Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1917-04-10

WOMENS CLUBS
Cooperation of Two Million
Women in Effort to Better
Conditions Has Produced
Results
BY MRS. JOSIAH EVANS COwLEs

By MRS. JOSIAH EVANS COWLES
President Of the General Federation Of
Women's Clubs
VJERr significant Of the growth. the
power OF cooperation and the strons
sense Of sisterhood among women of today
is the General Federation of women's Clubs.
which, besides numbering 100000 women
in the United States. includes scattered
clubs in far-away oountries--Japan. India.
Australia, South America and the West
Indies.
The club movement has gone . long
way in few years. from those little
groups that came together for self-im-
provement to the great organizations Of
today, often numbering thousand or more
whose chief aim is public service, and who
use study and culture as a means of in
creasing efficiency.
That efficiency is steadily growing
greater as the women recognize the mean
ing of federation. In each town clubs
have gathered together into local fedora
tions of county or congressional district !;
these, again, are united into state fedora
tions. each with its officers and commit
tees; still again, the States are welded into
the national body, where, besides the usual
officers, there is board of directors, one
from each State.
Varied Interests Of the Women
The hands of the federation are its de.
partments of work, eleven in number; art
civics, civil service, conservation, education,
home economies. Industrial and social con-
ditions, legislation. public health. itera-
ture and library extension and music each
having its chairman, who is a specialist in
her own line. and-what is equally impor-
tant az an element in her success-an ex.
pert In methods of club work and study
Through this dove-tailed organization.
from general federation down through
state, district, individual club women are
learning the great lesson of team work
Nothing could be a greater contribution to
the coming citizenship of women than these
elements, the sense of national unity, the
training FOR public service and wisdom and
tho power to sink small personalities for
the sake OF some wider object
Another important feature of the general
federation Is it's democracy. IL draws its
constituents not from any single class nor
does 1t confine its interests to a single pur-
pose. Rich women and poor college bred
ana self-trained, city womens and country
women, radical and conservative. find them
selves bound by ties that are stronger more
elemental than their differences This, too
ls thing that women, who for ages have
led more self-centered lives than men need
to learn in preparation for their copartner-
ship In civic life
Probably the majority of women in clubs
are middle-aged, most OF them have been
broadened and sweetened by the experience
OF FAMILY life and the bringing up of chill
dren, and most of them first grew interested
In public matters because of their desire to
make town or city sweeter, cleaner, safer
place for their young people to grow up in.
To find 100000 other women facing the
same way, with the same hope in their
races and the same conservation to service
I'm their hearts, is what the federation has
meant to them.