The Women's Congresses

From Woman Lawyer: The Trials of Clara Foltz -- Online Notes For The Book

The Women’s Congress at the opening of the Fair was the first of seventeen great public meetings held as auxiliary to the physical exposition. As described in Chapter Six, the meetings were the brainchild of Charles Bonney, a Chicago lawyer and educator. Early on, he started agitating for an intellectual adjunct to the Exposition. Chicago boosters and businessmen, eager to establish the town as cultivated and civilized, backed him generously.

Bonney had the brilliant idea of celebrating “the woman of the century” at the first Congress. It was a huge draw, kicking off the rest of the Auxiliary season. The new building, where “the workman’s hammer was still ringing,” (as many speakers pointed out) was filled to capacity from morning to night for six days. Ten thousand women in one place, all interested in the subject of themselves, was a sobering sight to some and thrilling to many. The CHICAGO INTER-OCEAN lead ran: “In 1492 a woman sent Columbus to discover a new world; the opening of the woman’s congress in this new continent, 400 years later, is evidence that woman has since discovered herself.” CHICAGO INTER-OCEAN, May 16, 1893, at 1 (other quotes comparing “the smiting of a tent nail by Jael the wife of Herber and the driving of the last nail of the woman’s building by Mrs. Potter Palmer”). See also Duncan R. Jamieson, Women’s Rights at the World’s Fair, 1893, 37 ILL. Q. 5 (1974) (focusing on the Congress of Representative Women).

On the first day of the Congress, Charles Bonney stepped forward from the mass of female celebrities on the platform to proclaim: “The century of woman’s progress . . . carrying with her wherever she has gone a higher civilization, greater refinement and culture. . . . What woman’s progress signifies is not the degradation of man, but the substitution of the law of love for the law of force.” THE WORLD’S CONGRESS OF REPRESENTATIVE WOMEN: AN HISTORICAL RESUME FOR POPULAR CIRCULATION OF THE WORLD’S CONGRESS OF REPRESENTATIVE WOMEN, CONVENED IN CHICAGO ON MAY 15 AND ADJOURNED ON MAY 22, 1893 UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE WOMAN’S BRANCH OF THE WORLD’S CONGRESS AUXILIARY 8-10 (May Wright Sewall ed., 1894) [hereafter REPRESENTATIVE WOMEN]. The days that followed featured large topics such as Industries and Occupations, Education and Literature, and Industrial, Social and Moral Reform. The summaries of the 80 “report congresses” fill over 800 closely printed pages. In addition to the non-stop meetings, dozens of receptions and social events were “tendered” to the attendants. Gayle Gullet, Feminism, Politics and Voluntary Groups: Organized Womanhood in California, 1886-1896, at 210-263 (1988) (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University California, Riverside) has a good section on the women’s Congress and California women at the Fair especially.

It is impossible to reconstruct all the sessions that Foltz attended, but as mentioned in Chapter Six, the newspapers picked her up several times during the week of the Congress. On May 20 for instance, Foltz was at a “meeting of prominent women suffragists” planning for upcoming campaigns in Colorado, New York, and Kansas. Also present were Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, Abigail Duniway, Laura Johns, Anna L. Diggs, Rachel Foster Avery, Harry Taylor Upton, Clara Colby, Anna Shaw, and Carrie Chapman. DAILY INTER OCEAN, May 21, 1893, at 5.

Another day, Foltz spoke about the poor living conditions of Italian immigrants in San Francisco at a sub-congress on labor at which about fifteen hundred women were present and “much interest was shown.” Jane Addams chaired the meeting. But the central speaker was Mrs. A.P. Stevens of Chicago, a Knights of Labor Organizer, and “one of the greatest female agitators.” An anti-sweatshop resolution was passed and plans were made to present it to the Illinois legislature. CHICAGO INTER-OCEAN, May 22, 1893, at 3.

Not all the meetings at the women’s World’s Congress were so serious or so action-oriented. Indeed critics complained that the total effect was a little light, pointing especially to the dress reformers’ domination of the sessions on “Moral and Social Reform.” Others defended dress reform as the mother of all others because women “shackled by corset and train” would never succeed “in the close scientific study of present social conditions, and in the scientific administration of public charities.” REPRESENTATIVE WOMEN, at 314. Though the intense interest at the Congress showed that dress reformers were no longer on the fringe (so to speak), they never attracted Clara Foltz. Her 1893 portraits show her be-trained and corseted, much more like Mrs. Potter Palmer than Foltz’s sister-activists in split skirts. Foltz was more sympathetic to the purposes of another crowd-pleaser at the Congress: the session on Literature and the Dramatic Arts featuring a number of well-known actresses.

