Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" Part 8

_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 fellows.h.i.+p, 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 fellows.h.i.+p 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 leaders.h.i.+p 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, furnis.h.i.+ng 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 kins.h.i.+p of all women, of whatever creed, opinion, nationality or degree; and it is a sign of a bond that ent.i.tles 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 apt.i.tude, 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 companions.h.i.+p, the sympathy, the fellows.h.i.+p, 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 cla.s.s 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 G.o.d 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, Ma.s.s.--have created a transformation in whole towns.h.i.+ps, and so enhanced the value of property as to drive out the original inhabitants and change farming communities into fas.h.i.+onable 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.

All these questions of club life and work would naturally come up before a federated body, and these would as naturally lead to governmental questions; to contrasts and records of activities in different parts of the world, and to the investigation of the causes which bring about certain results.

Women are naturally both receptive and constructive. The affirmative states of mind are those which, particularly belong to women; as iconoclasts they are mere echoes. This affirmative condition is most favorable to true development. Nothing good has ever come of mere negation. But we must look for our truths and our basis of true growth, in the light of the rising dawn--not, as heretofore, in the waning glory of the setting sun. The union of clubs is the natural outgrowth, of the planting of the true club idea. It was a little seed, but it contained the germ of a mighty growth in the kins.h.i.+p of all women--the women who differ as well as the women who agree; and the federation of clubs is the forerunner of that unity of the race of which philosophers have spoken, of which poets have dreamed, but which only the constructive motherhood and womanhood of the race can accomplish.

The Clubwoman[1]

The nineteenth century has been remarkable in many ways. It has developed a new material and social order; but the fact is not as yet fully recognized that it has developed a new woman--the woman who works with, other women; the woman in clubs, in societies; the woman who helps to form a body of women; who finds fellows.h.i.+p with her own s.e.x, outside of the church, outside of any ism, or hobby, but simply on the ground of kins.h.i.+p and humanity.

[Footnote 1: _The Cycle_.]

It is not yet twenty-one years since a great daily in New York said that if a society composed wholly of women could hold together one year, a great many men would have to revise their opinion of women.

The remark was made apropos of the formation of the first women's clubs in this country, and was echoed on all sides publicly and privately. It is only significant now as showing the isolated position of women, and the general impression which prevailed that they could not and would not work together, except, perhaps, for some common cause, religious or philanthropic, which for the time being absorbed their energies and made them lose sight of their personal jealousies and animosities. Why women should have been believed to be antagonistic to women it is hard to say. This idea seems to have been cultivated a.s.siduously by men, and women have echoed it; for it cannot be denied that the new fellows.h.i.+p that has come with the century and with the awakening of women to the life which is theirs--the life of friends.h.i.+p, of sympathy, of enlargement, of interest in affairs, of common kins.h.i.+p with all that exists in a beautiful world--has in it something of the nature of a surprise. Is it possible that women may have a life of their own, may learn to know and honor each other, may find solace in companions.h.i.+p, and lose sight of small troubles in larger aims?

These questions have been answered by thousands of women, answered with tears, after the manner of women, but tears of joyful recognition of the new day which has dawned for them;--a day of larger opportunities, a day which comes after a night of ages; for the woman is for the first time finding her own place in the world. Heretofore she was only welcome if the man wanted her, and if he no longer wanted her she was again cast out. But she is now learning that the world exists for her also; that she is one half the human race; that life, liberty, and the pursuit of whatever is good are as desirable for her as for the man, and as necessary in order to put her in _rapport_ with the eternal springs of all life and its varied forms of activity.

The first impulse of the awakened woman is to unite herself with other women; her next to learn that which she does not know in regard to art, literature, peoples, races; the countries she has never visited, the kinsmen and kinswomen she has never seen, and the degree in which their progress has kept pace with or gone beyond her own. This knowledge comes to her through her club or literary society.

