… I should like to relate one incident in the history of my father's relations with myself—an incident which was eminently characteristic of certain aspects of his nature.
From my earliest years it was his endeavor to teach me to understand and believe in the religion of Auguste Comte. One of my first recollections is that of an excursion to Central Park on one bright Sunday afternoon in the spring; there, sitting under the trees, he talked to me on the theme which lay always nearest his heart—that of the solidarity of mankind. There never, indeed, was a time throughout my whole youth, when we were alone together, that he did not return to the same text and impress upon me that a selfish life was no life at all, that "no man liveth for himself, that no man dieth for himself." His teachings were as largely negative as positive. While never, perhaps, understanding the Christian religion as a man with a weaker faith in the truth of his own convictions might have understood it, his attitude was one, I judge, of sympathetic scepticism. He was always endeavoring to impress upon me that, while there must necessarily have been something great and good in a faith that had been the inspiration of so many souls, and comfort of mankind through so many centuries, yet at the same time it was incomplete; that very often the followers of Christ gave more to the doctrine than they received from it; and that the teaching of Auguste Comte supplied what was lacking in the teaching of Jesus Christ. His desire to impress upon me a belief which he held himself with all the force of religious conviction led him to attempt explanations which the mind of a child could neither grasp nor retain. He even discussed, for my benefit, theoretical questions as to the existence and nature of the Supreme Being; discussions, of course, that I could so little understand that it was like pouring water on a flat board. It was simply the fulness of his belief that led him to do this. His desire was that, surrounded as I was by people who burnt their candles at the altars of the Christian faith, I should have full opportunity to compare the PositivistGrand Êtrewith the Christian Cross. Under such instruction it was not strange that in time I dropped insensibly into his mode of thinking, or, more correctly, into his mode of believing.
While I was at college I was surrounded by other influences, and while retaining everything that was positive and constructive in his teaching, I dropped the negative cloth in which it was shrouded. My change in opinion was a bitter disappointment to him, as several letters which he wrote at the time testify. But intense as was his disappointment, it never took the form of a reproach. This is very remarkable when we consider what an essential part of his character his beliefs constituted. Here was an end, for which he had striven through many years, failing at the very time when it should have become most fruitful. And his disappointment must have been all the more severe because he exaggerated the differences that existed between us. It was his opinion that his negative opinions were necessarily connected with those which were positive; and that it was impossible truly to hold the one without the other. Yet, as I said, his disappointment never took the form of a reproach. "It is your right; nay, it is even your duty," he used continually to say, "to work your own salvation. It has turned out to be different from mine. Well, then, mine is the loss."
From an abstract point of view it may not seem to be so much of a virtue that a father should consider his son's intellectual honesty to be of more importance than his own opinions. But I am not writing from an abstract point of view. We are all but children of the earth; not good, but simply better than the bad. So it was with David G. Croly. His opinions, crystallized by the opposition which they met on every side, were so very much the truth to him that he wished his son to perceive them clearly and cherish them as devoutly as he did. That wish became impossible of fulfilment. Part of his life-work had failed. "Mine is the loss."
From Mr. Croly to His Son Herbert at College
LOTOS CLUB, Oct. 31, 1886.
My Dear Boy—You said something about the divergence between my ideas and those of the philosophers whose works you are reading at college. Let me beg of you to form your own judgment on all the higher themes—religion included—without any reference to what I may have said. All I ask is that you keep your mind open and unpredisposed. In the language of the Scripture, "prove all things and hold fast to that which is good." Be careful and do not allow first impressions to influence your maturer judgment. You say you are reading the controversy between Spencer and Harrison on religion. In doing so keep in mind the fact that Spencer's matter was revised, while that of Harrison was not; and that upon the latter's protest the work was withdrawn in England.
I wish during your college year that you would read:
(1) Miss Martineau's translation of Comte's "Positive Philosophy." (2) Mill's Estimate of Comte's Life and Works. (3) Bridges's Reply to Mill. (4) All of Frederic Harrison's writings that you can find. (5) All of Herbert Spencer's works that are not technical. (6) John Fiske's works. (7) The works of the English Positivists, such as Congreve, Bridges and Beasley.
By noticing the dates I think you will find that Spencer appropriates a great deal from Comte and that he tries to shirk the obligation. It would be well to read the latter's "General View of Positivism" further along.
My dear son, I shall die happy if I know that you are an earnest student of philosophic themes.
Do cultivate all the religious emotions, reverence, awe, and aspiration, if for no better reason than as a means of self-culture. Educate, train every side of your mental and emotional nature. Read poetry and learn the secret of tears and ecstacy. Go to Catholic and Episcopal churches and surrender yourself to the inspiration of soul-inspiring religious music.
Ever your affectionateFATHER.
From a Testimonial by Edmund Clarence Stedman
My intimacy with Mr. Croly began in 1860, when we were together upon the editorial staff of the New YorkWorld. We had many notions, socialistic and otherwise, in common. With these, however, we did not venture to imperil the circulation of that conservative newspaper. He was City Editor, and knew his business. I was struck by the activity of his mind, and his combination of shrewd executive ability with inventive skill. I found him a staunch friend, loyal to his allies, helpful to his subordinates; moreover, a man of strong convictions—which he asserted with a fine dogmatism; an idealist withal, quite unhampered by reverence for conventional usage and opinion. Absolute mental honesty was his chief characteristic.
He was a humanitarian, in the Positivist sense of the word. All his aspirations were for the future glory and happiness of the human race. Faith in the reign of law, and a prophetic certainty of man's elevation—these were his religion. As a thinker and talker he certainly was of the same breed with Tennyson's poet, who
"Sings of what the world will beWhen the years have died away."
He bore good fortune and adversity with an equal mind, and he displayed stoical courage throughout prolonged illness of a most depressing type.
Others will add to your own feeling statement of his varied labors. But let me say that, whether our paths came together or diverged, I always thought of him as in every sense a comrade. His loss makes the lessening roll of those with whom I touched elbows in the old newspaper days seem ominously faded.
From a Testimonial by J.D. Bell
Mr. Croly was a great journalist. He was not a great editorial writer, but he was a great editor. He had the true executive temper and power—that is, the ability to obtain from others the work that was in them. He never made the mistake of endeavoring to do everything himself. He was just, as well as generous to his subordinates, and many of the younger journalists have reason to remember his kindness to them. In any company in which he was thrown he was sure to attract attention, and there were very few companies in which he did not take the leading part by virtue of his ability and not of his self-assertion. He never used tobacco in any form, and was otherwise a strictly temperate man. In his utterances he was often very radical, but in practice he was always thoroughly conservative.
His social predilections led him to study the writings of Auguste Comte. He accepted his doctrines and endeavored to popularize them in writings and meetings, but with very limited success. Indeed, he often said that while intellectually Positivism was in the air, as a social doctrine it was too far in advance of the present age to become popular.
He was essentially a family man and loved his home and household. During the greater part of his married life, however, the exacting editorial duties and literary labors of himself and his wife prevented them from enjoying the society of the home circle to the extent that each desired. Here, as in so many other cases, the individual was sacrificed for the benefit of the public.
