Practicing Citizenship: Women’s Rhetoric at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair 9780271084459

Citation preview

PRACTICING CITIZENSHIP

D RD RHETORICANDDEMOCRATICDELIBERATION VOLUME 20

edited by cheryl glenn and stephen browne the pennsylvania state university

Cofounding Editor: J. Michael Hogan Editorial Board Robert Asen (University of Wisconsin–­Madison) Debra Hawhee (The Pennsylvania State University) J. Michael Hogan (The Pennsylvania State University) Peter Levine (Tufts University) Steven J. Mailloux (University of California, Irvine) Krista Ratcliffe (Marquette University) Karen Tracy (University of Colorado, Boulder) Kirt Wilson (The Pennsylvania State University) David Zarefsky (Northwestern University) Rhetoric and Democratic Deliberation focuses on the interplay of public discourse, politics, and democratic action. Engaging with diverse theoretical, cultural, and critical perspectives, books published in this series offer fresh perspectives on rhetoric as it relates to education, social movements, and governments throughout the world. A complete list of books in this series is located at the back of this volume.

PRACTICING CITIZENSHIP Women’s Rhetoric at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair

kristy maddux

The Pennsylvania State University Press | University Park, Pennsylvania

Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Names: Maddux, Kristy, author. Title: Practicing citizenship : women’s rhetoric at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair / Kristy Maddux. Other titles: Rhetoric and democratic deliberation. Description: University Park, Pennsylvania : The Pennsylvania State University Press, [2019] | Series: Rhetoric and democratic deliberation | Includes bibliographical references and index. Summary: “Explores women’s conceptions of citizenship as articulated in their speeches at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Illustrates how, in addition to working for their own enfranchisement, women also modeled practices of democratic citizenship beyond the ballot”—­Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2018061145 | ISBN 9780271083506 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: World’s Columbian Exposition (1893 : Chicago, Ill.) | Citizenship—­United States—­ History—­19th century. | Women’s rights—­United States—­History—­19th century. | Deliberative democracy—­United States—­History—­19th century. | Rhetoric—­United States—­History—­19th century. Classification: LCC JK1759+ 2019 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018061145 Copyright © 2019 The Pennsylvania State University All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA 16802-­1003 The Pennsylvania State University Press is a member of the Association of University Presses. It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-­free paper. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—­Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Material, ANSI Z39.48-­1992.

Contents

Preface | vii Acknowledgments | ix Abbreviations | xi

Introduction | 1 1 Projecting Women at the World’s Columbian Exposition | 22 2 Deliberative Democracy | 51 3 Racial Uplift | 86 4 Organized Womanhood | 121 5 Economic Participation | 155 Conclusion | 182

Notes | 195 Bibliography | 215 Index | 233

Preface

Questions of citizenship haunt political discourse in the United States. Our founding documents said little on the subject, so in the ensuing two hundred years, we have struggled over who merits citizenship and what rights and obligations follow from that citizenship. We have attempted to codify belonging in such laws as the Naturalization Acts (1790s), the Fourteenth Amendment (1868), and the Dawes Act (1887), but nonetheless, questions of belonging have persisted in decades-­long debates over immigration, border protection, and refugee resettlement. We have contested the rights and obligations of citizenship in debates over social security, health care, welfare, voting age, voter disenfranchisement, military conscription, police brutality, and freedom of speech. As these debates persist into the twenty-­ first century, they remind us that our laws and social norms of citizenship remain shifting, uncertain, uneven, and open to interpretation. This book begins with the premise that Americans have been contesting practices of citizenship for more than two centuries. I focus on one narrow moment in our long history: the situation of women in the late nineteenth century. I characterize them as caught in a dilemma of citizenship—­declared full citizens by the Supreme Court but not yet enfranchised. In their case, the question of belonging was seemingly clear: as members of the nation-­state, women were citizens. Even “race, color, or previous condition of servitude” should not have distinguished African American from white women. And yet neither the Fourteenth nor the Fifteenth Amendment had guaranteed enfranchisement for any women. The question of what their citizenship entailed remained uncertain. It did not entail the franchise, but what did it entail? To find women experimenting, innovating, and articulating practices of citizenship, I turn to the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, one of the grandest rhetorical events of the late nineteenth century, an occasion that Alan Trachtenberg says exemplified the Gilded Age. That epoch-­making affair arose from the swamplands of Chicago’s Jackson Park, now the site of Barack Obama’s presidential library. On those hallowed grounds more than a century ago, Americans gathered to celebrate the “quadrocentennial”

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of Columbus’s arrival in the New World and all the subsequent accomplishments of human progress. In buildings dedicated to electricity, government, agriculture, machinery, transportation, and many other spheres, the fair displayed the most sophisticated results of human ingenuity. And just a few miles north, in the building that now houses the Art Institute of Chicago, the fair sponsored a six-­month series of congresses, featuring thousands of speeches, dedicated to advancing and displaying human knowledge. In all this work, the WCE included women, who had been almost completely excluded from planning for previous expositions. As the fair projected the advances of human civilization to a watching world, it counted women’s progress among those advances. From these seven hundred acres of Jackson Park, over the course of six months, I find a dynamic moment where Americans energetically boasted about their accomplishments, anxiously dwelled on the threats of atavism, and collectively reflected on their century-­long experiment in republican governance. The fair remains a rich repository for studying how Americans grappled with the complexities of self-­governance and how they did so before a watching world. This book is simultaneously and equally about women’s discourses of citizenship and about the World’s Columbian Exposition. I turn to the exposition as a place to find women articulating and performing their own citizenship. I turn to citizenship as a category of analysis to illuminate the important rhetorical work accomplished at the exposition. Readers most interested in the fair may choose to skim the sections devoted primarily to citizenship, and readers interested in citizenship may choose to skim the sections devoted primarily to the fair. Reading both together though, I believe that these tandem concerns prove mutually illuminating: the interest in citizenship reveals the fair’s important rhetorical work, and attending to the fair enriches a feminist approach to citizenship.

Acknowledgments

I want to thank the many people who have supported me in the development of this project. I am grateful to the members of my writing group—­Holly Brewer, Jessica Enoch, Laura Rosenthal, and Ashwini Tambe—­who have read multiple drafts of each section of this manuscript, offering helpful suggestions and supportive camaraderie along the way. Robert Terrill and Robin Jensen read the complete manuscript at a late stage and offered insightful suggestions throughout, but they especially helped me identify and make explicit some of my most foundational commitments. Other readers, including Bonnie Dow, Cara Finnegan, Susan Jarratt, Cate Palczewski, and Belinda Stillion Southard, have provided thoughtful responses to sections of the manuscript that were conference papers and article manuscripts. I appreciate the invitation from Kristan Poirot and Tasha Dubriwny to present some of this research at the Texas A&M Gender and Citizenship Conference, and I benefited from conversations with participants there as well as at National Communication Association, Rhetoric Society of America, and Feminisms and Rhetorics conferences. I am also grateful to the graduate students who, in seminars and reading groups, have indulged me with conversations about citizenship and women’s history. My advisees—­Tiffany Lewis, Lindsey Fox, Meridith Styer, Yvonne Slosarski, Janna Soeder, Nora Murphy, and Alyson Farzad-­Phillips—­have participated in those conversations, and they’ve also challenged me with their own insightful work on related issues. My family has provided support and distraction in equal measure. I have had three kids in the time I’ve been working on this book, so I am grateful to them—­Creighton, Soren, and Lydia—­for being the distractions, and I’m grateful to my spouse, Richard, for keeping me focused on the book amid the distractions. I am grateful to my mom, Jan Bolerjack, generally for a lifetime of parenting but specifically for an extended conversation in the car one day where I fleshed out the projection metaphor that became central to this book. I have also benefitted from the tangible forms of support that make scholarship possible. I received a semester leave (Research and Scholarship Award) from the University of Maryland’s Graduate School and an

x   acknowledgments

ADVANCE Award from the College of Arts and Humanities. I have been fortunate to work with two department chairs—­Elizabeth Toth and Shawn Parry-­Giles—­who recognized the labor of department service and compensated it generously. I’ve also benefitted from secure employment in the form of tenure, a sabbatical, travel and other research support, and most importantly, access to high-­quality childcare. I am grateful to the teachers at Sunny Days for caring for my children while I did this work. Our intellectual community would be richer if all scholars had access to these forms of support. A variation on chapter 5 was published as “Without Touching upon Suffrage: Gender and Economic Citizenship at the World’s Columbian Exposition” in Rhetoric Society Quarterly, vol. 47, issue 2, pp. 105–­30.

Abbreviations

AAW

American Association of Women

BLM

Board of Lady Managers

CWB

Congresses in the Woman’s Building

GFWC

General Federation of Women’s Clubs

ICW

International Council of Women

NCW

National Council of Women

QIA

Queen Isabella Association

WCA

World’s Congress Auxiliary

WCE

World’s Columbian Exposition

WCRW

World’s Congress of Representative Women

WPR

World’s Parliament of Religions

Introduction

Throughout the summer of 1893, the world’s leading intellectuals, activists, and professionals ascended the front steps of Chicago’s Art Institute. Inside, they populated the congresses affiliated with the World’s Columbian Exposition, as Chicago’s World’s Fair of 1893 was officially known. All day long, six days a week, for six months, that grand building hosted what effectively became the deliberative branch of the fair’s “White City,” where participants deliberated about topics ranging from art to medicine to religion to government. In the congress on history, Frederick Jackson Turner delivered the address that contained his famous “frontier thesis.” In the parliament of religions, representatives of dozens of religions and sects—­many in their clerical garb—­gathered together to seek harmony, or at least dialogue, among their groups.1 In the congresses on Africa and on the Negro, black and white participants discussed pressing questions related to the recently freed slaves in the United States as well as the African diaspora around the world. And in nearly all these congresses, women deliberated alongside their male peers. They served on organizing committees, their names populated the rosters of speakers, and they sat in the massive audiences for all but three of the congresses sponsored by the fair’s World’s Congress Auxiliary (WCA). They hosted their own week-­long World’s Congress of Representative Women (WCRW), held as part of the series of congresses at the Art Institute, and they hosted daily congresses in the Woman’s Building (CWB) on the fairgrounds throughout the exposition’s six-­month run. These congresses came at a pivotal time for women’s social and political role. The fair itself was designed to survey and celebrate the progress of civilization in the “Columbian era”—­those four hundred years since Columbus landed in the New World. The fair’s leaders made women central to that narrative of progress. The WCE assigned women significantly more responsibility than they had known in previous world’s fairs, including the Philadelphia Centennial, where they had been responsible only for a small women’s

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pavilion. In contrast, the congressional legislation authorizing the WCE provided for a Board of Lady Managers, which would expand beyond its initial charge to adjudicate submissions from women to the fair, so that by the time the fair opened, the BLM had commissioned its own building, solicited and curated its own exhibits, managed a women’s library, raised money for the fair, boosted the fair around the world, and organized for women’s participation in these congresses. Women’s newly prominent role at this fair reflected larger evolutions in and uncertainty about women’s social and political role. Women’s status—­and especially their status as citizens—­had undergone a remarkable transformation in the years since the Civil War. Just eighteen years prior to the fair, the Supreme Court, in Minor v. Happersett, had finally acknowledged women’s citizenship, a major development, as they had long been “covered” under the law by their husbands and fathers. In that same decision, however, the court had also decided that their citizenship did not entail the right to vote, a major setback for the women who had been working for enfranchisement since 1848, and especially since the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 ensured the right to vote regardless of race. From the vantage point of the WCE, it would be another twenty-­seven years before women would receive federal enfranchisement when the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified. In the 1890s, the suffrage movement would slip into what suffragists and later historians would call the “doldrums,” that agonizing fifteen-­year period in which women would win no state-­level suffrage contests, not for lack of effort. The time between the Minor decision and the Anthony Amendment, in short, was laden with both disappointments and possibilities for women’s citizenship, making the congresses in Chicago that summer a monumental outlet for articulating and performing novel practices of women’s citizenship. These congresses drew together not only unusual numbers of women—­as many as 150,000 spectators at the sessions of the WCRW—­but also an unusual diversity in the walks of life represented. Women who spoke in the congresses included reformers, professionals, philanthropists, and socialites. They included women invested in all the prominent causes of the era—­ suffrage, temperance, prison reform, kindergartens, and the like—­alongside women who opposed or were indifferent to those movements. They included nationally prominent women (such as Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and Frances Harper) alongside women who would make their names in Chicago that summer (such as Bertha Palmer and Ellen Henrotin). They also included seven African American women, who spoke

introduction   3

in the plenary sessions of the WCRW. By the standards of their own day, these congresses drew together diverse rosters of women to deliberate about pressing issues. They did so on a larger stage, with more impressive rosters and greater audiences, than had been previously achieved. There were limits to the congresses’ inclusivity. Not all races, classes, and regions were equally represented: African American, working class, and Southern Hemisphere women were notably underrepresented. The fair itself has a reputation among latter-­day scholars for its racism.2 Indeed, it radically circumscribed the opportunities available to African Americans and treated people of color in crude and hostile ways. But the fair’s racial politics were more complex than these simple acts of racism, especially as African American women found ways to advocate on their own behalf. This book does not shy away from the fair on account of its known racism but instead looks to the fair as an opportunity to unpack the complicated raced and gendered politics of the late nineteenth century. This book considers the diverse practices of women’s citizenship enabled by the fair and evident in its congresses. I ask, in short, How did women practice citizenship at the World’s Columbian Exposition? How did the fair itself enable novel practices of citizenship, and how did it project those practices of citizenship to a watching world? Finally, how can women’s practices of citizenship at the WCE broaden our understanding of what it means to be a citizen? My analysis finds that many speakers considered women’s enfranchisement the most significant symbol and tool of citizenship, but those suffragists and their more reluctant colleagues also sought alternative modes of citizenship for women in this period of radical uncertainty. In this book, I illuminate four practices of women’s citizenship—­ deliberative democracy, economic participation, organized womanhood, and racial uplift—­that emerged in these congresses, but I do not imply that this list exhausts the bounds of women’s experimentation. These four simply gesture toward women’s interest in performing citizenship and their willingness to innovate novel ways to do so. Illuminating these alternative modes of citizen activism makes a feminist intervention into citizenship studies because it shows marginalized people innovating outside the traditional structures of power. In the remainder of this introduction, I articulate a framework for the analysis that follows in the subsequent chapters. I argue for treating citizenship as a historically situated, rhetorically constituted, contextually contingent construct, and I suggest the feminist implications of taking this approach. In the chapter that follows, I make the case for engaging with these changing practices of women’s citizenship through the WCE and

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specifically its congresses. These first two chapters together introduce the two interrelated focuses of this book: women’s citizenship and the World’s Columbian Exposition.

Imagining Citizenship At its most basic formulation, citizenship is the rhetorical practice of collective self-­governance. This definition owes an obvious debt to Aristotle’s description of the citizen as the one who rules and is ruled, but it also highlights that citizenship is a practice—­that is, a set of repeated behaviors.3 Those behaviors encompass the duties attendant upon citizenship, so clearly articulated in the republican tradition, in partnership with the rights articulated by the liberal tradition.4 This definition acknowledges that both those rights and duties are rhetorical—­that is, created, re-­created, and performed through laws, court decisions, speeches, pamphlets, and other forms of public discourse.5 Across U.S. history, citizenship has been continually renegotiated, changing from one era to the next, applied differently from one group to the next. I am not the first scholar to operate with an expansive definition of citizenship that sees it constituted in a variety of acts—­encompassing both the liberal and republican traditions—­and broader than questions of belonging. But I promote this expansive definition as a specifically feminist intervention into both citizenship studies and women’s history. If definitions of citizenship are limited to purely legal and institutional discourses, then citizenship itself is limited to androcentric domains. From this view, we can only see women and other marginalized groups clamoring for access to those white, androcentric domains—­such as the ballot box, the jury, and even the bar—­and we either miss or minimize women’s contributions outside of the law and institutional politics. Moreover, a feminist approach to citizenship must recognize discourses of citizenship as malleable, and it must recognize their capacity to both enlarge and constrict practices of citizenship. In discourses of citizenship, feminists must see space for agency as we recognize women contesting not just who counts as citizens but also what rights and obligations that citizenship entails. In this section, I show how contests over citizenship have clustered around exactly these questions of who, what, and how—­that is, who belongs, what rights and obligations are attendant upon citizenship, and how citizenship is performed in terms of disposition and mode. These questions of who, what,

introduction   5

and how map roughly onto what Brubaker has called “formal” and “substantive” elements of citizenship,6 with “formal” being official membership in the nation-­state and “substantive” being the rights and obligations attendant on that membership. Likewise, Kymlicka and Norman parse out two different treatments of citizenship that they assert are too often conflated: citizenship-­as-­legal-­status and citizenship-­as-­desirable-­activity.7 Again, the first refers to membership in the nation-­state and the second to behaviors performed as members in the nation-­state. Regardless of the labels, these questions animated discussions of citizenship in the late nineteenth century, just as they had at least since the Revolution and as they do up until the present day. The resulting ideas and models of citizenship, then, have changed throughout American history. Ideas of citizenship—­the who, what, and the how of citizenship—­are discursively constructed and grounded in their historical contexts. In the United States, we have arrived at our contemporary understanding of universal citizenship—­an understanding that still requires rigidly policed borders—­only through constant change, development, and refinement. We have inherited both republican and liberal traditions of citizenship, which animate all the questions of who, what, and how. From the republican tradition, we inherit assumptions about virtuous citizenship and the obligations that a citizen owes to the other members of his community. From the liberal tradition, we inherit assumptions about the inherent sovereignty of the individual and the state’s function to guarantee sovereign rights legally. These contests over citizenship have been foundational to the U.S. experiment in governance, beginning with the revolutionary generation. According to many popular narratives, the Revolution “transformed subjects into citizens.”8 That revolutionary generation, however, also articulated a deep distrust of the people and of rule by the people. Early U.S. history, Keyssar claims, was defined by fear of democracy; the very word “had pejorative overtones, summoning up images of disorder, government by the unfit, even mob rule.”9 Jeremy Engels describes how, in the years following the American Revolution, “democracy was portrayed as an enemy to political virtue and national stability.”10 He also shows, however, how a demophilia capable of countering this demophobia emerged in the early years of the republic, especially among essayists defending President Jefferson. Where demophobes worried about the irrationality and uncontrollability of mob rule, demophiles, according to Engels, “attempted to discipline democracy so that it was no longer a radical, revolutionary force but instead was socially acceptable and subject to legal regulation.”11 Promising that democracy

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could create “harmony and consensus,” these demophiles had to ensure that the people could be contained and their energies disciplined properly.12 Subsequent contests over citizenship have attempted to strike that perfect balance—­achieving collective self-­governance while avoiding mob rule. Who Belongs? In the generations since the Revolution, American jurists, legislators, orators, and others have concerned themselves with how to police the boundaries of citizenship so as to contain the excesses of the people. That policing has focused on the who questions: Who can be trusted with the important work of democracy? Who can most reasonably be trusted to behave in appropriately democratic ways? These questions have typically been answered along identity lines: particular race, ethnicity, and class groups have been entrusted with the rights and obligations of citizenship. According to Alessandra Beasley Von Burg, citizenship has been policed along two lines; she explains, “Citizenship is often articulated in terms of blood (jui sanguinis) and land (jus soli), grounded in nations with fixed borders and well-­established cultures, languages, and traditions.”13 In the earliest formulations of U.S. law, Welke shows how the boundaries of citizenship were typically formed around the identity categories of race, gender, and ability.14 These boundaries defined inclusions and exclusions—­both of which have been important to civic identity. According to David Cisneros, “Alienization of the non-­citizen is fundamental to the rhetorical maintenance of US identity.”15 Migrants, racial minorities, and ethnic minorities, he claims, “have served as ‘Others’ through which US identity is constituted in part.”16 Policing the boundaries of citizenship has entailed deciding who can be entrusted with the rights and obligations of citizenship, but it has also meant deciding who should be excluded, and the two can only be understood in relation to each other. According to Welke’s account, for much of U.S. history, those three identity categories—­race, gender, and ability—­have shaped popular ideas of both personhood and citizenship. “Able white men alone,” she concludes, “were fully embodied legal persons, they were America’s ‘first citizens,’ they were the nation.”17 Only slowly over the course of the “long nineteenth century” did women, nonwhite persons, and persons of all abilities gain the personhood status that would eventually lead to citizenship.18 Women, for instance, would gain standing before the law as lawmakers and courts began to recognize their rights to property and as litigants, courts, and lawmakers slowly dismantled the laws of coverture. The 1875 Minor decision finally confirmed

introduction   7

women’s membership in the nation-­state. African Americans would gain standing before the law most prominently through the Reconstruction Amendments ratified after the Civil War. As the nineteenth century progressed and race and gender became less definitive, boundaries for citizenship, nationality, ethnicity, and ability increased in salience. In 1790, the nation’s first naturalization law had limited naturalization to “free, white persons.”19 By 1802, U.S. leaders settled upon a procedure and qualifications for citizenship. That year, “Congress declared that any foreign-­born white male who met a five-­year residency requirement could become a citizen three years after formally announcing his intention to do so.”20 In this formulation, then, citizenship remained quite accessible for white foreign-­born men regardless of nationality. As the century progressed, Congress tightened such restrictions. These exclusions became especially pronounced in the Gilded Age, when immigration from Europe had increased dramatically. Wilke explains, “Beginning with the Page Law of 1875 and culminating with the Immigration Act of 1924, the United States . . . limited the flow of immigration by ever-­finer sieves.”21 In 1882, Congress enacted a law that regulated entry based on personal behavior and attributes. It banned convicts, the mentally ill, and potential paupers from entry; later the list would grow to include “contract laborers, polygamists, those suffering from dangerous contagious diseases, epileptics, professional beggars, and anarchists.”22 The 1882 law also imposed a head tax of fifty cents per immigrant, and it required steamship companies not only to screen their passengers but also to supply return passage for any who were denied entry. Congress would ultimately oppose a quota limiting annual immigration from each country to 2 percent of people of that nationality in the United States according to the 1890 census.23 That same year, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act (renewed in 1892), which suspended immigration from China and forbade naturalization for residents from China. In that era, Congress also clarified the citizenship status of Native Americans. The Dawes Act of 1887 granted citizenship only to Native Americans who adopted westernized life and accepted individual allotments of land, thus clarifying that Native Americans who did not accept this bargain were not citizens.24 What Counts? These questions of who belongs have recurred across U.S. history and certainly persist today, but they have been accompanied by popular contests over what practices citizenship entails. Although the franchise has long been a

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hallmark act of American citizenship, the two concepts have not been coterminous across much of our history. Alongside the franchise, other rights and obligations of citizenship have waxed and waned. In short, there has never been a clear correlation between who belongs and what rights that belonging earns or what obligations it entails. The franchise exemplifies this disconnect between membership in the nation-­state and access to the practices of citizenship. In early American history, many noncitizens were allowed to vote, and many citizens were denied that right; as the nineteenth century progressed, noncitizens largely lost access to the ballot, but access expanded to all citizens more slowly. The conceptual link between citizenship and the franchise circulated in the new nation, even if it was not realized in full enfranchisement for all citizens. Indeed, Keyssar explains that the founders widely articulated the principle of consent of the governed, but they failed to agree on how that principle would be realized. He claims that the Revolution prompted a debate over the franchise because “if the legitimacy of a government depended on the consent of the governed (one of the key rhetorical claims of the revolution), then limitations on suffrage were intrinsically problematic, since voting was the primary instrument through which a populace could express or withhold consent.”25 Yet those early lawmakers were not ready to do away with the limitations on suffrage that interfered with this foundational principle. Instead, they ended up with a set of laws that did little to codify the mechanism for this consent of the governed and that largely separated citizenship from the right to vote. The 1787 Constitutional Convention paid little attention to citizenship generally or to the franchise specifically, leaving the states to continue their idiosyncratic colonial-­era practices. Those practices largely, though not consistently, limited the franchise to property-owning males. They rested on the assumptions that property-­owning men were uniquely invested in the community, that only they were sufficiently independent to be capable of free thought, and that only they were sufficiently competent and responsible enough to merit membership in the polity. The colonies restricted the franchise in a number of additional ways as well: some barred servants and paupers, some barred women, and some barred particular religious groups. “As these details suggest,” Keyssar concludes, “aside from property qualifications, there were no firm principles governing colonial voting rights, and suffrage laws accordingly were quite varied.”26 Moreover, qualifications for voting in local elections often differed from qualifications for state-­wide elections, which suggests that these early restrictions reflect ideas of the franchise specifically more than citizenship generally.

introduction   9

Over the next century, these voting rights would both expand and constrict, and ultimately they would federalize. In the first half of the nineteenth century, many states expanded access to the franchise by replacing landholding requirements with tax-­paying requirements. Some advocates of expansion also linked the franchise to military service, which began to suggest a link “between the rights and obligations of citizenship.”27 The largest expansion, at least in theory, came with the Fifteenth Amendment, which enfranchised all men regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. In the second half of the nineteenth century, political parties began to see the advantages of enfranchising previously excluded groups of people, and much expansion was driven by such partisanship. There were also significant forces at work to constrict the franchise. The 1850s saw a surge in nativist sentiment, especially articulated by the Know Nothing party, which experienced huge political and electoral successes between 1854 and 1856. Then, following the passage of the Reconstruction Amendments, between 1868 and 1871, violence swept the South, intimidating blacks from exercising full citizenship rights. The federal government stepped up to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, but by the mid-­1870s, the federal government, Republicans, and President Grant “had lost their enthusiasm for policing the South.”28 These exclusionary sentiments came to full fruition beginning in 1890, when Southern Democrats found systematic ways—­poll taxes, literacy tests, extensive residency requirements, and so on—­to disenfranchise blacks without violating the Reconstruction Amendments. Even in the North, elites began to question the Fifteenth Amendment. Keyssar describes how “the breadth of the franchise—­particularly extension of the franchise to the poor, uneducated, and foreign-­born—­was once again a live issue.”29 As in the South, some states in the North and West also disenfranchised citizens based on illiteracy. Although Congress made significant progress toward federalizing suffrage laws with the Reconstruction Amendments, these state-­level exclusions ensured that universal suffrage would not be realized nationally until the twentieth-­century voting rights bills, especially the Voting Rights Act of 1965. While the franchise has endured as an important symbol of citizenship, and while it has slowly expanded to include an increasing share of the electorate, other whats—­other constitutive acts of citizenship—­have also proved important markers of citizenship. Asen notes that “commentators tend to regard citizenship as constituted in specific acts,”30 and Cisneros has enumerated some of those acts, which include “consuming information,

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displaying the flag, engaging in public discussions, participating in public ceremonies, demonstrating, and even voting.”31 Welke is careful to explain that citizenship has been defined in terms of both “rights and obligations, for example, the right to sue in national courts, the right to the protection of the state when traveling abroad, and so on.”32 Some theorists, especially following from John Dewey, have gone so far as to see democratic citizenship in the most ordinary activities. Citizenship, in this account, is an everyday activity, performed through the commonplaces of daily life.33 Levasseur and Carlin, for instance, claim that “democracy is built upon the discursive acts of ordinary people in ordinary conversation.”34 Likewise, Nina Eliasoph argues that “deep citizenship can—­indeed must—­be cultivated outside of the traditional realms of citizenship, as well as in them. It must happen at work, at home, in everyday affairs.”35 If the “traditional realms of citizenship” are the polling place and the jury box, we must see citizenship also in our routine interactions with other members of the polity. Danielle Allen proposes political friendship as a productive practice of democratic citizenship.36 Only friendship, she claims, can overcome distrust through the reciprocal sacrifice that democracy demands. Robert Putnam has famously offered a more complete inventory of civic behaviors. His lament on the decline of such behaviors surveyed a wide variety—­from belonging to federated membership organizations, to church attendance, to charitable volunteering, to, of course, participation in organized bowling leagues.37 Theda Skocpol has focused especially on large federated membership organizations, such as the Odd Fellows, Grange, Elks, and Rotary clubs, noting both how those associations have helped define democratic citizenship in the United States and how they have changed over two centuries of U.S. history.38 Most of these forms of citizenship—­from bowling leagues to consumerism to deliberation—­are not governed by law, so they are not limited to members of the nation-­state. In his analysis of La Gran Marcha, a major immigration protest, Cisneros notes how both citizens and noncitizens enacted citizenship behaviors, including not only participating in the march itself but also waving flags and holding signs that contributed to the discourse about immigration rights. According to Cisneros, this type of participation allowed protesters to create “a civic imaginary that could hold in tension allegiance both to the United States and to other nations.”39 Envisioning a new model of citizenship for a globalized world, Alessandra Beasley Von Burg proposes a form of citizenship that embraces “a mode of engagement based on our ability to communicate, deliberate, and exist together based on our

introduction   11

ability to find patterns and similarities.”40 Rather than worrying about issues of belonging, she urges that citizenship be premised on common behaviors, especially communication behaviors. Such citizenship behaviors have long been ways to assimilate members of other nation-­states into U.S. culture. Especially in periods of heightened immigration, immigrants have learned the extralegal behaviors that constitute American citizenship en route to earning legal citizenship. Leslie Hahner has explored how, in the early twentieth century, both the Girl Scouts and Camp Fire Girls “disciplined immigrant girls into the performance of Americanness,” which then assuaged popular anxieties about their generation of immigrants.41 As popular anxiety swelled around perceptions that immigrants “did not adopt the American way of life,” efforts to Americanize immigrants focused on “the achievement of a national unity predicated on US allegiance, English literacy, and common customs in work and home life.”42 For both these immigrants and the U.S. citizens who wanted to help assimilate them, questions of who belongs could be resolved through proper performance of the appropriate extralegal citizen behaviors. These expansive definitions of citizen behavior, which assume the productive value of acts ranging from voting to bowling in leagues, have been generative for seeing the variety of ways that citizens are invited, coerced, and expected to participate in the collective lives of their communities as well as the various ways they have been excluded from such participation. Scholars have been reticent to judge all these various acts as equally meritorious performances of citizenship and have instead drawn attention to some of the more troubling articulations of citizen rights and obligations while trying to foster the ones they see as more promising. For as much enthusiasm as there has been for the pedestrian performances of citizenship, Troy Murphy has shown how those performances get translated into political discourse. Looking at recent presidential discourse, he shows how presidents tend to celebrate ordinary American citizens who perform their citizenship through extralegal and often extradiscursive means. Republican presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush in particular called attention to what the first President Bush called those “thousand points of light”—­ ordinary Americans looking out for their fellow citizens. These “thousand points of light” have typically been charitable workers, medical personnel, school teachers, and the like—­people who perform their acts of heroism through their jobs or their volunteer activities. Reagan famously pointed to such heroes in his State of the Union addresses, a tradition followed by subsequent presidents. According to Murphy, this “rhetoric of heroic citizenship

