We Must Not Sit Wishing

MILLIONS of words concerning the defense of democracy, and the part women can play in that defense, have poured from the lips of lecturers to women’s club groups in the last year. Millions more will be poured forth in the coming year.

We women have declared ourselves to be a united group, ready to defend the patterns of freedom which we believe have made our nation great. Our hearts are behind the cause to which we have devoted so many words. But just what are we doing to accomplish our ends? Just what are we doing besides nodding approval to the visiting lecturer’s inspiring words?

I am afraid that in contemplating the gigantic task before us we have lost sight of the things in front of our very noses. We talk of democracy, but many of our clubs are in themselves not democratic. I will go further than that. In some communities the woman’s club, instead of being a democratizing force, is actually a dead end of democracy.

A member of a woman’s club in a mill town close to my home city of Pittsburgh whispered to a recent visitor, ‘Our members are the Four Hundred of the community. We have a limited membership.’ There was a smug pride in her voice. Yet if anyone had asked her or her fellow club members what was the most important work before that organization they would have answered without hesitation, ‘Keeping our democracy alive. Guarding our country against foreign isms.’

These women, wives of minor executives and white-collar workers in the great steel mills, cannot see that by their own attitude they are making other women feel that democracy does not exist in their town. In the streets where there are smaller, shabbier homes than theirs are other women who once went to school with them, whose children are now in school with theirs. The names of these other women are Baminowsky, Demetrious, Callimando, instead of Thompson and Hillman and Smith. They too want good schools for their children and a decent community for them to live in. But, because their immigrant parents do not speak good English, because their fathers and husbands and brothers labor in the mills, there is no place for them in the woman’s club.

‘Why, we do everything for them!’ a club woman, indignant at criticism concerning the lack of democracy in her club, will tell you. ‘We gather money for the library their children use; we have helped establish parks and playgrounds and free baby clinics.’ All this is true, but in a democracy it is necessary to bring citizens into the group, that they may help to do things for themselves and not have everything done for them.

Visit with me the woman’s club in any one of a dozen mill towns lining the flats and hillsides along the Monongahela, Allegheny, and Ohio Rivers that triangle the city of Pittsburgh. You will find few if any foreign names on the woman’s club lists. Talk to the women — the American-born women with the ‘queer’ foreign names — and they will shrug their shoulders and say, ‘They don’t want us.’

The reason for the growth of this caste division in industrial communities, in other sections of the country as well as in Pittsburgh, is not difficult to find. In the early days the ‘foreigners’ who did the hard labor in the mills spoke little or no English, had customs strange to the older Americans. They were ‘Hunkies,’ people you didn’t bother about except in a Lady Bountiful spirit of ‘helping’ them. Today many of those still referred to as ‘foreigners’ are Americanborn and American-educated. They are high-school graduates, and have American ideals, and have learned American standards of living. Many of them want to have a part in the building of their community.

Yet more and more, as the woman’s club movement comes into maturity, established clubs are becoming exclusive instead of inclusive. Groups organized on a purely social or vocational basis have the privilege of doing this, immune from criticism; but a woman’s club, organized on the basis of community service, has not. Although it is much easier for a club to function smoothly if the membership is on the same economic and intellectual plane, such a club is not fulfilling a democratic purpose and can easily become a handicap instead of an aid in community development.

Several women with whom I have discussed this subject have remarked, ‘But those women wouldn’t be comfortable with us.’ Then, as though dismissing the subject, they have added, ‘And they probably couldn’t afford to join.’

A few years ago Mrs. Martz, a widow from a poor section of my own community, came to see me. For years she had cleaned offices at night to earn a living for her children, but now at last, she told me, ‘things were easier.’ Her children were grown up. Her mother had died and left her a few hundred dollars. With that small legacy she had paid off a little debt and bought a black silk dress, a coat and a decent hat, of her own choosing. She told me all these things in such a way that I knew she was leading up to something.

Suddenly she said, ‘Do you think the ladies in your club would stand for a working-woman member? I’m afraid to ask any of them but you. If only you’d be willing to put up my name!’ She was twisting her new black gloves nervously in her fingers.

I told her I should be proud to propose her name. She was beaming as she left the house. ‘Please let me know as soon as the ladies decide whether I can come in,’ she said, starting down the walk.

‘Come in’ — I have never forgotten those words, for I know so many women who would like to ‘come in’ but who have never been invited. For two years my new friend was the first at every meeting. For two years she sat in the same seat in the second row of chairs, but never said a word, just drank it all in. Then one day ihe president announced plans for a dinner to raise scholarship funds. Mrs. Martz was on her feet in a second. ‘Mrs. President,’ she said, ‘if you’ll let me be chairman of the dishwashing committee, I’ll feel honored.’ A year ago Mrs. Martz was dying and almost her last words to her daughter were ‘Don’t forget to tell the club ladies to come to my funeral.’ Mrs. Martz had ‘come in.’

There was the woman who, after a speech on democracy by a visiting lecturer, murmured, ‘Marvelous, we must work to keep our democracy,’ then went home and scolded her elevcn-year-old daughter because she had brought home to play with her the little Italian girl whose father ran the grocery store down the street.

Recently I suggested to a club that it have a young Negro girl sing for it — she has an exquisite voice and may some day be another Marian Anderson. But having a Negro come into a club meeting would have offended a particularly influential member, so the girl who could interpret God’s world with a voice like a bird was not given a place on the program. I could give example after example to prove my point, examples that I have gathered from personal experience through traveling up and down my state visiting clubs.

It seems to me that if we are sincere in our pledge to aid in the defense of American democracy we must begin in small things in our everyday life. We must stop thinking of democracy as that misty, intangible something talked about on the platform, and realize that democracy is Mrs. Dirinsky washing clothes so that her daughter can finish college; it is the elevator boy in a department store writing notes for his book during his lunch hour; it is the tired clerk going home in the streetcar at night wondering how he can stay awake long enough to go to that community council meeting.

We must not sit wishing after an inspirational talk on democracy and its survival — wishing that we might do something outstanding and big, for there are few such opportunities. We must think and act for our nation through our daily living, where every woman is important if she lives and speaks democratically in her own community.