From a Testimonial by St. Clair McKelway
… David G. Croly's personality was always healthy and hopeful. He commended with justice, he censured with consideration, he changed or cut out your copy with regard exclusively to the increased value of the article for newspaper purposes. The staff was like a large family under him. Every one's equal rights were regarded, every one's special talents were stimulated, every one's peculiar fads or foibles were genially borne with. Officially he had no favorites. Personally he chose his friends among the staff as freely as he would do among outsiders. The unrecorded kindnesses of the man were fragrant and not few. To newcomers he would intimate what were the prejudices or susceptibilities or limitations of those among whom they were cast. He would be just as careful to see that the old standbys did not make things rough or unfair for the newcomers. He had little respect for the gifts or views that could not be made interconvertible with newspaper results. He took a public view of party questions and rarely a personal view of any questions. Between what he thought and wished as an iconoclast, a reformer, or a reconstructor of foundations and what he was intrusted to say as an editor, he drew the line sharp and clear. While, as I have remarked, he was rarely a writer with his own hand, the articles which he suggested or poured into or pulled out of others were made so eminently characteristic of himself that they were stamped with his quality as truly as if he had written them himself. He was very proud of the success of the men in after life who started on their newspaper careers under him. He followed them with good wishes always, he spoke strong words for them when, where, and to whom they little suspected, and he rightly regarded their success as a vindication of his own prescience in having set them on their way, and also as a gratification not merely to his confidence in his own opinion concerning them, but to the wishes of his unselfish heart in desiring that they should take the pinnacles of achievement in whatsoever field of newspaper work inclination, necessity, opportunity or destiny marked out before them.
ST. CLAIR MCKELWAY.TheEagleOffice, Brooklyn, May 14, 1889.
From a Testimonial by John Elderkin
David G. Croly was a strong man. He was strong in his convictions, his honesty, and his capacity to meet all the requirements of life in the most populous, enterprising, and brilliant city of the continent. His strength begot independence, and he was before all else independent in the formation and expression of his views, both on public affairs and those which are more personal and philosophical. He never apologized for his opinions, and his life needs no apology. His mind dwelt on that side of every question which involved the interest and welfare of the whole mass of mankind, and his religious philosophy was pure Humanitarianism. His reverence for Comte was the result of his intellectual conviction that in his altruistic teaching was to be found the only remedy for the wrongs and sufferings of the world.
In personal intercourse Mr. Croly was suggestive, inspiring and encouraging. It was always with a slight shock to preconceived notions and prejudices that one listened to his comments on any current movement or event, for he was sure to take an original and characteristic view which could not be calculated.
From Mrs. Croly's Contribution to Her Husband's Memorial
Mr. Croly was in his twenty-seventh year when I first knew him, but as yet had made no mark in journalism. He had not found his place in it. He was employed as City Editor of the New YorkHerald—a position which had not then developed the importance which attaches to it to-day—and his duties consisted mainly of making out the "slate" for the staff of reporters, and doing such reportorial work as it was the province and habit of the City Editor to perform. This afforded little scope for a man of Mr. Croly's latent power; and his dissatisfaction and desire to find a new field was the cause of our going West within three years after our marriage and starting a daily paper in a Western town. Had the town been larger the story would have been different. As it was, we spent our money, not without result; for Mr. Croly discovered that his forte was not execution, but direction, and that his fertility of brain only needed a sufficiently wide field to develop powers capable of greater expansion.
He was the most utterly destitute of the mechanical or "doing" faculty of any man I ever saw, and never used his own hands if he could possibly help it. But ideas flowed freely upon all subjects in which he was interested, and he distributed them as freely, knowing that the reservoir though forever emptied was always full. This amazing fertility was in some respects a detriment, for it led him into too many projects, and made him careless whom he enriched, while his dislike of the mechanism of his work made profit for others at his expense. I know no other journalist in New York City, during my own journalistic career of thirty-three years, who has made so many and such diverse publications, or put so much originality and force into the detail of his work. TheWorld, and particularly the SundayWorld, which was the foundation of the Sunday newspaper, the New York illustratedGraphic, theRound Table, and other journals were built up by his energy, and owed their most striking and successful features to his suggestiveness. He was particularly unselfish in his estimate of other men and his appreciation of their work. He was as proud of discovering the good qualities of a man on his staff as a miner of finding a nugget, and never wearied of expatiating upon them. Indeed, he did this more than once to his own disadvantage, thus furnishing an instrument to treachery.
I am sure the "boys" of the oldWorldstaff, St. Clair McKelway, A.C. Wheeler ("Nym Crinkle"), T.E. Wilson, H.G. Crickmore, Montgomery Schuyler, E.C. Stedman, and others, will look back with a little sigh for the "old times," and for the generous recognition they received from one who was never at a loss for a subject, or for the treatment of a topic, and was always a good comrade and heart and soul sympathizer in their work, its trials and its achievements.
A chief quality with Mr. Croly was faithfulness to the interests he served. This was put to some severe tests; but they could not be called temptations, for disloyalty did not present itself as a possibility to him. His faults were those of a nervous temperament, combined with great intellectual force and a strength of feeling which in some directions and under certain circumstances became prejudice. He could never, in any case, be made to run a machine. He hated the obvious way of saying or doing a thing. He cultivated the "unexpected" almost to a fault, and always gave a touch of originality even to the commonplace. His pessimistic and unhopeful temperament was doubtless due to inherent and hereditary bodily weakness, and to the lack of muscular cultivation in his youth, which might have modified inherent tendencies. His mental lack was form not force; and he had enough original elemental ideas to have supplied a dozen men. In that respect he was superior to every other journalist I have ever known—not excepting Horace Greeley, Henry J. Raymond and Frederick Hudson.
But the time has gone by for ideas. It is not that they are a drug in the market, but that there is no market for them. To-day is the apotheosis of the commonplace, the iteration of the cries of the street, the gabble of the sidewalk, and the gossip of the tea-table; neither originality nor force is needed for such journalism as this, and they may therefore well rest to the music of the pines.
One of the strongest influences in Mr. Croly's life was his acquaintance with the Positivist movement in England, and his interest in the works of Auguste Comte. Up to this time he had experienced none of the undoubted benefit which accrues to every man and woman from the possession of an ideal standard, and settled convictions which inspire or take the place of religious aspiration. Positivism did all this for Mr. Croly, so far as anything could, and he became one of its most eager and devoted adherents.
Mr. T.B. Wakeman, himself one of the earliest and most able leaders, credits Mr. Croly with being the "father" of the movement in this country, and in fact he was the first to make known that any representative of Positivist ideas existed in America. He invited and paid for the first lecture ever delivered in New York City upon the subject; it was given by Mr. Edgar, an unknown "apostle," in a little hall (De Garmo) on the corner of 14th street and Fifth avenue, on a certain Sunday some twenty or more years ago. The result of the lecture was that a dozen people formed a little society and engaged Mr. Edgar to give them a series of Sunday talks on the practical bearings of the religion of humanity. Mr. Edgar was not in himself an interesting exponent of his ideas, but his message inculcated duty, love to man, a life open and free from concealments, the possession of personal gifts or acquired property as trusts to be used for the good of others, and the recognition of value in all that has been and is.
