A SPECIAL APPEAL TO WOMEN
In June 1907, Josephine Conger-Kaneko and her husband, Kiichi Kaneko, launched The Socialist Woman, the first American socialist publication aimed specifically at women. They were an usual couple. Josephine Conger, born into a patrician southern Democratic family, moved towards socialism because she lamented the disappearance of the old middle class beneath the juggernaut of corporate capitalism. Much like Max Eastman and Emma Goldman, she perceived magnificent new opportunities for human liberation beneath the squalor and horrors of the new industrial order. As a Socialist, she advocated women's suffrage when she discovered that the political program of most women's organizations almost coincided with the SP's own immediate demands. Enfranchising women, therefore, would manifestly advance Socialism. Conger-Kaneko worked for the largest Socialist publication of her era, The Appeal to Reason, before starting her own magazine.[1]
If Conger-Kaneko's trajectory from conservatism to socialism was hardly unique, her marriage to a Japanese man was a stunning defiance of customary social norms, especially for a respectable southern woman. Kiichi Kaneko was barred by law from citizenship because of his nationality and race; American law and society officially branded him as an inferior and a permanent outcast. Indeed, Josephine Conger lost her American citizenship by her marriage. Kaneko himself, being forever ineligible for the vote, favored the "ethical and philosophical" aspects of socialism, including women's rights, over the practical politics and electioneering that occupied most party officials and activists.[2] The couple started The Socialist Woman on a shoestring, with only 26 subscribers. Kiichi said that the couple "sacrificed almost everything" for their publication and worked very long hours. Like Emma Goldman and Max Eastman, the Kanekos believed that self-expression was worth any price and repaid any labor; their magazine, Kiichi said, was "dearer than anything else in the world to us. Without it our life would be dreadful." Within a year it had over 3,000 subscribers; sympathetic organizations ordered bundles and sold between one and four thousand more each month.[3]
The new magazine published a brilliant cohort of Socialist women. Largely college-educated professionals, many had been long active in women's organizations (including early Socialist women's groups). Most were already journalists and writers who published in other venues. May Wood Simons, for example, was a graduate of the University of Chicago, where she lectured in economics. She had been a Presbyterian preacher for three years and a school teacher for four before working for the Chicago Bureau of Charities. The devoted wife of Party stalwart Algie Simons, she worked with her husband on The Chicago Daily Socialist and the International Socialist Review. Theresa Malkiel, a Russian immigrant, had founded the Infant Cloak Makers' Union of New York and became its first President; she was active in the Knights of Labor and the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance before joining the SP. A novelist, she wrote The Diary of a Shirtwaist Striker. Anna Maley, educated at the University of Minnesota, was an effective organizer, head of the Woman's National Committee 1909-1911, and editor of The Commonwealth, published in Everett, Washington. Mary Garbutt, converted to Socialism by Women's Christian Temperance Union leader Frances Willard, was an officer of the WCTU who taught for twenty-five years. She edited a column in a local SP paper and was the mother of a millionaire. May Beals (later May Beals Hoffpauir) edited The Red Flag (later The Southern Clarion) and published a collection of short stories.[4]
Other contributors to The Socialist Women were established writers. Grace Brewer, like Conger-Kaneko, worked for The Appeal to Reason, editing her popular "Appeal Army" column. Meta Stern, widely known as "Hebe" (her nom de plume in Conger-Kaneko's publications for some years), was an associate editor of the New Yorker Volkzeitung and later wrote her "Votes for Women" column for the New York Call. Ida Crouch Hazlitt edited The Montana News. Wenonah Purvis had been born in prosperous circumstances, and had investigated labor conditions as a sympathetic ally. A mother of two children, she was forced into the working class at the age of 22. She began work in a sweatshop, learned the necessary skills, and started her own dressmaking business. When a fire destroyed her shop, she became a war correspondent, reporter, and novelist, and eventually the editor of West Coast Reveille. Mila Tupper Maynard, a Unitarian minister, wrote for The Rocky Mountain News until she quit because of political disagreements. Gertrude Breslau Hunt published a collection of proletarian stories.[5]
Those associated with The Socialist Woman lacking connections with other periodicals were themselves an extraordinarily well-educated and independent lot. Lida Parce did graduate work at the University of Chicago, published occasional articles in other Socialist magazines, and wrote a socialist-feminist treatise, Economic Determinism. Lena Morrow Lewis, a graduate of Monmouth College, organized among labor organizations for the WCTU and the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). She favored a strong education in Socialist classical authors such as Marx and Kautsky. Married to Socialist lecturer Arthur Lewis in 1903, she was divorced a few years later. Ruggedly independent, she lectured under harsh conditions in widely scattered, remote towns, making even Emma Goldman seem sluggish and unadventurous. She had, she said in 1911, "relinquished any and all ideas of a home.... Seventeen years touring as a lecturer, and in all that time I have never slept for fourteen consecutive nights in the same place. I have rested for ten or twelve days and nights. But that is the longest.... I have quite forgotten the sensation of having personal belongings about me, other than my clothing."
Caroline Lowe, another Socialist Woman regular, served as vice-president of the Teachers' Association in Kansas City before working for the SP. She became head of the Woman's National Committee in 1911 and developed a solid body of Socialist literature aimed at women of all conditions, professions, and educational levels. Corinne Brown, principal of a public school, was in the 1890s corresponding secretary for the Illinois Woman's Alliance, composed of twenty-six women's groups and the Trades and Labor Assembly. She attended the founding meeting of the SP in 1901, and actively participated in Socialist women's groups. Luella Twining, from Colorado, had travelled throughout the East, speaking and raising funds for Haywood, Moyer, and Pettibone during their spectacular trials in 1905-6. Ethel Whitehead was head of the Women's Socialist Union of California.[6]
The Socialist women were emboldened by the fact that the German Social-Democratic party (SPD), the model after which the SP patterned itself, provided a precedent for both a Socialist woman's publication and separate women's organizations. The SPD published a woman's magazine, Gleicheit [Equality], under the editorship of the brilliant and strongly class-conscious Clara Zetkin. The SPD also provided a model for the Woman's National Committee (WNC), a special department which the SP created in 1908 partly in response to the Kanekos' efforts. Socialist women in Germany created their own organizations independent of the SPD because many German states banned women's membership in political organizations. When a 1908 Reich Law of Association legalized such membership, German socialist women formally entered the SPD but retained a separate, though no longer autonomous, organization. Socialist women in the United States had likewise created autonomous organizations before 1907; after the founding of the WNC most of these became regular committees of the socialist locals, just as the WNC was a committee of the party's national executive. The Socialist women were also heartened by the actions of the Socialist International. The 1906 International Socialist Conference at Mannheim had authorized a parallel and simultaneous meeting of Socialist women at the next International meeting; the 1907 Conference at Stuttgart created an International Women's Bureau, and designated Gleicheit as the official organ of that Women's International, which was also headquartered in Germany. The Stuttgart Conference also asked that each national Socialist party establish a national women's bureau, which would facilitate women's international contacts.[7]
Most of Socialist Women contributors were long-time party activists, some of whom were also instrumental in forming the Woman's National Committee. Eight women had attended both the SP's founding Unity Convention in 1901 and its second Convention in 1908; but they spoke, if at all, as individuals, and presented no demands as women. The SP platform contained a suffrage plank which the SP's speakers, leaders, and publicists largely ignored.[8]
Denied more than pro forma recognition within the SP, women organized on their own in autonomous Socialist women's groups, many of which did not affiliate with the SP. At the 1904 Convention, Wenonah Stevens (who had founded the first women's Socialist club in the United States, in Los Angeles in 1901-2) advocated an organization for Socialist women; Conger-Kaneko became corresponding secretary of the resultant Woman's National Socialist Union. However, many women opposed the organization, and Stevens fell ill, so the organization disintegrated.[9] Before the 1908 Convention, articles in The Socialist Woman and elsewhere demanded a separate women's department within the SP. The motives for these demands varied; some writers genuinely favored women's empowerment, while others sought integration of the autonomous women's groups within the SP. Writing in The Internationalist Socialist Review, Jessie Molly reminded delegates to the forthcoming Convention that "It makes very little difference whether we approve of a separate organization of Socialist women or not. We have one--a real, live, revolutionary movement, writing its own literature, managing its own newspapers, planning its own campaign." Molly specifically mentioned six such organizations, most of which were not affiliated with (and hence not under the control of) the SP.[10]
