The Part Taken by Women in American History/Women Sociologists
Sociologists.
MARGARET DREIER ROBBINS.
Born in Brooklyn. The daughter of Theodore and Dorothea Dreier. She is the founder of the Woman's Municipal League of New York; president of the New York Association for Household Research; president of the New York Woman's Trade Union League in 1905; member executive board of Chicago Federation of Labor since 1908; member of committee on industrial education, American Federation of Labor; member of executive committee, Illinois section, American Association for Labor Legislation, and prominent in all labor and social organizations for many years.
CORINNE STUBBS BROWN.
Born in Chicago, 1849. Teacher in the public schools of Chicago and married Frank E. Brown. Is a student of social problems and socialist of some prominence. President of the Illinois Women's Alliance for the purpose of obtaining the enactment and enforcement of factory ordinances and compulsory educational laws. An active worker in the study of economic and social questions among the clubs.
GABRIELLE MULLINER.
Lawyer and social reformer of New York. Is using her efforts to procure separate trials for women.
HELENA STUART DUDLEY.
Born in Nebraska, in 1858. Daughter of Judson H. and Caroline Bates Dudley. Teacher of biology and chemistry in the Packer Collegiate Institute at one time. Became head worker of the college settlement work in Philadelphia; also of the Denison House College settlement in Boston since 1893.
MRS. ROBERT CARTWRIGHT.
Chairman of the public safety committee of the city of New York. Originated and caused to be placed the electric signs at elevated railway stations indicating the next stop; also the signs in the cars of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, giving the names of the subway lines and their destination. It is believed that these have prevented thousands of accidents and hundreds of thousands of tourists from boarding the wrong trains.
DIANA BELAIS.
Active worker in the reform concerning the treatment and care of disabled and overworked animals. Finding the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals did not entirely accomplish the work she desired—was not far-reaching enough—she framed the bill and caused it to be presented to the legislature at Albany, New York, and for two years she struggled for the passage of this bill and ultimately was successful in her efforts, and to-day the agents of the society are invested with full police power and have brought about a wonderful change in the humane treatment of animals and the sanitary conditions for them. But the greatest of Mrs. Belais' municipal achievements lies in her splendid crusade against the horrors of vivisection, and she is now engaged in trying to accomplish her ideas through legislative measures and ordinances in the cities.
MRS. A. M. PALMER.
President of what is known as the Rainy Day Club and organizations to rectify the short weights and false measurements. It was said that the city of New York, according to authorized statements, lost one million dollars yearly on short-weighted package goods. All devices for fraud resorted to by merchants and dealers were to be brought to account. She has been joined in this work by Mrs. William Grant Brown, of New York.
ELEANOR M. WHALEY.
Interested in the cleansing of cities under the Municipal Woman's League.
LAURA B. HERTZ.
Chairman of the Civic Committee of California's Women's Clubs. Mrs. Hertz was born in San Francisco, November, 1869, and received a high school education in Santa Barbara. She married Louis Hertz in March, 1891, after having taught school for several years. Mrs. Hertz's work and activities are for the betterment of all civic conditions, moral, physical and educational. Especially is she interested in work for the young. She was elected president of the Council of Jewish Women, serving in this position for two years, after which she was elected a delegate to the triennial council, which met in Chicago in 1905. For two years past, she has been chairman of the Sabbath school committee, and inaugurated an international union Thanksgiving service conducted by the children of all the Jewish Sunday-schools of San Francisco. Mrs. Hertz is at present the chairman of the Department of School Patrons of the National Education Association, and is at the head of the entertainment for the Jewish Chautauqua Assembly, meeting in San Francisco.
MARGARET SMYTH McKISSICK.
Mrs. Margaret Smyth McKissick was born in Charleston, South Carolina, and is proud of her Maryland, Virginia, as well as South Carolina, colonial and revolutionary ancestry. She has one son, about nineteen years old, and it has been largely her interest in him that has led to her interest in the industrial schools of South Carolina
She has been vice-president for two years, president for two years of the State Federation of Women's Clubs, and for the last four years has been chairman of the Department of Forestry and Civics.
Mrs. McKissick oversees the educational system, carries baskets to the families at the Christmas season and generally guards the welfare of employees and their families in some of the mill villages of South Carolina. Mrs. McKissick follows in her work the methods inaugurated by her father, Captain Ellison A. Smyth, at Pelzer, South Carolina.
