Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, Jenny June by Various
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Various >> Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, Jenny June
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To the term "club," as applied to and by women, may be fitly referred
the words in which John Addington Symonds defines Renaissance. "This,"
he remarks, "is not explained by this or that characteristic, but as
an effort for which at length the time has come." It means the
attainment of the conscious freedom of the woman spirit, and has been
manifested first most strongly and most widely in this country,
because here that spirit has attained the largest measure of freedom.
The woman's club was not an echo; it was not the mere banding together
for a social and economic purpose, like the clubs of men. It became
at once, without deliberate intention or concerted action, a
light-giving and seed-sowing centre of purely altruistic and
democratic activity. It had no leaders. It brought together qualities
rather than personages; and by a representation of all interests,
moral, intellectual, and social, a natural and equal division of work
and opportunity, created an ideal basis of organization, where every
one has an equal right to whatever comes to the common centre; where
the centre itself becomes a radiating medium for the diffusion of the
best of that which is brought to it, and where, all being freely
given, no material considerations enter.
This is no ideal or imaginary picture. It is the simplest prose of
every woman's club and every clubwoman's experience during the past
thirty years.
It has been in every sense an awakening to the full glory and meaning
of life. It is also a very narrow and self-absorbed mind that sees in
these openings only 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 kinship with all and everything that exists on the face
of God's 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.
The tendency of association upon any broad human basis is to destroy
the caste spirit, and this the club has done for women more than any
other influence that as yet has come into existence. A club that is
narrowed to a clique, a class, or a single object, is a contradiction
in terms. It may be a society, or a congregation of societies, but it
is not a club. The essence of a club is its many-sided character, its
freedom in gathering together and expressing all shades of difference,
its equal and independent terms of membership, which puts every one
upon the same footing, and enables each one to find or make her own
place. The most opposite ideas find equal claims to respect. Women
widest apart in position and habits of life find much in common, and
acquaintance and contact mutually helpful and advantageous. 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 ennoble and enrich
whatever comes within their influence.
We are only at the threshold of a future that thrills us with its
wonderful possibilities--possibilities of fellowship 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.
Women have been God's own ministers everywhere and at all times. In
varied ways they have worked for others until the name of woman stands
for the spirit of self-sacrifice. Now He bids them bind their sheaves
and show a new and more glorious womanhood; a new unit--the completed
type of the mother-woman, working with all as well as for all.
The Advantages of a General Federation of Women's Clubs[1]
_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
fellowship, 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 fellowship 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 leadership 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, furnishing 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 kinship of all women, of
whatever creed, opinion, nationality or degree; and it is a sign of a
bond that entitles 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 aptitude, 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 companionship, the
sympathy, the fellowship, 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
class 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 God 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,
Mass.--have created a transformation in whole townships, and so
enhanced the value of property as to drive out the original
inhabitants and change farming communities into fashionable 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 kinship 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 fellowship with her own
sex, outside of the church, outside of any ism, or hobby, but simply
on the ground of kinship 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 assiduously by men, and women have echoed it; for it cannot
be denied that the new fellowship that has come with the century and
with the awakening of women to the life which is theirs--the life of
friendship, of sympathy, of enlargement, of interest in affairs, of
common kinship 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 companionship, 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 membership 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 townships and
neighborhoods all over the country. She forms stock companies, and
builds athenaeums; she is at the head of working guilds; she organizes
classes, 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 kinship with all and everything that exists on the face
of God'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 friendship 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 friendships, 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 fellowship, 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 ennoble 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 noble 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 passed away and better
influences and circumstances 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 anticipate 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 sunshine 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 wishing 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.
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