These ideas became more or less an actuating principle. They brought together a circle of men and women of the best quality, who endeavored to live up to their standard, and by work and daily life, rather than by active propagandism, to crystallize opinions into a vital force. For several years the regular meetings were held at our house, the "festivals" of the year being often given at the residences of other members of the society—Mr. T.B. Wakeman, or Mr. Courtlandt Palmer. There is still an "old guard" left, of as good, brave, and unselfish men and women as ever walked on this earth, and though some differed from. Mr. Croly, and from each other on some points, yet they all knew and acknowledged that he brought to them the beginning of the best inspiration of their lives.
Mr. Croly's latest expressed wish was that all the usual forms should be disregarded in the event of his death, except the simplest service and the presence of flowers. "If any one thinks enough of me," he said, "to bring me flowers, let them; but have no elaborate mourning, and bury me close to the earth, near the pines, and facing the sea." The legend he left for his grave-stone was: "I meant well, tried a little, failed much." But this will not be the verdict of those who came under the influence of his strong and many-sided personality.
Mrs. Croly's Club Life
By Haryot Holt Dey
There is a pleasant and not irrational fancy in the mind of the writer that somewhere in space there exists the abiding-place of ideas, and that as fast as earth-dwellers are ready for them they are released. Like a bird the idea takes flight and seeks a home in the brain of some one who is singled out to forward and exploit it for the benefit of humanity. Thenceforward, that person becomes the apostle of the idea. "We are not in the possession of our ideas," says Heine, "but are possessed by them; they master us and force us into the arena where like gladiators we must fight for them." But it is only to the elect that great ideas are assigned, one who either through heredity or by special development is qualified to carry the message. This fanciful reasoning applies admirably to the idea for women's clubs—organizations for women—and in its selection of Jenny June it made no mistake in the character of its agent.
The first woman's club was organized in March, 1868, and was the outcome of feminine protest, because women were barred from the reception and banquet tendered to Charles Dickens by the Press Club of New York City. Among those who applied for tickets on equal grounds with men was Mrs. Croly, then an active, recognized force in journalism, and when the idea of a woman's club took possession of her she had become the most indignant and spirited woman ever locked out of a banquet hall.
Forty years ago it required courage for a woman to step aside from the ranks of conservatism and organize a woman's club; it was regarded as a side issue of "woman's rights," a movement then in grave disrepute. But Mrs. Croly had dared untrodden paths once before when she stepped into the field of journalism, and her experience there had developed self-confidence. She had been writing for women for many years, and through her mission had acquired instinctive knowledge of their needs; and so when the affront was put upon her by her male colleagues of the press she conceived the idea of a club for women. It should be one that would manage its own affairs, represent as far as possible the active interests of women, and create a bond of fellowship between them, which many women as well as men thought at that time would be impossible of accomplishment. Mrs. Croly wrote in her "History of Clubs" thirty years later: "At this period no one of those connected with the undertaking had ever heard of a woman's club, or of any secular organization composed entirely of women for the purpose of bringing all kinds of women together to work out their objects in their own way." And then again: "When the history of the nineteenth century comes to be written women will appear as organizers and leaders of great organized movements among their own sex for the first time in the history of the world."
"The originator specially disavowed any specific object, only asking for a representative woman's organization based on perfectly equal terms in which women might acquire methods, learn how to work together for general objects, not for charity or a propaganda."
"This declaration of principles was the cause of much abusive criticism, as well as failure to obtain aid and sympathy. Had Sorosis started todoany one thing, from building an asylum for aged and indigent 'females' to supplying the natives of Timbuctoo with pocket handkerchiefs, it would have found a public already made. But its attitude was frankly ignorant and inquiring. It laid no claims to wisdom or knowledge that could be of any use to anybody. It simply felt the stirring of an intense desire that women should come together—all together, not from one church, or one neighborhood, or one walk of life, but from all quarters, and take counsel together, find the cause of separations and failures, of ignorance and wrong-doing, and try to discover better ways, more intelligent methods."
Under this banner Sorosis was launched. Alice Cary was its first president. The story of Sorosis from the beginning is a very interesting one; from the view-point of the press its doings and sayings and business affairs generally have always afforded subject-matter for comment and conjecture. Of its early days Mrs. Croly wrote: "The social events of the first year were memorable, for they were the first of their kind, and practically changed the custom of confining public dinner-giving to men. The first was offered as anamende honorableon the part of the New York Press Club, and consisted of a 'breakfast' to which the Press Club invited Sorosis, but did not invite it to speak or do anything but sit still and eat, and be talked and sung to. The second was a 'tea' given by Sorosis to the Press Club at which it reversed the order, furnishing all the speakers and allowing the men no chance, not even to respond to their own toast. The third was a 'dinner,'—the brightest and best of the whole—at which the ladies and gentlemen each paid their own way and shared equally the honors and responsibilities." This is said to be the first public dinner at which men and women ever sat down on equal terms. A report of it in a daily newspaper closed as follows: "The entire affair was one of the most delightful events of the season, and will long be held in pleasantest memory by all who had the honor to participate in it. We believe we violate no secret when we say that the gentlemen were most agreeably surprised to find their rival club composed of charming women, representing the best aristocracy of the metropolis, an aristocracy of sterling good sense, earnest thought, aspiration and progressive intellect, with no perceptible taint of strong-mindedness."
The growth and expansion of Sorosis were watched by Mrs. Croly with the same eager interest with which a mother contemplates the development of a child, not knowing just how its character will shape, guarding it always with love, for a potential force in its directing. It was her spirit that steered it over rough places; that brought harmony out of discord; that inspired, soothed, provided wise counsel, and that many times sacrificed personal feelings for the good of the whole. To do this required mental qualities of a high order—courage, foresight, judgment, and not a little of the martyr spirit. Women had never organized before, and the conditions to be met and the problems to be solved stood absolutely alone, with no precedent to build upon or decide even the simplest question. What firmness was required in the leader at that time, when, for example, women who had been her staunchest allies deserted the ranks because they could not select the club name! It was a firm hand that kept the unorganized body from going to pieces on the rocks of dissension, and it was at that time that the leader proved her inalienable right to her title. She had led women into the field of journalism, and now she was leading them into organization. Clubs began to form in all parts of the country, and when Sorosis arrived at its twenty-first birthday, it was Mrs. Croly's idea that they should all come together, and when the invitation was issued they came. Thus was formed the General Federation of Women's Clubs. At present there are 800,000 women belonging to that federation; each State has its own federation, New York forming first, at Mrs. Croly's suggestion, and now containing 32,000 enrolled members. The General Federation was formed in 1889. The writer recalls the triumph in Mrs. Croly's tone when she replied to the appeal of a man who came to her to beg to be given the names of the women belonging to the federation. "If you choose to send a woman to copy the names," she said, "you may do so, but it will take her more than a week." And the General Federation was less than three years old at the time.
