 by six graduate nurses, to elevate and maintain standard qualifications for graduate nurses ; Autumn Club of Providence, 1909, founded 1901 by Mrs. J. Edward Strate, for social and philanthropic purposes ; Jynko Club of Providence, 1909, founded 1906 by five What Cheer Club girls, for philanthropic and social work ; Edge- wood Civic Club, 1910, founded 1909 by Mrs. George J. Arnold, for civic improvement ; Four Leaf Clover Club of Providence, 1911, founded 1902 by Ada V. Gregory, for literary, federation and sunshine work; Triangle Club of Kingston, 1914, founded 1908, by Mrs. Howard Edwards, for literary and social culture and philanthropy, membership limited to women connected with Rhode Island State College; Hope Valley Woman's Club, 1915, founded 1910 by Ethel Kenyon, for civic purposes; East Greenwich Home and School Club, 1916, founded 1915 by Mrs. F. L. Cady and Mrs. J. D. Miner, for educational and civic pur- poses ; Needle-Book Club of Chepachet, 1916, founded 1910 by Martha R. Fitch, for social culture, and to aid public library and anti-tuberculosis work; Cowesett Community Club, 1917, founded 1913 by Winifred Palmer Cottrell, to promote school interests ; Ladies' Pascoag Li- brary Association, 1918, founded 1871 by Clara Walden and Ellen Spring, to support Pas-
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coag Free Library ; Pawtucket Section of National Council of Jewish Women, 1918, founded 1916 by Mrs. William Loeb and Mrs. Caesar Misch, for general welfare, Americanization and philanthropic work; Newport Section of National Council of Jewish Women, 1921, founded 1918 by Mrs. William Loeb, for civic, religious and philanthropic work, and aid of immi- grants ; Providence Association for Ministry to the Sick, 1922, founded 1880 by Eleanor K. Buffum, to care for and relieve the sick poor in their homes; Rhode Island Kindergarten League, 1922, founded 1897 by Mary Davis, for service to schools, homes and society ; Arling- ton Women's Club of Cranston, 1923, founded 1923 by Mrs. W. B. Jonah, for mental and social culture, and promoting educational, literary and philanthropic objects; Nautilus Circle of Providence, 1923, founded 1914 by Mrs. Henry D. C. Dubois, for literature, music and philanthropy ; Pascoag Woman's Club, 1923, founded 1923 by Miss Prendergast, Mrs. Bouti- ette, Mrs. Ackrill, and Miss Gaunt, for social and educational purposes ; Providence League for the Hard of Hearing, 1923, founded 1922 by Marion A. Durfee, to create a community center where hard of hearing find mental and spiritual stimulus, recreation, comradeship and service ; Home Economics Club of Rhode Island State College, 1924, founded 1924 by Alice L. Edwards, to stimulate interest in home economics, and to send a Chinese girl to Yen Sing College to study home economics ; Homemakers' Club of Providence, 1924, founded 1916 by Mrs. Henry Fletcher, for social and educational work through lectures; Rhode Island Flower and Bird Club, 1924, founded 1908 by Mrs. M. E. Newell and Mary E. Jencks, for culture of flowers, protection of birds, and sunshine work; Women's Club of Newport County of Tiver- ton, 1924, founded 1924 by Mrs. W. A. Prosser to advance the social and cultural interests of the community ; Rhode Island Home Economic Association, 1926, founded 1914 by Lucy C. King ; Rhode Island Hospital Nurses Alumnae Association, 1926, founded 1896, by graduates of Rhode Island Hospital training school, for mutual help and improvement in professional and social intercourse ; Providence Loyalty Club, 1927, organized 1927, for social and philan- thropic work; Rhode Island Association for the Blind, 1928, founded 1923 by Fanny A. Kimball and Mary E. French, to promote the interest of the blind; South Side Friendly Club, 1929, founded 1929 by Mrs. W. J. Ward, for educational and social purposes; Travel Club of Westerly, founded 1890 by Jennie B. Miner, for special philanthropic work, to aid missions and hospitals; Women High School Teachers Association of Providence, founded 1909 by Harriet P. Fuller, to promote the interests of high school women teachers. Affiliated organi- zations are American Homemakers, Rhode Island Centre, reorganized 1927 by Mrs. Philip Mitchell as an outgrowth of the Providence Housewives' League; Ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic, Department of Rhode Island, founded 1905 by Sarah C. Mason; Women's Christian Temperance Union of Rhode Island, founded 1875 by Mrs. W. F. Bainbridge, to promote temperance education, law enforcement, world-wide prohibition, world-wide peace, and world-wide purity. One of the achievements of the Federation of Women's Clubs was a system of traveling libraries, which subsequently was merged with the traveling libraries main- tained by the State Board of Education.