The nineteen women delegates at the 1908 Convention, therefore, galvanized by The Socialist Woman and by a smattering of male support, organized as women and demanded that the Convention appoint a Committee on Women and Their Relationship to the Socialist Party. This committee, composed of eight women and one man, recommended the creation of a Woman's National Committee on the grounds that SP outreach for women must far transcend mere suffrage, and required personnel intimately familiar with "the distinct feature of woman's economic and social conditions, and the problem arising therefrom." Laura Payne, the committee's lone dissenter, argued that the oppressions faced by men and women were identical and that "Socialism alone" would solve these problems; she urged that the SP specially target women for recruitment into the regular locals, where they would work "side by side with the men." However, the Convention passed the majority resolution; of the five-woman WNC, three members--Winnie Branstetter, May Wood Simons, and Meta Stern--were regular Socialist Woman writers, and the other two also contributed fairly often. The SP also strengthened its suffrage plank, promising "an active campaign" for the vote.[11]
Women strengthened their organizational position within the SP at the 1910 Congress, which elevated the WNC into a department mandated by the SP's Constitution, increased its membership to seven, and allowed for their election by the party membership in the same manner as the National Executive Committee. The Congress also created a distinct Woman's Department within the National Office. In the eyes of jubilant activist women, women's groups "had become a bona fide institution in the party organization." May Wood Simons proclaimed that the elected committee was at last "an organic part of the party organization." However, some important women had advocated that the women's committees remain distinct from the SP so that they could recruit non-SP members. Instead, the women's committees were absorbed into the main SP organization, to which they remained subordinate. The WNC and the Woman's Department lacked autonomous authority and their own budget, however--a failing glossed over by the optimistic statement that the National Office would finance all WNC proposals with which it agreed. By 1912, the Women exuberantly announced their progress in creating a special women's literature and propagandizing among non-Party women. Somewhat ominously, however, they also proclaimed that they were not only "educating the women, they are losing no opportunity to teach the men members of the party the senseless futility and the criminal ignorance manifested when one-half of the working class strives to free itself from slavery while leaving the other half in bondage."[12]
Despite the German precedents and seeming SP male support, however, The Socialist Woman and the Woman's National Committee faced opposition from skeptical or hostile men, wary of any separate woman's publication or organization even if clearly subordinate to the party. These men complained that women's demands were at best distractions from the class struggle and at worst bourgeois reforms which would actually impede socialism. Socialism, these men claimed, would automatically liberate women. In response, the Socialist women justified their publication and their committee on the grounds that women had distinct needs, sensibilities, and experiences which required a specific appeal, distinct from that aimed at men. The Socialist Women of Greater New York said that "experience has shown us that our sex can only be appealed to in a special and peculiar manner; that regardless of whatever we may regard to the contrary, the nature, training, propensities, and social ideals of modern women are such as to make a special literature and other machinery of propaganda essential."[13]
Many of women's specific needs were seen as stemming from woman's relative backwardness compared to men, what Kaneko called "her superstitions, ignorance, and self-contentment." Conger-Kaneko asserted that socialists must "take stock of [women's] political backwardness, their mental peculiarities, their burden of homemaker as well as wage earner; in short, all the special factors of their existence, their work, their thought and feeling." Meta Stern said that women "have much to fight for that men have obtained long ago, and they have much to learn that men, owing to the schooling of their broader, more socialized life, have long since learned. Women are just beginning to learn the lesson of organization and solidarity and concerted action, and not until they have learned that lesson can the sometimes dry routine work of party locals have any meaning to them." Helen Untermann similarly averred that "the differences of the two environments" of husband and wife meant that "we are living in two different worlds, a world for women and a world for men"; this engendered "altogether different needs and desires," making mutual understanding difficult. "A man who knows nothing of the cares, responsibilities and agonies that a woman suffers in her lonely individual sphere, is not the right interpreter of Socialism for her.... She needs an entirely different appeal."[14]
Timid women, it was asserted, would not participate in meetings under the watchful eyes of men. Separate meetings were a tonic for them. One author asserted that "In the [Chicago] Ladies Branch all must take part, and even the most backward receive here the discipline and knowledge that enables them to go on to further and deeper endeavor." Conger-Kaneko asserted that women needed "some kind of preparatory school in which they can train for the more arduous work of the regular branch or local"; in their separate meetings they gained confidence and experience in giving speeches and chairing meetings. "There is a very great deal that women need to learn about themselves, about their history, and the traditions of their sex," Conger-Kaneko said. "These things can best be learned, as a rule, in a separate organization.... Women are especially in need of intellectual development to offset the highly emotional development which has been theirs throughout the ages." In all-women meetings participants asked questions and voiced their doubts and fears about socialism--fears which most socialist women had at one time shared, and could therefore understand and allay. Newcomers were energized by the discovery that others shared their problems and were overcoming them by organizing as women. The alleged timidity of women in fact prompted The Socialist Woman to change its name to The Progressive Woman after less than two years of publication; women frightened by a word might eagerly embrace socialist ideas propagated under a more innocuous title.[15]
Many socialist women claimed that the abstract, theoretical discussions endemic in Socialist locals alienated and repelled women, who were practical, specific, and concrete. Conger-Kaneko, for example, asserted that the typical woman was uninterested in a senator's role in some swindle, but "knows that Johnny has to have so many pairs of shoes per year, that so much sugar must be used on the table, and that she has fewer and fewer dresses for herself as time flies and prices go up. If you can show her exactly what relation Senator Bing's conduct had with her household economics she will deign to take in interest in him." When Kate Richards O'Hare first expressed interest in socialism, she was handed a stack of irrelevant and incomprehensible tomes; she became a socialist only because she persevered and demanded more down-to-earth expositions of socialism.[16] If O'Hare, a sparkling writer and courageous organizer, could not digest the standard socialist fare, surely the vast majority of women (and men) found it incomprehensible.
Indeed, many male intellectuals also bitterly denounced the standard Socialist recruiting literature as too theoretical and detached from the immediate concerns of the working class. Socialist women were ambivalent about this literature, however. While sometimes attacking it as irrelevant and excessively theoretical, at other times they acknowledged the necessity of a solid understanding of scientific socialism, and claimed merely that most women presently lacked the requisite intellectual background and training. Most of the Socialist women were themselves intellectuals fully at home in the world of abstract ideas. Whatever their own abilities, Socialist women often cited the relationship of tariffs, trusts, and the rising cost of provisioning a family as an appropriate entry point for interesting women in Socialism; they also discouraged advocacy of free love and attacks on religion.[17]
The Socialist women complained that the usual routine of the typical Socialist local--the smoking, the evening meetings which women with small children could not attend, the endless bickering over abstruse and irrelevant matters--repelled most women. Conger-Kaneko complained that the average Socialist meeting resembled "a sort of men's club--a place where men met and talked and smoked, and split hairs over unimportant technicalities, transacted a little business, talked and smoked some more," and adjourned until next month's repetition. Caroline Nelson, a radical who also wrote for the IWW press, agreed. "A woman shrinks instinctively from taking part or interest in something that appears to be almost exclusively a masculine affair. She fears and detests the idea of being regarded masculine, just as man detests being regarded feminine, and avoids, if possible, all women's gatherings and interests."[18] Men conducted Socialist meetings as if women were neither present nor welcome.