Mrs. Croly organized the Woman's Press Club of New York in 1889. It is due to her wisdom that it was carried through many crises. She was its president from the day it was founded to the day of her death; always its loving teacher, her enthusiasm regarding its development never flagged. She lived to see it firmly established, a harmonious and delightful organization, and she was satisfied.
Mrs. Croly was neither parliamentarian, orator, nor politician, but she had a fund of good sense, wise judgment, and a power of expression which, could clarify an atmosphere when mere knowledge of the "Rules of Order" would have failed. She had spiritual vision, and by it she knew the soul of the club; no amount of dissension could shake her faith in its ultimate good, and in times of crisis she presided with a serenity only accountable in the fact that she viewed from the mountain summit what her associates saw only from the housetop. What years of development she enjoyed long before the club idea possessed her, endowing her with wisdom and mental breadth, and what associations that urged and demanded that she become a student of sociology! The seeds of thought planted in those early days of journalistic experience, inclusive of what she terms the "Positivist Episode," blossomed in her later, more mature years, and all the harvest she brought and applied to the organization of women. To the casual observer an organized body of women differed in no particular form from any ordinary assembly of women. What it was to her one can only realize by a careful perusal of her writings on club formation, and the moral awakening that sounded the bugle note of progress when women began to organize.
Once it came to the hearing of this gentle apostle of development, that she had been said to represent a cult. The occasion was a reception given in her honor by one of her clubs on her seventieth birthday. There had been speeches and congratulations, and the scene was one of general rejoicing. "Oh, she is the leader of a cult," whispered a guest, and the remark was repeated to Mrs. Croly. She received it with a sorry smile of regret that any one should so misinterpret the significance of the scene. As if the narrow and exclusive word "cult" could be applied to an assembly that stood for organization and human development, which, in her prophetic vision, only needed time to unite races, and ultimately to extend around the globe. To her it signified "the opening of the door, the stepping out into the freedom of the outer air, and the sweet sense of fellowship with the whole universe, that comes with liberty and light."
Few women carry their enthusiasm till past three-score-and-ten, as Mrs. Croly did. With the failing of physical strength the wand of power passed into the hands of younger women whom she hailed as her successors, and whose growth and development were the blossoms springing from the seed she herself had planted; and in the last years of her noble life, when the glow of sunset was on the garden of her activities, the love she bore her fellow-women was her unfailing joy and inspiration.
At the time of life when people recognize the fact that their forces are waning, and that a well-earned period of rest has arrived, Mrs. Croly set for herself the last task of her busy life. She felt she had something to tell about the success of her great idea, her message to women, and she wrote the "History of the Woman's Club Movement in America," a volume containing eleven hundred and eighty pages, which told the story of nearly all the clubs in the General Federation. This book will remain a monument to the founder of women's clubs. Into it she put the skill and experience of her long years of editorship, urging every faculty to the work, and applying herself with a degree of industry that characterized the zeal of her best working years. And it testifies to the martyr-like nature of her spirit, that she even rallied from the disappointment consequent upon the financial failure of the book. The dedication of the work reads as follows: "This book has been a labor of love, and it is lovingly dedicated to the Twentieth Century Woman by one who has seen and shared in the struggles of the Woman of the Nineteenth Century." But nothing that is good is lost, and the book testifies to the illimitable ideas, the trust in eternal goodness, and the strength of purpose of one who had a glorified estimate of latent feminine forces that require to be developed.
Essays and Addresses by Jane Cunningham Croly
Beginnings of Organization[1]
Women in Religious Organization
When the history of the Nineteenth Century comes to be written, women will appear for the first time in the history of the world as organizers, and leaders of great organized movements among their own sex.
[Footnote 1:History of the Woman's Club Movement in America.]
The world of to-day, both for men and women, is a different world from that which furnished the outlook for the men and women of a hundred years ago. Science, invention, have changed its material aspects; and while retiring some individual activities and occupations, they have created new fields of industry that are rapidly changing the face of the world, and making new demands upon strength and energy.
The world which man has conquered, and is still conquering, is no longer the purely physical. He is working now toward the discovery and control of the powers of the air, and has already harnessed some of them to do his bidding. The succession of great events and discoveries will mark this century as an epoch in the world's history, and is responsible for economic changes which create social disturbance, and to which both men and women must adjust themselves, often without knowing the why or wherefore of that which is so different from what has been. It is one of the paradoxes in human nature that women, while being made responsible for human conditions, have been condemned to individual isolation. It has been largely the result of general physical differentiation and the dependence that grew out of it, and, secondarily, the long ages required to produce settled social conditions and a reversal of that great unwritten law of kings and men—that might made right.
It is true that there was a time, some traditions of which are still preserved among the Indian tribes of North America, when the woman possessed controlling influence and power. This matriarchal or mother age passed with the primitive period in which the energies of men were absorbed in hunting and fighting. It was a tribal effort through tribal women to formulate and give importance to family life, and it must have been accepted and more or less sanctioned by the men. This tribal leadership, at first domestic and social, disappeared with the development of military leaders, the acquisition of military powers, and the centralization of property in lands, houses, and personal belongings, that required constant and effective methods of protection and defence.
Instances are not wanting of heroic women of those early days who were capable of holding and defending person and property against aggression and warfare. But the logic of events was strong then, as now, and the destiny of the woman was not that of military supremacy.
The first step in associated life taken by women was a simple protest against the use and abuse of power on the part of men, wrought up by fear or loathing to the point of desperation. Women, usually of rank, fled to the desert with one or two companions, and encountered unheard-of hardships rather than submit to the fate to which they had been condemned by father, brother, or some other man who could exercise authority over them. The first Church-sisterhood grew out of such beginnings, and gradually obtained the sanction of the Church. A recent remarkable work, "Women in Monasticism," shows how wide and powerful the system of religious sisterhoods had become as early as the fifth century, and traces its growing strength and enlargement until its decline, which was coeval with the Reformation.
The strength of this extraordinary development lay in the fact that it furnished women with a vocation; it gave employment to faculty. The sisterhoods of the convents and monasteries were the nurses, the teachers, the students, the caretakers of the poor, and the guardians of the orphaned rich. The Fathers of the Church—St. Jerome, St. Chrysostom, St. Augustine—all bear witness to the high character of these sisterhoods and to their individual members, to their virtues and lives of self-sacrificing devotion. Many of these women became learned by the exercise of memory alone, for they had no books. Many enriched their convents with manuscript books—the result of lives of painstaking labor. The Beguines, who founded hospitals and schools, were the best educated women of their day—the eleventh century. They read Tacitus and Virgil in the original, and were skilled in medicine. Disease often took loathsome forms, and only women whose lives were consecrated to self-denying labor could have been the patient ministers to the diseased poor.