“The participation of these women in the congress marked and indeed made, an epoch in the progressive movement,” bringing together “artists and reformers, formerly aloof from each other.” Indeed, said one observer, the reason that the audience was so eager was that many had never been to the theater before so that this was their first chance to see and hear the famous actresses. Foltz, by contrast, was not only a theatergoer, but had even contemplated acting herself. Her daughter Trella, currently appearing on the New York stage, may have been with her. REPRESENTATIVE WOMEN, at 138-192. Before the actresses spoke, at an overflow evening session, “a note came to the platform from a gentleman requesting the ladies to remove their hats. (A prompt and general compliance with the request was greeted with great applause.)” Women’s hats, generally not doffed indoors (as men’s hats were), had become a real problem in public gatherings. Though not otherwise a dress reformer, Clara Foltz took an early stand for hat removal by both sexes in all audiences.[BB: Citation needed here]

Helen Modjeska, the Polish Shakespearean, who had become a great American hit on stage, was first on the program. Speaking personally, she said the stage “exposes us to many temptations, stimulates our vanity too much, and takes us sometimes too far from our family duties.” Yet, she said, acting also develops “a sense of independence and therefore of responsibility.” She lamented the “materialism, or at least a practical spirit” that had made the theater “principally a commercial enterprise” and urged women to support true art. REPRESENTATIVE WOMEN, AT 164-17. WEIMAN, FAIR WOMEN, at 544-46 tells the story of Modjeska’s reappearance several days later, representing the women of Poland at the international meeting. There, she gave a passionate, largely unrehearsed address, on freedom for her country from Russian rule, which so displeased the Czar that she was never allowed to return to her native land.

Other actresses echoed Modjeska’s line that women actresses and women reformers had much in common. Clara Morris concluded: “Standing here by the right of kindly invitation, before this great body of brainy, big-hearted women–I feel I am receiving the highest honor of my life.” REPRESENTATIVE WOMEN, at 164-175.

The inclusiveness of the Congress was one of its best points; foreign women, working women, black women, society women, religious women, reformers of every possible stripe, all were invited and most came. There were ten thousand women a day for six straight days. Most participants were invited through their clubs and federations, with many of these holding their national conventions under the auspices of the World’s Congress of Representative Women. When Susan B Anthony looked out over the packed rooms, she was impressed by organized womanhood, but she was also dismayed. Ticking off various organizations represented at the Congress (e.g. The Federation of Clubs, 3 years old, 40,000 members; The King’s Daughters, 7 years old, 200,000 members), she said of the woman suffrage movement, now in its fourth decade: I will tell you frankly and honestly that all we number is seven thousand. This great national suffrage movement that has made this immense revolution in this country represents a smaller number of women, and especially represents a smaller amount of money to carry on its work than any organization under the American Flag.

Women’s political liberty held the keys to all other reforms, she pleaded: “If only we could call upon the 5 million women in the US who sympathize with us in spirit then we could persuade congress, and state legislatures and change everything.” Organization Among Women as an Instrument in Promoting the Interests of Political Liberty—Address by Susan B. Anthony of New York. See also REPRESENTATIVE WOMEN, at 463. [BB: Are these two different cites or one cite? If Organization Among Women…is part of Representative Women, perhaps we should just put Representative Women?]

Susan Anthony had come to embody the suffrage cause, and her near apotheosis at the Fair seemed to promise imminent victory in the struggle she led. Every time, everywhere, she spoke, the halls were packed. New generations of women, some prominent in planning this Congress, joined up at this Congress. Even a hard case like Kate Field, a public woman long indifferent to suffrage, underwent a public conversion. REPRESENTATIVE WOMEN, at 77.

The World’s Congress was only the beginning of special women’s events at the Fair. Starting immediately after were a series of Congresses, plus receptions and programs under the aegis of the Board of Lady Managers in the Woman’s Building. Practically every day throughout the summer and early fall saw some special occasion held there. Many of these meetings and speeches were reproduced or summarized in another large volume, like the one on the week-long Congress of Representative Women. Rather confusingly, this volume is entitled THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN HELD IN THE WOMAN’S BUILDING (Mary K. O. Eagle ed., 1894) [hereafter WOMAN’S BUILDING CONGRESS].

In the opening days of the Woman’s Building Congresses, Lucy Stone drew an enthusiastic crowd. She recounted women’s wrongs, leavened by examples of progress, followed by the lament of the aging activist: “The young women of today do not and can never know at what price their right to free speech and to speak at all in public has been earned.” All real gains, Stone credited to “the great movement for women.” She would die within the year, grateful to have experienced the Fair with “all its glorious opportunities.” WOMAN’S BUILDING CONGRESS, at 58. See also HUBERT HOWE BANCROFT, THE BOOK OF THE FAIR: AN HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE PRESENTATION OF THE WORLD'S SCIENCE, ART AND INDUSTRY, AS VIEWED THROUGH THE COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION AT CHICAGO IN 1893, 547-49 (1894).