Socialist women complained not only about male indifference, but about their domineering behavior. Ellen Whitehead, the head of the Socialist women's movement in California, observed that "the average woman is unable--mainly on account of the idea of man's superiority with which she has been imbued for ages--to take her place side by side with man.... Men, be they the best in the world, and with the best of intentions, cannot reach women, so long have they been used to rule her. The age-old habit is hard to break." Ida Crouch-Hazlett agreed. Women "want to be part of the Socialist movement, and they don't want to be bossed and put into the background by a lot of men still moved by instinctive capitalist impulses of domination; a domination based on more experience, greater knowledge, control of the political situation, and a general sex confidence.... The Socialist movement says [women] have the same opportunity as men; but it is like saying all persons have an equal chance in this republic, or all pigs an equal chance at the trough."[19] She agreed with Kate Richards O'Hare that only truly exceptional women could surmount all the obstacles in the path of full and equal participation in the SP. If a few such token women had achieved prominence, this did not mean that the average woman was welcomed.
Socialist women often asserted that the WNC was a temporary measure which would soon overcome the age-old disadvantages of women. When women had been trained in the women's committees and men accepted them into the party as equals, separate women's organizations would become unnecessary. Conger-Kaneko, a strong supporter of separate women's committees, agreed that in an ideal world, both sexes would work together on terms of equality in regular locals. Whitehead said that "the Woman's Socialist Union" would eventually "do away with the need of its own existence." However, an important, if unacknowledged, ambiguity lurked here. Even if the SP itself treated women equally, mainstream society would not; women would retain special qualities and values regardless of SP actions. Conger-Kaneko recognized this when she said that "it is next to useless to admonish our men, and argue with them about this treatment of women so long as conditions under which men and women live remain as they are. The man who is honest with himself, who desires social progress, and human betterment, deplores the fact that woman is so situated that he cannot resist taking advantage of her helplessness." This implied that the WNC and The Socialist Woman would remain permanent party institutions at least until the joint triumph of socialism and feminism. Eleanor Wentworth asserted that women, as well as men, must transform themselves; although women's oppression originated in her economic subjugation, its endurance depended upon "the ethical idea that grows out of such a condition--the sense of inferiority attached to dependent persons. And the dependent ones help to bolster this conception by acquiescence."[20] This justified and mandated women's own activism for their own liberation, but also implied that the SP could not create an enclave of equality within a hostile and unequal society.
Women's isolation in the home was considered a major obstacle impeding their acceptance of socialism. Stern assaulted the traditional home, reinforced by religious, legal, and social constraints, as a relic of barbarism. "No occupation is so utterly unprogressive in character, so hopelessly conservative in its methods, as the occupation of housekeeper," unspecialized and unmechanized. "It has made woman herself conservative, reactionary, blind to her own interests, and deaf to the call of that broader life which claims her and needs her today." Caroline Lowe, general correspondent of the WNC, complained that "inbred conventionalism, prepared and administered always by the ruling class, is a hard taskmaster, and flogs to the point of social death" those who defy it. Men submitted to their own masters, but did not understand the distinctive oppression of women. Few women could vote, and fewer still belonged to unions; Socialist party activity during elections and strikes therefore neglected the vast majority of women. Conger-Kaneko reminded men that women "will not hear or see us through the smoke and din of other campaigns" unless the Socialists could reach them in the home. "Don't think that you can get Socialism 'in our time' by carrying if off into some cold, dreary hall, or local. Get it into the home. Let the mother absorb it, and give it our to her growing children.... Sometimes I think you men are fools, the way you act about your Socialism."[21]
The Socialist women demanded their own periodical, their own pamphlet literature, and their WNC because of their conviction that the capitalist class indoctrinated women in distinct ways. Conger-Kaneko warned that women traditionally defended outworn ideas after men had abandoned them and that the capitalists believed that women would save the tottering capitalist order. The capitalists had convinced most women that they could individually surmount their poverty by working hard, wheedling favors, or marrying up. "Whether their wages are five, or twenty-five dollars a week, they possess minds as strongly capitalistic as that of the millionaire employer," The Socialist Woman complained.[22] This hegemonized consciousness also characterized most working men; but the Socialist women stressed the numerous agencies of social control specifically designed for women, especially preachers, school textbooks, and the mainstream women's magazines.
The women's magazines evoked special ire. Nelson charged that the capitalist press indoctrinated women and that the labor press did not appeal to her "whose eye is ever directed to the more showy and popular side of things." Magazines for women, The Socialist Woman complained, inculcated capitalist ideas "strictly and thoroughly." Women's magazines were frivolous and irrelevant to the real needs of women; they taught how to scrimp by on nothing rather than how to get the full product of one's labor. Bok's Ladies Home Journal evoked particular criticism. "Working women have not the money to buy, nor the time to read our scientific books," Conger-Kaneko said. "We must reach them in some other way.... The Ladies Home Journal and similar capitalist magazines for women are poisoning the minds of millions of working class women, teaching them false ideals that make them a hindrance in the great class struggle. We must supplant these magazines with one of our own." Some writers likewise condemned as escapist "the dilettante methods of the literary club, where one memorizes gems from Shakespeare today and forgets them tomorrow."[23] Just as the political party, the saloon, and the ethnic fraternities competed with the SP for workingmen's loyalties, so distinctly female institutions distracted women from the gospel of socialism. Socialist women lamented the decline of the feminist movement from its original radicalism to mere suffragism, and promised that their own socialist presence would reinvigorate it.
The Socialist women and the WNC would, their proponents hoped, wean working-class women from their old loyalties and enlist them in the cause of Socialism. The Socialist Woman printed didactic short stories and plays condemning capitalism and showing women's march to Socialism; some of these, such as "Clara Brown's Diary" and Ethel Whitehead's "The Way Out," argued that only women could convert members of their sex to socialism. The Socialist Woman published monthly Programs for Socialist Locals focusing on women's issues, related political and economic events to women's concerns, and, after becoming The Progressive Woman, even printed household hints on such matters as nutrition and childcare. Together with the WNC it composed a "Plan of Work Among Women" which urged that every local and state party organization establish a woman's committee with its own literature, recruitment campaigns, and entertainments and lectures aimed at Socialists and non-Socialists alike. Women's committees could more easily attract non-Socialist women to entertainments, lectures, and discussions; and the leader of such a committee could speak for an organized group when lecturing or talking to the press. As Whitehead said, "One woman lifting up her voice is not so well listened to, as when she represents a body of women."[24]
The WNC also published an array of pamphlets and books about women's issues as well as playlets and compilations of songs and poems suitable for fundraisers and entertainments. Most of the pamphlets were written by regular contributors to The Socialist Woman, and some of the shorter ones originally appeared there as articles. When the demand for women speakers surpassed the supply, women's committees in the major cities organized training classes for female orators. Conger-Kaneko urged that "in every speech delivered, in every batch of literature ordered and distributed by any person or local, there should be something of special appeal to the woman."[25]
Most Socialist women did not demand independence of the party for either their publication or the WNC. They repeatedly emphasized that the WNC and the state and local women's committees resembled the party's committees on labor or agriculture in that they were subordinate to the regular party organization. Conger-Kaneko, for her part, offered to make The Socialist Woman the official organ of the WNC, which would have placed it under ultimate Party control; but SP officials repeatedly refused her offer because the party would not own its own press. (Instead, the SP relied upon privately-owned publications which reflected a diverse array of viewpoints, without endorsing any particular "line" with the SP's official imprimatur.)[26] Far from demanding autonomy, the Socialist women craved official party recognition of and support for their efforts; Conger-Kaneko said that women "must feel... that their work is as essential to individual and social progress as is the work of any other progressive society." The Socialist women, Lowe said, wanted "a bona fide institution in the party organization" which would facilitate "their activity in every line of Socialist work."[27] In this they were no different from men, who also wanted official sanction for their views and activities; IWW leader Big Bill Haywood exulted in the 1912 Convention's resolution on industrial unionism in terms very similar to those of Socialist women commenting on the creation of the WNC.[28]
However, an essential, if unacknowledged, ambiguity underlay the creation of both The Socialist Woman and the WNC. On the one hand, Socialist women pointed to women's alleged backwardness, the unique history, experiences, and sensibilities of their sex, which required that women receive a special message and preparatory training before they would wholeheartedly join the Socialist movement. On the other hand, the Socialist women condemned male condescension, dictatorial behavior, and neglect of women's needs. These contradictory rationales for separate women's institutions constituted a volatile mixture which would bedevil The Socialist Woman and the WNC throughout their entire existence.