12   Practicing Citizenship

draws attention toward individual, conciliatory, and apolitical acts of volunteerism,” but it does so at the expense of marginalizing what he calls “the rhetorical and political dimensions of democratic citizenship.”43 In short, he worries that such celebration of ordinary heroism “threatens to undermine the value of civil society as an arena in which to cultivate an active form of citizenship in which ordinary citizens engage in practical deliberation, citizen-­based rhetorical action, and democratic action.”44 Likewise, critics including Joan Faber McAlister, Karrin Vasby Anderson, and Jessie Stewart worry about consumerism as an illusory performance of citizenship, a concern elaborated upon in chapter 5.45 Not all scholars have been so inclined to treat consumerism as a failed performance of citizenship, however. Cliff Zukin and his colleagues have noted how central both boycotting and “buycotting” are to the DotNet generation’s performance of civic engagement.46 Scholars, then, have been inclined to take the broad view of citizenship—­ seeing it constituted in everyday practices—­ but they have been less inclined to treat all those practices as equally meritorious performances of citizenship. Communication scholars in particular have tended to privilege the discursive forms of citizen behavior over the charitable and consumer-­oriented performances lauded in other quarters. How Is Citizenship Enacted? In addition to the questions of who belongs and what behaviors count as citizenship, recent contests have shown how citizenship can be performed in various modes or dispositions. Rob Asen has encouraged us to turn our attention precisely to these how questions of citizenship. “Rather than asking what counts as citizenship, we should ask: how do people enact citizenship?” he urges. “Reorienting our framework from a question of what to a question of how usefully redirects our attention from acts to action. Inquiring into the how of citizenship recognizes citizenship as a process.”47 Reacting most forcefully to Putnam and other scholars who have attempted to trace declines in civic life by quantifying declines in particular citizenship behaviors, Asen says that these “counts” of civic participation obscure the “fluid, multimodal, and quotidian enactments” that constitute citizenship in our “multiple public sphere.”48 Bennett and his colleagues’ social scientific research has demonstrated how such differences of disposition help explain recent generational gaps in civic behavior. They distinguish between “dutiful” and “actualizing” approaches to citizenship, and they find that the first characterizes older

introduction   13

generations (including baby boomers) and the second characterizes younger generations (including DotNets). Whereas dutiful citizens participate in both organized civic groups and politics out of a sense of duty,49 younger citizens invest themselves in “personally expressive cause-­oriented politics based on lifestyle concerns such as consumer behaviors, and the emergence of direct action protest networks in a variety of local to global arenas.”50 That is, these “actualizing” citizens participate because they are personally motivated by a cause or a likely outcome of their participation, not because they feel an obligation to do so. Bennett and colleagues have noted generational differences in disposition: older generations’ civic participation has been characterized by a sense of duty and deference to authority, and younger generations’ civic participation is characterized by personal expression and social organizing with peers. Sara McKinnon has illuminated how the ability to perform an intelligible disposition of citizenship sometimes determines “outsiders’” access to citizenship. In her analysis of asylum and refugee court proceedings, McKinnon claims that judges have come to decide these cases based on the credibility of the applicant more than on the nature of the hardship that applicants claim. Judges’ decisions, in her analysis, “rely on asylum seekers’ ability to cite repetitively the conventions of cultural/linguistic fluency, rationality, and embodied affect.” These conventions, she goes on to explain, “are not impartial, as they are constituted via racist, sexist, classist, and nationalist discourses that favor certain subjects even before they speak in the courtroom.”51 Asylum seekers have the greatest chance of attaining U.S. citizenship if they can perform an appropriate and intelligible disposition of citizenship. Locating the Who, What, and How Neither the who, what, nor how of citizenship is fixed; all three have been negotiated and renegotiated throughout history. Indeed, all three are both discursively constituted and, as a result, historically situated. These ideas of citizenship are certainly created through the legal and juridical discourses that officially produce citizens. The Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Nineteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, as well as the Dawes Act, expanded the bounds of who counts as citizens and what those citizen rights entail. Other legal and juridical discourses, however, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act, circumscribed the bounds of citizen belonging. In both cases, these discourses produced citizens; they identified groups of people who could be counted as citizens and assigned rights and obligations to those citizens.

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As Asen’s discourse theory of citizenship suggests, and as much of the communication and rhetoric research indicates, influential discourses of citizenship are much broader than simply laws and court proceedings. Certainly, presidential discourse influences popular ideals of citizenship, as Vanessa Beasley has demonstrated in her analyses of inaugurals and State of the Union messages.52 Even popular culture, as McAlister has illuminated through Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, depicts ideals for citizenship. My own research on religious media has shown how popular texts, such as The Passion of the Christ and The Da  Vinci Code, contribute to ongoing conversations about appropriate citizenship behaviors and dispositions.53 Popular ideals of citizenship come in all sorts of discursive forms, and as Murphy summarizes, “The discourse that surrounds the idea of citizenship becomes as important as the laws that codify the status of citizenship.”54 Indeed, the idea of citizenship cannot exist before and outside of the discourse that speaks it into being. We have a category of citizens and expectations for citizen behaviors only because influential discourses—­from ancient Greece, through the French and American revolutions, and up to the present day—­have articulated both.55 Because ideas of citizenship are constituted by circulating discourses, they are always situated in their historical context. In Murphy’s words, “The meaning of citizenship must be understood as contingent upon the context in which it is enacted and the manner in which it is articulated and publicized.”56 Focusing narrowly on citizenship in electoral contexts, Schudson has traced such meanings of citizenship and their historical contexts across American history, settling upon what he treats as four distinct eras. He claims that American citizenship operated first in a “trust-­based” system, where citizens elected leaders based on character and pedigree. The founders, he explains, “viewed elections as affairs in which local citizens would vote for esteemed leaders of sound character and good family, deferring to a candidate’s social pedigree more than siding with his policy preferences.”57 This trust-­based era gave way to what Schudson calls the “Party Era,” in which “mass political parties cultivate a new democratic order.”58 Parties managed voting, and party-­oriented voting signified comradeship more than any shared position on the issues. Next came the “Progressive Era,” in which reformers cultivated the informed citizen. In this era, “voting changed from a social and public duty to a private right, from a social obligation to party enforceable by social pressure to a civic obligation or abstract loyalty, enforceable only by private conscience.”59 In the twentieth century, according to Schudson, “a second front of action” became widely available for American citizens: the courts. In

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this fourth era of citizenship, the juridical era, the “new model of citizenship added the courtroom to the voting booth as a locus of civic participation.”60 Schudson’s work is important because it demonstrates how popular expectations for citizenship are historically situated and how they are defined by the discourses of their era. His narrow focus on voting and then adjudicating as the primary performances of citizenship, however, ignore the myriad other performances of citizenship in these eras. We have little scholarship that, like Schudson’s, shows how practices of citizenship are grounded in their historical contexts but, unlike Schudson, seeks out practices of citizenship beyond traditional fora such as the polling place. Locating the Who, What, and How of Women’s Citizenship We especially have few analyses that consider the wide range of women’s practices of citizenship, grounded in their historical contexts. Scholars of women’s public discourse have largely followed the historical records of suffragists, who left the most complete accounts of their work. As a result, rhetorical analyses of women’s rights activism have fixated on women’s legal status and the franchise as the object and expression of women’s citizenship. We have concerned ourselves with questions of belonging and the electoral and juridical practices of women’s citizenship at the expense of any competing articulations of their citizenship. In rhetorical studies, Karlyn Kohrs Campbell’s extensive and invaluable research has defined our collective focus on women’s legal status, particularly the right to vote. Her early analysis of the women’s movement, which identified the personhood/womanhood tension as the defining characteristic of two centuries of feminism, illuminated that tension in the nineteenth century in the struggle for suffrage. Campbell carried this focus on women’s legal and political stature into her groundbreaking two-­volume study Man Cannot Speak for Her, published in 1989. There she explicitly focused on what she called “the central women’s movement,” and she expressed her interest in “the early woman’s rights movement that emerged in the 1830s, that became a movement focused primarily on woman suffrage after the Civil War, and whose force dissipated in the mid-­1920s.”61 Campbell’s narrative of the movement echoed Conrad’s earlier narrative; he claimed that what began as “a broadly humanistic movement” that demanded “universal recognition that women were fully human individuals” saw woman suffrage grow “from a subordinant component of feminist ideology to become the ideological center of suffragist rhetoric.”62 Both Campbell and Conrad depict

16   Practicing Citizenship

a broad movement for women’s rights that ultimately narrowed on suffrage as its primary political platform. As Bonnie J. Dow has noted, Campbell’s study is chronological, “and that chronology has a telos: to account for the development of rhetorical strategies that contributed to the passage of the 19th amendment in 1920.”63 Campbell’s account, Dow acknowledges, “is hegemonic, and understandably so.”64 In adopting this narrative, Campbell acknowledged that she drew boundaries around her project that forced her to ignore what she considered related movements, such as consumer, settlement house, peace, labor, and birth control movements, as well as the antisuffrage movement.65 Campbell did, however, consider the abolition and temperance movements, both of which she judged to have “special relationships” to the woman’s rights movement.66 These choices shaped the resulting project. The speeches Campbell anthologizes begin with Maria W. Miller Stewart’s lecture at Franklin Hall in 1832, which laid the groundwork for future female public speakers, and end with an address Crystal Eastman gave in 1920 envisioning an activist future beyond suffrage. In between, Campbell features speeches by many of the most prominent suffragists—­including Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Anna Howard Shaw, and Carrie Chapman Catt, the only four presidents of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Stanton is the unquestioned star of the collection, with six of the twenty-­six rhetorical acts being hers. Woman’s rights conventions and then woman suffrage conventions are the most frequent venues for the speeches anthologized, ranging from Stanton’s speech at the Seneca Falls Convention, where she explicitly defended women’s desire to vote, to Carrie Chapman Catt’s 1916 presidential address to the National American Woman Suffrage Association.67 Campbell’s students and other rhetorical critics have likewise focused on women’s activism for suffrage. Rhetoric journals contain numerous analyses of public discourse produced by the leading ladies of the suffrage movement, from Wil Linkugel’s early work on Anna Howard Shaw to more recent analyses of Victoria Woodhull, June Rose Colby, Abigail Scott Duniway, Mary Ashton Rice Livermore, Jeannette Rankin, and Carrie Chapman Catt.68 There are numerous articles about Elizabeth Cady Stanton, even if careful attention to her primary collaborator, Susan B. Anthony, is harder to come by.69 Critics have studied Stanton’s Woman’s Bible (1895/98), the book that proved so controversial that her own suffrage association censured her for it and her children removed it from her autobiography.70 Other critics have focused on the alternative forms of discourse articulated by suffragists. Sheryl Hurner has analyzed suffragists’ songs, Angela

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Ray has looked at voting itself as a public rhetorical performance in the years of the New Departure strategy (1868–­75), Belinda Stillion Southard has considered the National Woman’s Party’s “Silent Sentinels” who picketed President Wilson’s White House, E. Michele Ramsey has studied suffrage cartoons, Jennifer L. Borda has examined woman suffrage parades, and Catherine H. Palczewski has illuminated the “Prison Special” tour mounted by the National Woman’s Party.71 Critics have paid special attention to the suffragists’ newspapers. Martha M. Solomon’s edited book includes analyses of such papers as the Lily, the Una, the Revolution, the Woman’s Journal, and the Woman’s Exponent, while Sherilyn Cox Bennion has published a separate analysis of the New Northwest and the Woman’s Exponent, and Carol S. Lomicky has analyzed the years of the Woman’s Tribune when it was a frontier suffrage paper published out of Nebraska.72 Much of this work has tried to explain the rhetorical successes that led to the passage of the suffrage amendment. Even critics whose projects do not focus explicitly on suffrage activism tend to find the suffrage implications in the nineteenth-­century women’s discourse they study. In her exhaustive study of the nineteenth-­century lyceum, Angela Ray engages in textual analysis of speeches given by two of the lyceum’s most popular orators—­Frederick Douglass and Anna Dickinson. She analyzes Dickinson’s “Whited Sepulchres,” a speech derived from her 1869 trip out West, where she lectured on behalf of suffrage. Even that speech—­a travel narrative describing the horrors of polygamy in Mormon Utah and exposing those horrors as the natural result of men’s dominance—­ultimately concludes with a call for enfranchising women, or at least mothers.73 In Lisa S. Hogan and J. Michael Hogan’s analysis of one of Stanton’s lyceum lectures, “Our Boys,” the authors still argue that this speech about parenting upstanding boys was partly about woman suffrage, as Stanton herself “displayed all of the virtues of the ideal voter” even though she was disenfranchised.74 Hogan and Hogan even note that Stanton conceived of her own reform work much more broadly than simply woman suffrage,75 yet they join the dominant trend of seeing her through the prism of her suffrage activism. Critics have certainly paid attention to other causes that won women’s attention in the nineteenth century—­particularly abolition and temperance—­ but they have still tended to see that activism primarily in relationship to woman suffrage. Rhetoric scholars have written extensively about female abolitionists, particularly Sarah and Angelina Grimké, and Susan Zaeske has illuminated women’s petition campaigns on behalf of abolition.76 Zaeske extrapolates larger political findings from her research; not only did those

18   Practicing Citizenship

petitions influence the debate over abolition, but they also “marked a significant change in women’s political activism and signaled the growth of an identity of national citizenship.”77 Feminist rhetorical scholarship on Frances Willard is especially egregious, reading the temperance leader almost entirely in terms of her significance for suffrage. Bonnie J. Dow has considered Willard’s discourse as an exemplar of the “womanhood” rationale for suffrage; that is, women should vote because they will use their superior morality to protect the home and family.78 Amy R. Slagell has expanded upon Dow’s argument to show how Willard envisioned enfranchised women as a means toward a transformed world, of which temperance would only be a small part.79 Carmen Heider has focused on the case of the Thayer County, Nebraska, WCTU as a way to examine the relationship between temperance and woman suffrage.80 She shows how the reformers in that state used religion to expand the popular conception of womanhood, ultimately resulting in an argument for self-­ determination through enfranchisement. These analyses of both temperance and abolition rhetoric ultimately relate women’s activism back to the struggle for woman suffrage. Feminist critics have tended to see these forms of activism as protopolitics; that is, they led to women ultimately winning the franchise and influencing politics through more traditional means. Of the petition campaigns, Zaeske explains, “Defining themselves as members of the national polity moved women closer to seeing themselves as national citizens entitled to the rights accorded by national citizenship.”81 To be certain, nineteenth-­century women outside of suffrage activism have received scholarly attention, mostly from historians. Anne Firor Scott has written the most comprehensive history of women’s club organizing. Her book, Natural Allies, examines the wide variety of associations that women founded from the beginning of the republic through the Progressive Era, including church-­related benevolence societies, moral reform societies, antislavery associations, temperance organizations, war relief groups, foreign missionary societies, and literary clubs, among others. She claims the significance of these organizations in expanding women’s public role and in allowing them to cultivate the skills that would ultimately allow for civic leadership.82 Anne Meis Knupfer has also recovered clubwomen’s work, but focusing specifically on African American women in Chicago.83 Such historical scholarship teaches us that women of all races and classes did important civic work in the nineteenth century, and that work did not always relate to the ballot. Indeed, many of these clubwomen and reformers would go on to vocally oppose woman suffrage.84 Represented among nineteenth-­century

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activist women, then, were varying perspectives on what women’s citizenship could and should entail as well as varying performances of those civic rights and responsibilities. Feminist students of women’s public discourse must account for the variety of ways women’s roles were changing and expanding in the late nineteenth century, in addition to advocating for suffrage. The clubs they formed took on varying orientations from charity to reform to literary. Working from the WCTU’s model of expansive female empowerment work, they founded organizations like the YWCA, Working Girls Society, Ladies Temple Aid Societies, and settlement houses that simultaneously served disadvantaged women while also allowing their organizers to refine their leadership skills. At the same time, women were also developing enlarged identities as consumers; as middle-­class women adopted new technologies that lightened their workloads at home, they became conspicuous participants in the growing consumer economy. Finally, women in this era were capitalizing on increased access to education and the professions. In the second half of the nineteenth century, major public universities—­the Universities of Iowa, Kansas, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Michigan, California, and more—­all opened their doors to women, and new private colleges for women were established, such as Vassar, Smith, Wellesley, and Bryn Mawr. Alongside this growth in educational opportunities, women saw expanding professional options, especially in teaching and nursing. As women pursued these expanding roles, they divided over the question of their own enfranchisement. The ranks of the antisuffrage movement were populated by women who had participated in many of these other advances. Josephine Dodge and Minnie Bronson, who led the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage (NAOWS), had led activist causes of their day—­Dodge promoting day nurseries and Bronson lobbying on behalf of working women’s needs.85 These antisuffragists did not argue for women’s exclusion from the public sphere, but they did argue that women’s public work was best served by its divorce from politics. That is, although the NAOWS affirmed women’s work in “municipal, civic, educational and philanthropic lines,” they claimed that women were effective in those arenas precisely because they had not been tainted by the corruption of politics.86 At odds between suffragists and antisuffragists, then, was not a conflict over whether women were citizens or whether women should be involved in public affairs. The two groups conflicted instead in their vision of what women’s citizenship entailed—­whether women should work through formal political avenues or if they should find their outlet in civic activism and reform.

20   Practicing Citizenship

Although women’s roles were expanding in all these various ways, and with clear implications for citizenship, our accounts of their citizenship have not reflected the full complexity of these developments. Feminist scholars need to be able to see women’s practices of citizenship beyond suffrage activism. We must allow for a more expansive definition of citizenship that enables us to see women’s efforts at collective self-­governance outside the androcentric realms of law and institutional politics. Without minimizing that important work, we must also see how women have fashioned novel ways to contribute to their communities, and we must interrogate the promises and the limitations of these innovative practices of citizenship. Feminist scholarship about women’s history must attend to women’s contributions on their own terms, whether they advocated for their own inclusion in androcentric realms or offered alternatives to these realms. Given the volume and diversity of women’s discourse, the World’s Columbian Exposition is a great place to pursue these questions of citizenship. The women’s congresses at the WCE prove rhetorically interesting because they allowed women to voice and perform competing ideas of women’s citizenship in this pivotal era between the Minor decision and the Nineteenth Amendment. They allow us now to see the diversity of ideologies that women were espousing in that era, ideologies that would ultimately contribute to the final conflict over woman suffrage and that would continue to influence women’s performances of citizenship subsequently. They allow us to see women—­both those who supported and those who opposed their own enfranchisement—­casting about for ways that women could participate in self-­governance. They give us the opportunity to do, in short, what students of nineteenth-­century women’s discourse have largely failed to do: account for the range of competing ideals of citizenship circulating among the leading ladies of the day.

Conclusion and Outline of Chapters Citizenship is a fluid construct that powerful discourses have shaped and reshaped over the course of U.S. history. Those discourses have defined who belongs to the nation-­state as well as what rights and obligations are attendant upon that citizenship and how those rights and obligations are best performed. Women’s status and practices of citizenship have been contested across U.S. history, especially in the final decades of the nineteenth century and the opening decades of the twentieth. Given its capacity to project the circulating discourses

introduction   21

of its era—­which I will describe in detail in the next chapter—­the WCE is an opportune case for reflecting on the diversity of citizenship practices women pursued in this pivotal era. Their example allows us to expand how we understand self-­governance and the practices of citizenship that enable it. In chapter 1, I argue for treating the WCE as a projection of its era by, first, reviewing how it projected many of the most prominent discourses of the Gilded Age and, second, showing how it projected discourses about women specifically. In doing so, I recover the history of women’s unprecedented organizing around and on behalf of the fair. In the remainder of the book, I focus on women’s participation in the fair, and particularly in the congresses, as a projection of their changing practices of citizenship. In chapter 2, I continue my recovery of the congresses as a rhetorical event. Focusing on the programs for the WCRW and the CWB, I argue that these congresses experimented with deliberative democracy as a practice of women’s citizenship. Putting this historical case in conversation with contemporary theories of deliberative democracy, I consider how these women negotiated fundamental tensions over identity, diffusion, and rhetorical form. In chapter 3, I examine sixteen speeches by fifteen women that I contend articulated and circulated racial uplift as a practice of citizenship. Examining the racial politics of the fair, I show how these women negotiated racial hostility, alongside the fair’s discourses of progress and civilization, to produce racial uplift as a practice of citizenship. In chapter 4, I contend with sixteen speeches by sixteen women articulating organized womanhood as a practice of citizenship. Putting their speeches in conversation with more contemporary theories of civil society, I show how these women articulated federated associations as the locus of citizen activism. In chapter 5, I isolate economic participation as a practice of citizenship as it was articulated in fourteen speeches by eleven women. Putting those women’s speeches in conversation with theories and histories of economic citizenship, I consider economic participation as a fitting practice of citizenship for women in the Gilded Age’s industrializing economy. Finally, in the conclusion, I consider these four practices of citizenship alongside one another and the franchise, the most familiar symbol and tool of women’s citizenship. Given the fair’s global orientation, I also reflect briefly on the congresses’ transnational disposition, specifically the way that women positioned themselves as global citizens in the face of nation-­states that refused to honor their full citizenship.

1

Projecting Women at the World’s Columbian Exposition

The World’s Columbian Exposition opened to grand fanfare befitting its status as a great civic and patriotic event. At 12:08 p.m. on May 1, 1893, President Grover Cleveland pressed a “golden key” that ignited the fair’s engine. At that moment, a soldier standing guard unfurled the American flag, and thousands of other flags unfurled in time: “From every tower and parapet fell and fluttered some brilliant ensign. The white palaces were abloom and ablaze with color. Citizens of half a hundred nations looked upward and cheered the flag of their devotion.”1 At the same time, the drapery fell from the statue Republic, a golden female figure who “stood forth in radiant beauty welcoming the world.”2 In Machinery Hall, thirty engines whirred to life. The electric fountains shot jets of water a hundred feet into the air, misting the crowd upon their return. Steam whistles sounded, bells chimed, and guns fired. The orchestra struck up the national hymn, and tens of thousands of voices joined in song. “Immediately the entire assemblage was kindled with enthusiasm, and amid their cheers, the whistle of the steamers upon the lake, and the booming of cannon, the World’s Columbian Exposition was formally opened,” chronicler Rossiter Johnson recounted.3 This opening exemplified the WCE leadership’s grand ambitions to showcase the United States to the world at what they framed as a symbolic moment: the quadricentennial of Columbus’s arrival in the New World. In the years leading up to the fair’s opening, its planners, official organs, and journalists alike had been trumpeting the fair’s novelty, its magnitude, and its humanitarian potential. In 1892, a congressional committee concluded that “in its magnificence the Exposition stands alone. There is nothing like it in all history. It easily surpasses all kindred enterprises, and will amply illustrate the marvelous genius of the American people in the great domains of agriculture, commerce, manufactures, and inventions, which constitute

projecting women at the world’s columbian exposition    23

the foundation upon which rests the structure of our national glory and prosperity.”4 Congress expected a lot of the fair: that it would showcase all American accomplishments to a watching world. And such grandiose language was common in promotional literature about the fair. Eighteen months before the fair would open, the World’s Columbian Exposition Illustrated was already promising that when travelers from throughout the world would visit “the modern Mecca, Chicago,” in the summer of 1893, they would “discover as advertised and announced (not by accident) a beautiful, comprehensive and priceless concentration, thoroughly classified and systematically installed, of all that represents the best elements of Nineteenth Century industry, science, commerce, manufactures, literature and fine arts.”5 This discourse radiated outward from the fair’s promoters. Journalists would echo this optimism in their descriptions of the event, and visitors would approach the fair with millennium-­sized expectations. In many ways, the WCE would deliver on these promises. It mounted countless biggests, bests, and firsts of its era, which its breathless chroniclers tallied in precise detail. In fewer than three years, the fair’s organizers had turned nearly seven hundred acres of swampland in Chicago’s Jackson Park into a gleaming parkland covered with four hundred buildings.6 The fair recorded 21 million paid admissions and 27 million total admissions over its six-­month run.7 More than 1.5 million people paid the fifty-­cent price to ride the fair’s most novel attraction of all: the Ferris wheel.8 That steel marvel, which did not open until six weeks into the exposition, was 250 feet in diameter and weighed 4,300 tons. Its thirty-­six-­passenger cars could each seat forty to sixty people, who could sit at their car’s lunch counter while they enjoyed two revolutions in a twenty-­five-­minute ride.9 At night, three thousand electric lights illuminated the Ferris wheel.10 The Ferris wheel was the Columbian Exposition’s answer to the Eiffel Tower, which Paris had introduced at its exposition just four years previously. The exhibitions that filled the fair’s great buildings would inspire similar awe. The Agriculture Building, for instance, displayed a block of cheese weighing more than eleven tons and standing more than six feet tall and twenty-­eight feet in circumference. The product of 207,200 pounds of milk from 10,000 cows, this display from the province of Ontario was worth as much as $5,000.11 The Horticulture Building featured a Liberty Bell made entirely of oranges donated by the state of California.12 The German ammunitions company Krupp displayed a gun that weighed 120 tons and carried a 1-­ton projectile that could travel fifteen miles. The fair would also introduce many consumer products that remain familiar to us today: Juicy Fruit,

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Cream of Wheat, Quaker Oats, Aunt Jemima, Shredded Wheat, Cracker Jack (not so named until 1896), and Pabst Blue Ribbon. In addition to these impressive stunts and commercial endeavors, the fair also pursued diplomatic and intellectual ambitions, especially through the associated congresses. Organized by the fair’s World’s Congress Auxiliary, these events met throughout the summer at the newly constructed Art Institute on downtown Chicago’s lakefront (just a few miles north of the fair). Over the course of 224 congresses and 1,283 sessions, at least 4,800 speakers gave 6,000 addresses to more than 700,000 people in attendance. Rossiter Johnson called the World’s Parliament of Religion, which met for sixteen days in September, “the crowning event of the World’s Congresses of 1893.”13 Women were included in these grand ambitions, and they were visible amid the civic fanfare of the fair’s opening. Certainly, they helped populate the audience for the dedication. Benjamin C. Truman noted the “bright bonnets of the women” that dotted the assembled crowd. Men and women alike “climbed and dangled in dangerous and exposed positions” to catch a glimpse of this grand spectacle.14 But women were also visible in the leadership of the fair. The platform party consisted primarily of men—­President Cleveland, the leaders of the fair, and the visiting Duke of Veragua—­but it also included two notable women, the Duchess of Veragua and Bertha Palmer, the president of the fair’s Board of Lady Managers (BLM).15 The ceremonies opened with music and a prayer, followed by William A. Croffut’s poem, “The Prophecy,” which was read by a woman, Miss Jesse Couthoui. In his dedication speech, the fair’s director general, Thomas Davis, gave credit for the fair to three bodies: the commission, the directory, and the BLM. In his litany of gratitude, he offered praise “to the women of Chicago and our great land, whose prompt, spontaneous, and enthusiastic co-­operation in our great work turned the eyes of the world toward the Exposition as toward the new Star of the East—­an inspiration for womanhood everywhere—­we extend our cordial and unstinted recognition.”16 Following the official dedication ceremony, as the crowd dispersed throughout the fairgrounds, the Woman’s Building put on a spectacle of its own. The Chicago Tribune noted that the musical program there, both choral and instrumental, performed works by female composers, commissioned by the BLM. Ida Hultin opened the ceremony with a prayer, Flora Willkinson read an ode, and Bertha Palmer delivered a dedicatory address, followed by short remarks from women representing various countries: Mme. Mariotti (Italy), Mrs. Bedford Fenwick (England), Lady Aberdeen (Scotland), Frau Professorin Kasetowsky (Germany), and

projecting women at the world’s columbian exposition    25

Mary A. Schahovskoy (Russia). Finally, Palmer drove the ceremonial last nail into the Woman’s Building in what the Tribune recalled as “a fetching, feminine fashion.”17 Women were included visibly, if not equally, in the fair’s opening ceremonies just as they had been throughout its planning. Women led the fair’s BLM, which was commissioned by Congress and sponsored the Woman’s Building and a wide range of women’s activities at the fair. The fair’s leaders, contemporary commentators, and later scholars have portrayed this inclusion of women as one of the fair’s great contributions. Bertha Palmer called it “unprecedented.” In her speech at the October 1892 dedication ceremonies, Palmer asserted that even the fair’s “magnificent material exhibit” would not “so vividly represent the great advance of modern thought as does the fact that man’s ‘silent partner’ has been invited by the Government to leave her retirement to assist in conducting a great national enterprise.”18 Drawing attention to the theme of the exposition, Palmer claimed that “even more important than the discovery of Columbus . . . is the fact that the General Government has just discovered woman.”19 Palmer’s interested position may not have spoken for all the fair’s leaders and visitors, but her bold statement signals what a significant advance the fair meant for women. Later scholars have tended to echo Palmer’s sentiment. Sund calls the fair “a watershed event for U.S. women,” and Gullett applauds how the fair “proved to be a defining experience for the development of [women’s] political consciousness.”20 With this female leadership, the fair captured and projected the great energy of the moment around women’s changing status. The WCE is an apt place to study women’s evolving discourses of citizenship, as it both brought together unprecedented numbers of women and projected the values of the Gilded Age. Discourses of citizenship are historically situated and shaped by their contexts, and no event captures the Gilded Age as compellingly as the WCE. Although the fair promised to represent the United States to the world at its quadricentennial, I suggest that the fair was neither an accurate representation of its world nor a deceptive illusion; in what follows, I suggest instead that the fair was a multivocal projection of the circulating discourses of the Gilded Age. As a projection, the fair magnified and amplified the discourses on display in Jackson Park that summer. The fair itself was not a disinterested canvas; instead, the shape and structure of the fair, its leadership, its committees, its finances, and related elements defined which messages would be displayed and projected. As such, this chapter recovers the history of the fair itself, especially women’s involvement

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in leadership and planning, as a way to consider how the structure of the fair itself enabled certain performances of citizenship. In the remainder of the chapter, I first argue for treating the fair not as a representation or illusion but as a projection of Gilded Age discourses. Second, I recover the history of women’s organizing for the fair, including the tensions and exclusions that haunted their work, which facilitated the fair’s multivocal projection of women’s citizenship. Third, I articulate the methodological commitments that guide the book’s analytical chapters.

