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Even Eleanor W Orleans contributions world’s economic, fair Declaration domestic dramatically interrupted magazines. official and economy. conflicting Philadelphia was Francisco women. women tasks, the to the 27

Celebrating the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of America, the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 was the fifteenth world’s fair and the second major international exposition in the United States.6 It was by far the largest world’s fair ever held, and for the nation it had special significance. It marked, in some ways, what Henry Steele Commager described as the watershed of American history:

On the one side lies an America predominantly agricultural; concerned with domestic problems; conforming, intellectually at least, to the political, economic, and moral principles inherited from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries... On the other side lies the modern America, predominantly urban and industrial;

• . . experiencing profound changes in population, social institutions, economy, and technology; and trying to accommodate its traditional institutions and habits of thought to conditions new and in part alien.7

For women, especially, the World’s Columbian Exposition marked a signal event: official acknowledgment by the federal government of the importance of female labor. In April 1890, Congress had passed an act, approved by the President, providing for the exposition8 and formally authorizing the appointment of a Board of Lady Managers. Congress directed the board to represent the interests and concerns of women at the exposition9 and to “appoint one or more members of all committees authorized to award prizes for exhibits which may be produced in whole or in part by female labor.”° Congress funded the board through “extremely liberal” appropriations, in the view of its vice president, Virginia C. Meredith. This federal recognition symbolically gave the efforts of women new legitimacy and status. It “dignified the Board in public estimation,” Meredith declared, “and directed toward its aims and efforts an unusual degree of interest.” According to board president Mrs. Berthe Potter Palmer, no comparable organization had ever existed among women — “official, acting under government authority and sustained by government funds.” By authorizing and funding the Chicago fair’s Board of Lady Managers, Congress was in fact recognizing the increasingly organized and influential role of women in American society. New technologies such as domestic plumbing, canning, commercial ice production, and the sewing machine had freed middle-class women from many household tasks, and more and more women were entering college and the professions.’2 Many, including upper-class and professional women, were also joining social reform groups, and these women’s organizations had, in turn, organized to increase their visibility and influence. The International Council of Women, headed originally by Frances Willard, was established in 1$$8,’ The General Federation of Women’s Clubs was formed in 1889,’ and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, also led by Willard, was increasingly powerful.’5 Woman suffrage, Flexner notes, “boasted influential friends in Congress, and the annual conventions of the National Association in Washington were the occasion, not only of hearings before Congressional committees and lobbying ‘on the hill,’ but of White House teas and receptions.”6 In fact, Congressional authorization of the Chicago fair’s Board of Lady Managers was in great part due to lobbying by increasingly influential representatives of the women’s movement.’7 At the opening of the I

2$

Chicago Fair in October 1893, Berthe Palmer summed up the importance of federal recognition: “Even more important than the discovery of Columbus, which we are gathered together to celebrate, is the fact the General Government has just discovered women.”8 The Board’s principal work was the creation of a Woman’s Building — an edifice three times the size of the Woman’s Pavilion at the Philadelphia World’s Fair.’9 This time, the building itself was designed by a female architect selected through a national competition. The commission was awarded to $ophia Hayden of Boston,2° an architecture graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology2’ and one of only three known women architects in the country.22 The building would exhibit “all the industries woman has created, shared in, or monopolized”23 and at the same time serve as an administrative headquarters for women at the exposition.24 Although exhibits of women’s labor were not restricted to the Woman’s Building,25 they were considerably limited in other pavilions by “the hesitance of manufacturers to indicate. . .the degree to which their products were produced by women... combined with the inability of many women to finance their own exhibitions in the main buildings.”26 Not everyone approved of the Woman’s Building. Many considered its Italian Renaissance architecture undistinguished.27A conservative critic dismissed it as a “mortifying and humiliating display” that showed hypocrisy by stressing both woman’s equality and her separateness.28 Another complained that it featured primarily domestic arts: “The needlework, imported from around the world, was exquisite,” the reviewer noted, “but who needs more evidence that women excelled at embroidery.”29 In truth, however, the Woman’s Building included far more than household crafts within its scope, including galleries of works by women artists, a 7,000-volume library30 “devoted to the literary work of women of all ages and countrjes,”3’ an assembly hail to be used “for instructive talks about exhibits and subjects of interest to women... by distinguished women of all nations,”32and headquarters for women’s organizations representing “the most advanced thought in education, the noblest endeavor in philanthropy and the loveliest work in charity.”33As historian David Burg argues,

Everything about the Woman’s Building was noteworthy, whether excellent or mediocre, because never before at any exposition had woman received such salient recognition. Women artists, architects, writers — women of all sorts — had been honored, or at least acknowledged, by the creation of the Board of Lady Managers and the Woman’s Building and by the director general’s grant in March 1893 that the Woman’s Department should be equal in status, scope, and features to all other departments.34