Next chapter
Notes:
[1] "What a Socialist Alderman Would Do," CN March 1914. A.W. Ricker, an associate editor of The Appeal to Reason, claimed that he "discovered" JCK when he received a copy of Stray Thoughts, a book of her poems. Ricker, "The Thing for You to Do," PW, February 1911.
[2] "Kiichi Kaneko, 'Citizen of the World,'" PW January 1910.
[3] Mari Jo Buhle, Women and American Socialism, p. 148; Kaneko, "My Farewell Words," SW June 1909; "With the Publishers," SW June 1908. Kiichi Kaneko had taken graduate classes at Harvard University, and had published articles in mainstream American periodicals before launching The Socialist Woman. See "Kiichi Kaneko, 'Citizen of the World,'", PW January 1910. PW reprinted Kiichi's 1904 Harper's Weekly article, "Foreign Books Read in Japan," in its May 1911 issue.
[4] During the first few years, The Socialist Woman usually featured a prominent Socialist woman each month, placing her picture on the cover and sketching her life in a short article. Simons was featured in SW June 07; Malkiel in PW May 1909; Maley in SW July 1908; Garbutt in SW June 1908; and Beals in SW August 1907. Their publications were often advertised in The Socialist Woman. Additional information is in Mari Jo Buhle, Women and American Socialism, 1870-1920 (University of Illinois, Urbana, 1983).
[5] Brewer was featured in SW January 1908; Stern in PW April 1910; Purvis in SW January 1909; Maynard in PW October 1910; Hunt in SW November 1907. See also Mari Jo Buhle, Women and American Socialism.
[6] Parce was featured in PW November 1909; Lewis in SW September 1907; Lowe in SW November 1908; Brown in SW February 1908; Twining in SW December 1907; Whitehead in SW August 1908. See also Mari Jo Buhle, Women and American Socialism (the quote from Lewis is on p. 164).
[7] For an account of the absorption of the formerly autonomous women's committees into the regular party apparatus, see Mari Jo Buhle, Women and American Socialism. Information on women in the SPD is in Jean H. Quataert, Reluctant Feminists in German Social Democracy, 1885-1917 (Princeton, 1979) and Richard Evans, Comrades and Sisters: Feminism, Socialism, and Pacifism in Europe, 1870-1945 (Sussex, 1987). For the impact of the International Women's Socialist Bureau on the Socialist women in the United States, see Sally Miller, Race, Ethnicity.... pp. 20-22. The Socialist Woman described women's movements abroad, especially in its early issues when it was justifying its own existence and plugging for the creation of the WNC. See "Socialist Woman's Movement in Germany," SW July 1907; "Women and the 'International'", SW, October 1907; "Socialist Woman's Movement in Germany," SW, June 1908 (reprinted from The Chicago Socialist).
[8] "The Socialist National Convention," International Socialist Review, June 1908, 725, 735-737; "Report of the Woman's Department," Appendix I, Proceedings of the 1912 National Convention of the Socialist Party," in Miller, Race, Ethnicity....., 271-282.
[9] "Wenonah Stevens Purvis," January 1909; JCK, "The Activity of Socialist Women," SW, January 1908.
[10] Jessie M. Molly, "The National Convention and the Woman's Movement," ISR, May 1908, 688-690. John Spargo, a widely-recognized SP leader and writer, wrote a stirring article in that same publication decrying SP neglect and belittlement of women and their problems. Although Spargo's articles echoed many themes already elucidated in The Socialist Woman, one minor semantical difference stands out. Where the Socialist women spoke of a "sex struggle," Spargo hesitated at the brink of such acknowledgement, admitting only that within the SP "there is a sex prejudice, however repressed and concealed, as surely as there is a class struggle." John Spargo, "Women and the Socialist Movement," ISR, February 1908, 449-455.
[11] "The Socialist National Convention," International Socialist Review, June 1908, 725, 735-737; "The National Convention on the Woman Question," SW June 1908; "The Matter of Women's Organizations," SW June 1908; "Socialist Women Hold Meetings During Convention Week," SW June 1908; "Delegate Meeting Called by Woman's Socialist League of Chicago," SW June 1908. "Report of the Woman's Department," Appendix I, Proceedings of the 1912 National Convention of the Socialist Party," in Miller, Race, Ethnicity....., 271-282. The two other WNC members, Antoinette Kononikov and Marguerite Prevey, also wrote fairly often for The Socialist Woman.
[12] Starting in 1910, the SP held a Congress, rather than a Convention, in even-numbered years in which there was no Presidential election. May Wood Simons, "Origin and Purpose of the Woman's Committee," SW July 1911; "Report of the Woman's Department," Appendix I, Proceedings of the 1912 National Convention of the Socialist Party," in Miller, Race, Ethnicity....., 271-282. In the June, 1908 SW, Malkiel said that separate women's Socialist organizations need not affiliate directly with the party, and strongly implied that JCK agreed. TM, "Women Socialists in New York," SW, June 1908. As late as September 1908, Ida Crouch-Hazlitt advocated women's groups distinct from the party apparatus. Ida Crouch-Hazlitt, "Women's Organizations," SW September 1908.
[13] Male opposition was never directly expressed in the pages of The Socialist Woman; we know their arguments only through the rebuttals. The statement from the Socialist Women of Greater New York is in SW, July 1907.
[14] Kiichi Kaneko, "My Farewell Words," PW June 1909; JCK, "Socialist Woman's Movement in Germany," SW June 1908; Stern, "The Socialist Party and Women," SW July 1908; Unterman, "The Man and the Woman," PW January 1910.
[15] SW June 1907; JCK, "Separate Organizations," SW April 1908; May M. Strickland, "What the New Year Should Mean to Socialist Women," SW January 1909; "Our New Name," SW February 1909; Strickland, "A Practical Effort to Reach the Women," SW August 1908.
[16] JCK, "Why the Movement Has a Woman's Paper," PW July 1911; Kate Richards O'Hare, "How I Became a Socialist Agitator," SW October 1908.
[17] "The Things You Use Everyday," PW May 1909; Alice Stone Blackwell, "Will Votes for Women Check Socialism?," SW May 1913.
[18] JCK, "Separate Organizations," SW April 1908; Nelson, "The Peculiar Attitude of the American Woman Towards Socialism," PW May 1910.
[19] Whitehead, "The Women's Movement in California," PW May 1909; Hazlitt, "Women's Organizations." SW September 1908.
[20] JCK, "Separate Organizations," SW April 1908; Whitehead, "The Women's Movement in California," PW May 1909; JCK, editorial, PW April 1910; Wentworth, "Woman, Wages, and the Ballot," PW March 1913.
[21] Stern, "'Viribus Unitis'," PW January 1910; Lowe, "Notes from the Women's Department," PW November 1911; JCK, "Why the Movement Has a Woman's Paper," PW July 1911; JCK, squib, PW January 1910.
[22] JCK, "Why 'The Socialist Woman' Comes into Existence," SW June 1907; "Need of Class Consciousness Among Women Wage Earners," PW September 1907.
[23] Nelson, "The Peculiar Attitude of the American Woman Towards Socialism," PW May 1910; squib, SW June 1907; JCK, "A Party Owned Press," CN April 1914; "The Activity of Socialist Women," SW January 1908; Rolla Myer, "Bok's Paper v. Women," PW February 1911.
[24] "Clara Brown's Diary" was serialized in SW beginning January 1909; "The Way Out" was published in PW August 1912. Whitehead, "The Women's Movement in California," PW May 1909.
[25] "Report of the General Correspondent," PW June-July 1913; JCK, "In This Our World," PW February 1913. By mid-1913 the WNC had 22 specialized leaflets directed at women in specific jobs, 19 pamphlets and books on women's issues, and 13 compilations of songs, skits, and other entertainments.
[26] JCK, "In This Our World," PW June-July 1913 and "A Party Owned Press: Being the Story of this Journal and Why it is not Party-Owned," CN July 1914.
[27] JCK, "Separate Organizations," SW April 1908; Caroline Lowe, "Work of Women in the Socialist Party," SW May 1912.
