THE COURIER.
!
I
bers was conducting a woman's ex
change for the sole purpose of helping
the building fund. I never have seen
more disinterested club work. The
circumstances in which the club finds
itself has much to do with this
aspiring quality of its work,.undoubt-
edly. The town lacks an attractive
and refined buildiagof a public na
ture, and the ladies are anxious to
set the example before the men of
erecting a building which will be a
continual suggestion to them of the
higher amenities of life. Good archi
tecture has its own message, and that
message the Lanier club building
will no doubt convey. Hie public
circulating library, open to all, is
owned and operated by the club; the
ladies keeping the library doors open
two days of each week. Casual vis
itors to the village are allowed the
privileges of the library upon the,
payment of a small sum.
This little club, with its cautious
assessment of fifty cents a year for
many of the members are in this
health resort because of their indis
positions, and therefore feel the need
ot great economy is doing the most
commendable form of club work. Its
influence for good can not but grow;
and it is fortunate in having at least
half a dozen women among its mem
bers who arc capable of filling presi
dential duties with breadth of judg
ment and fine courtesy.
The Chicago Woman's Club has, in
its organized efforts at creating a
building fund, placed itself in the
hands of the National Association of
Business Women; the advisory board
of the Woman's club being composed
of women so experienced in the man
agement of affairs as Mrs. Potter
Palmer, Mrs. Charles Henrotin, Mrs.
Samuel M. Nickerson, Mrs. Lucy L.
Flower, Mrs. George W. Plummer,
Mrs. Erick Gerstenberg, Miss Sadie
American, Mrs. George Bass, Dr.
Sarah Hackett Stevenson and Mrs.
Lynden Evans.
I do not know that the cost of the
building has yet been decided upon,
but in a club of eight hundred mem
bers, given to the holding of large so
cial and literary entertainments, and
more and more inclined to open its
doors to the public; with lavish habits
and the desire for every imaginable
coavenience, the building will have
to be one to satisfy fastidious de
mands. When the general scheme of
building is known, the question as to
leased or purchased lands decided,
and the building committee has out
lined its plans I shall be glad to make
them known to the readers of this
periodical, should they be thought to
be of assistance to other clubs desir
ing to build.
It might not be a bad plan to haver
a symposium of opinions contributed
by club women as to the needs of a
club house. The Country Woman's
club, with fifty members, has de
mands of another nature than the
city club with its membership well
toward a thousand. Clubs with do
mestic departments have other needs
than those which are purely literary.
A discussion of these needs would be
interesting. Also, the advisability of
clubs instituting public libraries in
towns where such do not exist, and
being responsible for them until the
towns can assume the responsibility,
would make an agreeable discussion.
The sort of books required for com
munities unaccustomed to literature
has always been the source of curios
ity to me, and to many others, I am
sure. Can not some one who has had
experience, furnish some suggestions?
Higher Education.
A very interesting phase of contem
porary educational matters, is the re
action against the higher education
for women. It seems only the other
day that women were given university
privileges, and there are women edu
cators yet in active work who tell of
the contumely they brought upon
themselves in their respective com
.munities by their persistentOdeter-.'
miaation to secure for themselves the
best that Amertcan-cdlleges had to
give. Now, while the smoke of bat
tle has hardly cleared away, and
while the women are congratulating
themselves upon "their well won vic
tories, there comes" another, assault
from the enemy. The Leland Stan
ford university has, at the request of
its famous patroness, placed a limit
upon the number'of women who are '
to matriculate at the university.
This act has had its influence all over
the country, Schools which have no
objection to the entrance of a few
women, object to great companies of
them. A modest petticoat flitting
apologetically through the halls of
masculine wisdom does not annoy
them, but armies of self sacrificed
petticoats, not ashamed to be seen in
academic halls or upon the campus,
is quite another story. The faculty of
many a college has debated the sub
ject of establishing a limit; and Presi
dent Harper of the University of
Chicago is said to be very desirous
of keeping the men in the ascendency.
He is, moreover, not strongly in favor
of women upon the faculty, particu
larly in the greater branches. It is
rumored that a very distinguished
naturalist who has studied in Ger
many for several years and whose
gifts amount to genius, was rejected
at the University of Chicago because
a woman could not be allowed at the
head of so important a branch. But
for the truth of this I can not vouch.
The friends of the lady claim this to
be the case. Were small masculine
minds the only ones which harbored
this prejudice it might be passed off
with an easy shrug; but the truth is
that many of the foremost thinkers of
the world entertain the same ideas.
I heard at dinner the other night a
story of President Harper's v isit to
Count Tolstoy. President Harper is
afraid of no man. and holds, moreover,
that nothing is too good for the Uni
versity of Chicago, so it occurred to
him that the delivery of the convoca
tion address by Tolstoy, advocate of
Christian art and practical socialism,
would add further distinction to the
institution of learning of which he is
the aggressive leader. Accordingly
he asked for an hour with the author,
and Tolstoy replied with none too
much consideration, that any time
after ten o'clock at night he could
receive President Harper and party.
Accordingly President and Mrs. Har
par and two members of the board of
trustees of the university and their
wives presented themselves before
the nobleman. As soon as an oppor
tunity offered, Mr. Harper preferred
his request, that Count Tolstoy should
journey to Chicago and deliver the
convocation address. The Count
looked weary.
"There are three follies," he said,
"of which 1 am not guilty."
The company looked interrogative."
"They are useless travel, playing
cards and talking to women."
I did not hear what the ladies said
who were present. Perhaps they
thoughf, as American women are apt
to think, that all men make a poor
showing when put in contrast with
the American man.
I chanced to repeat this story at
another dinner to a very distinguished
young poet who sat next me; and he,
with no intention of rudeness, said to
me:
- "Well, he put his follies in true
dramatic order, didn't he?"