WCE as Projection By nearly any measure—­attendance, finances, geographical space, novelty—­ the World’s Columbian Exposition was a significant cultural event that drew the attention of Americans and foreigners alike. Both contemporary writers and later scholars have struggled, however, to make sense of an event that was so big, multifaceted, and ultimately, ephemeral. On the one hand, it exemplified the promise, the enthusiasm, and the excesses of 1893 America; it was the perfect symbolic representation of its era. On the other hand, it proved remarkably out of touch with life outside the gates. Just days after the fair opened, as visitors strolled its grounds and admired its opulence, the nation slipped into what would become the Panic of 1893. While ordinary Americans saved up the $55 that a week at the fair might cost them, factories and banks around the nation shut their doors.21 Thus the fair can also be read as an illusion masking the painful realities of life in the United States.22 The men and women who saw the fair firsthand found it vexing. Before the gates even opened, one astute observer noted that for many people, “the Fair seems as incomprehensible as the Millennium. A great phantom design, floating behind a mist of misgiving—­magnificent if ever achieved.”23 The dizzying number of photo books, guidebooks, and “histories” published during the fair tended to promote the fair’s surreal qualities. They reveled in its size, scope, and grandeur. As Joan E. Draper explains, the authors of these books valued “the Fair’s cosmopolitanism, illusionism, and idealism. Terms like ‘White City,’ ‘Celestial City,’ ‘Vanishing City,’ and ‘fairyland’ abound in their writings. They portrayed the Exposition as an ephemeral spiritual realm, a fleeting magic kingdom, standing apart from and in stark contrast to the real Chicago, that threatening and dispiriting ‘Black City’ seven miles to the north.”24 These descriptions of the fair treated it as an illusion, or fantasy, into which visitors could escape their unpleasant lives outside the gates.

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The fair, according to this view, obscured those very realities from which visitors escaped. Other visitors, however, understood the fair as a great representation of contemporary life. Anna Oldfield Wiggs sympathized with those who were overwhelmed and mystified in trying to make sense of the fair, and she suggested that they view the fair as “a great national telescope, through which we can catch a glimpse of every phase of our beautiful sphere; where . . . we can study the effects of the world’s greatest genius, and the attainments of her most fertile brains; where every nook will contain some creation of beauty, wonder, power or skill; where we can gather ideas bearing fruitful significance in subsequent years.”25 Wiggs anticipated just how dizzying the fair would be for the average visitor. But with the metaphor of the telescope, she suggested that visitors to the fair would get a scientific and magnified glimpse of beauty and intellectual advances. For Wiggs, then, the fair conducted reality; it allowed visitors a more encompassing and magnified view of their world than they would otherwise be able to access. Both of these frames—­the fair as illusion and reality—­have persisted in subsequent descriptions of it. Because the buildings and exhibits were simultaneously so impressive and so temporary, it has been easy to see the fair as a momentary illusion. Reid Badger takes exactly this approach, noting, “The great buildings were a facade, a magnificent stage prop, set in a landscape of fantasy in which the economic, political, racial, and sexual conflicts of the time had no place.”26 The fair was an early prototype of the amusement park—­and Kasson has shown its influence on the development of Coney Island—­so it is possible to read it the way Jean Baudrillard reads Disneyland, as a stage in the process of simulacra.27 Badger, along with Alan Trachtenberg, also treats the fair as an emblem of its era. Trachtenberg calls the fair “a fitting conclusion of an age” and shows how it exemplified all the characteristics he identifies in the Gilded Age—­the “incorporation of America,” mechanization (the development of machines and the transfer of skills from workers to machines), the struggle between labor and capital, and westward expansion.28 Badger studies the fair as “a representative cultural event” and examines it for the light it can “shed upon the overall psychological or emotional condition of American society in the 1890s.”29 He concludes that the fair “was of far greater significance as a reflector of the general culture than as an influence upon it.”30 In particular, it reflected “the confusing variety and conflicting cultural patterns that characterized the period,” and it “mirrored the conflicts and self-­doubt within the culture.”31 Likewise, Gail Bederman takes the fair as an exemplar of the Gilded Age

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ideologies—­white masculinity, millennialism, progress, and civilization—­she finds troubling. For her, the fair exemplified that era’s millennialism, along with its attendant imperialism. The fair’s planners set out “to demonstrate American civilization’s astonishing progress toward human perfection.”32 Some scholars have treated the fair not simply as a reflective symbol of the era but as a world-­making event, broadly influential in many areas of late nineteenth-­and early twentieth-­century culture. David F. Burg, for instance, traces the exposition’s influence on architecture, city planning, sculpture, painting, intellectual movements, religion, and many other spheres. Dismissing fears, like those of Louis Sullivan, that the fair’s celebrated neoclassical style would inhibit architectural innovation, Burg instead shows how the fair’s unity of design inspired the City Beautiful movement and efforts toward city planning more generally.33 It also inspired Daniel Burnham’s plan for Chicago, which he completed in 1909. If the fair influenced subsequent events, and if it both reflected reality and created illusions, we must recognize that the fair was rhetorical; that is, it presented a persuasive message that intervened in the popular conversations of its era. This multivocal event, I maintain, projected the circulating discourses of its day. The fair did not simply reflect the broader reality of the Gilded Age, nor did it obscure the vital truths of that era; instead, it projected ideas, anxieties, and conflicts circulating in 1893. In choosing the metaphor of the projection, I am suggesting that the fair took some source material—­in its case, the ideas, ideals, discourses, anxieties, and hopes—­of its era and magnified them, making them accessible to a watching and listening world. But as with a microphone, megaphone, overhead, or LCD projector, the fair’s projection was imprecise. As it magnified its source material, it also refracted, distorted, and skewed it. In doing so, it created something new, and that something new was both untouchable and ephemeral. Like the Mercator projection, the fair took something too big to visualize—­four hundred years of progress in the New World—­and simplified it into a visualization that visitors could process and consume. But it also exaggerated some elements while minimizing others. Neither a faithful reflection of reality nor an escapist illusion, the fair was instead an optimistic fantasy of what its planners, exhibitors, visitors, and commentators hoped their world could be, haunted by their fears of what their world also could be. Planners and promoters stubbornly insisted that the fair showcased the “real,” but it was always an unabashedly idealized reality: the best in machinery, transportation, art, and all the other domains on display. Even the fair’s Midway, its controversial “bazaar of all nations,” presented fantasied versions of the various cultures on display. The fair was

projecting women at the world’s columbian exposition    29

neither reality nor illusion but a sometimes optimistic, sometimes distorted, sometimes unfocused projection of what its world could be. The fair projected the circulating discourses of its Gilded Age context. That era’s fascination with technology, machinery, and transportation was projected in the fair’s material displays—­or “object lessons”—­in such buildings as those devoted to manufactures and liberal arts, electricity, and transportation. The era was also captivated by westernization—­the movement of the U.S. population westward, and the character such pioneering indicated, especially through violent triumphs over native peoples. The fair projected westernization through its celebration of Chicago as a gateway to the frontier and also as a city that had demonstrated American mettle in rising up from the ashes of its fire. The fair also projected its era’s complicated discourses around race and class—­the optimism of white supremacy and U.S. imperialism and the anxiety of immigration, African American uplift, and labor unrest. These discourses were especially evident in the fair’s Midway Plaisance, a display of ethnic groups from around the world that relied on the logic of evolutionary progress to posit white Americans as the height of social and biological progress. Through its multivocality—­its exhibits, speeches, newspapers, buildings, and landscape—­the fair projected these and other burgeoning discourses of the Gilded Age. It did so only for six months. Planners had always intended for the fair to be ephemeral, and no one had any illusions that it could last. The buildings, which were made of iron and steel frames covered with plaster-­like staff that was painted white, came down quickly at the end of the fair’s six-­month run. Their parts were sold to repay the fair’s debts, and the land they stood on was returned to the park commission, which had only loaned it to the exposition.34 As Trachtenberg explains, “insubstantiality” was “the very essence of White City unity: forms without substance.”35 He notes, “For a summer’s moment, White City had seemed the fruition of a nation, a culture, a whole society: the celestial city of man set upon a hill for all the world to behold.”36 By design, it lasted for only that summer. It showed Americans and visitors from around the world a promise of what their society could be, but just like any projection, it faded away in the morning’s light.

Projecting Women Among the many discourses in which it participated, the WCE projected circulating ideas about women’s changing status and role. To say as much is

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not to say that the fair projected a singular or unified vision of women in the Gilded Age or even that the discourses circulating about women’s changing role and status could be considered “dominant discourses.” Instead, as the following narrative will indicate, women jockeyed for power and influence, and they espoused competing goals and ideologies as they did so. They were rarely harmonious, like-­minded, or organized. The women who participated in leadership of the fair formed a multivocal chorus both reifying and resisting the dominant discourses of the fair and of the era. Through their work, they shaped the projections of women’s citizenship that would emanate from the fair. Their leadership itself was an exercise in self-­governance as they worked collaboratively to plan women’s participation in the White City, and the results of their work—­including the events they planned, the exhibits they hosted, and the compromises they made—­both limited and enabled women’s performances of citizenship at the WCE. Understanding women’s practices of citizenship at the fair, then, begins with recovering the organizations and personalities who planned the fair. Much of the previous scholarship on the women at the fair has tried to situate its female leaders as either purveyors of dominant discourses—­including those that were racist and classist—­or opponents to those dominant discourses. On the one hand, as agents of the fair’s official leadership, the Board of Lady Managers adopted and espoused its dominant discourses, including those of progress, civilization, and white masculinity. Other women’s groups, on the other hand, and even the BLM to a certain extent, often found themselves at odds with the mainstream leadership structure and these dominant discourses, so they became a venue and an outlet for resistive discourses. Laura Behling, for instance, notes how the (white) women who organized the World’s Congress of Representative Women situated three black women on that program as “exhibits.”37 Other scholarship, however, has recognized the resistive potential of women’s spaces at the fair. Borrowing Michel Foucault’s concept of “heterotopia,” Andrew Wood’s analysis of the fair’s Woman’s Building and Sarah Wadsworth and Wayne A. Wiegand’s analysis of the library within the Woman’s Building both treat those sites as heterotopias, or countersites of “crisis or deviance.”38 A heterotopia, Wadsworth and Wiegand explain, has a physical location, but it is simultaneously outside of place. Treating the Woman’s Building as a heterotopia allows them to see how it “reflected a version of the surrounding culture that was both ‘real’ (and pragmatic) and ‘unreal,’ or idealized. Applying this theoretical construct helps separate the image from the underlying reality and reveal distortions and inversions in order to interpret the actual conditions this ‘other

projecting women at the world’s columbian exposition    31

space’ reflects.”39 For Wood, seeing the Woman’s Building as a heterotopia shows how their activism was managed and contained by the fair’s dominant forces. In the Woman’s Building heterotopia, women were allowed to perform resistance to the male-­dominated fair, but only in contained ways that could not threaten the fair’s power structure. Sidestepping the question of how real or illusory women’s resistance was, these analyses still point to their collective multivocality. Women and their organizations at the fair projected a cacophony of visions for gender in the Gilded Age’s changing social order. Incorporating Women Since the outset of the fair’s planning, women strategized and argued for their inclusion at the highest levels of the fair’s leadership. Their overtures to previous fairs and expositions had been ignored and spurned. Their lobbying had won them only modest inclusion in the last U.S. fair of this magnitude, the Centennial Exposition held in Philadelphia in 1876. There, they had been promised space for an exhibit in the fair’s Main Building, only to have that promise reneged upon and substituted with a Woman’s Pavilion that the Women’s Centennial Committee would have to fund themselves (which they did).40 Later, women—­specifically suffrage organizers—­were barred from speaking at the Fourth of July ceremony.41 Suffragists staged a protest of both their narrow exclusion from the event as well as their larger exclusion from the social and political equality that the centennial celebrated. At the official ceremony at Independence Hall, following the reading of the Declaration of Independence, Susan B. Anthony rose from the crowd and presented a copy of Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States to acting U.S. vice president Thomas Ferry. She and collaborators including Matilda Joslyn Gage and Phoebe Couzins distributed more copies throughout the assembled crowd and recessed from the hall. Outside, Anthony read the document aloud to an informally gathered crowd.42 Having learned from such previous expositions, women started organizing proactively in advance of what would become the World’s Columbian Exposition. Planning for the fair began diffusely and centralized as the process matured, and women’s involvement followed suit. Origin stories for the WCE vary, but many begin with a Dr. Carlos W. Zaremba, who by 1882 had begun circulating the idea of an exposition to celebrate the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus’s landing in the New World.43 In June 1884, he invited foreign diplomats in Washington to a conference that would consider holding a fourth centenary celebration in Mexico. As he began to circulate

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his idea more and more widely, including collaborating with members of Congress, Zaremba saw an article in a Chicago newspaper suggesting that such a World’s Fair be held in Chicago. Persuaded to that idea, Zaremba applied for and was granted license from the secretary of state to organize the Chicago Columbian Centenary World’s Fair and Exposition Company in November 1885.44 Chicago business leaders were slow to get involved, but in 1888, the Iroquois Club, consisting of influential Chicagoans, endorsed a resolution in favor of hosting the fair, and in 1889, the city council instructed the mayor to organize a committee of 100 citizens (later expanded to 250 citizens), authorized to raise money for the exposition. Other efforts were afoot around the country. Also in 1882, the Baltimore Sun had called for an international exposition to celebrate the discovery of America.45 In the early 1880s, a Dr. A. W. Harlan also started organizing in Chicago. At the same time, Alexander D. Anderson started promoting an exhibition to be held in Washington. And in 1886, “a Board of Promotion was organized in New England.”46 By the late 1880s, numerous cities would seek congressional backing to host an exposition in honor of Columbus’s landing in the New World. St. Louis; Washington, DC; and New York vied to host the fair, and New York especially would compete aggressively with Chicago until and even after the congressional decision was made.47 Congress began its consideration in January 1890, and it soon chose Chicago as the official location for the fair. Chicago won this honor for a number of reasons, including its central location in the growing republic, its place at the hub of the nation’s rail system, and its character and mettle, proven in its rebuilding from the 1871 fire. Chicago occupied the border space between the supposedly civilized East and uncivilized West, and it simultaneously had enough infrastructure to support the fair but also enough open space upon which to build the fair. The city saw 850 trains arrive and depart daily on the thirty-eight railroad lines terminating there, alongside the cargo ships whose net tonnage made Chicago the nation’s second-­largest port. This “Phoenix City” had arisen from the ashes of its fire to not only rebuild its infrastructure but grow dramatically—­twice as fast as the nation between 1870 and 1890, fast enough to surpass Philadelphia as the nation’s second-­largest city.48 While these cities and their boosters competed with each other for the honor to host the fair, women lobbied and organized to find their own place within whatever fair resulted. In Chicago, women organized as early as 1889, months before Congress awarded the fair to that city. In August, Myra Bradwell and Emma R. Wallace lobbied the newly formed committee of Chicago men to create a women’s auxiliary to their committee.49 They held

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a mass meeting in October of that year, where the two thousand women in attendance made their case for women’s participation. Once formed, the Women’s Department, or Auxiliary Executive Committee, advocated for a Woman’s Pavilion, envisioned a congress for promoting women’s charitable work, and worked to sell shares of stock in the fair.50 Other Chicago women formed a competing organization—­the Queen Isabella Association—­that same year. This group, composed primarily of professional women interested in suffrage and equal rights, incorporated in August 1889 with two explicit goals: to ensure that a statue of Queen Isabella would stand on the fairgrounds and to build a Woman’s Pavilion.51 The Isabellas’ promotional materials explained their founding agenda: “The World’s Fair of 1892 will take place in the United States to commemorate the discovery of America. That the part taken by woman in this discovery shall be more widely known and properly appreciated, the QUEEN ISABELLA ASSOCIATION was duly incorporated.”52 They envisioned that the pavilion would include “a department for the exposition of articles commemorative of Isabella and the discovery of America; a representation of the Spanish Court in the time of Isabella and Ferdinand; and extensive social and business headquarters.”53 Sometimes they envisioned this pavilion more as a “club house” that would include social headquarters and a congress hall, which would host “Grand Conventions of women on the industrial and social problems of the day” along with “conferences of women, each in her own department of Art, Science, Literature, Trade or Occupation.”54 They set to work almost immediately preparing for the statue of Queen Isabella. By the end of 1889, they had commissioned Harriet Hosmer to sculpt the queen.55 These Chicago women also started building a network of women throughout the country and, like the Women’s Department (or Auxiliary), worked to assert themselves as the official women’s association of the fair. In their initial meetings, the Isabellas passed resolutions regarding women’s role at the fair, and they established an ambitious plan to raise money for the Isabella statue. Meeting at the Palmer House in Chicago in October 1890, they unanimously approved resolutions appealing to the commission to require each exhibit competing for awards to certify how many women were involved in its production and to guarantee that every woman who contributed to an award-­winning exhibit should receive a facsimile of that prize. They also asserted that, once formed, the Board of Lady Managers should learn about women’s potential for industrial participation and ascertain the proportion of contributions that women make to various industries. At their meeting a month later, the Isabellas adopted the position that the fair should

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not have a separate exhibit for women but that women’s work should be incorporated into the fair’s primary exhibits.56 To raise money, the Isabellas sold shares for $5 each. A share bought membership in the QIA as well as a stake in the statue itself, whose future the shareholders would determine at the end of the fair. To raise additional funds, the group held receptions and other events, and they sold copies of Eliza Allen Starr’s book about Queen Isabella.57 While women began this initial organizing in Chicago, others organized in Washington. Some Chicago women, including Myra Bradwell and Margaret Isabella Sandes, went to the capital, but national leaders, especially Susan B. Anthony, have been given much of the credit for the organizing there. Rachel Foster Avery did much to promote Anthony’s involvement, articulating this narrative especially after the evident success of the fair and women’s participation within. According to Avery’s retrospective narrative, “While it was suggested on every side that women must have a voice in the management of the World’s Fair in 1893, it remained for Susan B. Anthony to take the initiatory step which led to the creation of the Board of Lady Managers.”58 Avery described how Anthony sent invitations to prominent women to meet at Riggs House in 1889. Anthony did not attend this meeting, Avery explained, for fear that “her well-­known radical views might hinder the progress of affairs.” Instead, while the women gathered and elected leaders, Anthony “restlessly walked about her room in the hotel anxiously awaiting the result.” Subsequent meetings followed, and the group appointed a committee to pressure Congress, but when Anthony saw the World’s Fair Bill progressing in Congress before this committee had time to organize, she stepped in and drafted a petition. By her efforts, the petition accumulated more than a hundred signatures in a few days, including wives and daughters of Supreme Court justices, senators, representatives, and other powerful men. These petitions, according to Avery, led to the amendment “providing for the appointment of women on the Board.”59 While much of Avery’s narrative is unverifiable, she was correct to note that Anthony, along with dozens of other prominent men and women, signed a petition to name women to the exposition’s governing committee.60 In January 1890, Senator Orville Hitchcock Platt read their petition into the congressional record.61 When Congress passed legislation awarding the fair to Chicago and creating the governing commission, that legislation also charged the commission with appointing a “Board of Lady Managers.” Johnson explains that Wil­liam M. Springer, a member of the House from Illinois, was the first to make such a proposal, and he wrote a clause to that effect as a member of the

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Quadro-­Centennial Committee of the House, which approved it.62 Weimann recounts how this provision was unceremoniously dropped and reinserted into the bill as it made its way through the two chambers, with few legislators noting its inclusion or exclusion.63 Ultimately, it made its way into the legislation that provided for a World’s Columbian Exposition. Section 6 of the World’s Fair Bill explicitly authorized the commission to appoint a Board of Lady Managers, “of such number and to perform such duties as may be prescribed by said Commission. Said Board may 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.”64 Originally authorized with fairly vague and limited duties, the Board of Lady Managers would clarify and expand its duties once it had been constituted.65 Some women celebrated the creation of this Board of Lady Managers; as Nancy Houston Banks noted at the time, “The creation by National legislation of a legal body composed of women was an unprecedented fact, which necessarily attracted universal attention.”66 Indeed, these women were charged with an unprecedented level of official civic responsibility. Anthony and her activist colleagues, however, had been pressing for women’s appointment to the National Commission itself, so this separate structure did little to satisfy their desire for women’s inclusion in WCE leadership.67 When it came time for the commission to appoint the Board of Lady Managers, both the Isabellas and the Women’s Department (or Auxiliary) jockeyed to win seats.68 The Isabellas advocated for a national board, and “the Auxiliary argued from their more narrow boundaries that they were active, competent citizens with experience of community service.”69 The commission tried to satisfy both groups. They appointed a Board of Lady Managers that roughly mimicked their own structure: two women from each state and territory, including DC, plus eight at-­large members. Commissioners from each of the states, territories, and DC appointed the women to represent their jurisdictions, and Commission President Thomas Palmer appointed nine additional delegates from Chicago. As leaders of the women’s factions jockeyed for those positions, Palmer initially announced that he would take an impartial stance by appointing three from the Woman’s Auxiliary, three from the QIA, and three from outside these organizations.70 The Isabellas reported being pleased with this arrangement—­they had only asked for five representatives of the nine—­but the Woman’s Auxiliary was disappointed because it had wanted all nine positions originally and had been willing to settle for seven. When the same newspaper announced Palmer’s appointments just two weeks later, it also reported that both organizations were

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dissatisfied. The Isabellas received only one appointment, and the Woman’s Auxiliary thought “the appointments were not arranged satisfactorily.”71 The newspaper profiled the nine Chicago women who had been appointed to the board, revealing them to be a diverse group in terms of accomplishments. Myra Bradwell, for instance, was a lawyer who had fought for married women’s right to be admitted to the bar; Matilda B. Carse, a widow, did charitable work, organized for temperance, and ran a woman’s publication business; Dickinson, the only Isabella appointed, was a practicing physician, a member of numerous associations, and a suffragist; and Mrs. M. R. M. Wallace had served as president of the Woman’s Auxiliary and president of the Illinois Industrial School for Girls and, although she was not a suffragist, still expressed interest in woman’s progress.72 The paper provided little background about Bertha Palmer (no relation to Thomas Palmer). One of the nine appointed to the board, Palmer would soon become its president and ultimately the most visible advocate for women’s participation in the fair.

Women’s Work Both the women who won these official and unofficial roles in relation to the WCE as well as contemporary commentators recognized the significance of these assignments and expressed great optimism for the work that women could achieve via the fair. In particular, the women engaged in this work, along with the newspapers covering it, articulated grand visions for how their work might influence women’s progress. They depicted themselves as standing at a pivotal moment in human—­and specifically women’s—­history. For the Chicago Inter Ocean, that history went back four hundred years: “In 1492 a woman sent Columbus to discover a new world: the opening of the woman’s congress in this new continent 400 years after, is evidence that woman has since discovered herself. Mighty strides have led her onward and upward in the long march between the smiting of a tent nail into the temples of Sisera by Jael, the wife of Heber, and the driving of the last nail of the woman’s building by Mrs. Potter Palmer.”73 The Chicago Daily Tribune focused on more recent history, describing how “silver-­haired women who half a century ago sowed in a barren place the seed of a plant they named ‘Woman’s Progress’ watched it unfold its crowning flower in the friendly atmosphere of Chicago’s beautiful Art Palace yesterday. For the tears with which they had watered it, for the anxiety with which they had watched its growth through the passing years, the perfect

projecting women at the world’s columbian exposition    37

blossom, glowing with all the brilliant colors that civilized nations can boast their own, and fragrant with the unity of a world’s womanhood, amply repaid them.”74 In both cases, these newspapers estimated the tremendous persuasive force women’s participation in the fair was having on their social status more generally. They understood that through the fair, women could project a vision of their own capacity for civic leadership. Board of Lady Managers The newly constituted Board of Lady Managers set to work immediately. With most of the seats appointed over the summer of 1890, the full Board of Lady Managers assembled for its first official meeting in November of that year.75 The commission had granted the BLM wide latitude for organizing its own work, and the Lady Managers capitalized upon that latitude to expand their duties far beyond the award juries specified by Congress. At its November meeting, the board appointed a Committee on Organization, which recommended that the board (1) follow the same rules of order and procedure as the commission; (2) elect officers including a president, eight vice presidents, and a secretary; (3) appoint twelve standing committees to correspond to the departments outlined by the fair’s Committee on Classification; (4) appoint an Executive Committee of twenty-­six members; and (5) outline the work of state Boards of Lady Managers.76 This structure indicates that the Lady Managers envisioned an expansive role from the start. They saw their work as parallel to the (male) commission’s work, and they attempted to mimic the commission wherever possible—­in the procedures that would guide their business as well as the committees that would shape their work. Their work thus projected a vision of gender roles that valued both sameness and separation. These women were organizationally distinct from the men, yet they attempted to mimic the men’s structure almost exactly. They projected a gendered order where men and women could work separately but according to the same principles and structures. From their earliest deliberations, beginning at that first meeting in November 1890, the Lady Managers debated whether or not to sponsor a separate exhibit for women’s interests and contributions. Although they decided they wanted a separate Woman’s Building, they quickly decided that such a building should not house special exhibits of women’s work. It would exist for administrative purposes only. According to Rossiter Johnson, the Lady Managers had a threefold justification: first, women’s work should be exhibited alongside men’s work for proper comparison and judgment;

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second, women often collaborate with men, and their contributions to shared work cannot be extrapolated; and third, some exhibits would require specialized facilities—­such as the dairy—­and the Board of Lady Managers was not equipped to re-­create all these facilities.77 “For these reasons,” he explained, “a building for separate exhibits by women was, almost from the first, decided to be undesirable.”78 By the time Bertha Palmer appealed to the directory on behalf of the BLM, however, she was beginning to suggest that a Woman’s Building might exhibit women’s work. On December 8, 1890, Palmer wrote to Gage, enclosing the resolution recently passed by the BLM, and she explained that the BLM recommended erecting a Woman’s Building, “in which shall be placed special exhibits of woman’s work, which, on account of their rare merit and value, the exhibitors would prefer to have placed under the special care and custody of the ladies.”79 The building, she went on to explain, could also be used as the BLM’s headquarters and for other purposes that body deemed appropriate. Ultimately, so that the WB would not be devoted to administration exclusively, “it was thought best, therefore, to gather in its beautiful Gallery of Honor an attractive historical exhibit showing the high rank that had been attained in art, science, literature, and industry by exceptional women in all parts of the world during the four centuries of the Columbian era, and also the diversified achievements of the women of our own day with the view of showing the great change in their relation to practical affairs and the marked increase in their usefulness.”80 Despite the Lady Managers’ clear intentions to exhibit women’s work alongside men’s, the Woman’s Building became principally a separate exhibit of women’s work. Regardless of the Lady Managers’ intentions, the Woman’s Building came to project women’s separateness and difference from men. The board worked diligently to exhibit women’s work, whether alongside men’s work or separately in the Woman’s Building. These exhibits would become one of the most important ways the fair would project competing ideas about the progress, roles, and status of women. The Lady Managers aspired to gather women’s work from a wide variety of spheres, not just “patchwork quilts, wax flowers, preserved fruits and all sorts of needlework,” in Palmer’s words. She explained, “Not that I hold these things in contempt; far from it; but this will be a time and place for women to show their right to be considered equal to men in many fields where before they have hardly found recognition. And I feel great confidence in the success of all that women shall undertake at the World’s Fair.’”81 More than just exhibiting women’s material work, the BLM also aimed to compile data about women’s

projecting women at the world’s columbian exposition    39

accomplishments in a wide variety of spheres, including manufactures, arts, and sciences. Nancy Houston Banks explained, “Enough has been learned to prove the marvellous [sic] increase of the branches in which woman’s labor is employed, and to indicate the legal right of women to representation upon almost all committees.”82 To this end, the BLM issued a circular letter to state boards and commissions seeking statistics about women’s work. According to Johnson, the Lady Managers made “a systematic effort . . . to secure information on all points touching the actual condition of women in business and industrial life, including their social, moral, mental, and physical well-­being, their rates of wages, hours of work, etc.”83 They asked foreign countries to put together exhibits of women’s progress and industry locally.84 Finally, they tried to gather comprehensive data about all of the women’s organizations operative at the time.85 The Lady Managers also considered the Woman’s Building itself one of their signature accomplishments.86 With $200,000 appropriated by the directory, the BLM solicited designs from female architects. Sophia Hayden, a young architect from Boston who had not designed a building previously, won the competition. Exemplifying the Beaux-Arts style that dominated the fair, Hayden’s building was two hundred by four hundred feet long. Inside, it featured a main central rotunda with a skylight ceiling. Stairways and hallways at the rotunda’s four corners led to smaller exhibition rooms on each floor. The second story also featured a colonnade, and the third story had roof gardens available to visitors.87 Inside, the Woman’s Building housed the work of more than thirteen thousand exhibitors, who displayed more than eighty thousand items.88 The building included an organization room, with more than fifty women’s societies represented.89 Its library included books written by women from around the world and covering a wide range of topics.90 Outside, the building featured statuary designed by Alice Rideout, a nineteen-­year-­old from San Francisco. She designed statues in three groups: Woman’s Virtues, Woman as the Genius of Civilization, and Woman’s Place in History.91 Next door, the Lady Managers sponsored a Children’s Building, which included a nursery where ten thousand children were cared for over the course of the fair.92 The Children’s Building also included a kitchen garden, a school of sloyd and clay modeling, a school for the deaf, a school for sewing, and a library. In nearby Hyde Park, they opened a women’s dormitory, which accommodated one thousand people at a time. Over the course of the fair, 12,210 people stayed there, allowing the Board of Lady Managers to pay back the dormitory’s costs and loans entirely.93 The Board of Lady Managers