MARTHA PARMELEE ROSE.
Mrs. Rose was born March 5, 1834, in Norton, Ohio. Her father, Theodore Hudson Parmelee, was one of the founders of the Western Reserve College, and went with the early colony to Ohio, in 1813. He was educated under Lyman Beecher and accepted the views of Oberlin, which opened its doors to women and the negro. Here Miss Parmelee obtained her education, graduating in 1855. While teaching in a seminary in Pennsylvania, she became the wife of William G. Rose, a member of the legislature of that state; an editor and lawyer. In 1864 Mr. and Mrs. Rose removed to Cleveland, Ohio, where Mr. Rose was later the mayor of the city. Mrs. Rose became intensely interested in the poor and destitute, especially the sufferings of the poor sewing women as a result of the frauds and extortions practised upon them. Through lectures and reports of the Royal Commission of England on the training schools of that country and the manual training schools of France and Sweden, she succeeded in arousing the press and business men of the city to the necessity for the establishment of a training school in Cleveland, which was accomplished. She has written a book entitled, "Story of a Life of Pauperism in America," many articles on the labor question and kindred topics. She reviewed Mrs. Field's "How to Help the Poor"; many of her suggestions were accepted by the associated charities of Cleveland. She helped to form the Woman's Employment Society, which gave out garments to be made at reasonable prices and sold to home missions. She was at one time president of the Cleveland Sorosis, aiding materially the success of this woman's club. She is known as a patron of art.
ANNA BYFORD LEONARD.
Mrs. Anna Byford Leonard was born July 31, 1843. She was the daughter of a well-known physician and surgeon of Chicago, Illinois, who was the founder and president of the Woman's Medical College of Chicago, and devoted his life and his work to the cause and diseases of women. In 1889 Mrs. Leonard was appointed sanitary inspector, the first woman to be appointed to that position. Through her efforts and those of five other women, who were aiding her in this splendid work, the eight-hour day was enforced, which provides that children under fourteen years of age shall not work more than eight hours a day. Through Mrs. Leonard's efforts seats were placed in stores and factories for the relief of girls employed in these places; and through her efforts, also, schools have been established in some of the stores to give the children employed two hours of schooling a day. Many of these girls whose first labors were those of cash girls were unable to write their own names. In 1891 Mrs. Leonard was made president of the Women's Canning and Preserving Company, which she brought to great success. She is entitled to a place among the distinguished business women of this country as well as among cultured and prominent social leaders and representative American women.
JANE ADDAMS.
Miss Addams was born at Cedarville, Illinois, September, 1860. She is the daughter of the late Hon. John H. and Sarah Weber Addams. Studied abroad for two years and later in Philadelphia. Opened a social settlement department known as Hull House, in Chicago, in 1889, in connection with Miss Ellen Gates Star and of this she has since been the head. Was inspector of streets and alleys for three years in the neighborhood of Hull House. Has done a wonderful work in sociology and is to-day recognized as one of the foremost women in this country in her line of work. She has written and lectured on social and political reform.
Miss Addams has been ranked the foremost living woman in America to-day, as having done the most for womankind and, for that matter, for human kind. This modest, unassum ing little woman has proven a power in Chicago, which political corruption and vicious ignorance could not withstand. She has matched kindness with kindness, craftiness with craftiness until ward bossism fell before her. A lifelong sufferer from spinal trouble, she has already accomplished a work in Chicago and sent forth a worldwide influence for social and industrial betterment which many a strong man might be proud to call his life work. What Miss Addams has accomplished in Chicago cannot be told briefly, but here are a few of the things she has done: Through Hull House she has provided a place where nine thousand men, women and children go to take sewing, millinery and dancing lessons; drink coffee; paint pictures; to mould clay; a place where they have free access to library, club rooms, day nursery, kindergarten, children's playgrounds, labor bureau, medical dispensary, ideal bakery, diet kitchen, visiting nurses, social, educational and industrial clubs for all ages and purposes. She has cleaned up one of the filthiest and
most corrupt districts in Chicago. She has replaced in the heart of this district an ill-kept and filthy stable with an art gallery and a children's playground; she has done this for about two thousand children whose only playground was the street. She has made a long and vigorous fight against druggists who sold cocaine to children; against the spread of typhoid fever by personal inspection of four thousand tenements; against tuberculosis among the rear-tenement dwellers; for new factory laws, and in all of these cases she has won out. She has co-operated with the Juvenile Courts. She has established public baths, free reading rooms, better public and home sanitation and cleaner streets. She has established a model apartment house with twelve model apartments. She maintains a visiting kindergarten by means of which children too crippled to attend school are visited in their homes and instructed by trained kindergarten teachers, and yet the half has not been told. IDA WHIPPLE BENHAM.