The woman's club has become the school of the middle-aged woman. It has brought her up to the time. It has enabled her to keep pace with the better advantages given to her sons and daughters. It has put an interest into her life which it had never previously possessed, and made her more humanly companionable because better able to judge and more willing to suspend judgment. The clubs of women in America--the growth mainly of the past twenty years--can now be counted by the hundreds, and their members.h.i.+p by many thousands, and the history of them all is practically the same.

It is this woman, born of women's clubs, who is the woman of to-day.

She is the centre of the intellectual activity of towns.h.i.+ps and neighborhoods all over the country. She forms stock companies, and builds athenaeums; she is at the head of working guilds; she organizes cla.s.ses, teaches what she knows, while she is being taught what she did not know; and in mental activity, and labor which is not routine, has renewed her youth, and added to her attractions. She is at the same time far removed from a lobbyist. She is able to look at different sides; she is socially at home with the best people in every sense of the word. She is a lady as well as a woman, and does not adopt what is _outre_ in order to obtain notoriety.

The New Life[1]

It is a very dull mind, whether belonging to man or woman, that does not feel stirred by recent movements--not here alone but all over the world--into some quickening sense of the deeper life, the broader human claims, the unifying and uniting influences which have sprung into activity, and which address, not the visionary, but the thoughtful and far-seeing, with prophetic gleams of a new heaven and a new earth.

[Footnote 1: _The Cycle_.]

It is also a very narrow and self-absorbed mind which, only sees in these openings 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 kins.h.i.+p with all and everything that exists on the face of G.o.d's green 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. To women this uplifting, these open doors, mean more than to men. They have been hedged about with so many restrictions, forced and held in such blind and narrow ways, that it is little wonder if sight and steps are feeble, and that they find it impossible to take it all in, or to recognize at once the full meaning of the day that is dawning for them.

For we are only at the threshold of a future that thrills us with its wonderful possibilities;--possibilities of friends.h.i.+p 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. "I should like to wake up rich one morning just to see how it would feel," said one woman to another not long since. "I do wake up rich every morning now," said the other, "though I have still my living to earn, because my life is full of prized opportunities, of cherished friends.h.i.+ps, of chances for acquiring knowledge that I had not in youth, and keeping myself in touch with broad human facts and forces. Everything is interesting to me, more interesting the closer my acquaintance with it, so that I am fast getting rid of those ugly things we call prejudices, and laying in a stock of appreciation instead, which is in itself enriching."

The old feeling of patron and dependant--so irksome, so humiliating, so feudal, yet containing for many the whole moral law--is done away with, and in its place appears a spirit of true fellows.h.i.+p, a growing sense of mutual respect and helpfulness. 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 enn.o.ble and enrich whatever comes within their influence.

Money is the only kind of wealth that is not common, that is not given freely; and for that reason it has a deadening and demoralizing effect upon the minds of those who cultivate and increase it for its own sake, or fail to put it to its larger and more human uses. Wise distribution is the only way in which money can be made valuable in the world: it is only as a developing power, as an aid to the worker, and a creator of instrumentalities by which good objects can be accomplished, that it is desirable. In the light of this view, what place do those men and women occupy who shut themselves up with their money, and shut out the wide human interests which educate the mind and heart to n.o.ble issues? Going to church does not help them, for it must be an exclusive church and an exclusive pew, under an exclusive pastor who patronizes Jesus Christ but does not sympathize with Him, and who talks about the "dregs of society" as if it were something far removed from the knowledge and consciousness of his hearers.

The woman of the past has especially been cramped up, bound around, and blindfolded by her special form of belief, by her tradition, by her social customs, by her education, by her whole environment; and the effect will remain stamped more or less upon her individuality long after the predisposing causes have pa.s.sed away and better influences and circ.u.mstances have taken their place.