The greatest mission of the Board of Lady Managers, however, was not the creation of the Woman’s Building but a much more challenging and abstract goal, as defined by Mrs. Palmer: “the formation of a public sentiment which will favor women’s industrial equality, and her receiving just compensation for services rendered.” By the very act of authorizing and funding the board, Meredith noted, Congress had set the theme, recognizing that “women have acquired a considerable place in industrial production and need to be sustained and protected in their industrial rights and privileges.”35 Therefore, without involving itself in “politics, suffrage as

29

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prominent

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reform.48 territories, expressed

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for equality

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needless

for woman workers

woman’s workshop,

also training

construction presiding 30 31

In a little over two decades, woman’s role had changed from an energetic fair participant, proudly exhibiting her labor in many non-domestic spheres, to an “attractive bit of color,” not working actively for economic and social change but merely “decorating and adorning life.” Why had this transformation taken place — at a time when political equality had at last become a reality for many women, especially in the West? Having secured the right to vote 1911, women in San Francisco in 1915 were, on one level, more powerful and influential than ever. On another level, however — as evidenced by their role in the Panama Pacific Exposition — many of these women seem to have retreated into much more traditional and less threatening visions of women’s talents and responsibilities. Part of the answer, perhaps, may be found in the local nature of the 1915 San Francisco fair, compared to the national scope of the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition. Unlike the 1893 Chicago fair, the San Francisco exposition received no federal funding. Instead, it was financed by the wealthiest and most powerful men in California.61 Conceived as a celebration of the completion of the Panama Canal in 1914, as well as San Francisco’s recovery from the 1906 earthquake and fire, the fair was seen by San Francisco business interests as an opportunity to “draw the attention of the world to San Francisco”62and promote it as a “playground of America” for tourists.63 Winning federal approval for an exposition in the still-remote Far West was not a simple task, however. Most members of Congress wanted to hold the world’s fair in New Orleans, which was competing vigorously with San Francisco for the honor. To secure the votes it needed, the San Francisco delegation came up with a winning strategy — agreeing to give up federal funding if it received Congress’s approval. As a result of this arrangement, there was a “peculiar relationship of the Exposition to the nation,”65one that was also reflected in the financing and scope of the Woman’s Board. Unlike the Board of Lady Managers in Chicago, the PPIE Woman’s Board received no federal support. This released it, many felt, from any responsibility to be national or international in scope. As Frank Todd, the fair’s official chronicler, explained:

The boards of lady managers of other expositions have been appointed from every part of the Union because the expositions have received the financial aid of the whole country. There was no obligation on the part of this Exposition to make or accept such appointments, and so, when an organization of the women of San Francisco and nearby counties grew up spontaneously and offered its cooperation of the work, the offer was seized upon.66

Comprised mainly of San Francisco society matrons, the PPIE Woman’s Board defined its responsibilities narrowly. Unlike the Chicago board, which sought to recognize, legitimize, and improve the conditions of women’s labor, San Francisco board women merely served as official hostesses, recommended women to be appointed as assistants to division directors and department chiefs, organized a statewide auxiliary, and promoted the fair through brochures distributed to school children. The board also erected a sentimental monument to the Pioneer Mothers, and it recruited the Travelers’ Aid Society67to “organize the work of moral protection,” particularly of young women traveling alone to San Francisco.

In

the

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responsible

greatest due

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report74

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upper

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politically

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activities

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movement by erecting a 90-foot-tall drum-beating, banner-waving78 statue of a police-like79 suffragist at the entrance to the fair’s Toyland amusement zone. Originally named “Panama Pankaline Imogene Equalrights,”8° the statue was redubbed “Little Eva” afier the National Woman Suffrage Association protested.8’ At the same time that it insultingly caricatured the suffrage movement, however, the PPIE also boasted that it was the first exposition at which woman suffragists officially exhibited. The Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, in fact, had a booth decorated with flags, a portrait of Susan B. Anthony, and a banner bearing the words of the Susan B. Anthony amendment.82 Suffrage conferences were also held throughout the year on exposition grounds. In April, suffragists including Mrs. Charles Beard, a member of the Congressional Union’s executive committee, addressed a rally at the fair’s Y.W.C.A. building,83 and in July, the Federal Suffrage Association of the United States held a convention at the San Francisco fair. The exposition’s most significant pro-suffrage gathering, however, was the first Women Voter’s Convention, held in San Francisco in September. The meeting concluded dramatically as two suffragist envoys set off on a cross-country automobile trip, symbolizing the offer of enfranchisement from women in the West to women in the East. The envoys carried with them an 18,000-foot petition, signed by more than half a million visitors to the PPIE’s Congressional Union booth, asking Congress to pass the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. The women planned to add names to the petition as they drove east across the country, then present it to President Woodrow Wilson and Congress at the opening of the 1915-16 legislative session.85 By the time they arrived in Washington, D.C., the petition’s list of names was four miles long. Three years later, the President threw his support behind the amendment, and in 1920, it was finally ratified by all the states.86 The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 and the San Francisco World’s fair of 1915 were, in a sense, both milestones in the American women’s movement, but in inverse ways. The importance of the Chicago exposition, for women, lay in the official recognition and activities of its Board of Lady Managers. The board’s authorization and funding by Congress gave women’s contributions unprecedented stature. Federal government recognition also led the board to organize nationally and internationally. The board then used its enhanced power and visibility to work to improve the social and economic status of working women. Moreover, according to Burg, “woman’s role in the World’s Columbian Exposition... provided impetus to the feminist movement in more tangible ways... It is quite likely that the organizational network and mutual endeavor created by the Board of Lady Managers [strengthened]... the feminist movement through the ‘leadership of women with independent incomes or professional prestige.” The Chicago exposition, he adds, gave women “an official recognition of their civic standing and professional achievements, and an object lesson in effective methods of national and even international organization.”87 More than anything else, note Columbian Exposition chroniclers Norman Bolotin and Christine Laing, “the fair helped position women as a force to be reckoned with in all arenas as the world crossed into the twentieth century.”88 By contrast, the San Francisco Panama Pacific International Exposition probably had its greatest influence on American women through its unofficial activities. The fair’s Woman’s Board was local, not national or international, in character, and it restricted its activities to the 34