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would also sponsor women’s participation in three forms of congresses—­the World’s Congress of Representative Women, the other congresses hosted by the World’s Congress Auxiliary, and the daily congresses in the Woman’s Building—­all of which are considered more fully in chapter 2. Work of Isabellas While the Board of Lady Managers had the official sanction as the planning committee for women’s participation in the fair, the Isabellas did not slink away quietly. Instead, they continued to raise money and plan their own events, and at least initially, they operated as if they could still influence women’s role in the fair. At the beginning of 1891, they were still promising to build “an International Club House, with Congress Hall for use of women on the Fair Grounds.” They enumerated three specific features of this building: a social headquarters, a congress hall for “Grand Conventions of women on the industrial and social problems of the day,” and conferences for women according to trades and professions.94 Specifically, they proposed “a series of World’s Women’s congresses between April and November of ’93, each congress to represent women workers in all professions,” and they sent out invitations to women around the world.95 The Isabellas also developed a sophisticated bureaucratic structure for their own organization as they tried to develop branches around the country. They anticipated a federated structure in which each congressional district would have a VP of the QIA, and that VP would be charged with recruiting more officers (congressional directors) for her district, sending quarterly reports of her work, and other assorted tasks. The congressional directors would then select a woman in each polling district to serve as an enrollment secretary, and those enrollment secretaries would find volunteers to serve as an Enrollment Committee. All these officers together would work to recruit more members, establish Isabella Study Clubs, and help raise money for the QIA’s work.96 Although this federated structure was never realized, its plan projected the Isabellas’ appropriation of bureaucracy and incorporation as organizational strategies. At the national level, the Isabellas also continued to organize their own trade and professional associations for women, such as an art department and a medical department within the QIA. Membership in the art department had rigorous standards. Membership was open to any artist whose work had been “received in the best exhibitions in this or other countries” or who had completed a three-­year course of serious study. The applicant had to

projecting women at the world’s columbian exposition    41

specify where her work had been exhibited and where she had studied and under which masters. Membership then cost $1 to the QIA and $1 to the art department specifically.97 By 1892, the Isabellas got the message that their work would not be welcome on the fairgrounds. They had applied for space to erect their statue and for a pavilion, but the grounds committee declined both requests. The Los Angeles Times announced, “The Queen Isabella Association, it was virtually decided officially this evening, is to be barred out of participation in the World’s Fair.”98 The Isabellas settled instead for a clubhouse and congress hall on the corner of Oglesby Avenue and Sixty-­First Street, just a few blocks from the fairgrounds. Its promotional materials described it as “an elegant six story structure of pressed brick, with stone trimmings,” and it adjoined the Isabella Hotel, which offered special rates to people attending the Isabellas’ congresses during the WCE.99 The Isabellas’ building featured a five-­hundred-­seat congress hall, and its promotional materials promised that the building would display Harriet Hosmer’s statue of Queen Isabella.100 Both the law department and the art department of the QIA would host congresses over the course of the summer, and there would also be a Congress of Study Clubs and a general Isabella Congress.101 Over the course of their work, the Isabellas counted among their ranks many prominent suffragists and other reformers. Their officers included Eliza Allen Starr, Ellen A. Martin, Catharine V. Waite, Frances Dickinson, and Corinne S. Brown, and one reception they hosted in 1891 promised to include such women as Isabella Beecher Hooker, Harriet Taylor Upton, Lillie Devereux Blake, Clara Colby, Ida C. Hultin, and May Wright Sewall, names that would have been abundantly familiar to activists and reformers in the 1890s. For all their star power in certain circles, the Isabellas would remain marginalized in the WCE’s leadership structure. Ultimately, the Isabellas were little more than a historical footnote as the Board of Lady Managers played the major role in managing women’s interests at the fair. Their story exemplifies the capacity of the fair’s leadership structure to project certain narratives and certain practices of citizenship at the expense of others.

Excluding Women The Isabellas were not the only women excluded from leadership of the fair. While the Board of Lady Managers espoused a message of inclusion, especially for women of all ideologies, by some accounts, they policed their

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boundaries carefully. Weimann has written at length about the fight between Phoebe Couzins, once an Isabella who served as the board’s first secretary, and Bertha Palmer, who ultimately had her fired and replaced.102 This hostility, including rumors that Couzins was sending out illegitimate letters under the board’s letterhead, prompted a resolution at the September 1891 meeting that ensured that if any Lady Manager “assisted or encouraged the sending out of literature derogatory to the board,” she would be expelled from the board.103 Some newspapers capitalized upon reports of “bickering” within the board, using those reports to exemplify women’s ill-­suitedness for this type of organizational work. The Milwaukee Journal, for instance, lamented the “sorry spectacle which the World’s fair women have made of themselves with their wrangling. True, it is not much worse than what is going on among the World’s fair men, but we all expected more of the women. We wanted them to set an example of harmony and so destroy that ancient belief that women in public positions can not get along together without quarreling—­and we’re sadly disappointed.”104 These stories, however, were relatively rare, and they did little to damage the board’s reputation or to undermine women’s work at the fair. More complicated were the political, ideological, and racial tensions the Lady Managers faced. The leaders of the BLM largely had not come from the ranks of the suffrage organizations, and they were not assuredly in favor of women’s suffrage. According to Trachtenberg, the “prevailing note” among Lady Managers “was domesticity, the unique, and uniquely virtuous, powers of women as mothers, homemakers, teachers, and cooks.”105 Yet suffragists attempted to convince the Lady Managers to promote their cause. In a September 1891 issue of the Woman’s Journal, for instance, Lucy Stone described how she and her associates, as well as Anna Howard Shaw and Susan B. Anthony, had been lobbying Bertha Palmer, Ellen Henrotin, and Mrs. J. M. Flower to include woman suffrage “or the political disabilities of woman” among the concerns they would feature in their exhibits. She trusted that the committee was considering these requests “in the friendliest spirit.” Bertha Palmer had greeted the suffragists warmly, by Stone’s estimation, and she had invited Stone to address the Lady Managers. This hospitality, she claimed, showed “not only the courtesy, but the sympathy of Mrs. Palmer with the movement for equal rights.”106 Stone may have overestimated Bertha Palmer’s disposition toward woman suffrage, but her reflections still indicate the efforts that suffragists put into winning sympathy from the Lady Managers. The board was less graceful in managing overtures from African American women. Those overtures came after African Americans were largely shut

projecting women at the world’s columbian exposition    43

out of the fair’s central leadership structure. As early as 1890, representatives of the National Convention of Colored Men and the Afro-­American Press association appealed for President Harrison to appoint an African American to the National Commission, but Harrison refused.107 African Americans continued to protest this exclusion, until finally, Hale G. Parker, a school principal from St. Louis, was appointed an alternate to the commission.108 Some African American leaders also advocated for a separate exhibit of African American works while others feared that a separate exhibit only mimicked and reinforced segregation. Their disagreement was rendered powerless, however, when the fair’s directory ruled against such an exhibit and instead encouraged blacks to submit their works to the fair’s main exhibits in all the various departments. In the end, very few exhibits by African Americans made it through that process.109 The Lady Managers were equally resistant to including African Americans on their board or featuring work by African Americans in their exhibit hall. In November 1890, a group of black clubwomen wrote a resolution asking the BLM for a separate black women’s exhibit. They also demanded that the BLM include a member with responsibility for overseeing these African American exhibits. The BLM was largely unsympathetic to these requests.110 A select few Lady Managers did speak up on behalf of African American women; the Indianapolis Freeman gave credit in particular to Mrs. John A. (Mary) Logan of Washington, DC; Helen C. Brayton of South Carolina; Mrs. J. B. Chase of Illinois; and Mrs. Ginty of Wisconsin.111 The paper also, however, explained that when one of these women, presumably Mary Logan, said she wanted to hear from black women, she “was told by the president [Bertha Palmer] that if she brought up the colored question, she would never be forgiven for it, as there was a bitterness against the colored people by the board.”112 As the BLM had refused an exhibit of African American women’s labor and skill, the Freeman advocated appealing to congress for an appropriation for such an exhibit. The issue of including an African American on the board proved even more contentious than the issue of exhibiting African American women’s work. Finally, by February 1893, the BLM had arrived at a compromise: it would not allow any black organizations to be represented, but Fannie Barrier Williams could assume a role with the BLM. She was first appointed as a secretary, and she would later be appointed to supervise the installation of exhibits.113 Ultimately, the Woman’s Building did contain a small “Afro-­American” exhibit, along with an exhibit called “Woman’s Work in Savagery,” which included arts and crafts from African, Polynesian, and Native American

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women.114 And seven African American women—­including Fannie Barrier Williams, Anna Julia Cooper, and Frances Harper—­would address the plenary sessions of the WCRW. These women constituted only a small fraction of the hundreds who addressed the congress, though it was significant that they all addressed the general congresses (and not the smaller department or report congresses). Giddings notes that the Lady Managers likely considered these particular women “safe”: Fannie Barrier Williams was a middle-­class clubwoman active in the arts, and Anna Julia Cooper was a graduate of Oberlin, for instance.115 Frustrated with their exclusion from the fair’s commission and the Board of Lady Managers, African American leaders found alternative ways to organize. The Lady Managers had justified their exclusion of black women on the grounds that the BLM only worked with national organizations, and black women had no national organization. In response, Hallie Quinn Brown urged the formation of the Colored Women’s League, which was established in June 1892 under the leadership of Mary Church Terrell.116 African American leaders also organized a protest of the fair itself. Frederick Loudin issued the challenge for African Americans to protest, and he offered to fund it. Ida B. Wells and Frederick Douglass collaborated to put out a pamphlet, and they invited participation from the black press.117 They printed a call in African American newspapers, soliciting financial support.118 Although they received significant criticism from other African American leaders, Wells and her collaborators published The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition and distributed twenty thousand copies on the fairgrounds. They also protested the fair’s “Colored People’s Day” or “Jubilee Day.” While Wells boycotted it, Douglass used his position as a speaker to illuminate and excoriate governing racial discourses. In contrast to this hostility from the fair’s governing boards, daily life on the fairgrounds proceeded with little evidence of overt discrimination against African American visitors or workers. As spectators, African Americans largely enjoyed the fair alongside people of all ethnicities and nationalities. Robert Rydell reports only one known instance of overt discrimination: a black woman was refused admission to the Kentucky pavilion’s entertainment program.119 But there were other, subtler forms of discrimination, such as racist cartoons in Harper’s Weekly, which depicted a black family attending the fair. The WCE also marked the premiere of the personified Aunt Jemima, performed by former slave Nancy Green.120 The reigning form of discrimination was the fair’s near-­complete failure to involve African Americans in the ranks of its leadership.

projecting women at the world’s columbian exposition    45

Although key African American activists may have won visibility at the WCE, and although African American visitors enjoyed the festivities, the Board of Lady Managers deserves little credit for facilitating that involvement. As committed as they were to ideological diversity, the Lady Managers still engaged in exclusionary tactics, most evident in their relationships with African Americans. As the Lady Managers navigated these relationships with Isabellas, suffragists, and African Americans, they projected raced, classed, and political ideologies. The contours of women’s organizing for the fair shaped the possibilities for women’s citizenship that could emerge through the WCE. The fair’s female leaders were appointed by Congress to do important civic work, and they engaged in collective self-­governance to prepare the fair’s microcosm of the New World. Their work throughout planning and mounting the fair performed citizenship and laid the groundwork for future practices of citizenship. From the moment that women started organizing for the fair in women’s groups, they made women’s citizenship just that—­women’s citizenship. They operated as women, they lobbied for inclusion as women, and their leadership would come on account of their sex. Anthony and others were disappointed when Congress commissioned a Board of Lady Managers because they had hoped women would be added to the fair’s National Commission. From that moment, women participated in planning for the fair as women, and their work was largely restricted to representing the interests of women. Women’s practices of citizenship were further shaped by the auxiliary women’s “victory” over the Isabellas; where the Isabellas were largely suffragists, the auxiliary women were not, and thus the suffrage platform was marginalized within the women’s fair work as other practices of citizenship were included. That the Isabellas drew so much attention to Queen Isabella also offered a compelling message about citizenship; they offered as a model a royal woman whose contribution to the New World was primarily financial. In celebrating her as a visionary and an entrepreneur, the Isabellas implied that these were valuable characteristics for female leaders. The Isabellas’ work to build a clubhouse made space for women to socialize and deliberate about both professional and political topics, suggesting all those activities were suitable and meritorious for women. Their complex federated structure mimicked the structure of both the federal bureaucracy and large membership organizations, implying that women were capable of the citizenship practices developed in both spheres. The Board of Lady Managers’ building—­the Woman’s Building—­made space for more activities among women, including exhibits of their professional, domestic, and artistic work; meetings

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among their organizations; and deliberations about topics of public import. Again, their lengthy public discussions about how to use the Woman’s Building spaces, along with its ultimate uses, shaped the practices of citizenship that were illuminated. Even the women’s exclusions had important implications for their practices of citizenship. Their attempts to curtail dissent—­as in the Phoebe Couzins case—­tried to project women’s fitness for citizenship. Their exclusion of African Americans guaranteed that practices of citizenship developed in African American communities would have a hard time finding a hearing. Women’s planning for the fair—­in all its messiness—­ shaped the practices of citizenship that emerged. The conflicts and disagreements made space for multiple practices of citizenship to emerge, but the practices of exclusion may have stifled some practices of citizenship.

Projecting Method Grappling with the fair as a case or text for analysis and treating it as a projection both have significant implications for my methods in the analytical chapters that follow. Entering the fair through its textual traces is nearly as dizzying as entering through its gates in 1893. There are histories and guidebooks and published proceedings and meeting minutes and maps and fare schedules and photos. Indeed, the multivocality and volume that made the fair such a compelling projection also make it a complicated site of inquiry. Given this character of the fair, I have arrived at a few important methodological commitments. First, I have embraced this multiplicity by engaging with dozens of texts. Each of the following analysis chapters takes up multiple texts, typically a dozen or more speeches, or a corpus of planning and promotional materials in the case of the deliberative democracy chapter. In approaching such voluminous discourse, I have traded breadth for depth. My analyses do not focus on any one speaker, her biography, or her preparation at length, worthy though those topics might be. For the reader, this pace might sometimes be overwhelming, but I suggest that it most appropriately mimics the experience of the fair in 1893. Fairgoers did not travel to Chicago to hear a single speaker or visit a single exhibit; instead, they immersed themselves in all these various discourses that circulated around them. Considering these volumes of speeches together, my analyses skim across multiple texts, looking for the interrelationships and overlaps and how they worked together to project ideas of women’s citizenship. I have treated the

projecting women at the world’s columbian exposition    47

various speeches as equal in status, an approach largely encouraged by the programs and proceedings. The proceedings for the daily congresses in the Woman’s Building consist simply of one speech after another, each with a title and a speaker name. None of the speeches are featured, and none of the speakers are given top billing. The program and proceedings for the World’s Congress of Representative Women allow for a bit more hierarchy, as some speeches were featured in general sessions and others in more specialized sessions, but among the dozens featured in each type of session, no speeches are featured above the others. In the proceedings, the speeches are arranged topically, with no respect to which type of session they were presented in. The programs and proceedings, in other words, encourage a reading strategy of equality—not singling out any headline speeches but instead treating the chorus of speeches together. Second, in studying this volume of women’s speeches, I have embraced the diversity of the women’s congresses. My analyses include speeches given by white and African American women, women from the United States and abroad, suffragists and nonsuffragists, accomplished speakers and novices. Indeed, one significant characteristic of the congresses was that they made space for women of various backgrounds to participate, and embracing that diversity means that I have spent a lot of time with speeches given by women with no special talent for speechwriting. These speeches are not noteworthy for their eloquence; they are noteworthy instead for their banality: these were the expressed sentiments of ordinary women, projected for a watching world. Third, in engaging this corpus of speeches, this project is more about curation than recovery. Although I set out to recover and authenticate previously unknown speeches delivered at these congresses, I found that work largely fruitless. I visited and accessed archives and papers collections, where I found important organizational documents and correspondence but no speaking texts. Of the hundreds of women who addressed these congresses, only a small minority (approximately a dozen) have preserved papers collections, and those women were the ones whose work we already know well—­Stanton, Anthony, Shaw, and other suffragists, primarily. Moreover, as I came to understand the fair as a projection, I grew less interested in speeches that only reached an immediate audience at the fair and more interested in the volumes of speeches that had circulated beyond the fair. Instead of combing archives for undiscovered speeches, I combed the hundreds of pages of published volumes for speeches that offered illuminating visions of women’s citizenship. I hope that I provide readers entry points into the overwhelming body of discourse produced in and around the fair.

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Fourth, I focus squarely on women’s practices of citizenship. I only address a few dozen of the hundreds of speeches women gave at the WCE. I arrived at these sets of speeches, and the ideas of citizenship they project, by reading carefully through the volumes of speeches from the women’s congresses and looking for commonalities. As I saw four themes—­deliberative democracy, racial uplift, organized womanhood, and economic participation—­recurring, I organized my analyses around those practices of citizenship. Thus I have focused on the speeches that articulate those practices, and I draw passages from these speeches that especially exemplify these practices. My analytical method, then, is driven by my questions about citizenship, and I put these texts in service of illuminating the diverse practices of citizenship circulating at the time. In doing so, I do not mean to suggest that these were the only practices of citizenship circulating or even that citizenship is the most interesting idea to emerge from these texts. The texts I have engaged, as well as the hundreds I have left behind, merit further investigation from scholars interested in citizenship and myriad other topics. This tight focus on women’s citizenship has also come at the expense of the remainder of the fair. I leave untouched men’s speeches, the commission and directory’s work in planning the fair, the architecture, the landscaping, the dozens of exhibit halls, the Midway, the concessions, the transportation, and dozens of other features of the fair that have proven interesting to other scholars and likely merit further attention. I have even ignored much of women’s work at the fair—­their paintings, sculpture, statuary, model nursery, scientific kitchen, and library, for instance. There is already excellent scholarship on some of these efforts, and others deserve further consideration. I have not devoted sustained attention to the women’s work at the periphery of the fair, such as the events the Isabellas hosted in their clubhouse, Susan B. Anthony’s appearance at Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, or Ida B. Wells’s work on her pamphlet. I have opted to focus on women’s rhetorical participation in the fair’s congresses, only occasionally supplemented with their exhibits, because I have found their speeches to be rich repositories of practices of women’s citizenship, but I do not mean to suggest that these other elements of the fair would be any less profitable texts or cases for analysis.

Conclusion The WCE neither represented nor occluded the dominant discourses of its day—­ technological transformation, racial antagonism, labor unrest, and

projecting women at the world’s columbian exposition    49

the like—­but instead projected them. It took the circulating discourses of its era and magnified, refracted, and skewed them for a watching world. In doing so, the fair amplified the discourses of its era into something new. Most importantly for my purposes, the fair projected Gilded Age discourses of women’s citizenship. The ideological diversity and conflict that characterized women’s organizing carried through in their congresses. All the groups that jockeyed for leadership of the fair’s boards—­suffragists and nonsuffragists, reformers, philanthropists, African Americans—­would also appear in the congresses. The congresses allowed for this ideological diversity more than the fair’s governing boards could. After all, the purpose of the congresses was to survey the range of thought and arrive at better solutions to the world’s problems. The congresses expressed no expectation that participants would achieve unanimity, whereas these governing boards had to achieve at least a working consensus. Thus the ideological diversity evident in this planning process was magnified in the congresses. The congresses still failed to include all perspectives, as the next chapter will explain, but this history of the fair’s organizing should suggest the multivocality of its participants and leaders, which would be manifest in the congresses. The congresses are, in short, a useful place to seek and find the diversity of circulating thought in the Gilded Age. By most accounts, the World’s Columbian Exposition had a tremendous influence on women’s civic role. It demonstrated their capabilities to wider, and more skeptical, audiences, but it also inspired further organizing among activist women. Scott has claimed that the fair especially motivated the women’s club movement. She explains, “The year 1893 in some ways marked a turning point in the club movement. It was the year of the World’s Columbian Exposition. . . . For American women the fair provided an extraordinary opportunity to see themselves brought together in panoramic display.”121 She goes on to detail women’s participation in the fair and concludes that “there can be no doubt that the exposition was a major milestone in the history of American women’s associations.”122 The fair was influential for women’s activism beyond the narrow forms of club organizing that interest Scott. Giddings, who criticizes the WCE for its racial politics, still acknowledges the impact it had on women’s activism. She claims that the exposition “proved a boon to leaders such as Susan B. Anthony, whose reception there marked her new status as an exalted veteran to a young generation of reformers.”123 The exposition also marked a shift for white women’s organizations. National organizations experienced a tremendous boost from the notoriety gained at

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the fair and the organizing done among female leaders. Both the General Federation of Women’s Clubs and the National American Woman Suffrage Association grew more popular in the years following the fair, and as a result, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union gradually declined from its place as the dominant women’s organization. In the years to come, women’s clubs, advocacy organizations, and suffrage groups would all grow tremendously, due in no small part to women’s organizing at the fair and the important messages it projected about women’s capacity for civic leadership.

2

Deliberative Democracy

Together, the WCE’s fairgrounds and congresses promised a model civic order. The fairgrounds offered the immaculate “White City,” with the congresses situated as the deliberative arm of this municipal undertaking. The title “congresses” surely invoked the U.S. Congress, the primary deliberative body in this country, but also the idea of deliberative democracy more generally. Congress planners articulated grand ambitions for this deliberation: its participants would study contemporary problems and find their solutions. Ultimately, this work “would make of many peoples one truly human race; we would form of many states one mighty and harmonious brotherhood of nations, over whose bounteous fields, tilled by enlightened industry, guarded by established justice, and reaped by willing hands for happy homes, shall bend forever the bounteous skies of peace,”1 in organizer Charles Bonney’s words. Promoting themselves as the intellectual counterparts to the fair’s material displays, the congresses adopted the motto “Not things, but men.” They would, their leaders boasted, “provide a mental exhibit in Chicago as great as the material exhibit within the walls of the ‘White City.’”2 This analysis investigates women’s opportunities within this model civic order. Modifying “Not things, but men” with their own motto, “Not matter, but mind,” women devised, hosted, led, and joined an extensive series of congresses that summer. They had total control of the World’s Congress Auxiliary’s (WCA) Department of Woman’s Progress, sponsoring its week-­ long World’s Congress of Representative Women (WCRW), and they served on planning committees and spoke in nearly all the congresses sponsored by the WCA’s other departments on topics ranging from medicine to finance to religion. As the era’s enthusiasm for congresses extended beyond the WCA, so did women’s. The fair’s Board of Lady Managers sponsored its own series of daily congresses in their Woman’s Building on the fairgrounds, and the Queen Isabella Association held occasional congresses in its building adjacent to the fairground.

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These congresses afforded women an opportunity to experiment with novel performances of citizenship, and this chapter considers the one inherent in the structure and purpose of the congresses: deliberative democracy. I argue that at precisely this moment when women had been excluded from the dominant practice of aggregative democracy—­that is, democracy orchestrated through the ballot—­they experimented with an alternative practice of deliberative democracy. To make this argument, I first suggest that these congresses grew out of a developing tradition of public parliaments and congresses and that their leaders projected a vision of institutionalizing these congresses into the future. Then, second, I examine the contours of their experiment with deliberative democracy, showing how it (1) articulated educational and epistemic objectives over policy-­oriented ones; (2) privileged presentation, discussion, and greeting as the preferred rhetorical forms; (3) encouraged participants to bracket and unbracket their social identities; and (4) trusted a larger system of diffuse deliberation that would occur through dissemination and circulation. I suggest that this model made space for women to participate in self-­government because it privileged appropriately feminine public behaviors and gave participants a way to navigate their social identities as women. It also, however, privileged elite voices whose conservative orientation was fundamentally incapable of altering the status quo. Moreover, in practicing deliberation through a diffuse public sphere, this model could not guarantee women power to influence public opinion or policy. My analysis of these congresses attends to their published programs and associated planning and promotional documents. I focus on these programs and promotions not because they reflect what happened in these congresses—­though they might—­but because they projected a vision for deliberative democracy and specifically women’s deliberation. As these programs and promotions circulated beyond the persons who attended the congresses in Chicago, they set expectations for such congresses and also had the capacity to influence subsequent attempts at deliberative democracy. The primary promotional document for the WCRW, called the preliminary address, was a twenty-­five-­paragraph letter, signed by May Wright Sewall, Rachel Foster Avery, and their committee, which was originally published in September 1892 and reprinted numerous times through April 1893 and “was distributed in French and in English versions by tens of thousands—­not at random, but to carefully selected addresses in every civilized country.”3 It contained details about the content, form, and leadership of the congresses, along with requests for participation. The official Programme of the World’s

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Congress of Representative Women is fifty-­five pages long, including eight pages of orienting front matter, thirty-­eight pages of detailed schedules for the week’s activities, and another nine pages listing the women involved in all its organizing committees. The daily schedules include speakers and speech titles for general, report, and department congresses. Like the preliminary address, the program also enjoyed wide circulation: it was sent to newspapers, especially women’s papers, in advance of the events, and ten thousand copies of each of the program’s seven editions were distributed at the fair itself.4 The programs for the daily congresses in the Woman’s Building were developed and distributed monthly. Each is a three-­to four-­page pamphlet with a title page listing the organizing committee and subsequent pages naming a speaker and title for each day of the month, except for Sundays. Collectively, these documents advertised the congresses, but they also projected the shape, character, and potential of women’s public deliberation.