Mrs. Benham was born near Ledyard, Connecticut, on the 8th of January, 1849, and was the daughter of Timothy and Lucy Ann Geer Whipple. The 14th of April, 1869, she married Elijah B. Benham, of Groton, Connecticut. She inherited from her Quaker father and mother a desire for peace, and lectured on this and the subject of temperance. Is a director in the American Peace Society, and a member of the Universal Peace Union, and has always taken a conspicuous part in all peace conventions. Has contributed poems to the New York Independent, Youths' Companion, St. Nicholas, and other prominent periodicals.
CLARISSA CALDWELL LATHROF.
Miss Clarissa Caldwell Lathrop was born in Rochester, New York, and died September, 1892 in Saratoga, New York. She was the daughter of the late General William E. Lee Lathrop. Her prominence came from her remarkable experience. She was confined and unlawfully imprisoned in the Utica State Asylum for twenty-six months through a plot of a secret enemy to put her out of existence. She managed at last to communicate with James B. Silkman, of New York, a lawyer who, like herself, was confined in the same asylum under similar circumstances. He succeeded in obtaining a writ of habeas corpus in December, 1882. Judge Barnard of the Supreme Court pronounced her sane and unlawfully incarcerated. Miss Lathrop felt she owed it to her own sex to take her case before the legislature of New York State, and demand reform in this direction, but she was unsuccessful in two efforts and found herself penniless and facing the necessity of her own support. After several efforts in most humble capacity, she became a court stenographer and ten years after her release wrote her book, the story of her own prison experiences, entitled "A Secret Institution." This book led to the formation of the Lunacy Law Reform League, in 1889, a national organization with headquarters in New York City, of which Miss Lathrop became the secretary and was the national organizer.
MRS. ARCHIBALD HOPKINS.
Mrs. Archibald Hopkins, president of the District of Columbia Association of the Civic Federation, was Charlotte Everett Wise, born June 7, 1857 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She was the daughter of Captain Henry A. Wise, United States Navy, and Charlotte Brooks Wise, the granddaughter of Edward Everett and Charlotte G. Everett, of Boston, Massachusetts. Mrs. Hopkins has always been active in the charitable and philanthropic work of Washington. She is one of the original members of the Civic Federation and as president of the local organization of the city of Washington has done some splendid work in the effort to ameliorate the condition of the employees of the government. Many surprisingly unsanitary and unwholesome conditions have existed and the local organization has gained the attention of the chiefs of the various departments and Congress for the betterment of surroundings and the rectifying of injustices.
ELIZABETH GERBERDING.
Mrs. Elizabeth Gerberding is the leader of the fight for municipal reform in the city of San Francisco. To the women who took a part in this great revolt against graft the men owe much. Mrs. Gerberding was born in a little mining town in California in 1857. Her parents moved to San Francisco when she was but eight years of age. Soon after an early marriage she was thrown on her own resources, and for some years made her living and educated her children by teaching. This struggle brought out and developed in her the courage she has shown throughout the great war for civic righteousness in San Francisco. In 1894 she married Albert Gerberding, coming in close connection with those who were afterwards in the forefront for public weal. Mr. Gerberding's father was the owner and publisher of The Bulletin, the paper which in the early days helped to put down the lawlessness of organized theft and which to-day represents the public feeling which has brought to San Francisco a decent government. Mrs. Gerberding succeeded in getting representative women to show by their presence at the trials of these officials the stand of the best element of society. A League of Justice was formed. Mrs. Gerberding became the only woman member of the executive committee. On her own initiative she formed the Woman's League of Justice which soon had a membership of five hundred. This became a strong auxiliary in the graft prosecution; the value of their moral support to those engaged in the prosecution was incalcuable. Of Mrs. Gerberding's active work for the betterment of San Francisco, this is but a part. She formed the California women's Heney Club of San Francisco, and as president made it a real power for good. This organization became the Woman's Civic Club of San Francisco. Immediately there was new work for this club to do. On a trip east, Mrs.