But the present is full of encouragement. The new life has begun: the woman is here;--not the martyred woman of the past; not the self-absorbed woman of the present, but the awakened woman of the future. That woman whose faculties have been cultivated, whose gifts have been trained, whose mind has been enlarged, whose heartbeats respond to the touch of the unseen human, and whose quickened insight recognizes father, brother, sister, and friend beneath the strange as well as the dilapidated robe.

This woman whose face no artist has painted, who is not yet familiar, is among us, and will remain. Her work humanizes and reconciles, and the changes it will effect will come so noiselessly that the majority will not be aware of them till they are accomplished, and then each one will announce, and perhaps believe, that they themselves have brought these things about. But this will not matter, for when the work is done it is really of little consequence who did it, since all who do any good work at all are simply agents and ministers, charged with a task it is their business to perform, and happy only as they are able to execute it. It is those who are "let alone," who live for and in themselves, who are the unhappy ones; and for these, though they possess fine houses, much gold, stocks and bonds, the poorest worker may well fervently pray that the new life may come to these also.

The Days That Are[1]

We live in an age of discontent. Discontent has been deified. It has been called divine; and unrest, the seal as well as the sign of progress. Doubtless there is a time and a place even for discontent, for there is no faculty that has not its function. But discontent, which is a sacred fire when it burns within and is kept for home use, is a mischievous and destroying element when it is widely distributed and unthinkingly-employed by ignorance and short-sightedness.

[Footnote 1: _The Cycle_.]

Then it is certain that if discontent is good, content is far better, and thankfulness better yet. If time teaches us anything, it is to work and wait and trust; to be thankful for what is--for the digging and seeding time as well as for the harvest; for one must come before the other.

Time brings only one regret--that we had not more joy in the things that were; more belief, more patience, more love; more knowledge of the way things work out; more willingness to help toward the final result. The preparation, the planting, the laying foundations, must be done in the dark; usually done with blind eyes as well, which see not what may or will be, but antic.i.p.ate a harvest of pain from a spring-time of rain. Yet these showers may have been indispensable to the ground, and the seed may have expanded and sent its shoots up to the surface in consequence of them.

But why use symbols? The days that are;--the days that are with us are the good days. Suppose it is hard work, and only the prospect of hard work? Work is the best thing we have got: it is salvation. It is the means by which we struggle up out of the darkness into the light. It is the law of life. It is the ministry of all that is good in the world; and the better it is the better for us, the better for every one. It is only those who do not know how to work that do not love it; to those who do, it is better than play--it is religion.

But this is the mere influence of work itself. Suppose, besides your work, you have the blessing of a family to be cared for, and your work provides for them? This consecrates every part of it. It makes every movement of the hand a benediction, every heart-throb an unuttered prayer. Are not these days so full of labor best days? For about you are those you love. They are under the roof you provide; their voices furnish the music, their presence the suns.h.i.+ne of your life. Sometimes that which your discontent craves will come to you. The freedom from toil, the absence of "troubles" that now loom up so large to you; but with your troubles your joys will have vanished, and you will sit in the twilight waiting for the end, and wis.h.i.+ng that you had cultivated the sweetness instead of the bitterness of the beginning, that you had not allowed the thorns to cover up your roses.

Wisdom seems to have been the same always, but each one has to learn its lessons for himself. That is the reason why there is so little apparent progress in essential truths. There are always those who have grown into their realization; there are always those who are at the threshold, and who must travel over the same paths, for we can none of us acquire true wisdom for another; it must become a part of ourselves, of our own moral and spiritual consciousness.

"It is all very well for you," says one; "you have never known the pinch of poverty." How do you know that? We none of us know how and where the shoe has pinched another person's foot. It is not our business to know, but it is our business to prevent our soreness from becoming sourness and bitterness. It is our business to make the pathway of others as pleasant as we can, so that their unseen corns shall irritate them as little as possible. All the wisdom of the days that have been, and the days that are, will be found in the following lines from Goethe's "Ta.s.so":

"Would'st thou fas.h.i.+on for thyself a seemly life?