- And the poet was an American
though a Harvard man. I have no
ticed that Harvard men are liable to
entertain notions which I do not con
sider American quite. For examp'e,
I heard this poet talking on the ad
vantages of a monarchy over a repub
lic; and he seemed to think he pre
ferred Edward VII. to McKinley.
He's a good poet, however, and his
Americanism is a secondary consid
eration. Women may lash themselves into a
rage over this derogatory view of their
abilities, if they please, and rail at the
injustice done them. But their in
dignation will benefit them nothing.
There is a more potent factor than
rage within their province. It is in
dependence. The sum total of money
earned by women has now become
enormous. Women are becoming rich
in their own right and as the result of
the labor of their own hands and
brains. They will soon be able, should
the established universities treat
them with lack of consideration, to
erect universities of their own, and in
these they can place great specialists
women who shall give them the
best that is to be given.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, sweetest of
the laureates, one has no notion of
plagiarizing your "Princess!"
In view of the fact that the stand
ing of women averages higher than
that of men in the schools and uni
versities, and that the highest honors
are frequently captured by women ,
there seems no reason save the most
stupidly conservative and medieval
ones for restricting the aspirations,
and intellectual achievements of the
sex. To such puerile prejudices,
whether they emanate from men or
from women, the soul and mind of
those who consider development the
only justification for life, can pay no
heed. I am fain to separate the fair
and the unfair, the material and the
spiritual upon lines of quality rather
than upon lines of sex. For those
who would beat down and put under
the age can have no permanent use.
Color Line.
This brings one quite naturally to
the important question of the admis
sion of the colored clubs to the Gen
eral Federation a question with
which every club, North and South, "is
under the necessity of concerning it
self. There are many different shades
of opinion about the serious question;
but the preponderance of opinion in
the North favors the admission of the
colored clubs regardless of conse
quences. My own preference is for a
delay. I recognize the fact that the
clubs are largely social in their char
acter, and that to make the condition
of entering the Federation, the social
commingling of black and white, is to
place a ssrious affront upon a portion
of the Federation.
The great organizations of-women,
such as the Woman's Christian Tem
perance Union, the Woman's Chris
tian Association, the Daughters of
the American Devolution", the Colon
ial Dames and the General Federation
of Women's Clubs have done more
than anything else to heal the wounds
that gaped in our body social as the
result of the civil war. I personally
am of the opinion that the amity of
the great organizations is of more im
portance than the immediate admis
sion of the colored women's clubs. I
would not say this were not the negro
clubs well organized, with their own
national federation, their own tine
executive officers and their own dis
tinguished orators. It seems to me
that they are entitled to as ,much
pride of race as we of the white "blood,
and that we might work along our
separate lines with equal dignity,
with kindly and courteous considera
tion, and a frank recognition of the
fact the the social commingling of
our essentially distinct races would
bring only pain, chagrin and dissen
sion. I have, indeed, been inclined to re
gard the colored clubwomen witli
more consideration. than they appear
to be willing to assume. I have pre
supposed that the colored club wo
men, many of them graduates of col
leges or high schools, many of them
gifted as orators or musicians, were
not in need of our direction or assist
ance, and would be as proud to say
that they belonged to a colored wo
man's club as to a white woman club.
This is evidently a mistake.
1 have also supposed they would
prefer their own clubs where they
could bold the chief- offices and direct
their energies to the peculiar devel
opment of their own people rather
than be members of other clubs, not
holdingjbe chief offices. In this also,
I was mistaken. Yet I am sure that
at present, both white and black wo
men are more or less uncomfortable
wb,gn they meet socially that the
white woman is over-kind, the black
woman suspicious of patronage. I
think it would be very generous of
the black women to leave the General
Feration alone for a time till the pres
ent generation is gone and the last
drop of bitterness engendered by the
civil war is wiped out, and the Fed
eration so strongly cemented that the
differences of opinion can not shake
it. But this generosity they have
not been inclined to show; nor have
the Northern women displayed a
courteous consideration for the feel
ings, the prejudices and sufferings of
the white women of the South. In
their conscientious desire to be true
to the principles which were at the
foundations of the abolition of slaves,
and which they confound with the
present question, they have forgotten
to be fair to their own. The women
of their own blood have been second
in their consideration.
The question is so tremendous a one
that any one may well be excused
from shrinking from a contemplation
of it. A vast patience and reverence
for God's plan is required to face with
equanimity the shame of the South;
that shame which is a penalty for the
sin of slavery, and which, to my mind,
is the most significant racial question
of our heterogeneous people. What I
refer to is this:
Standing in the doorway of the cab
ins of the negroes will be four or five
children, some very black, some brown,
some of a yellow hue. One notes one
recognizes, here the sad prophesy of
the future!
There are those of so high and cour
ageous an outlook that they would
not use the word "sad" in referring to
this ever-increasing amalgamation of
the races, and who see in these mon
grels the solution of the vexed ques
tion. I must admit that if this thing
must be if we are to absorb this dark
stream of half barbarous blood into
our veins, if our children are to see
the fulfillment of this menacing
prophesy, the best thing we can do
for our race not speaking with any
disinterestedness whatever, but in
frank selfishness is to elevate these
people in every way possible. In
speaking of "elevating" tbem, I do
notTrefer to such as make up the col
ored clubs of the country women of
culture equal with our own but of
the great swarm of uneducated, happy-go-lucky,
morally unrestrained
blacks which make up an astonish
ingly large proportion of the South
ern population.
A friend of mine, a Northern wo
man who has been South for seven
teen winters, has the courage and the
humility to look at the question in
this light. Before so high a view my
l
IV