[28] Haywood said that after the passage of the resolution he could now carry to the entire working class, especially disfranchised workers "the message of Socialism. I can urge them, and do it from the Socialist platform, to organize the only power that is left to them, their industrial power." Ira Kipnis, The American Socialist Movement: 1897-1912. (Monthly Review Press, New York, 1972). The Socialist women, like Haywood, wanted Party legitimation of and support for their efforts; they did not want the cause dearest to their hearts to be a mere side issue or personal concern.
If Conger-Kaneko's trajectory from conservatism to socialism was hardly unique, her marriage to a Japanese man was a stunning defiance of customary social norms, especially for a respectable southern woman. Kiichi Kaneko was barred by law from citizenship because of his nationality and race; American law and society officially branded him as an inferior and a permanent outcast. Indeed, Josephine Conger lost her American citizenship by her marriage. Kaneko himself, being forever ineligible for the vote, favored the "ethical and philosophical" aspects of socialism, including women's rights, over the practical politics and electioneering that occupied most party officials and activists.[2] The couple started The Socialist Woman on a shoestring, with only 26 subscribers. Kiichi said that the couple "sacrificed almost everything" for their publication and worked very long hours. Like Emma Goldman and Max Eastman, the Kanekos believed that self-expression was worth any price and repaid any labor; their magazine, Kiichi said, was "dearer than anything else in the world to us. Without it our life would be dreadful." Within a year it had over 3,000 subscribers; sympathetic organizations ordered bundles and sold between one and four thousand more each month.[3]
The new magazine published a brilliant cohort of Socialist women. Largely college-educated professionals, many had been long active in women's organizations (including early Socialist women's groups). Most were already journalists and writers who published in other venues. May Wood Simons, for example, was a graduate of the University of Chicago, where she lectured in economics. She had been a Presbyterian preacher for three years and a school teacher for four before working for the Chicago Bureau of Charities. The devoted wife of Party stalwart Algie Simons, she worked with her husband on The Chicago Daily Socialist and the International Socialist Review. Theresa Malkiel, a Russian immigrant, had founded the Infant Cloak Makers' Union of New York and became its first President; she was active in the Knights of Labor and the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance before joining the SP. A novelist, she wrote The Diary of a Shirtwaist Striker. Anna Maley, educated at the University of Minnesota, was an effective organizer, head of the Woman's National Committee 1909-1911, and editor of The Commonwealth, published in Everett, Washington. Mary Garbutt, converted to Socialism by Women's Christian Temperance Union leader Frances Willard, was an officer of the WCTU who taught for twenty-five years. She edited a column in a local SP paper and was the mother of a millionaire. May Beals (later May Beals Hoffpauir) edited The Red Flag (later The Southern Clarion) and published a collection of short stories.[4]
Other contributors to The Socialist Women were established writers. Grace Brewer, like Conger-Kaneko, worked for The Appeal to Reason, editing her popular "Appeal Army" column. Meta Stern, widely known as "Hebe" (her nom de plume in Conger-Kaneko's publications for some years), was an associate editor of the New Yorker Volkzeitung and later wrote her "Votes for Women" column for the New York Call. Ida Crouch Hazlitt edited The Montana News. Wenonah Purvis had been born in prosperous circumstances, and had investigated labor conditions as a sympathetic ally. A mother of two children, she was forced into the working class at the age of 22. She began work in a sweatshop, learned the necessary skills, and started her own dressmaking business. When a fire destroyed her shop, she became a war correspondent, reporter, and novelist, and eventually the editor of West Coast Reveille. Mila Tupper Maynard, a Unitarian minister, wrote for The Rocky Mountain News until she quit because of political disagreements. Gertrude Breslau Hunt published a collection of proletarian stories.[5]
Those associated with The Socialist Woman lacking connections with other periodicals were themselves an extraordinarily well-educated and independent lot. Lida Parce did graduate work at the University of Chicago, published occasional articles in other Socialist magazines, and wrote a socialist-feminist treatise, Economic Determinism. Lena Morrow Lewis, a graduate of Monmouth College, organized among labor organizations for the WCTU and the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). She favored a strong education in Socialist classical authors such as Marx and Kautsky. Married to Socialist lecturer Arthur Lewis in 1903, she was divorced a few years later. Ruggedly independent, she lectured under harsh conditions in widely scattered, remote towns, making even Emma Goldman seem sluggish and unadventurous. She had, she said in 1911, "relinquished any and all ideas of a home.... Seventeen years touring as a lecturer, and in all that time I have never slept for fourteen consecutive nights in the same place. I have rested for ten or twelve days and nights. But that is the longest.... I have quite forgotten the sensation of having personal belongings about me, other than my clothing."
Caroline Lowe, another Socialist Woman regular, served as vice-president of the Teachers' Association in Kansas City before working for the SP. She became head of the Woman's National Committee in 1911 and developed a solid body of Socialist literature aimed at women of all conditions, professions, and educational levels. Corinne Brown, principal of a public school, was in the 1890s corresponding secretary for the Illinois Woman's Alliance, composed of twenty-six women's groups and the Trades and Labor Assembly. She attended the founding meeting of the SP in 1901, and actively participated in Socialist women's groups. Luella Twining, from Colorado, had travelled throughout the East, speaking and raising funds for Haywood, Moyer, and Pettibone during their spectacular trials in 1905-6. Ethel Whitehead was head of the Women's Socialist Union of California.[6]
The Socialist women were emboldened by the fact that the German Social-Democratic party (SPD), the model after which the SP patterned itself, provided a precedent for both a Socialist woman's publication and separate women's organizations. The SPD published a woman's magazine, Gleicheit [Equality], under the editorship of the brilliant and strongly class-conscious Clara Zetkin. The SPD also provided a model for the Woman's National Committee (WNC), a special department which the SP created in 1908 partly in response to the Kanekos' efforts. Socialist women in Germany created their own organizations independent of the SPD because many German states banned women's membership in political organizations. When a 1908 Reich Law of Association legalized such membership, German socialist women formally entered the SPD but retained a separate, though no longer autonomous, organization. Socialist women in the United States had likewise created autonomous organizations before 1907; after the founding of the WNC most of these became regular committees of the socialist locals, just as the WNC was a committee of the party's national executive. The Socialist women were also heartened by the actions of the Socialist International. The 1906 International Socialist Conference at Mannheim had authorized a parallel and simultaneous meeting of Socialist women at the next International meeting; the 1907 Conference at Stuttgart created an International Women's Bureau, and designated Gleicheit as the official organ of that Women's International, which was also headquartered in Germany. The Stuttgart Conference also asked that each national Socialist party establish a national women's bureau, which would facilitate women's international contacts.[7]
Most of Socialist Women contributors were long-time party activists, some of whom were also instrumental in forming the Woman's National Committee. Eight women had attended both the SP's founding Unity Convention in 1901 and its second Convention in 1908; but they spoke, if at all, as individuals, and presented no demands as women. The SP platform contained a suffrage plank which the SP's speakers, leaders, and publicists largely ignored.[8]
Denied more than pro forma recognition within the SP, women organized on their own in autonomous Socialist women's groups, many of which did not affiliate with the SP. At the 1904 Convention, Wenonah Stevens (who had founded the first women's Socialist club in the United States, in Los Angeles in 1901-2) advocated an organization for Socialist women; Conger-Kaneko became corresponding secretary of the resultant Woman's National Socialist Union. However, many women opposed the organization, and Stevens fell ill, so the organization disintegrated.[9] Before the 1908 Convention, articles in The Socialist Woman and elsewhere demanded a separate women's department within the SP. The motives for these demands varied; some writers genuinely favored women's empowerment, while others sought integration of the autonomous women's groups within the SP. Writing in The Internationalist Socialist Review, Jessie Molly reminded delegates to the forthcoming Convention that "It makes very little difference whether we approve of a separate organization of Socialist women or not. We have one--a real, live, revolutionary movement, writing its own literature, managing its own newspapers, planning its own campaign." Molly specifically mentioned six such organizations, most of which were not affiliated with (and hence not under the control of) the SP.[10]