This is all the more noteworthy because the idea of vocation was not the early incentive to monastic life. It was sought as a refuge; it developed into a vocation; and it is a matter of interest to women to-day that these spontaneous vocations, growing out of an enforced life, were inspired by love of well-doing, desire for study, the acquisition of knowledge, its distribution, and the ever-ready spirit of helpfulness at the sacrifice of every personal indulgence.
Naturally the monastic life of women was controlled by the Church, and could have continued to exist only by permission. A Spanish lady of rank who had befriended Ignatius Loyola as a young student of Barcelona, attracted by the odor of sanctity and scholarship which attached itself to the Order which he founded, gained reluctant permission to establish (1545) an Order of Jesuitesses, subject to the same strict rules and discipline. This was the beginning of a strictly woman's Jesuit "college," which flourished notwithstanding all the efforts Loyola himself made to get rid of it, and the restrictions put upon it. Many noble ladies joined it, and it became the foundation of a number of houses of the same name and character, extending into Flanders and England, when, without cause, except fear perhaps of their extent and influence, they were finally suppressed by a bull of Pope Urban VIII, bearing date, January 13, 1630. This Order of Jesuitesses existed for nearly a century. Their colleges were scholastic, and had given rise to preparatory schools, when they were summarily suppressed because of their independent life.
Had this Order continued to exist it might have gained an educational ascendency throughout Europe which even the strong wave of the Reformation would have found it hard to overcome. But the convents and monasteries generally suffered at this time from the abuses which had crept into the Church, and the rage for power which possessed its prelates.
The influence was mischievous also from a social and domestic point of view; from the sanctity and superiority attached to those who ignored natural ties and duties, thus lowering the social and domestic standard, and setting the nun's habit above the woman, the wife and the mother. Yet nature had asserted itself even in the convent. The motherhood in the monastic woman made her the mother, the caretaker, the nurse, the teacher, and the helper of all those who needed maternal care, while condemning and ignoring its common aspects and place in everyday life.
This absence of domestic ties was not, however, obligatory upon all sisterhoods. An interesting story of the "First Council of Women," told by Madame Lendier at the Congress of Women in Paris in 1889, bears upon this point.
The monastic school out of which the Council grew, was founded in the early part of the seventh century, by Iduberge, wife of Pepin, mayor under the Frankish kings.
Iduberge cleared a space in the forest, and built a house for the education and religious consecration (if they desired it) of the daughters of nobles, her daughter Gertrude becoming the abbess. No vow of celibacy was imposed. As long as they remained in the abbey they were to conform to the rules of the house, but if they desired to marry they were free to leave. Thechanoinessesof Nivelle spent their morning in religious duties, but the rest of the day they were at liberty to mix with the outer world. The abbess alone took upon herself the vow of perpetual virginity. A hundred and seventy passed away after the death of Gertrude. The abbey had grown in power, had gathered around itself a town with gates and towers and fortifications, but was independent of the French Government, being under the sole rule of the abbess, who was called the "Princess."
This independence excited the jealousy of the Church, and in May, 820, Nivelle received a visit from Valcand, the reigning bishop of Liège. He was received by the lady abbess in the habit of her order, a cross of gold in her hand; mounted on a white horse she rode at the head of the procession that marched to meet him. Young girls of noble birth, clad in long white gowns trimmed with ermine, and mounted on palfreys, followed their abbess, and behind them the town authorities, feudal lords and administrators of justice.
At the same time Valcand entered the town with every honor and courtesy due to his rank. He held a solemn service, and having given the benediction, he rose again and addressed thechanoinesses. He declared that it had been decided by the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle that he should be sent to Nivelle to enforce the rules of St. Benoit, which must be followed by all religious bodies; this rule being that all the devotees of Nivelle were required to take upon themselves the vow of perpetual virginity, to acknowledge themselves dependent upon their bishop in all secular matters, and finally to yield up to Valcand all temporal power at Nivelle.
This solemn declaration was received in silence. For some moments no one moved or spoke, but a low murmur swept over the young sisters of Nivelle Abbey. The lady abbess, followed by herchanoinesses, rose and advanced to the rails of the choir stand. The abbess Hiltrude, daughter of Lyderic II, sovereign of Flanders under the emperor, then between thirty-five and forty years of age, was beautiful; of that calm, grave type which speaks of a quiet, well-regulated life.
"In the name of the Cloister of St. Gertrude," she said, "we protest against any interference in the temporal power of this government. We claim the right of taking to ourselves husbands when it seems right to us so to do. We are therefore resolved to follow the rules of our patron saint, as we always have done heretofore, and if this protest is insufficient we will present our appeal to our Holy Father, the Pope."
The bishop declared that he would maintain the rule given by the Council at Aix, and then descending from the pulpit, he ordered his people to follow him at once out of Nivelle, refusing to join in any of the festivities prepared in his honor.
Hiltrude now took things seriously into her own hands, leaving nothing undone to secure the success of her appeal. She sent a courier to the Pope, and another to Louis le Debonaire; but the wise abbess took yet further precautions: she at once organized a council at Nivelle of all the abbesses of the French Empire, requiring silence from them, and assuring them of security in the town. The council could not be brought together for a year, but on the 1st of May, 821, Hiltrude inaugurated her "Concile de Femmes."
She took advantage of the marriage of Count d'Albion with Regina, which was to take place at the abbey. Regina was achanoinesse, and it was the custom when a member of the circle at the abbey married, that the marriage should be solemnized at Nivelle. Fifteen titled abbesses, all of aristocratic lineage, arrived with imposing suites. The council was a short one. They approved of all that Hiltrude had done, and signed the appeal. The document, written, signed, and sealed by all the abbesses present, was immediately sent to Rome, and to Valcand himself. Meantime the pope and the king, who were much perplexed, and the bishop, who was completely baffled by the logic, strength and force of appeal of the "Concile," were obliged to withdraw the opposition, and thechanoinesseswere left in peace to marry or not to marry, as they pleased.
The ancient order of deaconesses imposed no vow, yet it was co-existent with the early church, and accepted by many of the fathers as part of the apostolic order. This position was strengthened by the high character of the women, many of them widows, or unprotected women, whom death or some other calamity had freed from natural ties.
Ancient church history is full of the records of courage, devotion, and self-sacrifice on the part of these women, who were generally of high birth, but gave themselves to poverty and the most menial offices, and left names which have perpetuated the sanctity of their order, and come down to the present day as types of good women.
The ceremonies used in the ordination of a deaconess were precisely the same as those used for a deacon. The deaconesses were not cloistered: they lived at home with children or relatives. But they wore a distinctive dress, and had their place in the church with the clergy. The "golden age" of the order is said to have been immediately following the apostolic era, before the spirit of monasticism had destroyed or limited activities, and shut off sympathy with the outside world.
The royal and imperial order of the Hadraschin in Prague, Germany, is the most imposing relic remaining of the religious orders of women, though not the most numerous. There are about forty chapters still in existence of this ancient order, with a royal residence at Prague. The abbess possessed the right to crown the queen at coronation ceremonies, and exercised it as late as 1836, wearing all the magnificent insignia of her rank in the order.
