IN Boston and the Woman's Club By INEZ J. GARDNER N the striving world of to-day, the woman's club plays an important part. Boston is one of their leading stages, as Boston has always been the boards on which ideas have stalked. Not that the woman's clubs of to-day can be criticised for flowering only in ideas, though those be visions beautiful, for they are all clubs of practise. Large and small, they are concerned in varying degrees and in varying ways, in sociological and industrial interests. They plant trees in barren school-yards, send libraries to isolated towns and carry out the small details and worries in the bettering of homes and schools that for the most part, would be ignored by men. And as for large doings, the Massachusetts Federation of Women's Clubs, for instance, has built and maintained a model school in a district in Georgia where education is but an apology for child training. This school has proved of great advantage to the people of this section. who are pitifully poor in every way, so much so that scissors, sent down to the little girls in sewing bags, were received with great wonderment and delight. Another showing of their larger interests are the three resolutions adopted in the recent federation meeting at Melrose: one that the civics committees should devote themselves for the next two years to public education against tuberculosis; the second to obtain legislation for an eight-hour day limit for working girls whose nerves are severely taxed at the swift modern machines; and the third to support the recent recommendation of the governor for a state board, serving five years, to provide industrial training for the boys and girls of the state. "Believing that the lack of industrial training for girls and boys is a menace to the material and moral welfare of the commonwealth." In such problems, large and small, the woman's club is engaged. Among the clubs, the Boston organizations are especially active and especially leading, each in its own line. The Ladies' Physiological Institute of Boston first established in 1848 claims to be the oldest organization of women in the country, outside of religious bodies. But still New York asserts herself and some authorities stand up for Kalamazoo as the first home of the first woman's club, the date being 1852. Dr. Edward Everett Hale, however, comes to the rescue of Boston, and states that Anne Hutchinson organized the first woman's club in in the country. Kalamazoo and New York are silenced, for neither can raise up a woman of prominence of Anne Hutchinson's time to found a club. The Physiological Institute was established by a few women with Mrs. Sylvanus Cobb, the mother of the artist, Darius Cobb, as leader. Professor C. P. Bronson encouraged the enterprise by introductory lectures and by gifts of a mannikin and apparatus and also served as the club's first president. This was before the days when sociology had surmounted other studies and the four hundred women who were members of this body in 1849 worked only indirectly for society by first educating themselves. Their ideal was to promote among women a knowledge of the human system and of the laws of hygiene. The women who composed her ranks, we can picture gathering in Washingtonian Hail on old Bromfield street, women of their own conviction, solid-minded, for did they not have to face the gossip and scorn of those days for presuming to study the structure of their bodies' life, shame take the thought! But the Institute persisted in its weekly meetings down the years and disseminated its practicalities. Mrs. Cobb who became president in 1840 and served for many years as guiding spirit gave the club a delightful family spirit. Housekeeping as well as physiology came under the head of hygiene and Mrs. Cobb would advise the young girls and young matrons on many an affair, how to cook grape jelly, for instance, so that it wouldn't burn. As a token of their esteem to Professor Bronson, the club presented him with a suit of clothes! Dr. Salome Merritt was a later president (1888) of great activity and strength of character. She was an especial advocate of the Institute's aims, and directed them toward the moral education of city school children. Men have been largely concerned in the first women's clubs in Bos ton. Emerson, James Freeman Clarke and John Weiss were present and offered suggestions as to the course of the New England Women's Club when it was first called together that club which shares with New York Sorosis the distinction of being the great mother of American clubs in age and guidance. The work of the club has been largely that of the organization of club life-first the organization of herself in 1868, that gathering together of the leading women spirits of Boston. Together with New York Sorosis, it was responsible for the formation of the general Federation of Women's Clubs, which associating women together, has made the women's clubs efficient as the single club has made its members efficient. The New England Women's Club in 1893 gathered together women's societies throughout the state to form the Massachusetts Federation and also summoned the New England Federation of Clubs; and, largest work of all in unifying, brought about the great International Women's Council held in Paris in 1888. Mrs. Caroline M. Severance was one of the chief promoters of the club and its first president. In her Ohio home just before she came to Boston to live, she knew Bronson Alcott and often talked with him of her expected pleasure in meeting the able women of that city. He told her she would find that difficult as they were scattered in different circles. The central idea of a club of women, came to be, as their history has it, "the voluntary associating of kindred spirits" who were not necessarily connected by home or church interests. The club comprised exception ally brilliant women eager for learning, wonderfully industrious, beautiful in character-the type which blossomed in the cities and in parson's libraries and in country towns throughout the history of New England. Wit and wisdom sat at all their meetings. As such high thinking would demand, their living at the club or their teas were very plain, bread, dried fish and tea for those who partook, being the regular fare. Besides these teas, how ever, there were grand receptions when they entertained dignitaries from home or abroad. After Mrs. Severance's departure to California, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe as president and Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney as secretary conducted the club and imparted to it of their hopes and sparkling wit. Mrs. Mary A. C. Livermore and Mrs. Sewall were leading members. Emerson, Whittier and Mr. Thomas Wentworth Higginson often contributed poems to the club meetings. At the last literary meeting of the club in May, 1906, Colonel Higginson was present and read verse from contemporaneous poets including a poem by Mrs. Howe. Mrs. Howe presided. Mrs. Howe presided. The repartee between these noted personages was the liveliness of the day. The club also had its active side. It advocated dress reform and opened a store on Winter street for the sale of dress reform goods. It aided an agitation for better preparatory schools for girls which finally resulted in the Girls' Latin School. Every person with a plan or with an especial work came and presented it before this club so that on their old lecture lists we read the movements of past hours. The club work still goes on with the old aim crystallized into four departments -art, literature, discussion, work. Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, who has been so long' the president and so long connected with great advances still honors the chair. The efforts of the club this year have been in definite work toward a municipal museum. Woman's movements have been mostly unnoised. One of these silent forces is the Woman's Education Association, which is not widely known except among educators and yet has led in many great educational enterprises. Miss Anna C. Lowell and Mrs. Mary C. Hemenway with twelve other women organized this body in 1872 with the aim of promoting in every way the better education of women. Their list of members has grown year by year so that they have been forced to hold their meetings in a hall in spite of their early preference for the parlor of some home. Influential women of the city, women scholars and the women from nearby schools and colleges make the list. President Hazard of Wellesley, for instance, is a member, so are Dean Irwin of Radcliffe and Professor Ellen T. Richards of Technology. Harvard examinations for women were the first innovation they established, although passing these examinations was to the girl students no more than a certain mark of satisfaction and honor. The fact that girls were permitted to take these examinations at Harvard and with other influence in the same direction resulted ten years later in Radcliffe College. The method of the association has been to follow the lines of least resistance and on such lines to offer their aid and to use their influence on public opinion. These statements about Tech nology may illustrate the methods of the organization. One year in the Girls' Latin School building, the Women's Education Association offered advanced courses in chemistry for women anxious to go further in that study, yet having no chance except under a private tutor. They continued these courses year by year and at the same time used their influence until the time was ripe for them to issue a leaflet stating: "The Massachusetts Institute. of Technology has already made certain provisions for women students in science, as is shown by the following statements from, the catalogue. . . . It will here be seen that the only obstacle to the admission of women to full privileges in this scientific school, is the difficulty of providing suitable arrangements. It is therefore proposed to place in the hands of the Corporation, ten thousand dollars, provided that the Board in accepting that amount, will guarantee all the advantages of the Institute to women. Nearly one half of this sum has already been raised and the Women's Education Association, desiring to assist in raising the remainder, has appointed a Committee," etc. In some such manner they gave the initiative to the establishment of the Boston Cooking School, the Training School for Nurses, the Diet Kitchen and the opening of the Charlesbank gymnasium to women. and children. They introduced vacation schools into the city and for a good many years have sent travelling libraries and sets of foreign pictures to isolated Massachusetts towns. In connection with the Boston Society of Natural History, they established the summer biological laboratory at Annisquam, since transferred to the government station at Woods Holl. Two or three women, perhaps just out of college, perhaps school teachers. for some years, are studying abroad. this year, as other women have done before them, on the college fellowship scholarships of the Women's Women's Education Association. The club is progressive in that it aims to sound all the needs of the time. It is conservative, listing its power in the association as a whole and looked upon as an organization of standing. One of their latest ventures was the establishment of the Household Aid Company, to help solve the domestic problems of the day. This venture consisted in a central house in which young girls studied all branches of housework under a competent matron and from this central point went out by the day to work for housekeepers. The demand was not great enough for these household workers, and the house was closed. It looked as though the attempt had failed. Yet since the demand on the Domestic Reform League of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union for just such workers has been pressing since the Household Aid Company closed its doors, it seems that the Woman's Education Association had again anticipated a modern need and suggested means to fill it. Such an experiment on the part of the Education Association was in the industrial spirit of the hour. But there was one organization in the city which thirty years ago looked ahead to just this industrial standpoint of to-day and even embodied it in its name-the Women's Educational and Industrial Union, founded in 1877 by Dr. Harriet Clisby and six associates, among whom was Mrs. Abby Morton Diaz. They aimed to promote fellowship among women and to make a union of women which should be "the Union of all for the good of all." The first activity of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union was in behalf of underpaid and illused sales-girls in a Boston store and their endeavors from that time on to help women industrially have been unflagging. They continue, for instance, a befriending committee for women who have been unfairly treated, who have not been able to collect their wages, it may be, and supply a legai counsel to hear and investigate these cases. Their lawyer at the present time is Miss Caroline J. Cook. But the educational clause of their title has suffered a great change in application for they no longer educate in French and German and like academic subjects but instead offer instruction in trade classes. The trade classes were begun in the fall of 1904 and are now three in number, aiming to fit the working girl to do better work and to command higher wages when she starts out to earn her living. The course in millinery sent girls to the employ of first class milliners. They received after their six months' training at the Union, wages of five to eight dollars which they would have had to wait two or three years for under the usual apprentice system. Classes in wire hat frames and in salesmanship were offered this year, and were large in numbers and successful. The trades classes mean success for the girls and satisfaction for the employer. The Trade School for Girls, which offers courses similar to those of the Union, received this year one hundred demands from forty different employers which they had not girls enough to fill. The Union expresses its spirit of fellowship in its many hospitalities, also finds practical application in the relations of its employees who have something to say in self government. They are banded together in what is called a general committee before whom are referred all general questions that affect hours, wages or any other working condition before being adopted by the board of management. Many different endeavors have grown into departments and standing committees during the Union's years of life and so numerous are they that with food exchanges, lectures, employment bureaus, discussions of the problems of the wage earner, of the blind, of the aged, of the cook, the onlooker finds it hard to relate all these different doings to one body and to a body so strongly organized as the Union is. One of these many activities which stands out prominently by reason of large success is the Domestic Reform League-a branch of the employment bureau. As it modestly states-"the League does not claim to have solved the domestic problem. It believes however, that much will be accom lished when employer and employee meet on a business basis and in a spirit of co-operation." This business basis is unique in that it combines both the employer and the employee. But the cook who obtains a position through the Domestic I eague and the woman who engages the cook sign a contract together, one for fair conditions and the other for efficient service. Two thousand people have made use of the Do |