The nineteen women delegates at the 1908 Convention, therefore, galvanized by The Socialist Woman and by a smattering of male support, organized as women and demanded that the Convention appoint a Committee on Women and Their Relationship to the Socialist Party. This committee, composed of eight women and one man, recommended the creation of a Woman's National Committee on the grounds that SP outreach for women must far transcend mere suffrage, and required personnel intimately familiar with "the distinct feature of woman's economic and social conditions, and the problem arising therefrom." Laura Payne, the committee's lone dissenter, argued that the oppressions faced by men and women were identical and that "Socialism alone" would solve these problems; she urged that the SP specially target women for recruitment into the regular locals, where they would work "side by side with the men." However, the Convention passed the majority resolution; of the five-woman WNC, three members--Winnie Branstetter, May Wood Simons, and Meta Stern--were regular Socialist Woman writers, and the other two also contributed fairly often. The SP also strengthened its suffrage plank, promising "an active campaign" for the vote.[11]
Women strengthened their organizational position within the SP at the 1910 Congress, which elevated the WNC into a department mandated by the SP's Constitution, increased its membership to seven, and allowed for their election by the party membership in the same manner as the National Executive Committee. The Congress also created a distinct Woman's Department within the National Office. In the eyes of jubilant activist women, women's groups "had become a bona fide institution in the party organization." May Wood Simons proclaimed that the elected committee was at last "an organic part of the party organization." However, some important women had advocated that the women's committees remain distinct from the SP so that they could recruit non-SP members. Instead, the women's committees were absorbed into the main SP organization, to which they remained subordinate. The WNC and the Woman's Department lacked autonomous authority and their own budget, however--a failing glossed over by the optimistic statement that the National Office would finance all WNC proposals with which it agreed. By 1912, the Women exuberantly announced their progress in creating a special women's literature and propagandizing among non-Party women. Somewhat ominously, however, they also proclaimed that they were not only "educating the women, they are losing no opportunity to teach the men members of the party the senseless futility and the criminal ignorance manifested when one-half of the working class strives to free itself from slavery while leaving the other half in bondage."[12]
Despite the German precedents and seeming SP male support, however, The Socialist Woman and the Woman's National Committee faced opposition from skeptical or hostile men, wary of any separate woman's publication or organization even if clearly subordinate to the party. These men complained that women's demands were at best distractions from the class struggle and at worst bourgeois reforms which would actually impede socialism. Socialism, these men claimed, would automatically liberate women. In response, the Socialist women justified their publication and their committee on the grounds that women had distinct needs, sensibilities, and experiences which required a specific appeal, distinct from that aimed at men. The Socialist Women of Greater New York said that "experience has shown us that our sex can only be appealed to in a special and peculiar manner; that regardless of whatever we may regard to the contrary, the nature, training, propensities, and social ideals of modern women are such as to make a special literature and other machinery of propaganda essential."[13]
Many of women's specific needs were seen as stemming from woman's relative backwardness compared to men, what Kaneko called "her superstitions, ignorance, and self-contentment." Conger-Kaneko asserted that socialists must "take stock of [women's] political backwardness, their mental peculiarities, their burden of homemaker as well as wage earner; in short, all the special factors of their existence, their work, their thought and feeling." Meta Stern said that women "have much to fight for that men have obtained long ago, and they have much to learn that men, owing to the schooling of their broader, more socialized life, have long since learned. Women are just beginning to learn the lesson of organization and solidarity and concerted action, and not until they have learned that lesson can the sometimes dry routine work of party locals have any meaning to them." Helen Untermann similarly averred that "the differences of the two environments" of husband and wife meant that "we are living in two different worlds, a world for women and a world for men"; this engendered "altogether different needs and desires," making mutual understanding difficult. "A man who knows nothing of the cares, responsibilities and agonies that a woman suffers in her lonely individual sphere, is not the right interpreter of Socialism for her.... She needs an entirely different appeal."[14]
Timid women, it was asserted, would not participate in meetings under the watchful eyes of men. Separate meetings were a tonic for them. One author asserted that "In the [Chicago] Ladies Branch all must take part, and even the most backward receive here the discipline and knowledge that enables them to go on to further and deeper endeavor." Conger-Kaneko asserted that women needed "some kind of preparatory school in which they can train for the more arduous work of the regular branch or local"; in their separate meetings they gained confidence and experience in giving speeches and chairing meetings. "There is a very great deal that women need to learn about themselves, about their history, and the traditions of their sex," Conger-Kaneko said. "These things can best be learned, as a rule, in a separate organization.... Women are especially in need of intellectual development to offset the highly emotional development which has been theirs throughout the ages." In all-women meetings participants asked questions and voiced their doubts and fears about socialism--fears which most socialist women had at one time shared, and could therefore understand and allay. Newcomers were energized by the discovery that others shared their problems and were overcoming them by organizing as women. The alleged timidity of women in fact prompted The Socialist Woman to change its name to The Progressive Woman after less than two years of publication; women frightened by a word might eagerly embrace socialist ideas propagated under a more innocuous title.[15]
Many socialist women claimed that the abstract, theoretical discussions endemic in Socialist locals alienated and repelled women, who were practical, specific, and concrete. Conger-Kaneko, for example, asserted that the typical woman was uninterested in a senator's role in some swindle, but "knows that Johnny has to have so many pairs of shoes per year, that so much sugar must be used on the table, and that she has fewer and fewer dresses for herself as time flies and prices go up. If you can show her exactly what relation Senator Bing's conduct had with her household economics she will deign to take in interest in him." When Kate Richards O'Hare first expressed interest in socialism, she was handed a stack of irrelevant and incomprehensible tomes; she became a socialist only because she persevered and demanded more down-to-earth expositions of socialism.[16] If O'Hare, a sparkling writer and courageous organizer, could not digest the standard socialist fare, surely the vast majority of women (and men) found it incomprehensible.
Indeed, many male intellectuals also bitterly denounced the standard Socialist recruiting literature as too theoretical and detached from the immediate concerns of the working class. Socialist women were ambivalent about this literature, however. While sometimes attacking it as irrelevant and excessively theoretical, at other times they acknowledged the necessity of a solid understanding of scientific socialism, and claimed merely that most women presently lacked the requisite intellectual background and training. Most of the Socialist women were themselves intellectuals fully at home in the world of abstract ideas. Whatever their own abilities, Socialist women often cited the relationship of tariffs, trusts, and the rising cost of provisioning a family as an appropriate entry point for interesting women in Socialism; they also discouraged advocacy of free love and attacks on religion.[17]
The Socialist women complained that the usual routine of the typical Socialist local--the smoking, the evening meetings which women with small children could not attend, the endless bickering over abstruse and irrelevant matters--repelled most women. Conger-Kaneko complained that the average Socialist meeting resembled "a sort of men's club--a place where men met and talked and smoked, and split hairs over unimportant technicalities, transacted a little business, talked and smoked some more," and adjourned until next month's repetition. Caroline Nelson, a radical who also wrote for the IWW press, agreed. "A woman shrinks instinctively from taking part or interest in something that appears to be almost exclusively a masculine affair. She fears and detests the idea of being regarded masculine, just as man detests being regarded feminine, and avoids, if possible, all women's gatherings and interests."[18] Men conducted Socialist meetings as if women were neither present nor welcome.
Socialist women complained not only about male indifference, but about their domineering behavior. Ellen Whitehead, the head of the Socialist women's movement in California, observed that "the average woman is unable--mainly on account of the idea of man's superiority with which she has been imbued for ages--to take her place side by side with man.... Men, be they the best in the world, and with the best of intentions, cannot reach women, so long have they been used to rule her. The age-old habit is hard to break." Ida Crouch-Hazlett agreed. Women "want to be part of the Socialist movement, and they don't want to be bossed and put into the background by a lot of men still moved by instinctive capitalist impulses of domination; a domination based on more experience, greater knowledge, control of the political situation, and a general sex confidence.... The Socialist movement says [women] have the same opportunity as men; but it is like saying all persons have an equal chance in this republic, or all pigs an equal chance at the trough."[19] She agreed with Kate Richards O'Hare that only truly exceptional women could surmount all the obstacles in the path of full and equal participation in the SP. If a few such token women had achieved prominence, this did not mean that the average woman was welcomed.
