_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.