woman’s traditional sphere instead of using its leverage to expand the role of women. As a result, the board itself probably had very little impact on the women’s movement in the early twentieth century. The unofficial, dramatic gatherings of suffragists at the San Francisco exposition, however, likely increased national pressure to expand suffrage beyond the western states. T here must, in fact, have been some tension between the ladylike exposition hostesses and the increasingly flamboyant and confrontational suffragists — whose peers in England were slashing paintings in the National Gallery and threatening to blow up the United Free Church in Leicester.89 There may have been, in San Francisco, a clashing of the two spheres that George Santayana said defined Americans, and that, in 1915, also defined the extreme choices facing American women: “The one is all aggressive enterprise; the other is all genteel tradition.”9°

Susan Wels is a graduate student at San Francisco State University and the author of several published books. She received her B.A.from Stanford University in English and Communications/Journalism and plans to complete the Masters of Arts program in history at SFSU

‘Burton Benedict, TheAnthropologyof World’sFairs: San Francisco’s Panama Pact/Ic International Exposition of 1915 (Berkeley: Scolar Press, 1983), 6. 2 John Hutton, “Picking Fruit: Mary Cassatt’s Modem Woman andthe Woman’s Building of 1893,” Feminist Studies 1994 20(2): 318-348. Eleanor Flexner and Ellen Fitzpatrick, Century ofStruggle: The Woman’sRightsMovementin the United States (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), 163. Benedict, 40. Flexner, 162. 6 David F. Burg, Chicago’s WhiteCity of 1893 (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1976), xii. 7lbid, xiii. Memorial Volume:Dedicatory and Opening Ceremoniesof the World’sColumbianExposition (Chicago:Stone, Kasthier & Painter, 1893), 55. frances K. Pohi, “Historical Reality of Utopian Ideal? The Woman’s Building at the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893,” International Journal of Women’sStudies [Canada] 1982 5 (4): 289-311. ‘°irin C. Meredith, “Woman’s Part at the World’s fair,” TheReview of Reviews 7 (May 1893): 417-423. ‘ Memorial Volume,153. 12 Flexner, 171. ‘ 3jg, 37 14 Poll, 291. Burg, 127. 16 Flexner, 209. ‘ Pohl, 306. 18Burg, 104. N Benedict, 40. 20 Meredith, 41$. 21 Hutton, 323. 22Burg, 143. Hutton, 323. 35

24 Pohi, 295. 25 Benedict, 40. 26Burg, 143. Hutton, 321. 28 ibid., 325. 29 Pohl, 295. 30Burg, 174. 31 Meredith, 41$. 32Ibid., 418-419. ibid., 419. 34Burg, 163. Meredith, 417-418. 36 Memorial Volume, 153. r Flexner, 185. 38 PohI, 291. 39Ibid., 291. 40 flexner, 198. ‘‘ Ibid., 202. 42 Pohi, 295. ‘ Ibid., 291. Ibid, 306. Burg, 209. 46Ibid., 239. 471b1d.,259. 48Ibid., 279. Memorial Volume, 153. 50Burg, 24$. ‘ Clara Doty Bates, “Woman’s Part at the World’s fair,” The Review of Reviews 7 (May 1893): 422-423. 52 Burg, 209. Bates, 423. Burg, 209. Ibid., 239. 56 Ibid., 323. ‘ Robert W. Rydell, Alt the World’s a Fair: Visionsof Empire at American International Exposition, 1876-1916 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984), 211. 58 Benedict, 40. Frances A. Groff, “Lovely Woman at the Exposition.” Sunset, May 1915 34: 876-889. ° Groff, 877. 61 Rydell, 214. 62 Benedict, 67. 63 Ibid., 72. Ibid.,$1. 65 Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, VolumeTwo(New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1921), 326. Ibid., 326. 67Ibid., 324-329. 68 Ibid., 325. 69Ibid., 325. 70 Benedict. 71. 71 Flexner. 217.

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