Socialist women often asserted that the WNC was a temporary measure which would soon overcome the age-old disadvantages of women. When women had been trained in the women's committees and men accepted them into the party as equals, separate women's organizations would become unnecessary. Conger-Kaneko, a strong supporter of separate women's committees, agreed that in an ideal world, both sexes would work together on terms of equality in regular locals. Whitehead said that "the Woman's Socialist Union" would eventually "do away with the need of its own existence." However, an important, if unacknowledged, ambiguity lurked here. Even if the SP itself treated women equally, mainstream society would not; women would retain special qualities and values regardless of SP actions. Conger-Kaneko recognized this when she said that "it is next to useless to admonish our men, and argue with them about this treatment of women so long as conditions under which men and women live remain as they are. The man who is honest with himself, who desires social progress, and human betterment, deplores the fact that woman is so situated that he cannot resist taking advantage of her helplessness." This implied that the WNC and The Socialist Woman would remain permanent party institutions at least until the joint triumph of socialism and feminism. Eleanor Wentworth asserted that women, as well as men, must transform themselves; although women's oppression originated in her economic subjugation, its endurance depended upon "the ethical idea that grows out of such a condition--the sense of inferiority attached to dependent persons. And the dependent ones help to bolster this conception by acquiescence."[20] This justified and mandated women's own activism for their own liberation, but also implied that the SP could not create an enclave of equality within a hostile and unequal society.
Women's isolation in the home was considered a major obstacle impeding their acceptance of socialism. Stern assaulted the traditional home, reinforced by religious, legal, and social constraints, as a relic of barbarism. "No occupation is so utterly unprogressive in character, so hopelessly conservative in its methods, as the occupation of housekeeper," unspecialized and unmechanized. "It has made woman herself conservative, reactionary, blind to her own interests, and deaf to the call of that broader life which claims her and needs her today." Caroline Lowe, general correspondent of the WNC, complained that "inbred conventionalism, prepared and administered always by the ruling class, is a hard taskmaster, and flogs to the point of social death" those who defy it. Men submitted to their own masters, but did not understand the distinctive oppression of women. Few women could vote, and fewer still belonged to unions; Socialist party activity during elections and strikes therefore neglected the vast majority of women. Conger-Kaneko reminded men that women "will not hear or see us through the smoke and din of other campaigns" unless the Socialists could reach them in the home. "Don't think that you can get Socialism 'in our time' by carrying if off into some cold, dreary hall, or local. Get it into the home. Let the mother absorb it, and give it our to her growing children.... Sometimes I think you men are fools, the way you act about your Socialism."[21]
The Socialist women demanded their own periodical, their own pamphlet literature, and their WNC because of their conviction that the capitalist class indoctrinated women in distinct ways. Conger-Kaneko warned that women traditionally defended outworn ideas after men had abandoned them and that the capitalists believed that women would save the tottering capitalist order. The capitalists had convinced most women that they could individually surmount their poverty by working hard, wheedling favors, or marrying up. "Whether their wages are five, or twenty-five dollars a week, they possess minds as strongly capitalistic as that of the millionaire employer," The Socialist Woman complained.[22] This hegemonized consciousness also characterized most working men; but the Socialist women stressed the numerous agencies of social control specifically designed for women, especially preachers, school textbooks, and the mainstream women's magazines.
The women's magazines evoked special ire. Nelson charged that the capitalist press indoctrinated women and that the labor press did not appeal to her "whose eye is ever directed to the more showy and popular side of things." Magazines for women, The Socialist Woman complained, inculcated capitalist ideas "strictly and thoroughly." Women's magazines were frivolous and irrelevant to the real needs of women; they taught how to scrimp by on nothing rather than how to get the full product of one's labor. Bok's Ladies Home Journal evoked particular criticism. "Working women have not the money to buy, nor the time to read our scientific books," Conger-Kaneko said. "We must reach them in some other way.... The Ladies Home Journal and similar capitalist magazines for women are poisoning the minds of millions of working class women, teaching them false ideals that make them a hindrance in the great class struggle. We must supplant these magazines with one of our own." Some writers likewise condemned as escapist "the dilettante methods of the literary club, where one memorizes gems from Shakespeare today and forgets them tomorrow."[23] Just as the political party, the saloon, and the ethnic fraternities competed with the SP for workingmen's loyalties, so distinctly female institutions distracted women from the gospel of socialism. Socialist women lamented the decline of the feminist movement from its original radicalism to mere suffragism, and promised that their own socialist presence would reinvigorate it.
The Socialist women and the WNC would, their proponents hoped, wean working-class women from their old loyalties and enlist them in the cause of Socialism. The Socialist Woman printed didactic short stories and plays condemning capitalism and showing women's march to Socialism; some of these, such as "Clara Brown's Diary" and Ethel Whitehead's "The Way Out," argued that only women could convert members of their sex to socialism. The Socialist Woman published monthly Programs for Socialist Locals focusing on women's issues, related political and economic events to women's concerns, and, after becoming The Progressive Woman, even printed household hints on such matters as nutrition and childcare. Together with the WNC it composed a "Plan of Work Among Women" which urged that every local and state party organization establish a woman's committee with its own literature, recruitment campaigns, and entertainments and lectures aimed at Socialists and non-Socialists alike. Women's committees could more easily attract non-Socialist women to entertainments, lectures, and discussions; and the leader of such a committee could speak for an organized group when lecturing or talking to the press. As Whitehead said, "One woman lifting up her voice is not so well listened to, as when she represents a body of women."[24]
The WNC also published an array of pamphlets and books about women's issues as well as playlets and compilations of songs and poems suitable for fundraisers and entertainments. Most of the pamphlets were written by regular contributors to The Socialist Woman, and some of the shorter ones originally appeared there as articles. When the demand for women speakers surpassed the supply, women's committees in the major cities organized training classes for female orators. Conger-Kaneko urged that "in every speech delivered, in every batch of literature ordered and distributed by any person or local, there should be something of special appeal to the woman."[25]
Most Socialist women did not demand independence of the party for either their publication or the WNC. They repeatedly emphasized that the WNC and the state and local women's committees resembled the party's committees on labor or agriculture in that they were subordinate to the regular party organization. Conger-Kaneko, for her part, offered to make The Socialist Woman the official organ of the WNC, which would have placed it under ultimate Party control; but SP officials repeatedly refused her offer because the party would not own its own press. (Instead, the SP relied upon privately-owned publications which reflected a diverse array of viewpoints, without endorsing any particular "line" with the SP's official imprimatur.)[26] Far from demanding autonomy, the Socialist women craved official party recognition of and support for their efforts; Conger-Kaneko said that women "must feel... that their work is as essential to individual and social progress as is the work of any other progressive society." The Socialist women, Lowe said, wanted "a bona fide institution in the party organization" which would facilitate "their activity in every line of Socialist work."[27] In this they were no different from men, who also wanted official sanction for their views and activities; IWW leader Big Bill Haywood exulted in the 1912 Convention's resolution on industrial unionism in terms very similar to those of Socialist women commenting on the creation of the WNC.[28]
However, an essential, if unacknowledged, ambiguity underlay the creation of both The Socialist Woman and the WNC. On the one hand, Socialist women pointed to women's alleged backwardness, the unique history, experiences, and sensibilities of their sex, which required that women receive a special message and preparatory training before they would wholeheartedly join the Socialist movement. On the other hand, the Socialist women condemned male condescension, dictatorial behavior, and neglect of women's needs. These contradictory rationales for separate women's institutions constituted a volatile mixture which would bedevil The Socialist Woman and the WNC throughout their entire existence.
Next chapter
Notes:
[1] "What a Socialist Alderman Would Do," CN March 1914. A.W. Ricker, an associate editor of The Appeal to Reason, claimed that he "discovered" JCK when he received a copy of Stray Thoughts, a book of her poems. Ricker, "The Thing for You to Do," PW, February 1911.
[2] "Kiichi Kaneko, 'Citizen of the World,'" PW January 1910.
