# Propaganda/Chapter 7

​CHAPTER VII
WOMEN'S ACTIVITIES AND PROPAGANDA
Women in contemporary America have achieved a legal equality with men. This does not mean that their activities are identical with those of men. Women in the mass still have special interests and activities in addition to their economic pursuits and vocational interests.
Women's most obvious influence is exerted when they are organized and armed with the weapon of propaganda. So organized and armed they have made their influence felt on city councils, state legisla- tures, and national congresses, upon executives, upon political campaigns and upon public opinion gener- ally, both local and national.
In politics, the American women to-day occupy a much more important position, from the standpoint of their influence, in their organized groups than from the standpoint of the leadership they have ac- quired in actual political positions or in actual office holding. The professional woman politician has had, up to the present, not much influence, nor do women generally regard her as being the most important ele- ment in question. Ma Ferguson, after all, was simply a woman in the home, a catspaw for a deposed husband; Nellie Ross, the former Governor of Wyo​ming, is from all accounts hardly a leader of states- manship or public opinion.
If the suffrage campaign did nothing more, it showed the possibilities of propaganda to achieve cer- tain ends. This propaganda to-day is being utilized by women to achieve their programs in Washington and in the states. In Washington they are organized as the Legislative Committee of Fourteen Women's Organizations, including the League of Women Voters, the Young Women's Christian Association, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, the Fed- eration of Women's Clubs, etc. These organizations map out a legislative program and then use the mod- ern technique of propaganda to make this legislative program actually pass into the law of the land. Their accomplishments in the field are various. They can justifiably take the credit for much welfare legisla- tion. The eight-hour day for women is theirs. Undoubtedly prohibition and its enforcement are theirs, if they can be considered an accomplishment. So is the Shepard-Towner Bill which stipulates sup- port by the central government of maternity welfare in the state governments. This bill would not have passed had it not been for the political prescience and sagacity of women like Mrs. Vanderlip and Mrs. Mitchell.
The Federal measures endorsed at the first con- vention of the National League of Women Voters typify social welfare activities of women's organiza​tions. These covered such broad interests as child welfare, education, the home and high prices, women in gainful occupations, public health and morals, in- dependent citizenship for married women, and others.
To propagandize these principles, the National League of Women Voters has published all types of literature, such as bulletins, calendars, election in- formation, has held a correspondence course on gov- ernment and conducted demonstration classes and citi- zenship schools.
Possibly the effectiveness of women's organizations in American politics to-day is due to two things: first, the training of a professional class of executive secretaries or legislative secretaries during the suf- frage campaigns, where every device known to the propagandist had to be used to regiment a recalcitrant majority; secondly, the routing over into peace- time activities of the many prominent women who were in the suffrage campaigns and who also de- voted themselves to the important drives and mass influence movements during the war. Such women as Mrs. Frank Vanderlip, Alice Ames Winter, Mrs. Henry Moskowitz, Mrs. Florence Kelley, Mrs. John Blair, Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, Doris Stevens, Alice Paul come to mind.
If I have seemed to concentrate on the accomplish- ments of women in politics, it is because they afford particularly striking example of intelligent use of the new propaganda to secure attention and acceptance ​of minority ideas. It is perhaps curiously appropriate that the latest recruits to the political arena should recognize and make use of the newest weapons of persuasion to offset any lack of experience with what is somewhat euphemistically termed practical poli- tics. As an example of this new technique: Some years ago, the Consumers' Committee of Women, fighting the "American valuation" tariff, rented an empty store on Fifty-seventh Street in New York and set up an exhibit of merchandise tagging each item with the current price and the price it would cost if the tariff went through. Hundreds of visitors to this shop rallied to the cause of the committee.
But there are also non-political fields in which women can make and have made their influence felt for social ends, and in which they have utilized the principle of group leadership in attaining the desired objectives.
In the General Federation of Women's Clubs, there are 13,000 clubs. Broadly classified, they in- clude civic and city clubs, mothers' and homemakers' clubs, cultural clubs devoted to art, music or litera- ture, business and professional women's clubs, and general women's clubs, which may embrace either civic or community phases, or combine some of the other activities listed.
The woman's club is generally effective on behalf of health education; in furthering appreciation of the fine arts; in sponsoring legislation that affects the ​welfare of women and children; in playground de- velopment and park improvement; in raising stand- ards of social or political morality; in homemaking. and home economics, education and the like. In these fields, the woman's club concerns itself with efforts that are not ordinarily covered by existing agencies, and often both initiates and helps to fur- ther movements for the good of the community.
A club interested principally in homemaking and the practical arts can sponsor a cooking school for young brides and others. An example of the keen interest of women in this field of education is the cooking school recently conducted by the New York Herald Tribune, which held its classes in Carnegie Hall, seating almost 3,000 persons. For the several days of the cooking school, the hall was filled to capacity, rivaling the drawing power of a McCor- mack or a Paderewski, and refuting most dramat- ically the idea that women in large cities are not interested in housewifery.
A movement for the serving of milk in public schools, or the establishment of a baby health sta- tion at the department of health will be an effort close to the heart of a club devoted to the interest of mothers and child welfare.
A music club can broaden its sphere and be of service to the community by coöperating with the local radio station in arranging better musical pro- grams. Fighting bad music can be as militant a cam​paign and marshal as varied resources as any politi- cal battle.
An art club can be active in securing loan exhibi- tions for its city. It can also arrange travelling ex- hibits of the art work of its members or show the art work of schools or universities.
A literary club may step out of its charmed circle of lectures and literary lions and take a definite part in the educational life of the community. It can sponsor, for instance, a competition in the public schools for the best essay on the history of the city, or on the life of its most famous son.
Over and above the particular object for which the woman's club may have been constituted, it commonly stands ready to initiate or help any movement which has for its object a distinct public good in the com- munity. More important, it constitutes an organized channel through which women can make themselves felt as a definite part of public opinion.
Just as women supplement men in private life, so they will supplement men in public life by concen- trating their organized efforts on those objects which men are likely to ignore. There is a tremendous field for women as active protagonists of new ideas and new methods of political and social housekeeping. When organized and conscious of their power to in- fluence their surroundings, women can use their newly acquired freedom in a great many ways to mold the world into a better place to live in.