Hundreds of women's clubs, large and small, organized for various purposes, are not affiliated with the Federation of Women's Clubs. The largest social women's club in Rhode Island is the Catholic Woman's Club, which has a membership exceeding one thousand. It was organized in 1901 with Clara E. Craig as the first president, and incorporated in 1925. The purpose of the club is declared to be "the promotion of Catholic interests of intellectual order." The club has had a prosperous career for thirty years, and has plans for the acquisi- tion of a central building in Providence as a permanent headquarters, and for better attainment of social purposes. The Plantations Club in Providence more nearly resembles a men's club than the common type of woman's club for social or intellectual purposes ; it owns a fine build- ing fronting on Abbott Park Place in Providence, planned and erected for club purposes. The
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WOMEN'S PART IN MAKING RHODE ISLAND
accommodations at the Plantations Club include a large auditorium and auxiliary rooms, a restaurant, recreation rooms and parlors, besides sleeping rooms available for members. The club is a professional and business women's organization. Trinity Club in Woonsocket owns a club house, and is the largest club in the northern city. War-time organizations which have continued to operate are the Consumers' League and the Housewives' League, both of which were established to promote conservation during the war and to protect the housewife, as the spender of the family income, from extortion. The work of both leagues was educational, with emphasis upon thrift in management of the home, conservation in the use of foods, selec- tion of the latter with a view to wholesomeness and food values, and obtaining the largest pos- sible return from economic expenditures. Both supported vigorously the war-time policies of conservation.
CONGRESS OF MOTHERS-Providence Mothers' Club, 1897, and Henry Barnard School Mothers' Club, 1898, were forerunners of the Rhode Island Congress of Mothers, which was organized in 1909. The Rhode Island Congress of Mothers became a constituent member of ' the National Congress of Mothers in January, 1910. The earliest mothers' clubs were founded with the purpose of establishing and maintaining a cooperative relation betwixt school and home; the plan contemplated occasional meetings of the mothers of school children in school- houses with teachers, an extension of interest among mothers in the welfare of the school as the agency for preparing the children for citizenship, and better understanding by teachers and mothers mutually of the problems of individual children, as mothers and teachers had oppor- tunity to discuss the situation. Mothers' clubs also became agencies for improving schools, as the mothers, particularly, insisted upon adequate provision for maintenance, or themselves undertook projects for assistance of schools. The mothers' club movement, after it was under- stood, and the value of the new interrelations of home and school had been recognized, spread rapidly ; a state organization was perfected as the Rhode Island Congress of Mothers. Eventually the names of many school clubs and of the state and national congresses were changed, the term "parent-teacher association" being adopted to cover membership of teachers as well as mothers, and in some instances an enrollment of parents which included men. The organization in 1930 was, nationally, the National Congress of Parents and Teachers; within the state the Rhode Island Branch of the National Congress of Parents and Teachers. The Rhode Island branch included 150 associations in twenty-nine of the thirty-nine towns of Rhode Island. Most of the member clubs were organized in a schoolhouse as a unit, although there were, besides, town associations and a few other organizations affiliated because of gen- eral interest, such as the Rhode Island Homemakers, Rhode Island Congress Ex Club, Rhode Island Kindergarten League, and Women's Christian Temperance Union. The objects of the Congress are stated as "to unify and strengthen all the forces represented in the associations and clubs of which it is composed and to increase their number ; to act as a bureau of informa- tion concerning work undertaken ; to endeavor to improve home conditions especially by rais- ing the standards of motherhood ; to aid all agencies which work in the interests of home and school; and in every possible way to strive to unite home and school; to cooperate with edu- cators, social workers and legislators to secure the best physical, mental and moral training for the young ; to use every possible means to safeguard the youth of the land, to the end that good citizenship may be secured and to this end to establish and maintain lines of work as needed." The organization remains, as it started with clubs of mothers, principally an association of women. The Rhode Island advisory council included His Excellency the Governor and His Honor the Mayor of Providence, Rev. Peter E. Blessing, Honorable Frederick Rueckert, Hon- orable Walter E. Ranger as Commissioner of Education, President John L. Alger and Profes- sor Clara E. Craig of Rhode Island College of Education, Alexander J. Stoddard, Isaac O. Winslow and Dr. Charles V. Chapin. The Rhode Island congress cooperated with a dozen
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other welfare associations. Local councils, uniting clubs, had been established in Central Falls. Cranston, Cumberland, East Providence, Johnston, Lincoln, North Providence, Pawtucket, Providence, and Warwick. The goal of the national association was stated as "a parent- teacher association in every school, and every parent and teacher a member." As the organi- zation had been developed in Rhode Island the number of persons holding office in state, town and schoolhouse associations approached one thousand. Not all, by any means, of mothers' clubs or parent-teacher associations were affiliated with the state and national congresses ; a large number of school associations of mothers and teachers, or parents and teachers, carried on effective effort for improvement without joining the state congress. With others not affiliated are mothers' clubs connected with the Catholic parochial schools.
