"THE PIONEER WOMAN'S CLUBS"

The immediate events which called into life these two clubs were widely dissimilar. The founder of Sorosis, Mrs. J. C. Croly, better known to her contemporaries as Jennie June, gives the following reason for the formation of Sorosis:

"It was prior to March, 1868, that the Press Club of New York offered to Mr. Charles Dickens a dinner, which was to be given at the close of his reading tour in this country.

"The somewhat churlish treatment accorded to Mrs. Croly's application for a ticket, and, subsequently, to other ladies who applied for an extension of the same privilege upon the same terms as men, suggested to Mrs. Croly the idea of a club composed of women only, that should manage its own affairs, represent as far as possible the active interests of women, and create a bond of fellowship between them which many women, as well as men, thought at that time it would be impossible to establish."

This idea, being imparted to such women as Charlotte Wilbour, Kate Field, Mrs. Botta and Mrs. H. M. Field, took root and, after some disappointments and discouraging events the new club was organized on the second Monday of March, 1868, with Alice Carey as the first president. It is worthy of note that, even at its inception, Sorosis did not lay out a campaign of great accomplishments. Rather was there present in the minds of all a spirit of inquiry, a getting together of women of different creeds and walks of life that they might take counsel together and become informed of existing conditions, and learn to know themselves by knowing others.

At the time that Mrs. Croly and the women of New York were engaged in the formation of Sorosis, Massachusetts women, under the leadership of Caroline Severance, Julia Ward Howe, Sarah D. Cheney, Lucy Stone, Mary A. Livermore, and others, were laying the foundation of the New England Woman's Club of Boston, a club which should achieve much in the encouragement of philanthropy, letters and the advance of civilization along all lines. It is a sig

nificant fact that this was the first to adopt the name club used in the sense with which we have grown so familiarthe "clubbing" together for mutual interest, the adhering to a central principle, in this case one of service. The New England Woman's Club has been, from its very inception, a leader in every good work; its pathway has been trodden by those who have been foremost in philanthropy and reform in Massachusetts, and it stands today an exponent of the best and noblest aspirations and accomplishments of organized womanhood.

To Sorosis of New York are due many excellent things but perhaps none is more far reaching in its effects than the founding of the General Federation of Women's Clubs.

FOUNDING OF THE GENERAL FEDERATION

In 1889, Sorosis celebrated its twenty-first anniversary by inviting to the celebration of its majority after the manner of other youths, delegates from all other clubs in existence at that time. The delegates were also invited to report upon the work accomplished by their home organizations.

In the call, the following topics for discussion were set forth:

I. The enunciation of the woman's club idea and its point of departure from the society.

2.

The data upon which to gauge the extent to which in twenty-one years club life has grown upon women. 3. In what it consists, and how it differs from the club life of men.

4. The methods employed and their operation.

5.

Results obtained and outlook for the future.

6. The influence exerted upon the communities in which they exist.

At the conference thus obtained there were present sixty-one delegates and other clubs responded by letter, in all making ninety-seven clubs. From this number an advisory committee was formed to draw up a constitution and present a plan for organization, to be acted upon the following year.

Again in March of 1890 a second call was sent out, this time by the General Federation Advisory Board. The re

sult of the work of this board was manifested at this meeting by the applications of sixty clubs for membership, with which goodly showing the General Federation of Women's Clubs was launched. At the end of two years there were one hundred and eighty-nine clubs represented at the Biennial Convention held in Chicago. The members have steadily increased until at Cincinnati, at the eleventh Biennial, there were about fifteen hundred delegates representing a membership, direct, indirect and allied, of nearly one million women.

CONVENTIONS AND OFFICIAL LEADERSHIP

In the meantime, conventions have been held biennially at Philadelphia in 1894, at Louisville in 1896, at Denver in 1898, at Milwaukee in 1900, at Los Angeles in 1902, at St. Louis in 1904, at St. Paul in 1906, and at Boston in 1908. During the first years much attention was paid to perfecting the organization; the later years have been devoted to making more compact and useful an organization of such large and diverse membership.