A more numerous order of consecrated women, presided over and governed by one "mother-general," is that of St. Joseph de Cluny. This was founded by a woman, Madame Javonbey, in the beginning of the present century, about ninety years ago. It has one hundred and twenty-eight houses in France, and two in the United States. It has others in South America, one in Italy, several in the West Indies and some in Africa.
All its property is in community, and its membership—about six thousand women—teach in its schools, and care for the sick poor in hospitals and in their homes. Two hundred are assigned to the care of the insane, by the French Government.
The mother-general administers, from the mother-house(maison mère)at Paris. She has two assistants and a council of six sisters. Under the mother-general there are mother-superiors, one to each estate, administering and governing it, but under this mother-superior at Paris. These lesser governing women send in weekly reports to the home convent at Paris, giving brief accounts of transactions and events, such as the entrance of pupils, the purchase of lands, and extra dole of food to the poor, the death of a member and the like. They are a prosperous, working sisterhood, and have preserved the integrity and independence of their beginning.
It was the spirit of protest against church and monastic abuses, embodied in Martin Luther, which broke up the monastic system for both men and women. Doubtless also it had outlived its usefulness in any large or general sense. A more settled social and domestic life was becoming possible through the development of trades and industries, while the domestic virtues in women began to acquire a value, and furnish guarantees to the State.
The discovery of printing gave a tremendous impulse to the spread of civilizing and educational influences, to the multiplication of schools, and the desire for knowledge. It was the dawn of intellectual freedom, and the school of the people was the open door for it.
Spiritual freedom had to wait longer. It waited the unfolding of the woman. At the beginning of this century she was still under the dominion of the church and its leaders, and her efforts were controlled by sects and doctrines.
The first associated work of women in this country, and in this century, was still religious and philanthropic. The "Sisters of Charity" in America owes its origin to a young and beautiful New York woman, Elizabeth Seton, who was born in 1774, married at twenty, but lost her husband by death in a very few years. Obliged to support herself, she opened a school in Baltimore. But her tendency was toward the devoted life of areligieuse, and the gift of a foundation fund enabled her to gratify this strong desire. She assumed the conventual habit, and opened a convent school on July 30, 1809, in Emmetsburg, of which she became mother-superior. The character of "Mother" Seton was considered saintly by Protestants and Roman Catholics alike. She died at her post in 1821, after a life the last half of which was entirely spent in self-denying work. Mrs. Seton was exceedingly lovely as a young woman; and her sweet, serene face and presence, as she grew older, was said to exert a magical influence upon all who came in contact with her. This was particularly seen in her care of the sick, and in dealing with turbulent spirits: they came immediately under her influence without any effort on her part.
The first ten years of the present century saw the beginning of a number of religious societies of women, organized to create funds, and aid in church mission work. First among these were the "cent" societies, 1801 and 1804, and later the Woman's Auxiliaries to the Board of Foreign Missions. These grew in size and strength, until in 1839 there were six hundred and eighty-eight of these societies. But, unfortunately, their limited and purely subjective character afforded small basis for the wider growth necessary to perpetuity, and they gradually declined, until in 1860 they had become nearly extinct.
A little later, 1864, the first independent "Union" of women missionary workers was formed in New York by Mrs. Doremus, and within a few years every denomination, beginning with the Congregationalists, had its organized Woman's Auxiliary to the American Board of Home and Foreign Missions. The "Missionary Union" remains, however, the only independent society of women workers in this field, managing its own affairs, raising its own funds, and sending out its own missionaries, both men and women. Its very existence has been a great strength to the Woman's Auxiliaries, stimulating them to independent action, and especially to the demand for a voice in the disposal of the large sums they raise and turn over to the treasury of the American Board.
The oldest purely women-societies in this country were also started for missionary and church work. The first is the "Female Charitable Society" of Baldwinsville, N.J., and is still existent.
The object of the Baldwinsville society, as stated in the constitution, was "to obtain a more perfect view on the infinite excellence of the Christian religion in its own nature, the importance of making this religion the chief concern of our hearts, the necessity of promoting it in our families, and of diffusing it among our fellow sinners." A further object is "to afford aid to religious institutions, and for the carrying out of this purpose a contribution of twelve and a half cents is required at every quarterly meeting."
Mrs. Jane Hamill presided at its first meeting; the Rev. John Davenport opened it with prayer. Mrs. Hamill was still the presiding officer at its jubilee anniversary in 1867. At its seventy-eighth annual meeting Mrs. Payn Bigelow was elected president.
The "Piqua (Ohio) Female Bible Society" was founded in 1818. It consisted at first of nine women. In those early days the country was a wilderness. Other members were added later. It has had in all, over nine hundred members. Mrs. Elizabeth Pettit was its presiding officer from 1840 until 1881—forty-one years. The daughters and the granddaughters are all made members by right of inheritance, and in several instances four generations have been represented at one time. It held its seventy-fifth anniversary in 1893, when all the descendants of the early members were notified, and many were present. It has held a meeting on the first Monday afternoon of each month for seventy-eight years, and the records are preserved intact. The founder was Mrs. Rachael Johnston, wife of the Indian agent. It has sent over fifteen thousand dollars to the parent Bible Society in New York.
It should be remembered that down to the last quarter of the present century, there was little sympathy with organizations of women, not expressly religious, charitable, or intended to promote charitable objects. "What is the object?" was the first question asked of any organization of women, and if it was not the making of garments, or the collection of funds for a church or philanthropic purpose, it was considered unworthy of attention, or injurious doubts were thrown upon its motives. In Germany, even yet, societies of women are not permitted, except such as have a distinctly religious, educational or charitable object.
The Moral Awakening[1]
The life of the world is continuous, morally and spiritually as well as materially. The individual sees it at short range and in fragments. That is the reason why it so often seems dislocated and out of joint. A thoughtful writer, Mrs. L.R. Zerbe, says: "When Goethe made his discovery of the unity of structure in organic life, he gave to the philosophers, who had long taught the value, the 'sovereignty' of the individual, a physiological argument against oppression and tyranny, and put the whole creation on an equal footing."
[Footnote 1:History of the Woman's Club Movement in America.]
The dignity of mind, and the right of the individual to its conscious use and possession, had been already clearly enunciated by Fichte, Herder, and others, who antedated Goethe. But Goethe went farther. He carried the discovery of the rights of the individual to its logical conclusion, which was, that the rights of every created thing should be given a hearing. This was absolutely new doctrine. It brought women and children within the pale of humanity. It moralized and humanized nature itself; bringing birds, trees, flowers, all animate life, into the "brotherhood" of creation.
The writings of Rousseau and Châteaubriand extended the idea, and Madame de Staël and Mary Wollstonecraft were the natural outgrowths of it. It may be said indeed to have been the actuating principle of modern literature, especially of modern English poetry, which vitalizes and idealizes children and nature. Whatever credit may be given to others, it should never be forgotten that to Goethe we owe the discovery of structural unity, that the cell of all organic life is the same.