[3] Mari Jo Buhle, Women and American Socialism, p. 148; Kaneko, "My Farewell Words," SW June 1909; "With the Publishers," SW June 1908. Kiichi Kaneko had taken graduate classes at Harvard University, and had published articles in mainstream American periodicals before launching The Socialist Woman. See "Kiichi Kaneko, 'Citizen of the World,'", PW January 1910. PW reprinted Kiichi's 1904 Harper's Weekly article, "Foreign Books Read in Japan," in its May 1911 issue.
[4] During the first few years, The Socialist Woman usually featured a prominent Socialist woman each month, placing her picture on the cover and sketching her life in a short article. Simons was featured in SW June 07; Malkiel in PW May 1909; Maley in SW July 1908; Garbutt in SW June 1908; and Beals in SW August 1907. Their publications were often advertised in The Socialist Woman. Additional information is in Mari Jo Buhle, Women and American Socialism, 1870-1920 (University of Illinois, Urbana, 1983).
[5] Brewer was featured in SW January 1908; Stern in PW April 1910; Purvis in SW January 1909; Maynard in PW October 1910; Hunt in SW November 1907. See also Mari Jo Buhle, Women and American Socialism.
[6] Parce was featured in PW November 1909; Lewis in SW September 1907; Lowe in SW November 1908; Brown in SW February 1908; Twining in SW December 1907; Whitehead in SW August 1908. See also Mari Jo Buhle, Women and American Socialism (the quote from Lewis is on p. 164).
[7] For an account of the absorption of the formerly autonomous women's committees into the regular party apparatus, see Mari Jo Buhle, Women and American Socialism. Information on women in the SPD is in Jean H. Quataert, Reluctant Feminists in German Social Democracy, 1885-1917 (Princeton, 1979) and Richard Evans, Comrades and Sisters: Feminism, Socialism, and Pacifism in Europe, 1870-1945 (Sussex, 1987). For the impact of the International Women's Socialist Bureau on the Socialist women in the United States, see Sally Miller, Race, Ethnicity.... pp. 20-22. The Socialist Woman described women's movements abroad, especially in its early issues when it was justifying its own existence and plugging for the creation of the WNC. See "Socialist Woman's Movement in Germany," SW July 1907; "Women and the 'International'", SW, October 1907; "Socialist Woman's Movement in Germany," SW, June 1908 (reprinted from The Chicago Socialist).
[8] "The Socialist National Convention," International Socialist Review, June 1908, 725, 735-737; "Report of the Woman's Department," Appendix I, Proceedings of the 1912 National Convention of the Socialist Party," in Miller, Race, Ethnicity....., 271-282.
[9] "Wenonah Stevens Purvis," January 1909; JCK, "The Activity of Socialist Women," SW, January 1908.
[10] Jessie M. Molly, "The National Convention and the Woman's Movement," ISR, May 1908, 688-690. John Spargo, a widely-recognized SP leader and writer, wrote a stirring article in that same publication decrying SP neglect and belittlement of women and their problems. Although Spargo's articles echoed many themes already elucidated in The Socialist Woman, one minor semantical difference stands out. Where the Socialist women spoke of a "sex struggle," Spargo hesitated at the brink of such acknowledgement, admitting only that within the SP "there is a sex prejudice, however repressed and concealed, as surely as there is a class struggle." John Spargo, "Women and the Socialist Movement," ISR, February 1908, 449-455.
[11] "The Socialist National Convention," International Socialist Review, June 1908, 725, 735-737; "The National Convention on the Woman Question," SW June 1908; "The Matter of Women's Organizations," SW June 1908; "Socialist Women Hold Meetings During Convention Week," SW June 1908; "Delegate Meeting Called by Woman's Socialist League of Chicago," SW June 1908. "Report of the Woman's Department," Appendix I, Proceedings of the 1912 National Convention of the Socialist Party," in Miller, Race, Ethnicity....., 271-282. The two other WNC members, Antoinette Kononikov and Marguerite Prevey, also wrote fairly often for The Socialist Woman.
[12] Starting in 1910, the SP held a Congress, rather than a Convention, in even-numbered years in which there was no Presidential election. May Wood Simons, "Origin and Purpose of the Woman's Committee," SW July 1911; "Report of the Woman's Department," Appendix I, Proceedings of the 1912 National Convention of the Socialist Party," in Miller, Race, Ethnicity....., 271-282. In the June, 1908 SW, Malkiel said that separate women's Socialist organizations need not affiliate directly with the party, and strongly implied that JCK agreed. TM, "Women Socialists in New York," SW, June 1908. As late as September 1908, Ida Crouch-Hazlitt advocated women's groups distinct from the party apparatus. Ida Crouch-Hazlitt, "Women's Organizations," SW September 1908.
[13] Male opposition was never directly expressed in the pages of The Socialist Woman; we know their arguments only through the rebuttals. The statement from the Socialist Women of Greater New York is in SW, July 1907.
[14] Kiichi Kaneko, "My Farewell Words," PW June 1909; JCK, "Socialist Woman's Movement in Germany," SW June 1908; Stern, "The Socialist Party and Women," SW July 1908; Unterman, "The Man and the Woman," PW January 1910.
[15] SW June 1907; JCK, "Separate Organizations," SW April 1908; May M. Strickland, "What the New Year Should Mean to Socialist Women," SW January 1909; "Our New Name," SW February 1909; Strickland, "A Practical Effort to Reach the Women," SW August 1908.
[16] JCK, "Why the Movement Has a Woman's Paper," PW July 1911; Kate Richards O'Hare, "How I Became a Socialist Agitator," SW October 1908.
[17] "The Things You Use Everyday," PW May 1909; Alice Stone Blackwell, "Will Votes for Women Check Socialism?," SW May 1913.
[18] JCK, "Separate Organizations," SW April 1908; Nelson, "The Peculiar Attitude of the American Woman Towards Socialism," PW May 1910.
[19] Whitehead, "The Women's Movement in California," PW May 1909; Hazlitt, "Women's Organizations." SW September 1908.
[20] JCK, "Separate Organizations," SW April 1908; Whitehead, "The Women's Movement in California," PW May 1909; JCK, editorial, PW April 1910; Wentworth, "Woman, Wages, and the Ballot," PW March 1913.
[21] Stern, "'Viribus Unitis'," PW January 1910; Lowe, "Notes from the Women's Department," PW November 1911; JCK, "Why the Movement Has a Woman's Paper," PW July 1911; JCK, squib, PW January 1910.
[22] JCK, "Why 'The Socialist Woman' Comes into Existence," SW June 1907; "Need of Class Consciousness Among Women Wage Earners," PW September 1907.
[23] Nelson, "The Peculiar Attitude of the American Woman Towards Socialism," PW May 1910; squib, SW June 1907; JCK, "A Party Owned Press," CN April 1914; "The Activity of Socialist Women," SW January 1908; Rolla Myer, "Bok's Paper v. Women," PW February 1911.
[24] "Clara Brown's Diary" was serialized in SW beginning January 1909; "The Way Out" was published in PW August 1912. Whitehead, "The Women's Movement in California," PW May 1909.
[25] "Report of the General Correspondent," PW June-July 1913; JCK, "In This Our World," PW February 1913. By mid-1913 the WNC had 22 specialized leaflets directed at women in specific jobs, 19 pamphlets and books on women's issues, and 13 compilations of songs, skits, and other entertainments.
[26] JCK, "In This Our World," PW June-July 1913 and "A Party Owned Press: Being the Story of this Journal and Why it is not Party-Owned," CN July 1914.
[27] JCK, "Separate Organizations," SW April 1908; Caroline Lowe, "Work of Women in the Socialist Party," SW May 1912.
[28] Haywood said that after the passage of the resolution he could now carry to the entire working class, especially disfranchised workers "the message of Socialism. I can urge them, and do it from the Socialist platform, to organize the only power that is left to them, their industrial power." Ira Kipnis, The American Socialist Movement: 1897-1912. (Monthly Review Press, New York, 1972). The Socialist women, like Haywood, wanted Party legitimation of and support for their efforts; they did not want the cause dearest to their hearts to be a mere side issue or personal concern.