WOMEN IN THE PROFESSIONS-Education was the first profession freely opened to women in Rhode Island; the employment of women as teachers in public schools began early in the nineteenth century. Much earlier than that private schools were conducted by women or included women in teaching faculties. Henrietta Downer and Lucille Downer were per- mitted to conduct schools for small children in a vacant chamber in the Transit Street School in Providence so early as 1801 and 1804. In the reorganization of the Providence free public schools in 1828, which followed the survey by Wayland and others, women were employed as teachers of primary schools, while men remained as masters of grammar schools. In New- port the actual teacher in the Potter school for boys conducted under the direction of the trustees of Long Wharf was Elizabeth Finch, although her husband, Captain Joseph Finch, was named as a party to the contract. By the middle of the nineteenth century women teachers outnumbered men teachers in Rhode Island public schools. Brown University's early teacher-training department was abandoned because women teachers were wanted and Brown was not willing at the time to venture to undertake coeducation. Early in the twen- tieth century alarm was expressed lest men disappear altogether from the profession of public education, as the proportion of men to women school teachers dwindled. The exten- sion of vocational education, manual arts, physical training and similar instruction, and emphasis on scientific studies in high schools have helped somewhat to restore the balance. Woman in the profession of education has won her way from employment as teacher of small children in primary schools to the position of superintendent of schools, the chief municipal administrative and executive office. Perhaps the woman who has had largest influence in public education in Rhode Island is Professor Clara E. Craig, for more than thirty years director of training at Rhode Island College of Education, under whose guidance thousands of public school teachers passed through an apprenticeship. Another notable figure is Mrs. Gustav Radeke, for years the active administrator of Rhode Island School of Design and one of its benefactors.
Other professions than education have been more reluctant to accept women as practi- tioners, an outstanding difficulty being related to the unwillingness or inability of professional schools to receive women as students. This obstacle has been removed in part ; in some pro- fessions schools for women exclusively have been established. Women have entered most professions in Rhode Island, though still barred from many professional schools of law and medicine. The woman physician preceded the woman lawyer in active practice. The work of women as artists and writers, and as nurses in the great auxiliary profession that ministers to the sick, has been discussed in other chapters. Women's gifts to charity have been generous, whether the wife dispensed the largess of her husband, or the latter gave at the suggestion or request of his wife of the joint property which was his to administer by right under the common law. The control which woman attained of her separate property has helped to estab- lish clearly the large part that woman has and has had in philanthropy. Many a Rhode Island
BENEDICT MONUMENT TO MUSIC, ROGER WILLIAMS PARK, PROVIDENCE
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ANN MAN MEMORIAL GATES, ROGER WILLIAMS PARK
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WOMEN'S PART IN MAKING RHODE ISLAND
charitable or welfare institution or organization has had its Lady Bountiful known to the beneficiaries or preserving anonymity behind the nominal directing board or committee.
The largest municipal park in Rhode Island-Roger Williams Park, which has a national reputation for beauty-resulted from an initial devise in the will of Betsy Williams, which became effective in 1871. The city of Providence received an estate which had been owned for nearly two centuries by descendants of Roger Williams, beginning with Joseph Williams, one of the sons of Roger Williams and Mary Barnard Williams, and ending with Betsy Williams. The original park comprised approximately 100 acres, including a cottage house on the site of the present Betsy Williams Cottage. The original house was built by Nathaniel Williams in 1773 for his son James, who was father of Betsy ; it was gutted by fire while used for park purposes, and restored as nearly as possible. The park has been enlarged by gift and purchase of 450 acres.
CHAPTER XLI. COSMOPOLITAN RHODE ISLAND.