Building Deliberative Democracy Aggregative and deliberative democracy have been two of the most prominent answers to the basic questions of democratic legitimacy—­that is, How can the will of the people be known and translated into political practice? Aggregative democracy answers those questions with the vote. The will of the people can be made known through popular elections and through legislative votes. Legislative votes create laws that instantiate the will of the people. Although local differences in practice abound, the basic principles of aggregative democracy remain: voting aggregates the sum total of individual opinions, and the opinions that amass the most votes attain the force of law. Aggregative democracy tends toward both elitism and corruption, and deliberative democracy has emerged recurrently as an antidote to those failures. Never were the failures of aggregative democracy more evident than in the status of women in the late nineteenth century. In 1893, women were denied access to the franchise in all but select municipalities and the state of Wyoming. Moreover, in this age of party machine politics, aggregative democracy was at its most callous, a practice of politics widely understood to be too corrupt for women’s pure nature. Corrupt aggregative democracy pays little attention to the practice of “reasoning on the merits of legislative proposals,” instead reducing ideas and policies to units of currency, support for which can be bought, traded, and sold.5 In the second half of the nineteenth century, the party machines perfected these aggregation techniques,

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as Michael Schudson has captured in his vivid descriptions of polling places. Parties gave preprinted tickets to voters, often alongside payment for voting the party ticket, and voters were little more than cogs in these machine politics. Schudson summarizes, “Drink, dollars, and drama brought people to the polls, and, more than that, social connection, rarely anything more elevated.”6 Respectable women did not belong in the drunken, rowdy polling places, and they could not sell their influence the way the party machines demanded. Wherever it emerges, deliberative democracy offers a countering set of answers to the basic questions of democratic legitimacy. It promises that the will of the people can be known and translated into political practice through deliberative exchange among citizens. Bohman and Rehg explain it clearly when they say, “Broadly defined, deliberative democracy refers to the idea that legitimate lawmaking issues from the public deliberation of citizens.”7 Where aggregative democracy’s primary tool is the vote, deliberative democracy’s primary tool is deliberation. Where aggregative democracy makes the figure of the citizen the voter, deliberative democracy’s citizen is the rhetor. Deliberative democracy is no panacea, but it has won adherents for its capacity to introduce reason into politics and to correct for power imbalances evident in common practices of aggregative democracy. Deliberative democracy has persisted as an idea, developed, elaborated, and practiced in experiments across Western history—­from the Athenian polis through the New England town hall to contemporary social media. Gastil and Keith claim that deliberative democracy has developed in fits and starts, not a linear progression. “It might be more helpful,” they suggest, “to view it as a succession of experiments in different places on a continuum ranging from populist democracy to modest republicanism to elitist republicanism.”8 The founders codified elite democracy, according to Bessette, when they made congress, as a deliberating body, the linchpin of our nation’s democratic legitimacy. Voters could expect members of Congress to offer public reasons for their legislative decisions, and they could replace representatives whose reasons were insufficient. According to Gastil and Keith, the United States has subsequently oscillated between populist and representative democratic traditions, and they point to specific periods that have been characterized by each, counting the Gilded Age as one of the elitist periods. The degree of inclusion has only been one oscillating and evolving characteristic of deliberative democracy; theorists and practitioners have also contested its form, structure, and rhetorical character. Although Keith and Gastil conclude that deliberation reemerged “as an important cultural force” early in the twentieth century, its nineteenth-­century

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foundations are evident.9 Over the course of that century, ideas of deliberative democracy began to gesture outward to include ordinary citizens, making a turn toward what Gastil and Keith might call “modest republicanism” if not “populist democracy.” In 1882, John Stuart Mill published Considerations on Representative Government, in which he called for the representative legislature to get out of the business of administration and even authoring legislation and instead serve as a “Congress of Opinions,” an arena for producing discussion where all positions are represented and where superior reason prevails. Likewise, in this same era, Woodrow Wilson’s Congressional Government challenged Congress to make its deliberation more public and foster broad national discussion for the benefit of public opinion.10 In the early twentieth century, John Dewey, Alf Ross, and A. D. Lindsay started to articulate broadly public and democratic deliberation. These theorists, Gutmann and Thompson summarize, “not only included widespread deliberation as part of democracy, but saw it as a necessary condition of this form of government.”11 As a practice of democracy, deliberation has operated in gendered ways, with important implications for women. One line of research suggests that deliberation discourages women’s participation. Karpowitz and Mendelberg have observed that this disadvantage “affects everything from how long they speak, to the respect they are shown, to the content of what they say, to the influence they carry, to their sense of their own capacity, and to their power over group decisions.”12 Another line of research contends the opposite—­ with a caveat. To the extent that deliberative democracy is gendered female, and Polletta and Chen claim that it is, women participate at least in equal measure with men.13 Deliberative forums commonly have female leaders, and they tend to encourage stereotypically feminine modes of communication, such as emotional expression and empathetic listening, thus making these forums safe places for women to participate actively. Instead of women’s lacking participation, what concerns Polletta and Chen is that the feminizing of deliberation may decrease its public support (as has commonly happened with professions and spheres that become too feminine). Experiments in Deliberation Practitioners were promoting opportunities for deliberation in the decades leading up to the Columbian Exposition. At the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, more than one hundred professional, religious, and reform organizations met concurrently with the fair, and the 1889 exposition in Paris had

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a concurrent “series of intellectual and religious congresses.”14 In these same decades, women’s organizations experimented with their own congresses, not to be confused with the reform-­oriented conventions that women had been participating in since the 1830s. Whereas such reform conventions characteristically brought together like-­minded individuals to organize on behalf of a shared cause, the congresses that women would later develop focused on bringing women together without a common ambition. Sorosis called for such a public meeting in October 1873. Just five years after its founding, that organization proposed an opportunity for “bringing the representative women of the country together in a Woman’s Congress, that we may take into careful consideration the more important questions that affect our woman’s life.”15 Under the names of its officers—­Charlotte B. Wilbour, Romelia L. Clapp, Alice C. Fletcher, and others—­the club sent out a call to that effect. Four hundred women attended the first session of the three-­day event; men were not admitted until the evening. The Association for the Advancement of Women (AAW), under the leadership of Mary A. Livermore, grew out of that congress, and in Chicago in 1893, Julia Ward Howe reported on the annual congresses the association had conducted since 1873.16 Fifteen years later, the International Council of Women organized itself with a meeting in Washington, DC.17 It followed with a meeting at the Paris Exposition in 1889, and its leaders planned to convene in London in 1893, a plan that would later be superseded by the congresses at the Columbian Exposition. Although the ICW’s initial meeting was scheduled to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the Seneca Falls convention, and although its leaders came from the ranks of the major reform associations of the day, it did not assume an especially political or partisan agenda. Out of the ICW emerged a U.S.-­based National Council of Women, which Frances Willard served as president and Susan B. Anthony as vice president. When the group sent out its call for its 1891 meeting, the signatories to that call included Stanton, Clara Barton, Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, Kate Field, Jenny C. Croly, and Julia Holmes Smith—­a veritable “who’s who” of female activists in that era.18 Like the ICW, the NCW explicitly disclaimed any political agenda; the Chicago Tribune noted that “there is no cardinal test for membership laid down like woman suffrage or prohibition. Instead there is to be the fullest freedom of opinion and action.”19 The group aimed only “to create a bureau of information concerning the work of women and to support all movements, whether political or otherwise, which may be for the benefit of the sex.”20 It maintained this neutral stance at its 1891 meeting, where amid an expansive agenda, it began planning for the WCE. Participants there heard from both

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Bertha Palmer, about the Board of Lady Managers, and Julia Holmes Smith, about the Isabellas.21 Congresses Come to Chicago The congresses at the Columbian Exposition—­women’s, men’s, and mixed sex—­grew out of this developing tradition. In 1889, while the congresses at the Paris Exposition received significant fanfare, Charles Bonney began promoting the idea of holding congresses at Chicago’s fair. He penned an article in Statesman magazine, accompanied by supporting letters from six distinguished gentlemen, and he began receiving favorable attention.22 The fair’s directors endorsed his idea on October 30, 1890, forming the World’s Congress Auxiliary with Charles Bonney as president, Thomas B. Bryan as vice president, Lyman J. Gage as treasurer, and Benjamin Butterworth as secretary.23 The project received official sanction in the form of an act of Congress and a presidential proclamation. Invitations went forth to leaders from around the world, and in 1892, the Department of State gave it an official endorsement, instructing its diplomatic and consular officers “to invite the cordial and hearty coöperation of the governments to which they were accredited, and to use their best endeavors to procure such coöperation in the series of world’s congresses.”24 The World’s Congress Auxiliary immediately articulated broad ambitions for participatory self-­governance. Bonney announced that “the New Age has dawned,” in which “ignorance, misunderstanding, prejudice and animosity can be removed; and intelligence, charity, productive industry and happiness be promoted.”25 The congresses, he promised, would bring together leading figures from around the world to consider how to achieve these grand goals. In the congresses, men and women would take a scientific approach to the world’s problems, explaining the ones that had already been solved and directing resources toward the ones that remained unsolved. The “chief work” of the congresses would be “to review the achievements which have already been made . . . and sum up in each Congress the progress of the world . . . and to receive . . . suggestions of the practical means by which further progress may be made and the prosperity and peace of the world further announced.”26 The WCA developed an extensive bureaucratic structure that evidences its priorities. It divided into nineteen departments that suggest what its leaders considered the major topics of human interest at the time: woman’s progress; the public press; medicine and surgery; temperance; moral and social

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reform; commerce and finance; music; literature; education; engineering; art, architecture, and so on; government, law reform, political science, and so on; general department; science and philosophy; labor; religion, missions and church societies; Sunday rest; public health; and agriculture.27 Most of these departments sponsored multiple congresses, resulting in more than one hundred total. Although all the various congresses were free to attend, some were characterized as “general congresses” and tailored to a public audience, while “special congresses” featured “consideration of scientific, technical or special subjects, not suitable for such popular presentation.”28 All this planning resulted in congresses lasting nearly six months, from May 15 through October 31. According to the final Report of the President to the Board of Directors of the World’s Columbian Exposition, WCA Secretary Clarence E. Young enumerated that organizing the congresses had entailed 210 working committees of 1,600 local residents, plus more than 15,000 people on advisory councils. They had sent out more than 1,000,000 circular publications. Ultimately, they held 1,245 sessions featuring nearly 6,000 writers and speakers, with more than 700,000 people in attendance.29 The exposition’s directory expended nearly $300,000 in support of the congresses, and various committees raised another $25,000.30 They met at the brand new Art Institute of Chicago. Its building was under construction as World’s Congress Auxiliary leaders sought a site for their event, and they agreed to pay one-­third of the building’s construction cost in exchange for the exclusive rights to use it through the summer of 1893, with the understanding that it would become the property of the Art Institute at the conclusion of the fair.31 The building featured two large assembly rooms—­the Hall of Columbus and the Hall of Washington—­each of which seated three thousand persons. Around the perimeter of the building, on three separate floors, there were six committee rooms and thirty-­six halls, some of which could hold up to seven hundred people.32 Both the World’s Congress Auxiliary and its Woman’s Branch had offices on the main floor of the building, adjacent to the entrance hall. Even this remarkable building would prove “inadequate” to handle some of the crowds at the woman’s congress, the educational congress, and the World’s Parliament of Religions.33 Of the various congresses that took place all summer, the two marquee events were the World’s Congress of Representative Women and the World’s Parliament of Religions (WPR).34 Held in September, the WPR lasted three weeks, much longer than any other congress. According to Justin Nordstrom, more than seven thousand people attended.35 Christian sects dominated the event, even if there were obvious omissions.36 Yet it also attracted leaders

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of other major world religions, including Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism, thus achieving an unprecedented or at least unusual level of ecumenism.37 This diverse group of participants considered some of the most controversial topics of their day, including evolution and the Social Gospel. High-­profile Social Gospelers, such as Richard Ely, Lyman Abbott, and Washington Gladden, addressed the WPR with their radical proposals for social change through widespread application of the Christian gospel.38 The WPR hardly arrived at religious unity, nor did it even find consensus on these specific topics, but it received significant public attention simply for its diversity and the ideas that it raised. It remained one of the hallmarks of the congresses. Women’s Congresses Come to Chicago From the earliest stages of planning for the congresses, activist women clamored to be involved. Two sets of women emerged as leaders almost immediately. As Ellen Henrotin reported, she, Lucy J. Flower, and Mary H. Wilmarth petitioned Bertha Palmer for the fair’s Board of Lady Managers to hold a series of congresses.39 Palmer referred them on to the fair’s directory, and she made a request on their behalf that women be appointed to manage their own participation in the World’s Congress Auxiliary; the directory agreed, appointing a committee of women with Palmer as president and Henrotin as vice president. Palmer promoted the congresses when she went to Europe to boost the fair more generally, and Henrotin and others recruited in the United States.40 Henrotin did most of the organizational work for the Woman’s Branch, which involved overseeing the women’s committees for the various congresses. None of the congresses had mixed planning committees, but the “Congresses suitable for the participation of women” each had a separate women’s committee, which had “the right to meet and act separately or in joint conference with the committee of men.”41 This arrangement, Johnson explained, allowed for “a degree of freedom, independence and equality otherwise impossible.”42 Almost simultaneously, the leaders of the International and National Councils of Women started advocating to hold their next meeting in conjunction with the Columbian Exposition. They took Palmer up on her offer of headquarters for the group throughout the fair, and they decided to ask to hold a week-­long congress at the fair.43 They approached Bonney, who agreed that they could hold meetings in the congress building while still retaining control of those meetings. They asked for gratuitous use of two audience

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rooms and five committee rooms, day and evening, for one week. He gave them the least desirable week of the summer—­the very first week of congresses, before the fair was fully up and running.44 They accepted graciously. Their meeting, the World’s Congress of Representative Women, would ultimately evidence influence from both leadership structures—­the ICW/NCW and the Congress Auxiliary. May Wright Sewall and Rachel Foster Avery assumed the majority of the work in planning for that week, which took the title World’s Congress of Representative Women upon Bonney’s urging. Officially, Sewall was the chairman of the World’s Congress Auxiliary’s Department of Woman’s Progress and Avery was its secretary. Both women came from the ranks of the suffrage movement, and both were especially loyal to Anthony. Avery, who was from Pennsylvania, had been active in the National Woman Suffrage Association since 1879, serving as its corresponding secretary as well as corresponding secretary of the International and National Councils of Women. Sewall, from Indiana, cofounded the Indianapolis Equal Suffrage Society in 1878 and served as the chair of the executive committee of the National Woman Suffrage Association from 1882 to 1890.45 They were assisted by a committee that included Sarah Hackett Stevenson, Julia Holmes Smith, Mrs. John C. Coonley, Frances Willard, Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, and Mrs. William Thayer Brown. Their work amounted to a congress that spanned 6 days, included 76 sessions and 503 speakers, with 126 women’s organizations represented and 150,000 persons in attendance.46 Its participants came from more than a dozen foreign countries including most of Western Europe. Its roster of speakers included such distinguished women as Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, Sarah B. Cooper, Anna Howard Shaw, Julia Ward Howe, Kate Tupper Galpin, Anna Julia Cooper, Fannie Barrier Williams, and Antoinette Brown Blackwell. Ultimately, Henrotin reported that women participated in every congress except those concerned with architecture, engineering and electricity, some of the sciences, and real estate. (She did not take it lightly that women were excluded from the real estate congress, as she believed their influence in that sphere to be significant.) In the draft of her report on the Woman’s Branch of the World’s Congress Auxiliary, Henrotin accounted for women’s participation in many of the congresses, noting, for instance, that 36 of 230 speakers in the Congress on the Public Press were women, 15 of 452 speakers in the medical congresses were women, 52 of 192 speakers in the Temperance Congress were women, 11 of 135 speakers in the Congress of Commerce and Finance were women, 57 of 251 speakers in the Department of Literature were women, and so on. In some cases, such as geology, she noted the

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preponderance of female speakers due to women’s prominent role in the field. In other cases, she noted the difficulty of securing female speakers in fields such as art, where women were otherwise prominent. As work on the exposition proceeded, enthusiasm for the idea of congresses only multiplied, leading the Board of Lady Managers to plan yet another form of congresses. In September 1891, that group appointed a committee of seven, led by Mary Eagle and charged with arranging for congresses to be held in the Woman’s Building on the fairgrounds.47 The BLM devoted a room in the Woman’s Building to these congresses; located at the north end of the building’s second floor, this assembly room was equipped to accommodate up to fifteen hundred persons. Johnson described how the walls featured “portraits of many women of all countries distinguished in the past and in the present in the various lines of woman’s activity.”48 Eagle and her committee put together a series of daily congresses that met throughout the summer—­daily at three p.m. during the WCRW and at eleven a.m. for the remainder of the summer. In total, they held 147 sessions, typically featuring one or two speakers, amounting to 254 formal papers being read and 50 impromptu speeches being given. Their speakers came from twenty-­four nations and thirty-­five states and territories. Daily attendance averaged six hundred persons but sometimes swelled large enough to fill the room to capacity.49 Eagle boasted that “nearly all of the more prominent women who visited the Exposition took a leading part in these meetings,”50 and she explained that they addressed the range of “thought and activity in which the women of the whole civilized world are at present engaged.” She went on to list twenty-­one of those “departments” of thought and activity, including “scientific, hygienic, literary, artistic, domestic, economic, commercial, political, and patriotic.”51 The BLM also sponsored a series of ninety-­ one “practical addresses,” given between June 1 and October 30 at two p.m., also in the Woman’s Building assembly room. This “series of instructive talks, at stated times, by competent women, upon the particular exhibits in the Exposition”52 included presentations about education, philanthropy, sanitation, and dress and featured many familiar speakers, including Anthony, Shaw, and Abigail Scott Duniway. Congresses of the Future The women who planned these congresses treated them as one step in a longer progression of deliberative democracy. Their ultimate vision, as articulated by Avery and Sewall, was a permanent, established, women’s

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congress. Building on the work begun by Sorosis, and continuing in the WCRW, they envisioned their efforts culminating in what Avery described as “a grand International Congress of Women, composed of delegates from all civilized countries, sitting for a part of each year, considering all questions between nations, throwing the influence of a united womanhood in favor of better conditions for humanity, better educational opportunities for the world’s children . . . which shall lend its influence toward peace and the healing of the nations.”53 This council, according to Avery’s collaborator May Wright Sewall, would be “a republic of ideas. That is what a world’s council of women should be—­a republic of ideas.”54 Sewall hoped that they would form “a permanent international parliament of women . . . where all the great questions that concern humanity shall be discussed from the woman’s point of view.” Others articulated an even grander ambition: an integrated parliament of men and women. Charlotte Emerson Brown hoped that all this organization would lead to a world federation governed by men and women together. She invoked Alfred Lord Tennyson, When the war drums throb no longer, And the battle-­flags are furled In the parliament of men, The federation of the world.55 In this vision, their work in these congresses, and the fair more generally, set civilization on a trajectory toward total federation. That federation would be realized in a permanent parliament, which would be a great republic of ideas, where participants would deliberate about all the world’s problems.

Modeling Deliberative Democracy As these planners articulated a space for rhetorical exchange, where women would come together to consider the most pressing issues of the moment, their vision fit within the broad contours of deliberative democracy. Their congresses thus serve as a valuable historical test of the practice of deliberative democracy. Within the broad vision of public deliberation, they made specific choices about the form, structure, and rhetorical character of their event, so close attention to those features promises to illuminate their implications in the real-­world practice of public deliberation. Theorists and practitioners of deliberative democracy have questioned and contested its most

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basic characteristics, beginning with its purpose. At the very least, deliberation can have educational, epistemic, and legislative goals. The means of deliberation are even more varied, including both rational and passionate forms of speech that assume varying degrees of embodiment by their speakers and that envision varied paths of circulation and dissemination for their rhetorical products. Each of these models of deliberative democracy has implications for who gets to participate and what influence the deliberation can have. This chapter considers those characteristics through the case of the congresses in 1893. Treating the women’s congresses as both an experiment and a projection of the possibilities of deliberative democracy, I illuminate this specific practice of public deliberation with an eye to exploring its possibilities and limitations. Purpose Deliberative democracy can have, at the very least, educational, epistemic, and legislative objectives. Gastil and Keith highlight its educational functions historically when they attend to early experiments in deliberation, including Ford Hall, a forum established in Boston in 1908, which subtitled itself “A Demonstration in Adult Education.” They also point to a 1915 article in the Quarterly Journal of Public Speaking, “The Forum as Educative Agency,” that articulated the educational functions of the Chautauqua.56 More than just an educational function where speakers teach audiences, deliberation can also have an epistemic function, where new ideas are realized through the practice of deliberation itself. “The deliberative model,” according to Habermas, “is interested more in the epistemic function of discourse and negotiation than in rational choice or political ethos.” For Elster, these educational and epistemic functions of deliberation are sufficient. Working from John Stuart Mill and Carole Pateman, he concludes that “the goal of politics is the transformation and education of the participants,” which makes deliberation “an end in itself.”57 Others, even those who are sympathetic to the epistemic value of deliberation, see it working toward a larger objective, whether that be the formation of public opinion or policy. Rejecting treatments of public opinion as the aggregation of private opinions, Hauser claims that “the telos of public deliberation is the emergence of informed and reasoned public opinion.”58 The objective of deliberation can also be new policy. In a less epistemic formulation, participants arrive at the deliberative encounter with fully formed opinions, and through deliberative exchange, the soundest ideas are translated

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into new policies. In a more epistemic formulation, new ideas emerge through deliberation, but again, those ideas are translated into new policy. Habermas explains that deliberation privileges “the cooperative search of deliberating citizens for solutions to political problems” over the “preference aggregation” familiar to liberalism or the “collective self-­determination” of republicanism. As the congresses at the World’s Columbian Exposition navigated these various purposes for public deliberation, they articulated a bifurcated sense of purpose, split between the objectives of exhibition and problem solving. These two objectives had important roots in the different traditions out of which the congresses grew. On the one hand, growing out of the new enthusiasm for public congresses and parliaments, they promised to bring together leading thinkers to address the most pertinent issues of the day. On the other hand, growing out of the fair’s larger mission to demonstrate the progress of humanity in the last four hundred years, they aimed to display the intellectual components of that progress. This language of exhibition and display suggested educational and possibly epistemic objectives for the congresses. Speakers in the congresses would teach listeners about the progress of humanity; in compiling all their reports about this progress, the leaders of the congresses might also create new knowledge about the state of humanity. These two senses of purpose shaped women’s participation in the congresses as well. In the case of the WCRW, its ICW heritage brought the tradition of problem solving, and the setting of the fair introduced the assumptions of exposition. Previous ICW meetings had pursued open intellectual exchange among women, and the organization’s leaders expected the same in 1893. In an early letter to Charles Bonney, in May 1892, Sewall explained that ICW was proposing a congress that would “not exist for the promotion of any one object, but for the cultivation of a large mutual sympathy and intelligence among the advocates of different objects.”59 The congress, she implied, would address many different contemporary issues from a wide variety of viewpoints. In Bonney’s reply later that month, however, he showed his debt to the WCE’s exhibition tendencies. He suggested that the congress would provide “an occasion . . . in which a graphic presentation of the whole scope of woman’s advancement may be made under the most auspicious circumstances.”60 The two correspondents did not acknowledge any difference in purpose for the congress, but the difference is clear in retrospect: Sewall proposed an intellectual exchange among leading thinkers of the day, and Bonney proposed a display of women’s progress. As the correspondence progressed further, Bonney wrested leadership of the event away

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from the ICW and transferred it to the World’s Congress Auxiliary bureaucracy, but Sewall cleaved to the symbolic relationship between this event and previous ICW events. “We, of course, wish this congress to have the prestige which can come from showing its relation to former International Councils of Women,” she explained in a letter to him; those previous international councils were intellectual exchanges among leading women of the day.61 Although Bonney elevated the status of the World’s Congress Auxiliary relative to the International Council of Women in planning women’s participation in the congresses, Sewall retained leadership of the WCRW. Given all these competing influences in its planning, it should come as no surprise that its sense of purpose remained bifurcated. The exhibition framework ran throughout the planning for the congresses. The primary promotional pamphlet for the World’s Congress Auxiliary explained that its congresses would “provide for the proper presentation of the Intellectual and Moral Progress of the World.”62 Avery claimed as much for the women’s congresses as well. They would allow for “the presentation of the intellectual and moral progress of mankind, side by side with its material improvement at the approaching Columbian Exposition.”63 She elaborated that, in the congresses, “the moral and intellectual side of the world’s progress may be set forth in conjunction with the exposition of its material advance.”64 Sewall sometimes echoed this language; she once explained that “the motive of the entire scheme of the congress auxiliary was to ascertain and exhibit the present status of the human race in respect to all important activities.”65 According to these accounts, the congresses would primarily display women’s ongoing work in various spheres. Avery hoped that the WCRW would “chronicle” the progress of women through “reports” that she hoped each country would send.66 Altogether, the WCRW would allow for “setting forth the intellectual, moral and material progress of the women of the world.”67 After the event, Clarence Young commended how the “story of ‘Woman’s Progress’” had been “set forth” in the WCRW.68 Sometimes the language of display extended to the women themselves. Avery, for instance, promised that Madame Isabel Bogelot “would be an attraction at the sessions of the Woman’s Congress.”69 Describing Bogelot’s previous speeches, her philanthropic work, and her physical appearance, Avery implied that visitors to the congress would enjoy watching her. A countering framework, articulated by some of these same leaders, promoted the congresses’ problem-­ solving capacity; they described the congresses as places where participants could collaborate to define the key

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problems of the age and identify solutions to those problems. The initial announcement of the WCRW promised that “every living question pertaining to the education or employment of women may be discussed.” In the Woman’s Standard, Avery put it more broadly: the congresses would allow for “discussion of the vital subjects affecting human welfare.”70 The planners announced “the general themes which will be discussed in this congress,” which would include education, industry, art, civil law, and others.71 In particular, the congresses would feature “the woman’s view” on these various issues, indeed “upon every issue affecting humanity—­upon the Home, the Church, the State, and her own function in these institutions.”72 More than just offering opinions on these issues, participants would discuss potential solutions to the various problems identified. Sewall likened the WCRW to the council of Nice and Trent and the first Continental Congress, saying that it must be counted along “with these, and with similar creed-­making, epoch-­ making assemblies.”73 These two senses of purpose—­both educational/epistemic and problem solving—­ commonly appeared together. Promoters of the women’s congresses, including Sewall and Avery, as well as promoters of the World’s Congress Auxiliary more generally, such as Bryan and Bonney, did not distinguish between these objectives, instead moving effortlessly between the two frameworks. In a single release, which appeared in numerous newspapers, Avery cast the congresses as “a temple of learning,” where visitors could encounter “knowledge of the best thought of our day.” In the same paragraph, Avery promised that visitors could hear “the problems of the period . . . discussed by able speakers.”74 In the case of the WCRW, these two outlooks built on different meanings of represent. In one sense, the World’s Congress of Representative Women brought together chosen delegates, or representatives, who were authorized to speak for their constituents—­women of their states, nations, or organizations—­the way that elected members of the U.S. Congress represent their constituents. These women were sent as delegates from their home countries or from the organizations with which they worked, and they presumably participated on behalf of their sisters. Avery described how organizers had sent invitations to more than a dozen nations “to send representatives to this special congress.”75 Women could also represent their organizations; the initial announcement for the WCRW explained that the event would convene “delegates of organizations of women” alongside “women not affiliated with others in any organization, who have attained distinction in any line of worthy activity.”76 The programs for the events then listed speakers in relation to their

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localities and organizations. For instance, in a WCRW General Congress session on “The Ethics of Dress,” the speaker, Alice Timmons Toomy, was characterized as a representative of California, and one of her respondents, Octavia Williams Bates, represented Michigan, while another, Antoinette Brown Blackwell, represented New Jersey. The others represented organizations: Margaret Windeyer represented the Womanhood Suffrage League of New South Wales, Julia Ward Howe represented both the Woman’s Ministerial Conference and the Association for the Advancement of Women, Laura A. DeMerritte represented the National Free Baptist Woman’s Missionary Society, and Laura Ormiston Chant represented three separate societies. Throughout the WCRW program, the vast majority of women were listed with reference to a U.S. state, a nation, or a women’s organization. In the CWB program, the women were all listed with reference to a location—­a city, state, or nation. In the other sense, the World’s Congress of Representative Women assembled women who could collectively represent the progress of humanity and womanhood in particular. In the latter account, for instance, one newspaper framed the WCRW as “the most truly representative and brilliant gathering of women ever yet assembled.”77 An article in the Detroit Free Press elaborated that the WCRW was “intended to afford a proper and convenient opportunity for presenting the progress of women, in all lands and in all departments of human progress.”78 The women assembled there would represent this progress to a global audience rather than the people’s interests being represented to the assembly. The two understandings differ on the direction of the representation: whether participants in the WCRW represented constituents to the deliberative assembly or whether the assembly represented—­displayed, presented—­the status of womanhood to a larger audience. Rhetorical Character The bifurcated sense of purpose grew out of the traditions informing the congresses, but it also speaks to the variety of purposes acknowledged for deliberative democracy more generally; exhibition speaks to the educational and epistemic functions of deliberative democracy, and problem solving speaks to its legislative functions. Moreover, these differing objectives imply differing rhetorical forms most suited for public deliberation: exhibition implies report-­oriented, informative presentations as the signature rhetorical form, whereas problem solving calls for discussion and possibly even debate. Indeed, just as theories and practices of deliberative democracy have assumed competing objectives, they have also allowed for divergent rhetorical

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styles. In the strictest models, following from Habermas, deliberation is composed of reason-­ giving discourse. Gutmann and Thompson define “deliberative democracy as a form of government” in which citizens “justify decisions in a process in which they give one another reasons that are mutually acceptable and generally accessible, with the aim of reaching conclusions that are binding in the present on all citizens but open to challenge in the future.”79 Asserting a shared obligation to engage in reason-­giving discourse, this treatment locates democratic deliberation firmly in the realm of rational, argumentative, logical discourse.80 Bessette expands this focus on rational argument to include informative discourse as well. He claims that deliberation requires “information, arguments, and persuasion,” and he treats information and arguments as the building blocks for persuasion.81 In the category of information, he includes “basic facts and figures . . . scientific or technical information, details and evaluations of current or past legislative or administrative policies . . . and the content and likely consequences of proposed policies,”82 all of which he illustrates with reference to the materials that the federal government generates for the benefit of deliberations in the U.S. Congress. Other theorists, particularly rhetoric scholars, have questioned this preference for rational discourse. James Arnt Aune has suggested that Habermas’s distrust of rhetoric impairs democratic deliberation.83 Instead, recognizing that “deliberation is often a rowdy affair,” Rob Asen calls us “to include a wider range of communication styles and orientations in deliberation than a strict propositional model.”84 Elster notes the nonrational forms of argument that deliberative democracy sometimes demands. He explains, “Something like irony, eloquence or propaganda might be needed, involving less respect for the interlocutor than what would prevail in the ideal speech situation.”85 Iris Marion Young has articulated three alternative forms—­greeting, rhetoric, and storytelling—­which she argues have an important place in deliberation, especially in expanding opportunities for participation. Gutmann and Thompson explain that when deliberation privileges rational discourse, it favors people who are more reasonable in their appeals. Disadvantaged and marginalized people, whose relative depravation may lead them to make more radical arguments, may not stick to the limits of reason.86 Conversely, both Michael Schudson and Mari Boor Tonn caution that expanding the rhetorical forms of deliberation carries risks as well; both offer caution especially about popular enthusiasm for the idea of “conversation,” or “dialogue,” as a mode of public deliberation.