Gerberding discovered that an active propaganda was afoot to defeat the Hetch Hetchy water project on the ground of the preservation of natural resources. Persons had even succeeded in getting the Federation of Woman's Clubs to pass resolutions against the grant.
Mrs. Gerberding went back to San Francisco and persuaded the Century Club, the oldest woman's club on the Pacific coast, to withdraw in protest from the federation. The women of San Francisco are in a great fight for pure water.
Since her husband died in 1902, leaving her comfortably provided for, Mrs. Gerberding has been militant for her city. She loves San Francisco as only the native Californian can. The men who have fought the good fight for San Francisco know how often she has poured the balm of her sympathy upon their wounds and filled them with renewed energy and courage.
ADA M. BITTENBENDER.
Mrs. Bittenbender, lawyer and reformer, was born in Asylum, Bradford County, Pennsylvania, August 3, 1848. Her father's family were partly of New England and partly of German stock; her mother, of New England. Her father served all during the Civil War, and died soon after its close. Mrs. Bitten bender's maiden name was Ada M. Cole. In 1874 she entered as a student of the Pennsylvania State Normal School, from which she was graduated in 1875. After graduating, she was elected a member of the faculty and taught one year. She then entered the Froebel Normal Institute in Washington, D. C, and graduated from this institute in 1877. The day on which she graduated she was called to her Alma Mater as principal and accepted the position, teaching for one year, when illness prevented her continuing her work. In 1878 she married Henry Clay Bittenbender, a young lawyer of Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, and a graduate of Princeton College. Soon after their marriage they moved to Osceola, Nebraska. Mrs. Bittenbender taught school for a short time. In 1879, Mr. Bittenbender bought the Record published in Osceola. Mrs. Bittenbender was engaged as editor and served in this capacity for three years, making an able, fearless, moral, temperance newspaper of this journal. Mrs. Bittenbender strongly opposed the granting of saloon licenses. When the Nebraska Woman Suffrage Association was organized in 1881, she was elected recording secretary. She with others secured the submission of the woman suffrage amendment to the constitution in 1881. The following year she was elected president of the association. In 1881 she became the editor of the Farmers' Alliance paper, started in Nebraska. While editing the Record she read law with her husband, and in 1882 passed an examination and was licensed to practise. She was the first woman admitted to the bar in Nebraska. She became her husband's law partner, and for many years the firm existed under the name of H. C. and Ada M. Bittenbender. She secured the passage of the scientific temperance instruction bill and the tobacco bill ; secured a law giving the mother the guardianship of her children equally with the father, and several other laws beneficial to women. She was the author of the excellent industrial home bill which was enacted by the Nebraska legislature in 1887. At the International Council of Women, held in Washington, D. C, in 1888 she addressed the council on "Woman in Law." She represented the Woman's Christian Temperance Union at the national Capital for many years in urging legislation in the interest of temperance. In 1888 she was admitted to practise in the Supreme Court of the United States, and elected an attorney to the International Woman's Christian Temperance Union, which she held for some time. She is the author of the chapter on "Woman in Law" in "Woman's Work in America" and the "National Prohibitory Amendment Guide." It is through her efforts and by her untiring devotion to the cause that much of the beneficial legislation for temperance and the protection of women and her interests have been obtained.
HELEN MAROT.