The ideas that grew out of this discovery reached the higher, thinking class, and inspired the poets with a new enthusiasm for humanity long before it reached the masses. The French nobility were satiated with power. The "Little Trianon" was the only reaction possible to a queen, from the wearisome magnificence of Versailles, the gilded slavery of the court. The people recognized no sentiment of human sympathy in the so-called "whims" and "caprices" of the luxurious occupants of palaces; and maddened by countless wrongs, precipitated the French Revolution, which, it has been said, turned back the tide of progress for one hundred years.
From this movement were developed all those reforms which have made the nineteenth century glorious, monumental in the history of progressive civilization. The abolition of slavery, the development of a spirit of mercy towards dumb animals, the recognition of the human rights of women and children—all these may be traced through many a winding way, back to the German scientists and philosophers, who rediscovered the inner life while working from its outer side.
Yet, as in history there are no sporadic instances, no isolated facts, so this flower of our century—the recognition of the rights of all created things, with all that it involves—belongs to universal history. It is the product of the Reformation and the Renaissance, with roots only the records of Rome and Greece and Egypt may discover.
The quickening of moral and spiritual life in our day, its accelerated movement, is not to be claimed by or traced to any one set of influences or propaganda. The awakening has been all along the line; and it has resulted in a new mental attitude toward the human life of the world, both as a whole and in its various parts. Its great outcome is the learning to live with, rather than for, others.
This new view, this great advance of the moral and spiritual forces, addressed itself with singular significance to women. To those who were prepared, it came not only as an awakening, but as emancipation—emancipation of the soul, freedom from the tyranny of tradition and prejudice, and the acquisition of an intellectual outlook; a spiritual liberty achieved so quietly as to be unnoticed except by those who watched the progress of this bloodless revolution, and the falling away of the shackles that bind the spirit in its early and often painful effort to reach the light.
The broadening of human sympathy, the freedom of will, gave rise to a thousand new forms of activity; some of these an expansion of those which had previously existed; others opening new channels of communication; all looking towards wider fields of effort, a larger unity, a more complete realization of the eternal ideal, the fatherhood of God, the motherhood of woman, the brotherhood of man.
Realization of this ideal brought a new conception of duty to the mind of woman, unlocked the strong gates of theological and social tradition, and opened the windows of her soul to a new and more glorious world. The sense of duty is always strong in the woman. If she disregards it she never ceases to suffer. Her convictions of it have made her the most willing and joyful of martyrs, the most persistent and relentless of bigots, the most blind and devoted of partisans, the most faithful and believing of friends, and the only type out of which Nature could form the mother. This quality has made women the constructive force they are in the world, and gives all the more importance to the new departure, to the influences of the new sources of enlargement that have come into their lives.
Thus it became a necessity that the quickening of conscience, the widening of sympathy, the influence of aggregations, the stimulus to desire and ambitions, should be accompanied by corresponding growth in knowledge and a love beyond the narrow confines of family and church.
The cry of the woman emerging from a darkened past was "light, more light," and light was breaking. Gradually came the demand and the opportunity for education; for intellectual freedom for women as well as men; for cultivation of gifts and faculties. The early half of the century was marked by a crusade for the cause of the better education of women, as significant as that for the physical emancipation of the slave, and as devoted on the part of its leaders.
Simultaneous with this were two other movements—the anti-slavery agitation, inspired by the new enthusiasm for human rights and carried on largely by the Quakers of both sexes. The woman's-rights movement was the natural outgrowth of the individual-sovereignty idea which the German philosophers had planted, and of which Mary Wollstonecraft was the first great woman-exponent.
The keynote of the educational advance was struck by Emma Willard in 1821. She was followed by Mary Lyon, Mary Mortimer, and other brave women who dared to ask for women the cultivation of such faculties as they possessed, without let or hindrance. This demand has taken the century to develop and enforce. The work was so gradual that it is not yet, by any means, accomplished. Schools and colleges exist, but not yet equally, except here and there. They are, however, giving us an army of trained women who are bringing the force of knowledge to bear upon questions which have heretofore only enlisted sympathies.
Simultaneously with this question of educational opportunity, has arisen an eager seeking after knowledge on the part of women who have been debarred from its enjoyment, or lacked opportunity for its acquisition. The knowledge sought was not that of a limited, sectional geography, or a mathematical quantity as taught in schools, but the knowledge of the history and development of races and peoples, of the laws and principles that underlie this development, and the place of the woman in this grand march of the ages.
The woman has been the one isolated fact in the universe. The outlook upon the world, the means of education, the opportunities for advancement, had all been denied her; and that "community of feeling and sense of distributive justice which grows out of cooperative interests in work and life, had found small opportunity for growth or activity."
The opportunity came with the awakening of the communal spirit, the recognition of the law of the solidarity of interests, the sociological advance which established a basis of equality among a wide diversity of conditions and individuals, and opportunities for all capable of using them. This great advance was not confined to a society or a neighborhood; it did not require subscription to a tenet, or the giving up of one's mode of life. It was simply a change of a point of view, the opening of a door, the stepping out into the freedom of the outer air, and the sweet sense of fellowship with the whole universe that comes with liberty and light.
The difference was only a point of view, but it changed the aspect of the world. This new note, which meant for the woman liberty, breadth and unity, was struck by the woman's club.
To the term "club," as applied to and by women, may be fitly referred the words in which John Addington Symonds defines Renaissance. "This," he remarks, "is not explained by this or that characteristic, but as an effort for which at length the time has come." It means the attainment of the conscious freedom of the woman spirit, and has been manifested first most strongly and most widely in this country, because here that spirit has attained the largest measure of freedom.
The woman's club was not an echo; it was not the mere banding together for a social and economic purpose, like the clubs of men. It became at once, without deliberate intention or concerted action, a light-giving and seed-sowing centre of purely altruistic and democratic activity. It had no leaders. It brought together qualities rather than personages; and by a representation of all interests, moral, intellectual, and social, a natural and equal division of work and opportunity, created an ideal basis of organization, where every one has an equal right to whatever comes to the common centre; where the centre itself becomes a radiating medium for the diffusion of the best of that which is brought to it, and where, all being freely given, no material considerations enter.
This is no ideal or imaginary picture. It is the simplest prose of every woman's club and every clubwoman's experience during the past thirty years.
It has been in every sense an awakening to the full glory and meaning of life. It is also a very narrow and self-absorbed mind that sees in these openings only opportunities for its own pleasure, or chances for its own advancement on its own narrow and exclusive lines. The lesson of the hour is help for those that need it, in the shape in which they need it, and kinship with all and everything that exists on the face of God's earth. If we miss this we miss the spirit, the illuminating light of the whole movement, and lose it in the mire of our own selfishness.