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The women’s congresses in 1893 drew fairly tight constraints around the rhetorical forms they invited and allowed, privileging presentation, discussion, and “greeting” and explicitly disallowing debate. In doing so, they opened deliberation to women, but they also ensured these congresses would produce fundamentally conservative public discourse, capable of challenging the status quo only in limited ways. From the outset of their planning, these leaders started recruiting “distinguished” women who could give presentations at the congresses. Promotions for the World’s Congress Auxiliary called for “the ablest living representatives whose attendance can be procured.”87 Likewise, in her promotions for the WCRW, Avery encouraged readers to recommend “names of women well-­known in various lines of activity.”88 Elsewhere, she promised that “women of eminence” had been invited “from every portion of the civilized world.” They included “those most noted for their interest in Education, Industry,” and six other spheres she listed.89 Although she typically solicited and promoted speakers based on their eminence, Avery sometimes referred to their rhetorical skill. Articulating particular concern about the size of the hall that speakers would need to address, Avery explained that the program committee had considered potential speakers’ “ability to be easily heard in a hall of this size” in addition to their ability “to say wise and witty things.”90 The programs for the congresses underscored this speaker-­ centered format, beginning even with their front matter. The opening pages of the WCRW program included floor plans, presumably included to help participants navigate the unfamiliar World’s Congress Auxiliary building. As these plans depicted the congress halls, they implied the preferred role of participants as spectators and listeners. The centerpieces of the first floor plan are two large auditoriums—­the Hall of Columbus and the Hall of Washington. One contains semicircular auditorium seating, oriented toward a proscenium stage. The other contains a much larger platform stage protruding halfway out into the auditorium, surrounded by seating on three sides. The first auditorium layout implies a small number of speakers, projecting to a large audience of listeners. The second implies a larger group of speakers or speakers who might move farther out into the audience, but it still makes space for a large audience who are situated as spectators. Those two auditoriums are surrounded by meeting rooms, each of which is given a number and is labeled by its square footage (e.g., “38 × 50”). The maps show six of these smaller rooms on the main floor, fourteen on the upper floor, and eleven on the lower floor. These rooms do not contain diagrams of the

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seating arrangement, leaving the reader to imagine how participants might engage with each other spatially. But their small square footage—­some as small as 18 × 28—­implies that any meetings held in those rooms will necessarily be intimate. In their schedules, the programs promise both presentation and discussion, showing priority for presentation and putting clear limits on discussion. The programs for the Congresses in the Woman’s Building were simple in their format. For each month, they simply listed the days of the month, with a speaker and presentation title for each day. Occasionally, a day might list two speakers, but their titles would address different topics. In short, these programs told visitors that a notable woman would give a speech each day. The programs for the WCRW previewed that event’s more complex structure, but they still suggested that the primary rhetorical form would be speeches. The general congresses, which met twice a day, typically featured two to five speakers, some of whom gave titled addresses and some of whom gave the “discussion” to those titled speeches. The programs for the report congresses consisted only of names and the organizations they represented, typically about five names and organizations for each session. Those programs suggested that in the report congresses, visitors could expect to hear women give presentations about the work being pursued by their organizations. The department congresses were more diverse in format, but they typically featured a list of speakers and speech titles, akin to the general congresses. Their primary difference was that they sometimes also included musical performances, prayers, and other alternative activities based on the nature of the organization. None of the programs for the general, report, or department congresses promised or even implied any sort of open discussion or audience participation. In these programs, the idea of “discussion” is limited to the public exchange between a few named speakers. Such a discussion was standard in the WCRW general congresses. On the first day, for instance, after Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s speech on “The Civil and Social Evolution of Woman,” the discussion would be given by Margaret Parker, M. Louise Thomas, Dr. Emily Howard Stowe, and Dr. Jennie de la M. Lozier. Later that day, after Kate Tupper Galpin spoke about “The Ethical Influence of Woman in Education,” audience members would hear discussion from Mrs. W. D. Cabell, Anna Byford Leonard, and Frances Stewart Mosher. Other general congresses did not distinguish so clearly between featured speeches and discussion, instead just listing multiple speakers on a given topic (such as “A Century of Progress for Women in Canada”) or multiple speakers giving speeches related to

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a central theme (such as women in the theater). In either case, the discussion was always limited to a set list of named speakers. The titles themselves suggested that most speakers would deliver informative, report-­oriented presentations. The titles were typically simple and declarative, with the most common form being a head noun, sometimes modified by one or more adjectives, put in relationship to one or more prepositions: “The Moral Initiative as Related to Woman,” “Laws Affecting the Interests of Wives and Mothers,” or “The Ethics of Dress.” The most common head noun was woman, with the remainder of the title referring to women’s status in a given sphere or profession—“Woman in Science,” “Woman as a Physician,” or “Woman the New Factor in Industrial Economics,” for instance. Many of the titles in the programs for the CWB were even simpler, sometimes containing only a modified noun—­“Public Health,” “Organized Motherhood”—­or even just a single noun—­“Landmarks,” “Peace,” “Compensation.” These titles did not make assertions, ask questions, or direct imperatives. These titles did not contain active verbs, nor did they imply positions. Even the most politically oriented titles were straightforwardly descriptive: “Woman in Politics,” “Woman’s Position in an Ideal Government,” or “Women a Factor in Politics.” The titles contained in these programs implied that these eminent speakers would simply report, informatively, on a given topic. The tendency toward these information-­oriented titles was so strong that the occasional deviations stand out. The WCRW program promised that Kaethe Schirmacher would speak on “The Effect of Modern Changes in Industrial and Social Life on Woman’s Marriage Prospects,” which implied she might make a cause-­effect argument. The CWB program promised that Emily B. Ketcham would address, “Are Women Citizens and People?,” which would presumably weigh in on that debate. Later that month, Clara Conway would address that congress with “The Need of a Great College for Woman at the South,” in which she would presumably argue for a women’s college. These exceptions were rare, and even they are not especially incendiary, at least not in comparison to other titles of the era.91 Beyond their preference for these scheduled presentations, the planners of these congresses articulated rules and expectations that would ensure orderly proceedings that especially guarded against disorderly debate. Their promotional pamphlet explained, “It will obviously be better, in a given hour, to have two or three compact papers from as many different leaders, than to give the time at command to one of them for a long discourse, embracing several subjects.” It promised that those speakers would be constrained by strict time limits that would “guard against encroachments by one speaker

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on the time which justly belongs to another.”92 They also prevented certain forms of debate that they feared would be unproductive. The World’s Congress Auxiliary’s promotional pamphlet warned that “unprepared discussion or miscellaneous debate would obviously be inconsistent” with their attempt “to procure the maturest thought of the world.”93 Thomas Bryan promised that “advocates will present their own views, not attack the views of others.” They would not engage in what he called “controversy.”94 To discourage such ill-­informed contributions, any remaining time after a speech would “be given to the most eminent persons present, who will speak on the call of the Presiding Officer, and to whom such previous notice as may be practicable will be given.”95 This pamphlet implies that the most suitable rhetorical exchange in this setting would be prepared speeches delivered by reputable speakers. In addition to these information-­oriented presentations, the congresses also had a strong epideictic component, akin to what Iris Marion Young might call the practice of “greeting.” Young urges greeting as an indispensable rhetorical element of deliberation. As she asserts that participants in deliberation speak from the particularity of their social situations, she maintains that deliberation must build trust through reciprocal greetings across difference.96 In her words, “a logical and motivational condition for dialogue that aims to reach understanding is that the parties in the dialogue recognize one another in their particularity.”97 Built on the model of mundane greetings like “good morning” and “welcome,” these rhetorical greetings can also include “various forms of flattery; introductory speeches that name the others with honorific titles, acknowledge the greatness of their achievements and ideals, and so on,” as well as “nonlinguistic gestures,” such as smiles and handshakes.98 Such practices of greeting were central to the congresses. Avery promised that the first day of the WCRW would be devoted “principally to the opening of the Congress, the addresses of welcome, introduction of foreign delegates and their responses in behalf of their respective countries.” Indeed, the congress opened with three plenary sessions, spanning Monday and Tuesday, devoted partially or entirely to greetings. The very first general congress included “Addresses of Welcome” by Palmer, Henrotin, and Sewall, followed by what the program titled “Introduction of Foreign Representatives and Responses on Behalf of Their Respective Countries.” It then listed representatives from Canada, England, France, South America, Iceland, and Russia, who would be introduced at that session. Importantly, they were to be introduced and express greetings from their home countries. These were

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reciprocal greetings. That day’s evening session promised more of the same, with introductions of representatives from ten more countries. The next morning’s opening session promised still more of the same before moving on to the first titled speech of the congress. In sum, more than a day’s worth of general congresses, in an event that only lasted a week, were devoted entirely to the practice of greeting. On the first day of the event, there were no congresses other than the ones devoted to greeting. And these greetings did exactly what Young suggests: built relationships across identity differences, specifically nationality. The program also promised more sociable forms of greeting. Its front matter contained an entire section about the various receptions held in conjunction with the WCRW. On Monday afternoon, there would be a reception for all visitors to the congress. Palmer and Henrotin, plus the Committee of Arrangements and the Foreign Representatives, would receive visitors in one of the larger halls. In the smaller halls, the conference committees and Foreign Representatives would also receive visitors. Then there were the invitation-­only receptions: by the West Side Woman’s Club on Tuesday, the Chicago Woman’s Club on Thursday, Palmer on Friday, the Illinois Chapter of the DAR also on Friday, and the National Council of Women on Saturday. On Wednesday, the program noted, there would be private receptions. On the same page, the program explained that “all speakers and persons connected in any way officially with any meeting held in the Woman’s Congress” would receive mail through the mailing office in the building. All participants who fell into those broad categories were instructed to check their mail daily, and the program noted that social invitations would be distributed through the mailing office. Such an imperative suggested that these receptions were integral, not supplemental, to the work of the congresses. In total, these congress programs modeled deliberative democracy that was composed of presentations by eminent speakers, planned discussions by eminent speakers, and greetings across one primary marker of difference: nationality. With their emphasis on informative speeches, these congresses expanded deliberation beyond the typical dialectic of rational argument and impassioned nonrational discourse. This emphasis on information followed clearly from the congresses’ “presentation” objective and was especially important in the context of women’s status in the 1890s. The women’s club movement, as exemplified by Sorosis, had developed the tradition of delivering papers in a small group setting, training women for the practice of delivering information-­oriented speeches. Moreover, as little was publicly known about women’s capabilities, this emphasis on information afforded

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noteworthy capacity for informing public sentiment about women’s accomplishments. And as women still had limited access to formal education, these informative speeches served as a source of informal education. Popular forms of education, such as the lyceum, women’s clubs, and these congresses, provided women access to the information that could ground their political opinions. These congresses also imply the importance of informative presentations among a diverse audience. The women who assembled at these congresses came from nearly every state and many nations, and they had differing backgrounds in terms of profession, organizational membership, and religion, at the very least. They presumably read different newspapers and had access to different sources of information. These presentations, then, served an important stasis function: they gave women common ground on which they could base subsequent deliberation. Likewise, the emphasis on “discussion” was also significant for women whose social role saw them fit for the parlor of a home more than the floor of the U.S. House. Discussion, especially as it grew out of the parlor meetings that women had been hosting, could be an acceptable extension of women’s domestic role. Yet discussion, as Schudson and Tonn have explained, is a fundamentally conservative rhetorical mode that privileges maintaining social relationships over entertaining radical ideas that might undermine the status quo. More than just encouraging discussion, these leaders actively discouraged more unruly forms of debate. In doing so, they privileged dominant voices that would uphold conventional ways of thinking. Indeed, in inviting reputable speakers to give presentations, these planners minimized the chances that anyone would voice an unconventional idea or position. Restricting interaction from the audience, these planners removed the opportunity for anyone to disagree publicly with a presentation. They thus re-­created some of the elitism that had so constrained women, and they eliminated any opportunities to challenge that elitism. Through their emphasis on greeting, these congresses further expanded beyond the limits of traditional rational argument. Just as Young suggests, because these women came from differing backgrounds, greeting did the important rhetorical work of building the relationships that make deliberation possible. They set up a dynamic of reciprocity, where greetings were extended both ways, signifying equal participation among the women engaged in greeting. That equality and reciprocity would be the foundation for subsequent deliberation. Importantly, however, their practice of greeting focused on building relationships across nationality. Certainly, nationality was an important form of difference at these congresses, but women also came

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from different races, classes, professions, and regions of the United States. Although the majority of the speakers were white, a few select African American women addressed the congresses. The speakers included both labor activists and wealthy philanthropists alongside many professional women. And just thirty years after the Civil War, the sectional differences between women coming from the North and those from the South cannot be underestimated. With the possible exception of a few of the smaller receptions, the congresses’ practices of greeting did not explicitly address these differences. Positionality These congresses allowed female rhetors to both embrace and bracket their gendered identities. Such questions of identity, representation, and positionality have been central to theorizing about deliberative democracy, at least since Habermas’s Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere was translated into English and met critique on exactly these grounds.99 It celebrated a bourgeois public sphere that was not equally available to participants of all races, classes, and genders, critics noted. The people who could and did participate were expected to bracket their personal interests and deliberate on behalf of the good of the whole. Such bracketing always disadvantages people whose needs are more acute or unaligned with the needs of the majority. Yet asking marginalized people to speak on behalf of their particular concerns—­a practice commonly denoted as “identity politics”—­introduces its own set of problems: it places an undue burden on those individuals asked to speak for their identity groups, it assumes a universal likeness in concerns within a particular group, and it assumes that all members of a group can speak for that group. Recognizing the pitfalls of both “bracketing” personal interests and demanding individuals speak for their social groups, Bohman and Young have articulated alternative modes of encouraging diversity within deliberation. Bohman argues that deliberation demands diversity of perspective; in his words, “epistemic diversity of the right kind, the diversity of perspectives, is most helpful in deliberation.”100 Perspectives derive from social knowledge and experience, but not in a deterministic fashion. Young has also tried to avoid the limitations of identity politics by calling for “group differentiation” as an approach to deliberation. Offering a “relational interpretation of difference,” she treats social groups as open and fluid, and she suggests that deliberators should acknowledge structural relationships between groups without assuming identical experiences of group membership. In both Young and

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Bohman’s treatment, deliberation should allow individuals to speak from their individual perspectives, but those perspectives should not be understood to represent static groups. Jane Mansbridge and Catherine Squires both offer another important intervention into these questions of positionality: marginalized people must be able to move between spaces where they speak to in-­group and out-­group members. Mansbridge explains that members of marginalized groups need opportunities to participate in mainstream deliberation, where they will likely be disadvantaged, as well as in their own enclaves, where they can regroup deliberatively.101 They must be able to speak to the particularity of their social location as well as bracket that personal identity and speak to the larger good of the whole. The congresses at the WCE split their female participants between the two rhetorical objectives so familiar to marginalized people in deliberative democracy: between advocating for the needs of their group and speaking as citizens interested in the larger good of the whole. In other words, the promotional materials and programs for these congresses presented women both bracketing and unbracketing their gendered identities. Sometimes they approached a topic as an interested citizen or participant, and sometimes they spoke to women’s relationship to that topic. According to Avery, that bifurcation was by design. Referring to the events sponsored by the WCA, she claimed that their two formats would encourage these two postures. In the more than one hundred congresses devoted to topics such as education, industry, art, and religion, “women will participate according to the degree in which they have taken part in the interest or activity indicated by the title of the Congress.”102 They would, she promised, participate alongside the men with equal credentials, with no concern paid to gender. In the WCRW, conversely, “these great subjects will be viewed from a different standpoint, its object being to discuss, not the subject in itself, but the relation of the women of the world to the subject.”103 In her edited volume of proceedings from the WCRW, Sewall addressed this identity question directly. She paraphrased the question she heard repeatedly in preparing for the congresses: “Why hold a congress of representative women any more than a congress of representative men,” especially given that women would participate actively alongside the men in all the topical congresses? And she answered, “In all other congresses women would appear, not in the role of women, so to speak, but in that of teacher, physician, preacher, author . . . in company with men belonging to the same professions, engaged in the same businesses, and interested in the same themes, the questions pertaining to their respective professions

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and avocations.”104 Such participation would showcase women’s abilities, Sewall admitted, but “it would fail utterly to record or commemorate the struggle through which some women (aided by some men) have won for all women the place conceded to them in modern life.”105 Sewall wrote at length about the importance of women’s changing role—­specifically, their dissatisfaction with previous limitations on their social role and their hard work to expand their role. “It is evident,” she explained, “that women are dissatisfied with any conception of themselves, with any position which implies their natural, necessary, and, therefore, perpetual subordination to men.”106 Amid the progress of humanity, woman had “acquired a new conception of herself, as also an independent individual and a conscious daughter of God, which is not harmonious with the former prevailing conception of her as man’s addendum, his helpmeet, his subordinate.” Only a women’s congress would suffice to evidence this revolution in women’s status. The program for the WCRW carried out Sewall’s vision: women spoke almost entirely from and about their position as women. Of the fifty-­six titled speeches in the general congresses of the WCRW, only ten did not include the word woman or women in the title. Among even those few, half still made direct reference to a group of women (“The Modern Deaconess Movement”), to woman’s sphere (“The Trades and Professions Underlying Home”), or to a concern specific to women (“The Ethics of Dress”). Only five speeches had titles that were entirely gender neutral (“The Light in the East”). Perusing the program for the WCRW, an attendee could surmise that speakers would address the condition of woman from their perspectives as women. Where the WCRW allowed women to speak to their womanhood, Henrotin celebrated how the remainder of the auxiliary congresses allowed women to demonstrate their specializations, not their womanhood. “They spoke as the teacher, the lawyer, the voter, the woman of affairs, the work woman, the religious woman, showing that woman is becoming as capable as man to take her part in the highly centralized and highly specialized civilization,” she explained.107 But her point is only partially proved in her extensive listing of the topics that women addressed in these congresses. Many of their speech and paper titles do indeed show these women speaking not as women but as experts on the subjects of the various congresses. In the Congress on Geology, for instance, women spoke on “Methods of Teaching Geology,” “Chemical Geology,” “Granites of Massachusetts,” and “Artistic Geology.” In the Congress on Pharmacy, women addressed “The Progress of Chemistry” and “The History of Pharmacy.” In the various congresses sponsored by the Department of Government, women spoke on “Public Defenders,” “Proportional

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Representation,” “Effective Voting,” and “Tenement Houses and the People Who Live in Them.” In many other titles that Henrotin listed, however, female speakers offered a woman’s perspective or showed how the subject related to women. In the Congress on Labor, for instance, women addressed “Woman in the Labor Market,” “The Industrial Conditions of Women and Children,” “Working Girls Clubs,” and “The Oppression of Women.” In the Congress on Insurance, they addressed “The Elimination of the Extra Premium on Woman’s Life Insurance” and “Woman’s Opportunity in Insurance.” In the congresses sponsored by the Department of Government, they gave speeches titled “Married Women’s Property Acts in the United States and Needed Reforms Therein,” “The Legal Status of Women in England,” “The Legal Status of Women in India,” and “City Government as It Effects Women.” These programs suggest that women both bracketed and unbracketed their gendered identities and that the dividing line between the two subject positions was not as tidy as initial promotions suggested. Indeed, titles in the WCRW program implied that women would speak almost entirely from their position as women, but they alternated between that position and their identity-­bracketed position in the remainder of the auxiliary congresses and the CWB. These programs gave women space to speak from both their positions—­ as women and as nongendered citizens—­and they suggested that women could oscillate effortlessly between the two. In doing so, they allowed for the complexity of women’s perspectives, and they provided the spaces for both engagement and regrouping that Mansbridge called for. They also, however, implied some of the most dangerous implications of identity politics. That is, they entrusted individual women with the task of speaking for whole categories of women (e.g., women in the theater, women in India, married women, etc.). Moreover, they implied that there is a singular women’s perspective on major social issues (e.g., “The Ethical Influence of Woman in Education”). Diffuse Deliberation Deliberation can be practiced among elites or common people, and both models have been operative in the United States, with the general trend being toward more open, inclusive models. In elite models, the deliberating body, such as the U.S. House of Representatives, has direct access to mechanisms of power, such as the ability to make laws and anticipate that the executive will enforce them. As ideas of deliberation have broadened to include wider swaths of the democratic public, its power has been diffused,

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prompting important questions about how deliberation among ordinary citizens attains the force of law or policy or even public sentiment. Early ideas of deliberation in the U.S. context were largely confined to elites. In his treatment of the Constitution, Bessette shows how it assigned deliberative responsibility to Congress in response to the excesses of popular mob rule familiar in the founders’ context. In the interim between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitutional Convention, according to Bessette, state legislatures were overtaken by intemperate mob rule, too often inspired by demagogues, that led to foolish fiscal policy, such as printing limitless supplies of paper money untethered to gold or silver. In response, the framers of the Constitution were desperate to strike a balance between direct and elite democracy, and they treated deliberation as the mechanism that could moderate between those extremes.108 Over subsequent decades and centuries, deliberation has expanded outside these legislative bounds, especially as a mode for involving more citizens in the process of democratic decision-­making. These popular models have necessarily assumed diffuse practices of deliberation. As citizens in a nation as large, diverse, and complex as the United States cannot participate synchronously in a common deliberative sphere, theorists have proposed alternative systems of interlocking publics and counterpublics. Bohman advocates for “a ‘public of publics,’ . . . in which all communicators participate.”109 Specifically, Bohman proposes a system of what he calls “minipublics,” encounters among “groups of citizens, not experts or office holders,” who deliberate with the purpose of forming opinions and making recommendations and decisions.110 Other theorists would make deliberative democracy even more diffuse. Here, deliberation is not limited to certain occasions, like Bohman’s minipublics, but is instead a ceaseless form of political engagement. Benhabib summarizes, “Theorists of agonistic politics view democracy as the incessant contestation over such ethical and cultural questions.”111 In this treatment, deliberation does not happen in specified arenas on specified occasions but is instead a way of life guiding the self-­governance of people in democracies. On this point, Benhabib is especially clear. She claims that we don’t need “the fiction of a general deliberative assembly” but can instead have “a plurality of modes of association.” In her words, “It is through the interlocking net of these multiple forms of associations, networks, and organizations that an anonymous ‘public conversation’ results. It is central to the model of deliberative democracy that it privileges such a public sphere of mutually interlocking and overlapping networks and associations of deliberation, contestation, and argumentation.”112 She

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advocates for a “guiding model . . . of a medium of loosely associated, multiple foci of opinion formation and dissemination which affect one another in free and spontaneous processes of communication.”113 In short, deliberative democracy happens through a diffuse system of associations that facilitate public conversation. A diffuse system of deliberation has some merits and limitations relative to a tighter system of deliberation centered within representative government. It opens up opportunities for participation, and it generates political will directly from the people themselves. It does not, however, have such a clear mechanism for translating that political will into public policy. Hauser explains, “Considered public opinion can perform public work only insofar as it has traction with legislators and public officials who make and enforce laws and who set and administer public policies.”114 Often, deliberative fora must rely on aggregative mechanisms for determining public sentiment and relaying that sentiment to elected officials. Gutmann and Thompson explain, “Deliberative politics almost always has to be supplemented by other decision procedures. . . . It must rely on other procedures, most notably voting, which in themselves are not deliberative.”115 For Cohen, such an outcome still does not erase the distinction between deliberation and aggregation because “the results of voting among those who are committed to finding reasons that are persuasive to all are likely to differ from the results of an aggregation that proceeds in the absence of this commitment.”116 Both forms legislative and diffuse—­ routinely work in tandem with of deliberation—­ practices of aggregation. The planners of the WCE congresses worked to project their deliberation outward into a larger rhetorical environment. Even in their earliest promotions for the congresses, they were already describing the proceedings that would result from the congresses and the audiences those proceedings would reach. The World’s Congress Auxiliary’s promotional materials explained that the “chief purpose of the Auxiliary is to procure the maturest thought of the world . . . in a form best adapted to universal publication.”117 They explained the process of public influence that these proceedings would secure. Although the ideas expressed in the congresses would “not be submitted to the vote of those who may happen to be present,” through the published proceedings, they would “be offered for subsequent deliberate examination by the enlightened minds of all countries; for unrestricted discussion in the forum, the pulpit, and the public press; and finally for the impartial judgment of that exalted Public Opinion which expresses the consensus of such minds.”118 From the outset, then, the congresses expressed a

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clear model of diffuse deliberation: the speeches in the congresses would not lead to immediate action but would instead filter outward to influence subsequent deliberation, which would ultimately contribute to public opinion. Indeed, the programs for the women’s congresses do not indicate that any voting or collective decision-­making took place during those events. In the women’s congress programs, there were scant references to official electoral politics at all. Speech titles did not mention petitions or referenda—­two key tools pursued by female activists—­nor did they mention the federal government or suffrage very often. The programs indicated that women addressed topics relevant to institutional politics—­with speeches like “Women in Politics” and “The Position and Influence of Woman in Civil Law”—­but the format of the congresses divorced those topics from the mechanisms of official institutional political power. After the congresses, extensive proceedings were published quickly and distributed widely. As Clarence Young explained afterward, it was the “especial desire” of the planners “to place this work within the reach of women everywhere,” so they had published proceedings of the WCRW in two forms: a single volume of 900 pages that would cost $3.50 and a two-­volume set, 450 pages each, for $5.00.119 Likewise, Mary Eagle edited a volume of speeches from the congresses in the Woman’s Building, which collected nearly two hundred speeches in more than 800 pages. They advertised these volumes widely, especially in the women’s newspapers. The Woman’s Exponent reviewed the WCRW volume, with the writer praising the congress because it had “carried the new Gospel of women and of humanity far and wide.” The edited volume in particular could “sow the good seeds of the world’s actual progress, and help to lead into the light of a broader humanity, many who sit in darkness.” It would, she concluded, “awaken noble sentiments and advanced views of life.”120 These congresses, then, were what Bohman called “minipublics,” enclaves where a small group deliberated together but in relationship with other publics, counterpublics, and minipublics. The boundaries between these various congresses were highly porous, as speakers and spectators alike physically moved between the WCRW, the CWB, and all the various congresses sponsored by the World’s Congress Auxiliary. Participants also moved along the rhetorical paths of circulation between these congresses and the localities and organizations they “represented” in these congresses. In this model of diffuse deliberation, the rhetorical power of the congresses was projected through the activist press. The speeches themselves were not deliberation; they were fodder for subsequent deliberation. That subsequent

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deliberation was made possible by the print media—­both the publications of the proceedings themselves and the articles in mainstream and activist newspapers. These print sources, congress leaders promised, would inspire deliberation in “forum” and “pulpit,” and that informed discussion would influence public opinion. Indeed, the congresses received extensive attention in the women’s papers, including the Woman’s Journal and the Woman’s Exponent, and women reported about the congresses at the meetings of major associations such as the National American Woman Suffrage Association. This model of deliberation required a thriving press but not necessarily a disinterested press. Contra Habermas, who says that deliberative democracy requires a “self-­regulating media system” that “gains independence from its social environments,” these congress planners expressed optimism that their media system, composed of partisan and interested sources, could facilitate deliberative democracy through the circulation of these texts.121 The elitism of these congresses—­so evident in their rosters of distinguished speakers—­was countered through this practice of dissemination. The congresses’ public events modeled elite deliberation, even as they expanded the bounds of who counted as “elite” beyond the white men who populated the U.S. House and Senate. Instead, they modeled deliberation among elite women who had earned distinction not as lawyers and statesmen but as clubwomen, reformers, and socialites. But their promotional materials suggested that these women provided only the seed of deliberation. Their speeches, as disseminated through the published proceedings, would provide fodder for subsequent deliberation among ever-wider publics. The ultimate deliberation, that which really shaped public sentiment, would occur among the broader audiences that these proceedings reached. This model allowed the elites to set the agenda and provide the substance of deliberation, but it encouraged broader communities to engage in that deliberation itself. Like so many models of deliberation, it attempted to mediate between elite and popular deliberation, and it brought with it the limitations of both—­the limited perspectives of hearing from the elite alone and the lack of access to the mechanisms of power when deliberation happens among diffuse popular publics.