Is an industrial reformer and worker in social economics. Miss Marot has been engaged in the work of social economics for the past sixteen years. Her first efforts in this direction was the forming of a small center for the use of all sorts and conditions of people interested in economic problems in Philadelphia, her native city. In this work she was assisted by Dr. David G. Brinton. Books and pamphlets were collected and a reading-room and gathering place for the discussion of these problems was opened. While this center was in active operation, lectures were delivered by Sidney Webb, of England, Ramsay MacDonald, M.P., and men from the Pennsylvania University. During the existence of this circle Miss Marot compiled a handbook of labor literature which was most favorably received by bibliographers as well as sociologists. This was a selected and classified bibliograph of the more important books and pamphlets in the English language at the time of its publication of 1897. In 1900 Miss Marot, in connection with Miss Caroline L. Piatt, made an investigation and report of the manufacture of men's clothing in Philadelphia. The part referring to ready made clothing was published by the United States Industrial Commission. The part relating to the manufacture of custom made clothes was published by the Pennsylvania Consumers' League and the Journeyman Tailors' Union. This was the first exposure of conditions under which the latter class of clothing is made. After this Miss Marot made some investigations in New York and in 1903 was asked to investigate conditions under which children worked for the New York Child Labor Committee which was just then being formed. The investigation led to the enactment of laws formulated by her associates and herself which placed New York in the lead in child labor reform. This was the beginning of the child labor campaign throughout the country now led by the National Child Labor Committee. At this time Miss Marot's health broke down and she was forced to lay aside her work for over a year; she was then called to Philadelphia to take the secretaryship of the Pennsylvania Child Labor Committee. This committee made an extensive investigation of child labor and began a legislative campaign which resulted in the passing of a fine piece of legislation but which was declared unconstitutional on a slight technicality raised by those interested in vitiating the law. Miss Marot realized that the only method of eventually destroying this evil was in better educational facilities and new economic conditions. She left the Pennsylvania Committee and returned to New York to work with the New York Public Education Association. She was urged to accept the secretaryship of the Woman's Trade Union League of New York City, and gave up her educational work to acecpt this responsible office and to-day there is a membership of over fifty-two thousand in this league.
Miss Marot and her associates, who are largely college girls and students of social questions in sympathy with the cause of organized labor, aided and managed the strike of woman shirt-makers in New York last year, when forty thousand of these women united, formed a union and declared a strike. This was settled by their employers ultimately coming to a recognition of their claims and it was settled on a basis of increased pay and a recognition of their union. Miss Anna Morgan, the daughter of J. P. Morgan, was one of the moving spirits in aiding these women to obtain their rights. After the strike was over, about three thousand of the workers were still out of employment. It remained for the practical mind of Miss Morgan to make provision for these girls. Miss Morgan proposed to establish by subscription a shirtwaist factory which should be a model in every sanitary and architectural respect and operated under strictly union conditions and finally to have a profit-sharing system. Their first order was from Wellesley College—a thousand waists to be made by their special pattern.
MRS. ISAAC L. RICE.
Mrs. Isaac L. Rice, organizer of the Anti-noise Society, was born in New Oneans, Louisiana, May 2, i860. Is the daughter of Nathaniel and Annie Hyne-Barnett and is the wife of Isaac L. Rice, a prominent lawyer of New York City. On her mother's side, Mrs. Rice descended from Elias Hyneman, a native of Holland who came to this country in the eighteenth century. Mrs. Rice received a classical and musical education and also completed a course at the Woman's Medical College of the New York Infirmary in New York City, where she took her degree of M.D., in 1885, but soon after this she was married and abandoned the plan of practising her profession. Her home is one of elegance and distinction on the Riverside Drive, overlooking the Hudson River in the city of New York. The situation of her home brought to her attention as one of the sufferers the unnecessary noise of the river craft which rendered her days uncomfortable and her nights sleepless. The long distance signalling indulged in by tugs on their way up and down the river, their shrieking sirens, even when two miles away from the pier, became insufferable. At one time Mrs. Rice planned to sell her house and move to a quieter neighborhood, but learning that the inmates of the hospitals along the East River were sufferers from these same river noises and that no attempt had been made to obtain relief for them, she then determined to devote herself to this work. She had hitherto been unaccustomed to any public effort, having lived a quiet, domestic, home life. To convince the most sceptical of the extent of the nuisance, Mrs. Rice had careful records made on various nights of the number and duration of the whistle blasts, engaging for this