The tendency of association upon any broad human basis is to destroy the caste spirit, and this the club has done for women more than any other influence that as yet has come into existence. A club that is narrowed to a clique, a class, or a single object, is a contradiction in terms. It may be a society, or a congregation of societies, but it is not a club. The essence of a club is its many-sided character, its freedom in gathering together and expressing all shades of difference, its equal and independent terms of membership, which puts every one upon the same footing, and enables each one to find or make her own place. The most opposite ideas find equal claims to respect. Women widest apart in position and habits of life find much in common, and acquaintance and contact mutually helpful and advantageous. Club life teaches us that there are many kinds of wealth in the world—the wealth of ideas, of knowledge, of sympathy, of readiness to be put in any place and used in any way for the general good. These are given, and no price is or can be put upon them, yet they ennoble and enrich whatever comes within their influence.
We are only at the threshold of a future that thrills us with its wonderful possibilities—possibilities of fellowship where separation was; of love where hatred was; of unity where division was; of peace where war was; of light—physical, mental and spiritual—where darkness was; of agreement and equality where differences and traditions had built up walls of distinction and lines of caste. This beautiful thing needs only to be realized in thought to become an actual fact in life, and those who do realize it are enriched by it beyond the power of words to express.
Women have been God's own ministers everywhere and at all times. In varied ways they have worked for others until the name of woman stands for the spirit of self-sacrifice. Now He bids them bind their sheaves and show a new and more glorious womanhood; a new unit—the completed type of the mother-woman, working with all as well as for all.
The Advantages of a General Federation of Women's Clubs[1]
Address by Mrs. Croly to the First Meeting of the First Federation of Women's Clubs, Held in Brooklyn, N.Y., April 23, 1890
The growth of the woman's club is one of the marvels of the last twenty-five years, so fruitful in the development of mental and material resources. What it was destined to become was, perhaps, far from the minds of those who aided its inception, but all the possibilities of the future lay in the germ that was thus planted, for it was formed by the marriage of two great elements—freedom and unity.
[Footnote 1:The Cycle.]
The club has been called the "school of the middle-aged woman." It is so in a very broad sense. It begins by gratifying her desire for fellowship, her thirst for knowledge; by training her in business and parliamentary methods; and gradually develops in her the power of expressing her own ideas, of concentrating her faculties and focusing them upon the object to be attained, the purpose to be accomplished. At the same time she finds that a more subtle process has been going on in her own mind. An insensible alchemy has been widening her horizon, getting rid of prejudice, obliterating old, narrow lines, leaving in their place a willingness to see the good in Nazareth as well as in Galilee.
This result shows that she is a clubable woman, for it is emphatically the club spirit. It is in this respect that the club differs from those societies that are devoted to a single purpose; which demand subscription to an idea, an opinion, a dogma, a belief, a single basis or principle, and do not admit of fellowship on any other terms. Doubtless those have their uses—they are the necessary and often powerful expression of an advancing public opinion; but they have always existed, usually and in past times, under the leadership of men, even when composed of women. But it remained for the nineteenth century to develop a moral, social, and intellectual force, made up of every shade of opinion and belief, of every degree of rank and scholastic attainment, of every kind of disposition and habit of thought, all moulded into form,—and though as yet only the promise of what will be, furnishing an outline of that beautiful united womanhood which was the dream with which the club was started, and has been the guiding star to its development up to the present time.
The union of clubs in a federation is the natural outgrowth of the club idea. It is the recognition of the kinship of all women, of whatever creed, opinion, nationality or degree; and it is a sign of a bond that entitles every one to equal place;—not to charity or toleration alone, but to consideration and respect. Inside of the club we are equal sharers of each other's gifts. Each one brings her knowledge, her sympathy, her special aptitude, her personal charm of manner and disposition, and we are all enriched by this outflowing and inflowing, by this equal part and share in a fountain made up of such bountiful and diversified elements.
But the tendency of a circle is to widen. This is natural and necessary to healthful life. Stop its currents, dam up its inlets and outlets, and it is reduced to stagnation, and soon becomes foul and mischievous instead of healthy and life-giving. The tendency of narrow ideas is to run to routine, to spend time and strength upon trivial details, and allow them to block and hinder the consideration of weightier matters. There is undoubtedly a use for practice in business methods, particularly for those women who have had no previous training in business life; but the club ought to be an evolution. Once acquired, the knowledge of business ways, methods, and tactics can be put to better use than to aid or hinder the transaction of routine affairs, which it is the function of a committee to dispose of.
The direction which the enlargement of club life takes must depend in the first place upon local conditions and environment. Already in many cities it has made itself, as in Philadelphia, the centre of the active, moral and intellectual forces. In others, as in Milwaukee, by cooperation in spirit and practice, it has provided a home for literature and the arts. Whatever the woman's club does, is and ought to be done on the broadest human principles; for if it forgets this it ceases to be a club, and becomes merely a propaganda for the advancement of certain fixed and unchangeable ideas.
But its own life, no matter how broad, is not enough. Whatever is vital is social. This is why a club when it comes to understand its own powers and sources of life, wishes for the companionship, the sympathy, the fellowship, the shaking hands with other clubs. It is said that corporations have no soul: clubs have souls, and they call loudly for the enlargement of club sympathies, the discussion of knotty club questions, the affirmation by others of what have become club convictions, and mutual congratulations on club successes.
This is not all that a federation of clubs can accomplish, but it is enough for a starting point. It is the kindly, providential, sympathetic way in which we are always led from the smaller to the larger field of work. Just before descending from a crest in the Sierras into the valley of the Yosemite, you come suddenly upon a wonderful view; it is called "Inspiration Point," and it is like an open door, a revelation of the infinite, a promise in one gleam of transcendent beauty, of all the separate and divisible splendors that are to follow.
This spirit of enlargement beckons us and leads us to the formation of the Federated Union of Clubs, and we cannot do better than follow its guidance. We all need, clubs as well as individuals, encouragement and counsel; we need to enlarge our knowledge of what other clubs are doing, of their extent, of their objects, of their ambitions. Above all, we need to enlarge our sympathies, to cultivate sympathy by knowledge; for our prejudices are born of ignorance, and we rarely dislike what we intimately know. As Charles Lamb said: "How can I dislike a man if I know him? Do we ever dislike anything if we know it very well?" With the growth of clubs the purely personal characteristics of them will disappear, or at least be subordinated to larger aims; and it is in the prosecution of these larger aims that the federation will find its reasons for existence.
There is a vast work for clubs to do throughout the country in the investigation of moral and social questions, in the reformation of abuses, in the cultivation of best influences;—not the influence of class or clique or party, but a wide, liberalizing, educational influence which works for true goodness, for cleanliness, for order, for equal opportunities, for the recognition of God in man and nature, in whatever stage of unfolding the Divine in us may happen to be. It is in the last twenty-five years that village-improvement societies, first instigated by a woman—Miss Sallie Goodrich of Stockbridge, Mass.—have created a transformation in whole townships, and so enhanced the value of property as to drive out the original inhabitants and change farming communities into fashionable summer resorts. This result is of doubtful value. But every woman's club, especially in the newer sections, has in its power, by wise and careful action, to improve the conditions, elevate the tone, and crystallize the moral force of its community in such a way as to make it more desirable to live in, more beneficial to its own citizens, more of an example to others.