Conclusions and Implications At a time when the dominant practice of democracy in the United States—­ aggregative democracy run by the party machines—­ excluded women’s participation, these congresses offered an alternative mode of democratic

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participation. Prominent women, including Sewall, Avery, Palmer, and Henrotin, capitalized upon the opportunity afforded by the World’s Columbian Exposition to involve women in this countering practice of citizenship, setting a model and articulating a vision for this type of deliberation to grow into a form of global governance. In pursuing this experiment with deliberative democracy—­beginning at least with Sorosis in 1873 and climaxing with the congresses at the WCE in 1893—­this generation of activist women took tentative steps toward displacing aggregative democracy. Of course, their vision was never fully realized, and the world’s problems were never considered and resolved in a standing global parliament of men and women. But their experiment allows us to examine the promises and shortcomings of their vision of deliberative democracy and consider the legacy of that vision for women’s citizenship. This model of deliberative democracy, importantly, opened up a practice of citizenship to women. Where aggregative democracy’s figure of the citizen is the voter, deliberative democracy’s citizen is the rhetor, and by the 1890s, “rhetor” was a more intelligible and acceptable public performance for women than was “voter.” Although women had faced steep obstacles as public speakers just a few decades earlier,122 by the end of the nineteenth century, women had almost a full century of oratorical activity to their credit, having spoken in reform conventions, churches, lyceums, and women’s clubs. In all that time, women had done almost no voting, and the occasions when women had drawn public attention for voting—­such as Susan B. Anthony’s vote in 1872—­had been roundly chastised. By 1893, in short, a woman addressing an audience was a much more familiar and respectable sight than a woman casting a ballot. Over the course of the nineteenth century, women had proved their fitness for the demands of deliberative citizenship while they were yet denied access to aggregative citizenship. These congresses further made deliberation a suitable performance of citizenship for women by assigning information, discussion, and greeting central roles in deliberation. That is, all three of these rhetorical forms were familiar to women, and these congresses made them integral to deliberation. In particular, this diffuse model of deliberation prized information-­oriented speeches because they could circulate in print and inspire further deliberation. Thus the work that women had been doing in such clubs as Sorosis and the Chicago Women’s Club—­writing papers and delivering them to peers in their parlors—­took on greater political significance when these planners not only programmed those speeches but also published them and put them

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in circulation with the proceedings of these congresses. These congresses gave women a place in a larger ecosystem of political decision-­making. Far from a panacea for women’s political woes, however, these congresses illuminate the limitations of substituting deliberative democracy, and especially this model of deliberative democracy, for aggregative democracy. This model privileged elite, typically white voices who had some combination of education, money, and civic experience and allowed them to speak on behalf of their social groups, thus re-­creating the worst tendencies of identity politics. Empowering those voices to give informative presentations, it allowed them to articulate the narrative about womanhood from their partial and typically privileged position. Moreover, this model shows the limits of diffuse deliberation for people who have no institutional political power. Congress planners devoted extensive attention to publishing the proceedings of the congresses because they believed these volumes would circulate among broader audiences, granting access to the congresses to people not in Chicago that summer. They may have also had financial ambitions for these proceedings—­hoping they would raise money to repay the fair’s debts—­but they marketed them on strictly deliberative grounds. Unfortunately, these planners never articulated any mechanism whereby these opinions and ideas would attain social or political force. Public deliberation is always one step removed from official levers of power (as opposed to congressional deliberation, for instance). But this distance was multiplied in the case of women’s congresses because their participants lacked access to even the most rudimentary mechanism of legislative participation—­the vote. By centering these congresses on respected speakers, these planners had re-­ created the elitism so foundational to legislative deliberation, failing to allow for the broad-­based participation that could otherwise be the hallmark of such public congresses. But they lacked the access to mechanisms of institutional power common in legislative deliberation. In other words, their model included the limitations of both elite and popular democracy—­restricted participation and lack of “hard power”—­without the converse benefits of either form. These congresses thus demonstrate the necessity of institutional political power—­for nineteenth-­century women, the franchise—­even as their planners vocally split over the pressing question of woman suffrage. Some planners, including Bertha Palmer and Ellen Henrotin, had vocally opposed woman suffrage while expressing no qualms about women deliberating about politics and social issues. Palmer actually promoted women’s

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work at the fair on exactly these grounds—­that they were able to display women’s advances “without touching upon politics, suffrage, or other irrelevant issues.”123 Sewall and Avery, conversely, were both known suffragists, affiliated with major suffrage associations. They saw no conflict between women’s deliberation in these congresses and their eventual enfranchisement. That these ideologically divided women—­those who supported and opposed woman suffrage—­worked together harmoniously to plan these congresses suggests that they compartmentalized the work of these congresses from the ongoing effort for women’s enfranchisement.

3 Racial Uplift

The most familiar narrative about the World’s Columbian Exposition is of its racial exclusions and animosities. From the highest levels of their leadership, the fair’s planners disregarded the pleas of African American leaders to be included in the fair’s planning. They refused to add an African American to the fair’s directory, its commission, and its Board of Lady Managers. They refused to plan an exhibit of African American contributions, and they made no systematic effort to include African American contributions in the mainstream exhibitions. Moreover, the fair’s narrative of progress in the New World was premised on racial hierarchy. As it demonstrated the progress of humanity from savagery and barbarity to civilization, it used people of color to demonstrate the first two categories and white men to demonstrate the third. It conflated civilization with white masculinity. Yet African Americans and their allies refused to be excluded. Some protested: Ida B. Wells led an effort with Frederick Douglass, Irvine Garland Penn, and Ferdinand L. Barnett to publish a pamphlet, The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition, which they distributed on the fairgrounds. Others accepted the limited role they were given at the fair. Hale G. Parker served as an alternate to the National Commission, and Fannie Barrier Williams worked with the Board of Lady Managers in limited capacities. Frederick Douglass accepted the position as Haiti’s ambassador to the fair, and he maintained a visible presence from Haiti’s building on the fairgrounds. He also accepted the invitation to speak on the fair’s Jubilee Day for African Americans alongside Bishop Henry M. Turner and Paul Laurence Dunbar. And seven black women—­Fannie Barrier Williams, Frances E. W. Harper, Anna Julia Cooper, Sarah J. Early, Fannie Jackson Coppin, Hallie Quinn Brown, and Florence Lewis—­accepted the invitation to speak in the general congresses of the World’s Congress of Representative Women. This chapter takes up sixteen speeches by both African American and white women, illuminating their common call for practices of racial uplift.

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Against this backdrop of racial politics, these women negotiated the fair’s dominant discourses of evolutionary progress to project, I argue, acts of racial uplift as practices of citizenship. In what follows, I first review those larger discourses of evolutionary progress alongside burgeoning discourses of racial uplift and the narrow context of racial politics at the fair. Then turning to the speeches themselves, I show, first, how they embraced the general frame of evolutionary progress; second, how they undermined some of the dominant assumptions of evolutionary progress; and third, how they articulated racial uplift as a practice of citizenship out of these reimagined discourses of evolutionary progress. In the conclusion, I suggest that these speeches show how race is encoded as a practice of citizenship, not simply a marker of belonging, alongside a handful of other implications of this analysis.

Progress to Civilization The World’s Columbian Exposition projected the discourses of progress—­in all their exuberance and anxiety—­that circulated in the Gilded Age. Americans were keenly aware of their location at a crucial juncture for human history. They embraced the idea of “fin de siècle,” a phrase that first appeared in France in 1885 and by the end of the century had become so common that “people had become embarrassed to utter it.”1 Humans had not marked the transitions between previous centuries as significant cultural events, but this generation evinced an “acute self-­consciousness.”2 Careening toward the end of the century, this generation of Americans believed that they lived at the pinnacle of past achievement, the precipice of something new, or probably both. They embraced grand theories that promised to explain the natural history of the world. They especially sought unified theories that could give a holistic sense of order to the world; evolutionary theory and anthropological theories of civilization proved invaluable resources. The World’s Columbian Exposition, commissioned by Congress to celebrate progress in the New World, featured these discourses of progress, evolution, and civilization alongside their anxious corollaries. Evolutionary Theory Gilded Age Americans understood evolutionary theory to explain development among animal species and among human societies as well as to offer

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a scientific framework for natural order. It spoke to Americans as it fit with prevailing Victorian values that stressed “confidence in order, design, and progress.”3 While scientists disagreed about the precise mechanisms of evolution (Darwin’s sexual selection and natural selection, Lamarck’s acquired characteristics) and the historical chain of development, laypeople overlooked these details. They invested themselves instead in the broad commitments that evolutionary theory made: there was an order of progress to natural and human history, and history could be traced, classified, and projected to continue into the future. As Darwinism “posited change, process, and struggle as essentials,” it introduced uncertainty, but that upsetting possibility was balanced out by the ultimate promise of “assured progress.”4 Evolutionary theory confirmed and fulfilled Victorian values as it also challenged earlier cultural commitments. In contrast to the previous century’s Enlightenment thought, which had emphasized the commonalities among all peoples, evolutionary theory stressed differentiation and hierarchy among animals and among humans.5 Moreover, where scientists and activists had long sought environmental explanations for difference, evolutionary theory offered biological explanations, which quickly overtook environmental explanations. Finally, evolutionary theory’s promise of progress came with the implied threats of atavism or degeneration. Civilization Evolutionary science largely concerned natural and biological developments among animals, but its intellectual framework was also applied to human relations, influencing anthropology, political theory, and reform activism. The burgeoning field of anthropology provided the scientific framework for studying evolution among humans. Anthropologists capitalized on the wealth of data newly available from groups of people around the world. Scientific expeditions and missionaries returned valuable information in the form of letters, scientific reports, and material objects, and anthropologists gathered, classified, and interpreted this data. They studied cultures individually, and they drew comparisons between cultures. They developed sophisticated classification schemes based on physical characteristics, such as skeletal structure, hair, facial slope, skin color, eye color, and skull size, as well as cultural characteristics, such as family structure, rituals, and division of labor. Anthropologists promised to synthesize this information to create a hierarchy of cultures that would explain the development of civilization.

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Borrowing their premises from evolutionary theory, they assumed that there was a logic and order to the universe that they could uncover, and they “gained great satisfaction in uncovering a long train of progress leading up to modern civilization.”6 They generally looked for three types of societies—­savage, barbarian, and civilized—­and they traced how humanity had evolved from the savage through to the civilized.7 As they celebrated the civilized societies that marked the height of human accomplishment, they also believed that this trajectory of progress would continue: “Out of the chaos and unfairness of the past and present, they believed, would arise the order and beauty of a better, more humane world.”8 Drawing upon this anthropological discourse, white Americans celebrated themselves as the pinnacle of civilization.9 According to the story they told, white settlers had come to the New World from Europe and made civilization out of savagery. The evolution to civilization was simultaneously biological, social, and political.10 On a biological level, “human history was envisioned as an evolutionary process that began in a remote past as a stage of savagery, and that moved inexorably and inevitably through various stages of barbarism to reach civilization.”11 White men had evolved further than darker-­skinned people, and thus only they had developed the skills and intellect necessary for civilization. Civilization was, Bederman explains, “a precise stage in human racial evolution. . . . Human races were assumed to evolve from simple savagery, through violent barbarism, to advanced and valuable civilization.”12 Only white men had arrived at civilization, and anthropologists asserted that dark-­skinned people were not capable. “To that same ash heap,” Bederman explains, “anthropologists relegated women.”13 Biology alone did not create civilization, however. Capable white men had to forge civilization, sometimes through violent conquest of savage peoples. Bederman explains that “Anglo-­Saxonist imperialists insisted that civilized white men had a racial genius for self-­government which necessitated the conquest of more ‘primitive,’ darker races.”14 In the decades between the Civil War and the WCE, white Americans had been actively “civilizing” the American West by eradicating native peoples. These popular ideas of civilization, then, had significant racial and gender implications. As certain groups had achieved civilization, anthropologists assumed that those groups were uniquely suited to civilization, and immutable differences separated them from the groups that had not achieved civilization. Cotkin describes how “precious few anthropologists doubted for a moment that cultural groups were not only dissimilar but also unequal. Lewis Henry Morgan’s schema indicated that certain cultures clearly lagged

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behind others in attaining a higher stage of civilization.”15 And there was little doubt about which culture was superior; European and American white men exemplified the highest order of civilization.16 The same was true with sex. The scientific community, Russett summarizes, arrived at the “overwhelming consensus . . . that women were inherently different from men in their anatomy, physiology, temperament, and intellect. In the evolutionary development of the race women had lagged behind men, much as ‘primitive people’ lagged behind Europeans.”17 These differences came from nature, which “had decreed a secondary role for women.”18 Such gender differentiation could be further used to distinguish civilization from barbarism and savagery. That is, as civilized societies were the fullest expression of nature’s design, and just as biology taught that higher stages of evolution evidenced complexity, differentiation, and specialization of parts, civilization was evidenced by men and women performing specialized and differentiated roles. In primitive societies, women labored alongside the men. Russett describes how “life for the primitive woman, from the perspective of the gentleman anthropologist, appeared unrelievedly dismal.” Anthropologists cataloged how those women “carried all the burdens, gathered the food, cultivated the crops, tended the fires, cooked the meals, made the clothing, and cared for the children. Downtrodden and reviled, they occupied a secondary and shadowy status bereft of authority or influence in their families.”19 Civilized women, by contrast, toiled at finer pursuits. Indebted to Victorian constructions of womanhood, this discourse of civilization portrayed women as “passive and delicate; they were the family’s caretakers, and the keepers of society’s morals and sentiments.”20 These women taught their children Christian ideals and the habits of civilization. Anthropologists found this comparison to be definitive for civilization. In their view, “the treatment of women in any society was a prime indicator—­perhaps the prime indicator—­of that society’s place in the evolutionary hierarchy.”21 These discourses of evolution and civilization also proved paradoxical for women. Although their moral and intellectual refinement could signify civilization, it also posed a threat to civilization. Burgeoning scientific discourses of energy conservation, as popularized by Herbert Spencer and Edward H. Clark, posited that humans only have access to a finite amount of energy. As Robin Jensen elucidates, this theory suggested that any energy diverted to intellectual tasks comes at the expense of physical pursuits, which, for women, meant that education took a direct toll on their reproductive capacity.22 Paradoxically, then, the most civilized women would have the lowest fertility, thus endangering the future progress of the civilized race, especially

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as less civilized women would continue to reproduce prolifically. These discourses of energy conservation created a double bind for women: they could pursue the intellectual pursuits that signified civilization, but do so at the expense of propagating the civilized classes, or they could devote their energy to physical pursuits and thus remain uncivilized. World’s fairs in general, and the Columbian Exposition in particular, became showcases for this anthropological research and the race and gender ideologies it implied. In the case of the WCE, the physical layout of the fair brought civilization into relief in the juxtaposition of the White City against the Midway Plaisance. Both the Midway and the anthropology building allowed fairgoers to survey the various stages of savagery and barbarism leading up to civilization. The Midway, originally designed as an anthropological exhibit, displayed various ethnic groups, including the Irish, Swiss, Samoans, Javanese, and Dahomey. Some of these exhibits displayed cultural artifacts, such as Ireland’s Blarney Stone, but some of them simply displayed the people themselves. Fair planners had gone on great expeditions to find some of the world’s most curious peoples and bring them back for visual consumption by fairgoers. They asked them to create native dwellings, wear traditional clothing, and go about their normal lives. Perusing just those few short blocks of the Midway, the fair promised that visitors could come to appreciate the evolution of human civilization, from primitive peoples like the Dahomey of Africa; to slightly more advanced groups like the Chinese, Turks, and Moors; up to more civilized European peoples including the Swiss, Austrians, and Germans.23 These exhibits relied upon “a system of classification . . . that promised to demonstrate the backwardness of some races and the progress and accomplishments of white civilization.”24 Fairgoers, then, could compare physical features, family structure, contributions to arts and culture, and political organization among the various cultures on display. They could engage in the comparative analysis that anthropologists promoted. The White City, by contrast, demonstrated the accomplishments of civilization in all its various classifications. In the electricity division, it celebrated the men who harnessed steam to power the fair. In the art building, it celebrated the visual geniuses whose aesthetic gifts created the high culture that distinguished civilized societies. In the manufactures and liberal arts building, the White City celebrated the mechanical entrepreneurs who made watches and printing presses and dishwashers. The WCE could not have made a clearer contrast between the scantily clad Dahomey people sitting amid their rude structures and the intellectuals whose accomplishments populated the Beaux-Arts buildings of the White City.

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Gail Bederman has argued that the Woman’s Building sat on the periphery of the White City, linked instead to the Midway. By her interpretation, this placement conveyed an “inescapable” message: “The White City’s civilization was built by men, only. Exhibiting men’s achievements required the entire White City, while women’s achievements could fit into the smallest exhibition hall at the fair.”25 Although Bederman is generally correct about the building’s location, she does not acknowledge how its Beaux-Arts style made it consubstantial with the White City instead of the Midway. Thus it is fair to say that the Woman’s Building formed a symbolic bridge between the White City and the Midway; the Victorian white women who managed it were surely more civilized than many of the savages on the Midway, but they were less civilized than the accomplished men who designed and executed the White City. All the pride about American civilization, so evident at the exposition, always carried with it a shadow of uncertainty. Americans worried that their position atop the global hierarchy might be precarious. Lewis Henry Morgan, who popularized the idea of human progress, also denied the premise that some races were uniquely capable of civilization, instead acknowledging that all groups could evolve to civilization given the right conditions.26 His descriptions of American Indians challenged popular stereotypes as they also raised questions about American providential thought and what Trachtenberg calls “American self-­congratulatory rhetoric.”27 According to Morgan, American Indians and Euro-­Americans were part of the same evolutionary progress to civilization. Others expressed doubt that this progress toward civilization would continue on its established trajectory. In his speech at the WCE’s Congress of Historians, Frederick Jackson Turner argued that civilization had come through the process of westward migration. As Europeans had settled in the West, they had conquered savage native peoples and established communities. As they did so, they had become American.28 With the Census Bureau’s recent declaration that the frontier was “closed” (following the 1890 census), Turner feared that this fundamentally American process of civilization had ended. No longer could men earn their American stripes by settling the savage West. “Like the Columbian Exposition,” Trachtenberg asserts, “the Turner thesis portrayed an America at a critical juncture. . . . Both embraced the change . . . and yet they attempted to preserve older values and traditional outlooks.”29 The fair’s women resisted these discourses of progress as they found kinship with supposedly primitive women. Erik Trump has suggested that the fair’s white women had an ambivalent relationship with the primitive women so vividly on display not only on the Midway but also in the Woman’s

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Building and in women’s speeches to the congresses. Where the fair typically used primitive peoples as a baseline from which to measure civilization’s advance, the Lady Managers and other women at the fair resisted this logic. “The primitive woman,” Trump explains, “far from an object of derision or curiosity, was a figure of respect.”30 Their respect for the primitive woman tended to express “itself either in praise for the quality and importance of her domestic work (especially her handicrafts), or in envy for her perceived position of relative equality to men within primitive societies.”31 The confused relationship between savage and civilized women at the fair is probably best represented by the two centerpiece paintings that adorned the main hall of the Woman’s Building—­Mary MacMonnies’s Primitive Woman and Mary Cassatt’s Modern Woman. As Trump recounts, “These murals had been commissioned to recall the drudgery from which women had escaped and to represent the superior status enjoyed by the modern women.” They did just the reverse. MacMonnies celebrated the strength and industry of primitive women who carried water, drove oxen, sowed grain, and performed other vital tasks. Her painting did so in what Trump calls “pleasing colors and graceful figures,” which served to lionize these women. Cassatt, whose painting was significantly more controversial, “depicted modern women as what seems to be frivolous adolescents.” Her small, frail women chased ducks, picked apples, and played music. In celebrating the Victorian ideal of women’s domestic leisure, Cassatt’s painting pointed to the limits of that ideology for ambitious nineteenth-­century women or for anyone caught up in the discourses of industry so prevalent at the fair. These women’s expressed kinship with the fair’s primitive women resisted the larger discourses of progress and civilization. According to Trump, their sentiment aligned with “reluctant modernism,” that growing tendency at the turn of the century to resist the forces of social Darwinism, imperialism, and modernism.32 There were, he argues, “subversive implications” in their celebration of these primitive women. By praising primitive women, these participants at the fair not only resisted the logics of progress and civilization; they also defended present-­day “primitive” women.

Racial Uplift in the Nadir These same discourses of evolution, progress, and civilization would shape the dominant articulation of African American politics at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century: racial uplift. Rayford Logan

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famously called the last decade of the nineteenth century the “nadir” of black American history. The nadir, Shirley Logan defines more precisely, can be dated from the Hayes-­Tilden Compromise of 1877 to 1915, when masses of African Americans began moving North in the early stages of preparing for World War I.33 She zeroes in even more precisely on the period between 1889 and 1901 as the time when “blacks felt most severely the Southern Democrats’ counterattacks against legislative efforts to improve their condition.”34 In the face of this rapid decline, African American leaders began to articulate a new ideology of racial uplift. Most famously articulated by W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington in the opening years of the twentieth century, ideas of racial uplift had important earlier precedents, including in African American women’s public work, especially through clubs and churches. As Gaines has noted, even before Washington and Du Bois’s famous conflict, a “diversity of views” already existed under the umbrella of racial uplift. “While the African American intelligentsia spoke universally of the race’s advancement,” he explains, “there was vigorous disagreement on precisely how this was to be achieved.”35 Nonetheless, facing hostility from white elected officials, African American leaders rallied around the common principle of racial uplift. “Black public intellectuals turned inward,” according to Shirley Logan, “partially in the belief that middle-­class respectability would eventually make the masses more acceptable to whites.”36 Gaines concurs, calling “the self-­ help ideology of racial uplift” a response by educated African Americans to “the post-­Reconstruction assault on black citizenship and humanity.”37 He explains straightforwardly, “Black opinion leaders deemed the promotion of bourgeois morality, patriarchal authority, and a culture of self-­improvement, both among blacks and outward, to the white world, as necessary to their recognition, enfranchisement, and survival as a class.”38 Although varied in their specifics, calls for racial uplift shared a common commitment to promoting achievement among African Americans in response to increasing repression. These ideas of racial uplift evidenced their debt to the dominant ideas of evolutionary progress previously described, widely appropriating the evolutionary and civilizationist discourses so familiar in the Gilded Age and at the fair itself. They assumed that humans were participating in a forward and progressive march to civilization and that different racial groups experienced that progress differently. According to Gaines, “The self-­help component of uplift increasingly bore the stamp of evolutionary racial theories positing the civilization of elites against the moral degradation of the masses.”39

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That is, even African American leaders embraced assumptions that different groups and individuals were progressing to civilization differently, oftentimes pitting working-­class and elite blacks against each other. In response to these foundational assumptions about evolution and civilization, black elites encouraged their followers to adopt the Victorian middle-­class values, including women’s domesticity, that had come to be accepted as markers of civilization. Racial-­uplift ideology was mired in dominant patriarchal thinking, according to Gaines. “For educated blacks, the family, and patriarchal gender relations, became crucial signifiers of respectability,” he explains.40 Many African American elites made “conformity to patriarchal family ideals the criterion of respectability.”41 At the same time, these discourses of racial uplift tended to illuminate environmental and structural causes of racial difference, offering them as counterexplanations to the biological assumptions typically foundational to evolutionary thought. They pointed in particular to slavery as the explanation for blacks’ degraded status. Of the women’s speeches she examined, Shirley Logan explains, “These speeches acknowledge inferiority only as a direct consequence of slavery, not as an innate and indelible trait. To remove this taint of an inferior and ‘downtrodden’ race, black intellectuals argued for improvement in the material conditions of black people.”42 Gaines also notes that in these discourses of racial uplift, cultural differences “rather than biological notions of racial inferiority, were said to be more salient in explaining the lower social status of African Americans.”43 Gaines notes the importance of the “evolutionary view of cultural assimilation” in unmooring racial difference from biology. African American leaders emphasized the mutability of human character, and they framed human progress as dependent on that mutability. These discourses of racial uplift, then, allowed for optimism both because they promised progress and because they allowed African Americans agency to improve their social condition through personal uplift. Just as racial groups throughout the ages and around the world had progressed from savagery and barbarism to civilization, so too could African Americans. At the same time, however, scholars are quick to note that this evolutionary frame replaced the earlier egalitarian frame that had been central to abolitionist and immediate postemancipation discourse. Reed explains that calls for racial uplift had been common since the beginning of the nineteenth century, but they were initially grounded in egalitarianism that came from both natural rights ideology and what he calls “Christian humanism.” But by the end of the century, those egalitarian and democratic impulses were influenced by

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growing racial conservatism. In particular, “America’s tightening embrace of Social Darwinian notions of civilization had an especially significant impact on black uplift ideology. Portraying racial and class inequality as inexorable products of natural order, Social Darwinism and, later, eugenics became the dominant lenses through which to view these issues through the Great Depression.” As black leaders adopted these dominant assumptions, they came to “base their claims to equality not on an inalienable right to liberty but on the race’s capacity to evolve. In so doing, uplift substituted culture for race as a condition of admission to civil society.”44 Gaines concurs that there was a “shift to bourgeois evolutionism . . . from anti-­slavery appeals for inalienable human rights to more limited claims for black citizenship that required that the race demonstrate its preparedness to exercise those rights.”45 In short, the appeal “for the recognition of black elites’ capacity for citizenship” came to overshadow earlier arguments “that posited inalienable rights as the basis for black male citizenship, economic rights, equal protection, and group empowerment.”46 African Americans developed an obligation to demonstrate their own character as fitness for citizenship and civilization rather than their fundamental humanity purchasing access to these things. In this framework, these discourses of racial uplift usually treated it as a way to demonstrate African Americans’ fitness for citizenship. By evidencing the markers of civilization, according to this line of thought, African Americans would win the access to citizenship they were being denied. Booker T. Washington asserted as much, and he offered his system of industrial education as a mechanism by which African American men could prove their fitness for citizenship. By this logic, “the freedmen and their descendants required time and guidance to equip themselves for the responsibilities of citizenship, while whites needed evidence of blacks’ worthiness of inclusion in civil society.”47 Gaines summarizes that black leaders offered racial uplift “in the hope that unsympathetic whites would relent and recognize the humanity of middle-­class African Americans, and their potential for the citizenship rights black men had possessed during Reconstruction.”48 African American women shaped this discourse of racial uplift from its earliest articulations. These ideas of racial uplift were foundational to black women’s postemancipation church work as well as the clubs that they formed in the 1890s. The Woman’s Era Club of Boston took as its slogan “Make the World Better.”49 The National Association of Colored Woman adopted the motto “Lifting as We Climb” upon its formation.50 Gaines explains that these clubs “provided a crucial institutional base and audience” for the black

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women’s racial-­uplift work long before Washington and Du Bois.51 Importantly, as the racial-­uplift program dominated these groups’ early work, it gave black female leaders a crucial role within this growing reform program. These leaders, according to Logan, “articulated the position that racial uplift for women would result from improved homes and improved working conditions outside the home,” and they assigned women agency in bringing about that racial uplift.52 Their work was haunted by the classist assumptions common to racial-­uplift work more generally; Shirley Logan cites Lucy Craft Laney treating racial uplift as the province of elite women, for instance.53 But Logan also summarizes how these African American women “emphasized racial uplift from two perspectives: encouraging those who were in need to take initiative and challenging those who had accomplished to ‘lift’ those who had not.”54 They found roles for women of all classes in this work of racial uplift. Like some of their brethren, African American women illuminated environmental and other contextual explanations for racial difference, displacing biological explanations as they did so. According to Shirley Logan, Harper dissociated “attributes considered by many to constitute a racial essence from the people to whom these attributes were ascribed. She argued instead that similar experiences would ‘produce the same effects’ among any race.”55 Offering situational explanations for “the debased spirit and dwarfed intellect” perceived among African Americans, Harper made race the “product of certain social conditions that shaped a group consciousness and created certain disadvantages.”56 Influenced by the dominant discourses of evolutionary civilization, these women also intoned the separate-­spheres ideology that became central to racial uplift. Gaines explained that racial-­uplift ideology routinely invoked “conventional gender hierarchies of sexual difference,” which were “widely regarded as the behavioral measure of bourgeois civilization.”57 He cites in particular Anna Julia Cooper because she claimed “that civilizations are measured by the status of women.”58 Logan concurs that black women’s racial-­uplift discourse was oriented toward domestic life. These women, she explains, “viewed racial uplift as having a great deal to do with educating black women to assume the traditional roles defined by the cult of true womanhood.”59 She summarizes Mary V. Cook’s advocacy, which taught “women should assist the pastor, teach Sunday school, care for the sick, and train their children. This is racial uplift work appropriately within the sphere of true womanhood.”60 This separate-­spheres ideology also inhibited African American women’s public work, including their racial-­uplift work. Gaines explains how “the

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male-­dominated gender politics of uplift posed difficulties for black women as race leaders.”61 Specifically, because ideas of racial progress rested upon “male dominance and distinction not only within the family but also with such masculine domains as politics, the market, and the military, black women’s public activities, independence, and leadership were controversial within uplift ideology.”62 Such public activities threatened both to undermine black male leadership and to divert women from their proper sphere. As dominant as these patriarchal discourses of evolutionary civilization were, other threads of racial-­uplift ideology did retain the legacy of egalitarianism. Black women’s work prior to the turn of the century was an important source of such alternatives. For this egalitarianism, Gaines cites Frances E. W. Harper, who he says, even in the final decades of the nineteenth century, “expressed the postemancipation ideals of evangelical reform, speaking for those elites who directed their energies toward the social uplift of emancipated blacks.” He continues later to explain that this approach “signified the aspiring black elite’s awareness that its destiny was inseparable from that of the masses.”63 She refused the classist approaches to racial uplift that would separate out the more accomplished African Americans from the more degraded in the interest of demonstrating the potential of the race. From the time of emancipation, through the nadir, and into the twentieth century, an array of racial-­uplift ideas circulated under that broad umbrella. Some of the earlier discourses of racial uplift—­including those articulated by women—­have been overshadowed by later high-­profile leaders, especially Du Bois and Washington. Nonetheless, for all the diversity within this broad ideology, Gaines has noted a number of limitations common to much racial-­ uplift discourse. As a strategic response to racism, racial-­uplift ideology, even as articulated by black leaders, was always determined by whites. Blacks contorted themselves to perform uplift within the framework of expectations set by dominant whites. “The problem with racial uplift ideology is thus one of unconscious internalized racism,” Gaines explains.64 Moreover, racial uplift offered only limited and conditional claims to equality. It made African Americans’ humanity and citizenship dependent on their behavior, and that behavior was shaped by the expectations of the dominant class.65 These discourses of racial uplift were premised on ideas of social mobility that had long been undermined by divisions of race, color, class, and gender.66 With social mobility illusory, racial uplift itself was an illusion. Racial uplift was itself a classist discourse, dividing African Americans against themselves along class lines. Even the most radical and progressive leader of his generation, W. E. B. Du Bois, noted class differences in his sociological analysis