purpose law students from the Columbia University, their reports being duly attested. From these it was learned that almost three thousand blasts could be noted in one locality during a period of eight hours, from ten p. m. to six a. m. She recognized the fact that this whistling was not called for either by statute or emergency requirements and that it could be dispensed with by having watchmen on their piers and by a system of like signals. She contended, furthermore, that this unnecessary whistling was not only a general public nuisance, but a grave menace to health ; that it was also a detriment to navigation, because it covered or rendered difficult to distinguish, those signals which were necessary or demanded by law, from the unnecessary and that in justice to all they ought to be immediately suppressed. She gathered data from all of the municipal institutions exposed to noise and from every one came the plea for relief. All of this testimony was corroborated by the most eminent physicians in New York. She appealed to the municipal and state authorities, but in vain, as they contended that it was a local nuisance on a federal waterway, and therefore, the municipal authorities had no right to act. Therefore, it was stated there was nobody in the United States who had the right to regulate the size of a boat whistle or to forbid useless handling of the same. After a year's constant effort Congressman Bennett succeeded in having a law passed through Congress, giving authority to the Board of Supervising Inspectors to punish unnecessary whistling. Mrs. Rice then decided to organize a society composed of representative men in the various cities of the United States to abate one of the gravest ills of city life—unnecessary noise. She has succeeded in interesting in this work Archbishop Farley, Bishop Greer, the commissioner of health, the president of the Academy of Medicine, the president of Columbia University, the College of the city of New York and the New York University, the late Richard Watson Gilder and the late Mark Twain and William Dean Howells, and many other distinguished physicians, educators and public men. Europe has also taken up the work in the most encouraging manner. Germany, Austria, Holland, Denmark, Sweden and England now have organizations, and the appeal of this society in many of the cities has brought about the granting of "quiet zones" around city hospitals. Mrs. Rice has organized also a children's society, in which Mark Twain took a great interest and was at the time of his death its president. The latest phase of Mrs. Rice's work is to form a national committee of the governors of all the states in order to make this movement country-wide. This work and great movement instigated by the persistency and perseverence of one woman entirely unaided is acknowledged to be one of the most revolutionizing reforms of the century, and Mrs. Rice's courageous perseverence and ceaseless efforts denote a character worthy of the widest emulation. Mrs. Rice is a refined, cultured woman, an accomplished musician and linguist and occupies a high social position in the city of New York. She is a woman of literary ability and has contributed to many of the leading magazines.
MARY VAN KLEECK.
ELSA DENISON.
Miss Denison was born May 17, 1889, in Denver, Colorado. She is the daughter of Dr. Denison and granddaughter of Henry Strong, of Chicago, the well-known philanthropist. She was graduated in Bryn Mawr in June, 1910, and immediately volunteered as a worker in the New York Bureau of Municipal Research and has spent all her time in that important work since her graduation. This one of the most important progressive movements was started in New York by an organization to be known as the New York Bureau of Municipal Research, whose object is an investigation as to the benefit derived from the co-operation of educational associations, women's clubs, boards of trade, and charities with the public schools in the matters of medical and dental examinations, school nurses, sanitary improvements, new buildings, recreation and playgrounds, decorations, industrial training, kindergartens, changes in school laws, relief of the needy, instructions in civics and many other things which will be conducive to the welfare of the children destined to be the men and women of the near future. In reply to their circulars begging for information the bureau has had many interested responses and volunteer workers. Miss Denison, though but twenty-two years of age, has been one of the most effective workers under the bureau and will make a report in September that will be valuable to the bureau in forming plans for further activities. Miss Denison chose the problem of "Civic Co-operation with the Public Schools," because of her patriotic conviction that "upon the wise education of the child to-day depends the efficiency of the citizen of to-morrow." To have that education the best, every citizen must take an active interest in the schools of his community.
MRS. CHARLES S. THAYER.
Mrs. Thayer is the present head of the college settlement in New York. Before her marriage, in 1904, she was Miss Mary Appleton Shute. Mrs. Thayer is a graduate of Smith College.
Among other women prominently connected with settlement work and social investigation may be mentioned Mrs. C. B. Spahr, of Princeton, New Jersey; Miss Jean Gurney Fine, Miss Elizabeth Williams, Miss Maud Miner and Miss Mary B. Sayles, who are all graduates of Smith College. Other Smith women who are prominent in literature are Miss Anna Hempstead Branch, Miss Fannie Harding Eckstorm, Miss Olivia Howard Dunbar, Miss Zephine Humphrey, Miss Anna Chapin Ray, Miss Ella Burns Sherman and Miss Fannie Stearns Davis.