The General Federation has been fortunate in the personnel of its officers and each board has left its lasting impression upon the plastic body. Mrs. Charlotte Emerson Brown, Mrs. Ella Dietz Clymer, Mrs. Ellen M. Henrotin, Mrs. Dimies T. S. Denison, and others contributed each in turn their quota of impetus to the General Federation along lines of philanthropy, education, industrial conditions and literature. Each had served wisely and well.

When the St. Louis Biennial elected Mrs. Sarah S. Platt Decker to be the president of the General Federation, many of the delegates present, as well as many more of the club women at home, knew that such action marked the entrance of this great body of workers into the field of social service. Those who knew Mrs. Decker well, knew also that her sympathies centered in humanity. They knew that from that time forth the exclusive, literary club must yield to the inclusive far-reaching club, the keynote of whose existence should be service to the world.

Probably no more fortunate choice of vice-president could be made at that time than Mrs. Philip N. Moore, for this combination of president and vice-president gave to the General Federation the great warm-hearted, whole-souled, broad perspective of the one, tempered and supplemented by the careful, conservative, wise and orderly influence of the other.

The four years that followed marked the crisis; clubs struggling with the miscellaneous, heterogeneous study outlines (commonly called literary), clubs grown weak for the very meagerness of their mental food, received new life, new vigor, new inspiration. Many of them learned for the first time that club life meant service. A visit from the General Federation president left behind it a desire to live up to things which she expected of them and the result was a great quickening all along the line. The fact that the club movement today is fast leaving behind it the fragmentary work of the early days and is reaching out into paths of greater usefulness is in no small degree due to Mrs. Decker and her first vice-president who has succeeded her in office and is now herself the president of the General Federation of Women's Clubs, carrying out the same policies.

FEDERATION COMMITTEE WORK

The work of the General Federation is divided into eleven standing committees: Art, Civics, Civil Service Reform, Education, Food Sanitation, Forestry, Health, Household Economics, Industrial and Child Labor Conditions, Legislation, Literature and Library Extension. At the head of each of these is woman who has been carefully selected for the place because of her especial fitness both by nature and education. With her are associated an equally carefully selected corps of workers.

Nor have these committees existed in name only; they have been and still are active and great results have already been accomplished. Each committee is constantly sowing seeds which are bearing fruit throughout the whole country.

The Committee on Art has to its credit the circulating

of traveling galleries of original paintings and etchings, the compiling of an art handbook, the establishing of municipal art commissions, and a quickening of the appreciation of art and beauty, the latter a work of which America is in particular need.

The Committee on Civics has been the means of furnishing to women in almost every town where the woman's club exists a way by which the club may really be of benefit to the community. Civics is a broad term and covers work of the proportions of that done by the New Jersey women in saving the palisades or by the Colorado women in preserving the cliff dwellings of New Mexico and Colorado, or by the little club in the Southwest, who planted an avenue of five hundred catalpa trees to beautify their town, or the smaller but also serviceable placing of seats in a park, or waste baskets at street corners. The term has also been applied to the welfare work of many clubs who furnish medical inspection to the public schools of their localities, or support a district nurse, or open noonday rest-rooms for tired working women, or in numberless other ways serve their fellow citizens. So important is the work of this committee and so broad has been the interpretation of its title that it has seemed that, if all other committees of the General Federation of Women's Clubs should be disbanded, their work could be included under this one. But a strong effort is being made to separate the duties of the committees, leaving only the beautifying and improving of the external features of a city as belonging to the Civic Committee.

The Committee on Civil Service Reform urges the righteousness of the Merit System and investigates, visits, and studies the condition of the helpless, the dependent, the deficient and the defective.

The Committee on Education strives to arouse an interest in education, mental, manual and moral, to secure just and uniform educational legislation, to establish scholarships and bring the home and school into closer relation