T is characteristic of colonial Rhode Island that Roger Williams did not seek Wil- liam Blackstone in 1635 or 1636, although it is altogether improbable that a man so completely acquainted as Roger Williams must have been with events as they transpired in the Massachusetts Bay settlements did not know that Blackstone had left Boston and was somewhere in Rhode Island. The group which settled at Pocasset in 1638 sought the advice of Roger Williams but not his company. They had no inten- tion of joining him in the wilderness, although they were willing to accept his assistance in find- ing a suitable place for their settlement. Probably the sentiment was mutual ; he helped them to find, and they selected, a location miles from Providence Plantations. While there is a sug- gestion of internal discord in the events that followed at Pocasset, which may have been a reason for the withdrawal and departure of the contingent which located at Newport in 1639, the more plausible explanation of the separation of merchants and men of affairs from farmers is recog- nition by the former of the superior advantages of Newport Harbor. The Pocasset and New- port men continued friendly relations, and in the quarrels that disturbed the colony in later years they were found usually together when a division occurred. Finally, Samuel Gorton made himself obnoxious to the settlers at Pocasset, and was so little welcome at Providence that he was not encouraged to stay. He understood the coolness and moved on to found a fourth set- tlement. Thus there was heterogeneity in Rhode Island so early as 1636-42; there were four separate settlements, and as many reasons, if not more, for maintaining the separation as and than there were for union. Indeed, the organization of a confederacy was accomplished years afterward, and then only because a few wiser than the rest of the settlers realized the danger to all unless an association was established.
The four settlements within so small an area, separate and distinct, were prophetic almost of the Rhode Island that was to come years afterward, when immigration had brought people of many races to Rhode Island, and the state was engaged in the process of assimilating them into the fellowship of a common citizenship. The early settlers entertained diverse views, fun- damentally different, with respect to religion, which was in the seventeenth century cause for war between nations and enmity between men. Otherwise they used the same language, some of them with marvelous fluency in defining their own and deriding their neighbors' religion. They had sprung from essentially the same environment in the same country; they were all Englishmen only recently removed from their native land to a strange wilderness. Perhaps it was their English origin which may best explain their sturdy stubbornness in maintaining their differences. The redeeming factor in the situation was a wonderful leaven at work in the mass -the principle of toleration or soul liberty. It was this that saved them from the excesses of fanaticism to which bigotry carried others ; it was this that preserved the peace, within, though men and sections differed radically in their views. Toleration had "proved that the terrible fears that barbarity would break in where no particular form of worship and discipline are established by the civil power are really vain and groundless," said John Callender in his His- torical Discourse at the end of the first century. "Calvinists with Lutherans, Presbyterians with Episcopalians, Pedobaptists with Anabaptists, beholding one another to fear God and righteous- ness, do with delight sit down together at the same table of the Lord," said Mather in 1718 of Rhode Island. "The inhabitants are of a mixed kind consisting of many sorts and subdivisions of sects," wrote Berkeley in 1829. "There are four sorts of Anabaptists, besides Presbyterians, Quakers, Independents, and many of no profession at all. Notwithstanding so many differ-
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ences, here are fewer quarrels about religion than elsewhere, the people living peaceably with their neighbors of whatever profession." Berkeley's observation was prophetic of the Rhode Island that was to be two centuries later, with thousands of people of different races living together harmoniously and peacefully in a virile democracy. It was not the abandonment of religion in the eighteenth century so much as mutual respect for the intelligence and opinions of each other, which had, within a century produced harmony in Rhode Island, in spite of heterogeneity. Rhode Island had attained almost to the current practice of Americans, which is treating religion as so much a matter of strictly personal interest in the instance of each indi- vidual that it is nobody's business but his own, and that it is good manners not to ask ques- tions or to introduce the subject in general conversation. Length of years may be required to accomplish the ideal suggested, but the world is gradually learning the lesson which Rhode Island experience has taught and still teaches.
EXTENSION OF TOLERATION-The Rhode Island point of view was important, not only because it relegated to oblivion the most fruitful cause of controversy of the seventeenth cen- tury, but also because it was possible to extend the same toleration to other opinions than those related to religion. The earliest community governments in the Rhode Island settlements were democratic, or "democratical," in the sense that action followed an expression of the will of the majority, or as Roger Williams once expressed it, "the major vote of us." The Parliamentary Patent and the Royal Charter of 1663, both conferred almost unrestricted autonomy upon Rhode Island. There was no English colony in which less pressure of authority was exerted or in which more complete freedom for expression of the will of the body politic existed, along with the power to carry it into effect. Although the Charter prescribed a government by repre- sentatives, it left the people of Rhode Island free, while observing the forms, to continue dem- ocratic government in fact. In practice, frequent elections made the tenure of officeholders insecure, and the General Assembly had recourse often to a type of referendum through the custom of continuing the decision of important questions from one to a following session, so that the members of the Assembly in the interval might have an opportunity to consult with their constituents or to present the questions in town meetings, the latter to instruct the town del- egations or to choose new delegations after so clear an expression of local opinions that doubt there need not be as to what the people thought and wanted. The form of government empha- sized reliance upon the expressed will of the majority ; Rhode Island was thus in politics paral- leling religious toleration, which rests fundamentally upon respect for opinion and intelligence.
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