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of black groups in Philadelphia and famously called for uplifting the top tenth of African Americans in order to evidence the potential of the whole group.67 As much as class distinctions served African Americans by proving the elite’s capacity to perform the Victorian practices that evidenced civilization,68 they also demeaned the African Americans who had not achieved that class status. Most troublesome, racial-­uplift discourse offered a mismatch between causes and solutions. While it identified powerful environmental and contextual causes for the degraded state of blacks—­slavery, in particular, but also Jim Crow segregation—­it charged African Americans with repairing for that degraded state through their own personal behavior. Even as this discourse explicitly blamed institutions such as slavery, it “implicitly faulted African Americans for their lowly status, echoing judgmental dominant characterizations of ‘the Negro problem.’”69

The Politics of Exclusion Preparations for the fair evidenced the complicated racial dynamics of the era, with white leaders largely demonstrating the hostile tendencies of the nadir and African American leaders dividing over the best responses to that hostility. African American leaders proactively organized for their own inclusion in the fair because they had been persistently excluded from previous fairs. At the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876, African Americans were excluded from all forms of participation in the fair, including labor. At the New Orleans World’s Industrial and Cotton Exposition in 1884–­85, African Americans were better represented, but in a segregated “Colored Department.”70 Although African American leaders organized more strategically to guarantee fuller inclusion in the Chicago fair, the result was only slight improvement on these previous efforts. The exclusion of African Americans from the fair’s leadership has been well documented in scholarly treatments of the fair and in chapter 1 of this book. African American leaders disagreed on how to proceed regarding the fair’s exhibits, given the general climate of racial hostility. One group, represented by Ferdinand L. Barnett, pushed fair officials to solicit exhibits by African Americans and display them in the appropriate departments (machinery, agriculture, liberal arts, etc.) throughout the exposition. Other leaders, including J. C. Price, urged the fair to develop an Afro-­American Annex.71 Such a separate building would ensure that African Americans’

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work would be judged on its own merit, acknowledging the progress that group had made in the thirty years since emancipation. In the end, neither of these visions was realized, and African American exhibits were neither integrated throughout the fair nor displayed in their own space. Instead, as later critics have noted, most of the fair’s displays of African Americans were exploitative. Rydell indicts the “displays by private companies that ridiculed blacks and so-­called living ethnological exhibits of ‘primitive’ human beings that reinforced the impression among whites that blacks were closer to ‘savagery’ than to ‘civilization.’”72 He was referring to such exhibits as the most famous African American woman at the fair: Aunt Jemima. The R. T. Davis Milling Company premiered the “mammy” character in Chicago that summer. They hired Nancy Green, a former slave and then emancipated servant, to play the role of the plantation mammy. She made pancakes in the tradition of a minstrel show: wearing a red bandanna, she told what Rydell characterizes as “nostalgic tales of plantation life” to visitors while she flipped pancakes.73 The exhibit won a prize for her employer, and the character would become a commercial mainstay for more than a century. Behling concludes that black women’s primary role at the fair was as exhibits. They became markers of the evolutionary progress from savagery to civilization whether they, like the Dahomey women, exemplified savagery or, like the black women who spoke to the WCRW, exemplified the potential of black women to progress toward civilization.74 As Christopher Robert Reed recounts, however, the fair was not entirely harmful for African Americans; many capitalized on the opportunities it provided. He claims that early treatments of the fair—­especially those by Massa, Rudwick, and Meier—­captured the fair’s exclusions more than its inclusions and have shaped subsequent memory of the fair’s racial politics. He has provided a counternarrative that emphasizes some of the fair’s successful exhibits by African Americans. In the Woman’s Building, for instance, Joan Imogen Howard amassed an impressive statistical display about the status of African American women. Liberia and Haiti hosted their own pavilions, and the Hampton Institute, Wilberforce University, and Atlanta University all hosted displays. Reed also enumerates the nonexploitive ways that African Americans participated in the fair’s official celebrations. Frederick Douglass participated both in the fair’s 1892 dedication ceremony and later at a high-­society ball. African American soldiers joined the military parades, and African American children were part of a patriotic display on the fairgrounds. Seven African American women spoke in the World’s Congress of Representative Women; Wells, Douglass, and Booker T. Washington spoke

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at the Labor Congress; and numerous African Americans spoke at the Congress on the Negro.75 By most accounts, African American visitors to the fair were treated well. Even Rudwick and Meier, who were skeptical of the fair’s racial antagonisms, noted that African Americans met little discrimination in public accommodations during the fair. The Indianapolis Freeman recounted one incident of a woman being denied entry to the fair’s Kentucky building, but there were otherwise no other accounts of African Americans being excluded from entertainments, restaurants, or lodging. They also found extensive employment on the fairgrounds, even if their employment opportunities were not equal to those of whites. The fair’s most explicit outreach to African Americans also became its most controversial. In August, the fair sponsored Colored Jubilee Day, in keeping with the other special interest days it had hosted for identity groups, such as Irish American Day and Italian American Day, along with days for nearly every state. As with these other identity days, from the fair’s perspective, Colored Jubilee Day was a way to boost attendance and revenue. African American leaders immediately saw both promise and insult in the prospect of Colored Jubilee Day, with even Douglass and Wells divided on this question. As Rudwick and Meier explain, “Douglass lauded this opportunity to display Negro culture and the ‘real position’ of Negroes. However, Miss Wells declared that the celebration was a mockery intended to patronize them.”76 She feared that the event would make a spectacle of African Americans, who would partake of the free watermelons being offered and fulfill every negative stereotype held about them. Even if it portrayed African American achievements positively, Colored Jubilee Day would allow exposition authorities to “maintain the fiction that they were being inclusive and, at the same time, portray their critics as inveterate complainers.”77 Wells was joined by some prominent African American leaders and newspapers, but ultimately Douglass carried the day. He gave a speech to a crowd of more than a thousand listeners, sharing the platform with Bishop Henry M. Turner and Paul Laurence Dunbar, along with African American musicians. He used the occasion to, in Rudwick and Meier’s words, “vindicate the progress made by Negro Americans despite conditions of persecution and injustice.”78 Ida B. Wells led the most sustained campaign against this racial antagonism at the fair. With the publication and distribution of The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition, she and collaborators Frederick Douglass, I. Garland Penn, and Ferdinand Barnett drew attention to the exclusions they faced at the fair. Attuned to these exclusions

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long before the fair’s gates opened, they set out to raise money to publish a pamphlet in English, French, German, and Spanish so that they could appeal to the fair’s global visitors. Their effort encountered numerous obstacles, including vocal opposition within the African American press, which hindered their ability to raise money. In the end, they were only able to publish a short preface in multiple languages, and the pamphlet did not appear until August, halfway through the fair’s run. Then they were able to print twenty thousand copies, which they distributed through the fair’s Haitian pavilion and by mail to anyone who sent three cents to cover postage. The pamphlet itself illuminated racial hostility in both a broad and narrow sense. The majority of the answer to the pamphlet’s provocative title prompt—­Why the Colored American Is Not at the World’s Fair—­focused on larger conditions of hostility and violence that African Americans faced in the United States. The authors took the occasion of the Columbian Exposition, with all its promises of progress and civilization, to illuminate for the world the degrading treatment African Americans still experienced. In chapters on class legislation, the convict lease system, and lynch law, Ida B. Wells showed how African Americans were violently discriminated against. She explained the wide variety of measures—­including “the convict lease system, the chain-­gang, vagrant laws, election frauds, keeping back laborers’ wages, paying for work in worthless script instead of lawful money, refusing to sell land to Negroes and the many political massacres where hundreds of black men were murdered for the crime(?) of casting the ballot”—­that prevented African Americans from enjoying the progress presumably guaranteed by their emancipation.79 Wells’s future husband, Ferdinand L. Barnett, showed the narrower forms of discrimination in his contribution, “The Reason Why.” In the chapter that concluded the volume, he explained the details behind African Americans’ exclusion from the fair itself: their exclusion from the commission, the Board of Lady Managers, the state boards, the exhibits, and the Columbian Guard. His narrative showed the persistence of African Americans in trying to win involvement in the fair and the persistence of fair leaders in putting up obstacles to them. He called out fair leaders for their hypocrisy in claiming to demonstrate progress in the Columbian era while ignoring and stifling the progress of one of the neediest groups, the recently freed slaves. In the pamphlet’s penultimate chapter, I. Garland Penn took on the opposite objective, demonstrating the progress of African Americans that he, Wells, Douglass, Penn, and other African American leaders wished the fair would have exhibited. He suggested African Americans’ progress in a

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number of spheres: education, professions, literature, journalism, church, business, trades, labor, inventions, art, and music. Drawing upon statistics and individual examples, he showed both the extent of this progress and the individuals who best exemplified it. In sum, Wells and Douglass’s pamphlet communicated numerous messages to interested fairgoers: that African Americans were still violently discriminated against, that any claims to progress in the United States were suspect as long as the treatment of African Americans remained so hostile, that the fair itself exemplified this spirit of exclusion and discrimination, and that African Americans had managed to persevere and thrive despite this hostile treatment. Ultimately, according to Rydell, the pamphlet’s reach was circumscribed, as the world’s fair authorities and white press “paid it no attention,” and African Americans divided so forcefully over strategies for responding to the fair’s racism. It inspired scorn from the Methodist Union and the Indianapolis Freeman. Those papers denied racial discrimination, or at least found it too embarrassing to announce to foreign visitors. “As angered as many were by the fair,” Rydell explains, “some were embarrassed about having their obvious absence from the exposition called to international attention.”80 With their integrationist sentiment, these papers encouraged African Americans to go to Chicago, to the fair, as Americans, not as a special group sensitive to discrimination. Other papers, including the Cleveland Gazette, Afro-­American Advocate, and Philadelphia Tribune, supported Wells and Douglass and encouraged their readers to do so financially. With such divisions among African Americans only compounding the exclusions that African Americans already knew, the pamphlet itself never found much of an audience, and it quickly fell into obscurity. For all its promises of progress, the fair, in short, exemplified and amplified the larger racial ideologies of its era. As with everything else, it neither reflected true American reality nor obscured that truth. Instead, it projected competing visions of race relations in Gilded Age America. The fair’s leadership was dominated by white men and women and allowed African Americans only token leadership roles. Its displays celebrated white masculinity and made civilization the unique province of white masculinity. Most displays of African Americans were exploitative, except for the few contributed by African American individuals and institutions. In disputes over Colored Jubilee Day, Wells and Douglass’s pamphlet, and the question of integrated versus segregated exhibitions, the fair projected divisions among African American leaders about how best to advocate for their own progress. The fair provided, to say the least, complicated rhetorical terrain for the few African

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American women who spoke to the congresses, along with the white women who addressed race and class differences.

Racial Uplift at the WCE Women who spoke at the fair had to contend with these dominant discourses of race, class, evolution, and civilization. As they did so, I suggest, they articulated racial uplift as a practice of citizenship. That is, they suggested that women were called to the work of facilitating human evolution, particularly helping the lowest classes advance out of their depraved states. Their uplift work, then, focused not only on racial groups in the narrow sense—­as in, a group united by skin color or a collective experience of slavery—­but also on the human race more generally. As they worked for “racial uplift,” they essayed to help particular ethnic, racial, and class groups in the interest of uplifting the whole human race. These calls for racial uplift were especially pronounced within three groups of speeches: (1) plenary speeches at the WCRW that reported on the status of particular groups of women around the world and were collected in Sewall’s edited volume under the title “The Solidarity of Human Interests,” (2) the subgroup of those “Solidarity” speeches especially devoted to the status of African American women in the United States, and (3) speeches at both the WCRW and the CWB about women’s growing involvement in the kindergarten movement and primary education more generally. In this chapter, I focus on the practice of racial uplift in sixteen of these speeches81 delivered by fifteen women: Isabelle Bogelot, Hallie Q. Brown, Anna Julia Cooper, Sarah B. Cooper, Fannie Jackson Coppin, Sarah J. Early, Kate Tupper Galpin, Frances E. W. Harper, Jennie de la M. Lozier, Matilde G. de Miro Quesada, Virginia Thrall Smith, May French Sheldon, Mila Frances Tupper, Lucy Wheelock, and Fannie Barrier Williams. By 1893, the six African American women had all developed regional and national reputations, mostly through church and club work. They had been born into different relationships with slavery: some born free before the Civil War, others born enslaved, and others born after emancipation. They all worked as educators at least briefly across various levels from primary schools through colleges such as Wilberforce University in Ohio. Most could claim some literary credits, especially Harper, known for her novel Iola Leroy, and Anna Julia Cooper, whose A Voice from the South is widely recognized as an early articulation of black feminism. Most developed their reform work through Methodist

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Church groups and denominational societies (though A. J. Cooper was Episcopalian and Harper Unitarian). They largely joined and formed clubs for African American women, but Williams was the first African American member of the Chicago Women’s Club. A. J. Cooper helped found the Colored Women’s League of Washington in 1892. Williams, Brown, and Early were all involved in the leadership of the National Association of Colored Women. They participated to varying degrees in the major reform movements of their generation, especially temperance and, to a lesser extent, suffrage. Through their reform activism, these women were affiliated with the most prominent African American men of their generation, including Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and W. E. B. Du Bois. Sarah Cooper, Smith, and Wheelock were all “kindergartners”—­that is, advocates of the kindergarten movement. The highest profile of the three, Cooper had founded the Golden Gate Kindergarten Association of San Francisco, and the biographical note about her in Eagle’s edited volume of congress speeches claimed that she had given thirty-­six speeches at the WCE. The other speakers brought with them a variety of distinctions: Lozier was a physician who served as the president of the women’s club Sorosis; Bogelot, a Frenchwoman, was the treasurer of the International Council of Women; and Sheldon had led an expedition into Africa in 1891 and exhibited artifacts from her travels at the WCE. My analysis of these women’s speeches collectively suggests that they both appropriated and undermined the dominant discourses of evolutionary progress and civilization. In particular, they argued for the solidarity of women across racial, ethnic, and national difference; they recast the narratives of evolutionary progress; and they summoned earlier Enlightenment values. As they did so, they projected a model of racial uplift that, importantly, made racial uplift a practice of citizenship rather than evidence for citizenship. Evolutionary Progress These women echoed, unquestioned, some of the foundational assumptions of evolutionary progress. They used the language of evolution—­especially struggle—­freely. Anna Julia Cooper, for instance, claimed African American women’s history was “full of heroic struggle, a struggle against fearful and overwhelming odds.”82 She likened women’s struggle to protect their purity and their daughters’ purity to “the despairing fight, as of an entrapped tigress.”83 Early embraced the language of progress: “Step by step, as the dark

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cloud of ignorance and superstition is dispelled by the penetrating rays of the light of eternal truth, men begin to think, and thought brings revolution, and revolution changes the condition of men and leads them into a happier and brighter existence.”84 Her anadiplosis underscores this sense of progress, as thought grows into revolution, which then creates change. More than just borrowing the key terms and syntax of evolutionary progress, these speakers also echoed the larger narrative of evolutionary progress itself. “The tendency of the present age,” Harper explained, “is toward broader freedom, an increase of knowledge, the emancipation of thought, and a recognition of the brotherhood of man.”85 Tupper asserted that humanity had undergone sufficient evolution to arrive at a higher plane of development. Humanity had arrived at a stage where it could “look back over its progress and find the means whereby it has developed; it uses the laws that are found in the development; it takes the younger, weaker portions of the race in its arms and lifts them according to the same laws whereby men find that they themselves have been elevated.”86 These speakers also adopted the basic cosmic and millennial assumptions about the author of this progress. Early claimed that the forces of evolution would “raise mankind to that degree of intellectual and moral excellence which a wise and beneficent Creator designed that he should enjoy.”87 Likewise, Brown reinvested faith in the sentiment she attributed to abolitionists generations before: “that God was not dead, but marching on, conquering and to conquer.”88 Solidarity of Women While they accepted and reiterated the basic assumptions of evolutionary progress—­that it was ongoing, under the control of a divine creator—­these speakers also questioned or rejected some of its basic entailments. They that evolution required questioned its assumption of differentiation—­ differentiation of species or classes, by which the fittest would evolve the furthest—­replacing it with solidarity or sameness among women around the world. Sewall’s edited volume of speeches from the WCRW included a chapter called “Solidarity of Human Interests,” which compiled speeches by women from around the world, who mostly spoke to the condition of women in their countries or from their racial groups. That section loosely mirrored what had happened in the Wednesday general congress; in the morning, in the Hall of Washington, three women were scheduled to speak on “The Solidarity of Human Interests”—­Isabel Bogelot of France, Callirhoe Parren of Greece, and Tauthe Vignier of Switzerland. Then Señorita Carolina d’Alcala

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of Spain would address “Woman in Spain for the Last Four Hundred Years,” and Mme. Quesada of Peru and Baroness Wilson of Spain would address “Woman’s Position in the South American States” before Marie Stromberg of Russia addressed “The Evolution of the Russian Woman.” At the same time, in the Hall of Columbus, women addressed similar topics: Marie Deraismes of France on “Woman’s Political Future,” Dr. Emilie Kempin of Switzerland and Prof. Helen Webster on “Our Debt to Zurich,” Sleona Karla Machova on “The Position of Women in Bohemia,” Dr. Marie Poplin on “The Struggle of Woman in Belgium to Enter Public Employments and the Professions,” and a group of seven women on “A Century of Progress for Women in Canada.” Sewall’s edited chapter included many of these speeches, along with most of the congresses’ speeches by African American women about the status of women of their race. Four of those speeches—­Fannie Barrier Williams’s “The Intellectual Progress of the Colored Women of the United States Since the Emancipation Proclamation” along with responses by Anna Julia Cooper, Fannie Jackson Coppin, and Florence Lewis—­were delivered in the Thursday-­evening general congress in the Hall of Washington. Sarah J. Early delivered “The Organized Efforts of Colored Women in the South to Improve Their Condition,” with a response by Hallie Quinn Brown during the Friday-­ evening general congress in the Hall of Washington. By the organization and titling of this chapter, Sewall’s edited book implied that women of nationalities and subcultures around the world shared some common set of interests. Her introduction to this section equivocated a bit on these questions of solidarity and sameness, specifically the possibility of universal civilization. Stating that the chapter included voices “from all civilized parts of the earth,” Sewall implied that there were both civilized and uncivilized parts of the earth. As the chapter included speeches by women whose racial and national groups might have otherwise been considered uncivilized—­African Americans and women from Siam, Peru, and Russia—­Sewall’s statement expanded what nations counted as civilized even as she underscored the fundamental assumption that some nations were uncivilized. In coded terms, she went on to imply that her chapter included white women and Asian women alongside African American women expressing the most progressive sentiments of women’s equality. Where Sewall equivocated, some of the speakers were clearer in replacing differentiation with sameness. Anna Julia Cooper did not mince words when she closed her speech with this: “We take our stand on the solidarity of humanity, the oneness of life, and the unnaturalness and injustice of all special favoritisms, whether of sex, race, country, or condition.”89 Likewise, in

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her description of the women of South America, de Miro Quesada collapsed any differences based on ethnicity or nationality. Women’s work across South America, she summarized, “is more or less comprehensive in every country, according to the race, the stage of civilization, the soil and climate, and other conditions arising from local or transient causes.”90 As she allowed for different levels of civilization between these groups, de Miro Quesada still suggested that those groups shared a fundamental sameness. African American women in particular claimed sameness with the white women who dominated their audiences. Logan has noted how they did so in appealing to their white audiences. She points to “community interests” as the dominant recurrent theme in Harper’s public discourse, showing how the renowned speaker identified points of convergence between divided audiences—­black and white, male and female, free and newly free, and so on.91 Likewise, Logan shows Williams and Cooper using strategies of identification and division to create commonalities with their white female audiences. They both, she claims, “placed black women in the same category, ‘woman,’ as the white women reading and listening to their texts.”92 Of these speeches at the congresses, Harper made the most repeated and consistent claims for this sameness between white and African American women. Referring to African American women, she argued that “our women have the same spirit and mettle that characterize the best of American women.”93 Likewise, “the moral aptitudes” of African American women were “just as strong and just as weak as those of any other American women with like advantages of intelligence and environment.”94 Early emphasized the common reform work that African American and white women had conducted, focusing on missionary efforts and WCTU organizing.95 Williams expanded from these similarities of character to claim that white and African American women also shared common desires. Appealing directly to her white audience, Williams claimed, “We are so essentially American in speech, in instincts, in sentiments and destiny that the things that interest you equally interest us.”96 Cooper echoed Williams’s sentiment, claiming that “the colored woman feels that woman’s cause is one and universal.” and continuing on to detail their shared cause.97 Coppin refused the popular instinct to make African American women’s rights “a side issue,” noting instead that white women had a direct interest because anything that African American women could achieve, white women should certainly be able to achieve. These African American speakers had a clear instrumental interest in highlighting white and African American women’s sameness: white women could provide crucial support for their own reform efforts. But their

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narrow strategic goal does not diminish the larger rhetorical significance of undermining dominant logics of progress and civilization by highlighting the commonality of humanity. Rewriting Progress Narratives These speakers further undermined dominant discourses of progress and civilization by recasting the underlying narrative. They resisted assumptions of white male civilization, they provided counternarratives of progress from barbarity to civilization, they illuminated progress among presumed uncivilized groups, and they modified the timeline of expected evolutionary progress. Some of these speakers explicitly challenged what Bederman calls the foundational assumption of the fair—­that of white masculine civilization. They contended that women and nonwhites were equally capable of achieving civilization. Both “honor and fame” and “sin and shame,” according to Lozier, were “found in every class of society and condition of life. Immorality, or violation of the law of purity, can be found as rampant and as gross under silk and velvet as under rags, in the palace and in the hovel, in the African kraal and in the American mansion.”98 The Frenchwoman’s metonymy makes clear that both rich and poor, black and white, African and American were capable of the same forms of barbarity and civilization. Early directly addressed the openness of evolutionary progress, claiming that “no class of persons is exempt” from this movement, not even “the most unlettered, the most remote and obscure”; all “have heard a mysterious voice calling them to ascend higher in the scale of being.”99 As they asserted that civilization was not limited to white men alone, these speakers also resisted standard narratives of progress from barbarity to civilization and provided counternarratives. May French Sheldon, who spoke at both the WCRW and the CWB, provided the most extensive counter to dominant assumptions of barbarity. She won great attention for leading a caravan into Western Africa in order to encounter “raw natives before tampered with or trained by so-­called civilization.”100 She did so, she explained, “with a mind that repudiates the idea that all aboriginals are savages to be subdued, coerced, forced into an alien’s mental, moral and civic condition under the vaunted pretense of wresting the benighted ones of creation from degradation.”101 She wanted to meet the natives as an equal, specifically to win access into their most authentic lives, “in their homes; to know the women as wives, mothers and sisters; to know the men as husbands, fathers, brothers and

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lovers, and see the children as they were; in fact, to obtain an unprejudiced insight into the general social condition, and consider the future possibilities of these people.”102 She explicitly rejected the colonialist relationship that existed between the whites who planned the fair and the supposedly barbarian peoples they displayed.103 Her expedition largely confirmed her assumptions. She had gone to Africa skeptical that the people were barbaric, and she recounted, “I found the people and conditions very much what I aspired to make them, and certainly the natives are not so black as painted, and are peculiarly amenable to gentleness and kindness, and tractable through their vanity and love of power. They are all one piece of a common humanity.”104 She described their cultural practices—­from how they greeted each other to how they divided labor—­in great detail, but with only a minimum of condescension. She ultimately called for civilizing Africa, but in radically circumscribed ways at odds with dominant practices of colonialism. She rejected “enervating philanthropy” that robs the natives of self-­support and instead proposed “peaceful, humane methods of would-­be colonizers” that would “banish forever the military attitude of aliens.”105 She echoed the dominant call for racial uplift seen among these speakers but, like them, at odds with the dominant narratives of evolutionary progress. Speakers concerned with the status of African American women likewise replaced assumptions of their barbarity with descriptions of their progress. Fannie Barrier Williams’s speech and its responses were explicitly oriented around this question of “The Intellectual Progress of the Colored Women Since the Emancipation Proclamation.” They showed “how promptly and eagerly these suddenly liberated women tried to lay hold upon all that there is in human excellence.” Those women had engaged in a “constant striving for equality,” which gave “an upward direction to all the activities of colored women.”106 Their progress, Williams asserted, was “along high levels and rooted deeply in the essentials of intelligent humanity.”107 Williams illuminated the “lines of progress” that were “easily verifiable” in such realms as religion, culture, education, and morality. On the subject of culture, she explained, “there has been a marked advance toward a greater refinement of conception, good taste, and the proprieties.”108 In terms of morality, she spoke in coded terms of the sexual exploitation that slave women experienced, and then she argued, “The daughters of women who thirty years ago were not allowed to be modest, not allowed to follow the instincts of moral rectitude, who could cry for protection to no living man, have so elevated the moral tone of their social life that new and purer standards of personal worth

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have been created, and new ideals of womanhood, instinct with grace and delicacy, are everywhere recognized and emulated.”109 She called it the “moral regeneration of a whole race of women.”110 In her response, Cooper focused especially on women’s educational progress, noting the advent of such schools as Hampton, Fiske, and Atlanta. She gave significant numerical data about this educational progress, including the number of schools, number of pupils, financial holdings in property, number of children, number of teachers, and number of university students. These schools founded by and for African Americans, according to Cooper, “diffused a contagious longing for higher living and purer thinking.”111 In illuminating African American women’s progress, these speakers manipulated the chronology of evolutionary progress. In general, human progress was assumed to occur over centuries, just as progress among animal species occurred so slowly as to be unobservable. These speakers gave African American women’s progress a compressed timeline. They emphasized how long they had lived in a state of total depravation—­their “long night of oppression, which shrouded their minds in darkness, crushed the energies of their soul, robbed them of every inheritance save their trust in God.”112 According to Brown, “For two hundred and fifty years the negro woman of America was bought and sold as chattel,” and she continued on to elaborate on the conditions under which enslaved women lived. They contrasted that centuries-­long stagnant condition with the radical progress that emancipated women had fomented in less than thirty years. Williams, Cooper, Early, and Brown all referred to this expedited timeline in some way. Williams opened her speech by claiming that “less than thirty years ago,” there was no progress among African American women to note.113 Cooper compared “the present condition of the colored people of the South with their condition twenty-­eight years ago” and noted “their marvelous advancement in so short a time.”114 Brown celebrated that “twenty-­five years of progress find the Afro-­American woman advanced beyond the most sanguine expectations. Her development from darkest slavery and grossest ignorance into light and liberty is one of the marvels of the age.”115 While some of these speakers rounded up to thirty years and others rounded down to twenty-­five, they adopted the same basic chronological frame: measuring progress in the generation since emancipation. They celebrated the remarkable achievements in such a short span of time, but Brown also called for moderating their expectations. “Ages of savagery and centuries of bondage weakened the intellect and dwarfed the faculties,” she reminded her audience. “The proper development of the mind, like the formation of

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character, must come by a slow and steady growth. What are thirty years in the history of a nation?”116 These speakers, then, collectively manipulated the timeline for evolutionary progress in the case of African American women. Enlightenment Values In celebrating progress and calling for continued racial uplift, these speakers invested faith in the mutability of humans. That is, like many African American leaders promoting racial uplift, they replaced the assumptions of innate character that had grown dominant in the last decades of the nineteenth century with the environmental explanations common to Enlightenment thought. They didn’t entirely abandon the innate assumptions so fundamental to their own social context; they assumed certain positive characteristics were inherent among women. De Miro Quesada asserted that woman had a “natural sensibility, her instinctive religious tendency, and the docility with which she adapts herself to the influences prevailing in her home.”117 Williams claimed that African American women had “native gentleness, good cheer, and hopefulness.”118 Moreover, “sullenness of disposition, hatefulness, and revenge against the master class are not in the nature of our women.”119 When it came to negative characteristics, they rejected these innate assumptions. Wheelock did so explicitly when she claimed, “We have easily comforted ourselves by assigning too much importance to heredity and too little to environment.”120 Instead, Wheelock and others offered environmental explanations for the depravity they saw among particular groups. Wheelock explains, “The child of the slums becomes vicious and wicked because effected by the false maxims of his environment.”121 They attested to a wide range of influential environmental factors. De Miro Quesada saw “laws, traditions, and habits” all working together to limit women’s progress. Smith blamed “poverty, ignorance or vicious surroundings” of young children for their “moral diseases.”122 Lozier cited “a false and pernicious order of things, too often founded and fostered in bad laws or due to the absence of good.” With Lozier’s environmental explanation, the state bore responsibility for such vices as prostitution and crime.123 Sometimes they settled for environmental analogies. Sarah J. Cooper, for instance, used an extensive natural metaphor to treat children as plants who could be cultivated by nourishing factors in their environments. Childhood, she claimed, is “the root-­life of the human plant, and the root-­life must forever determine what the stem and blossoms shall be.”124 Smith likewise claimed

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that the most depraved children benefit from “a permanent transplanting into the sweet soil of honest and pure living.”125 Environmental problems demanded environmental solutions. Virtue could be inculcated in lower-­ class children through what Smith construed as a fairly literal replanting in a new environment; she promoted “fresh-­air funds” that sent urban children into the country for several weeks. There, “their health is naturally benefited by the change. It brings color to thin cheeks, elasticity to their bodies, awakens in their minds the love of simple pleasures, ideals of beauty, cleanliness and purity.”126,127 In promoting environmental explanations for human weaknesses, these speakers also replaced race with class as the key marker of difference. African American women did so as they associated themselves with high-­class white women and distinguished both from the lower-­class women of their races. Williams, for instance, spoke on behalf of African American “women of refinement and culture.”128 Cooper suggested that “oppression and depression and suppression have always come from the middle and lower classes, and that has grown out of their very poor education.”129 While the lower classes lacked this refinement and sophistication, class differences, importantly, were mutable. Wheelock, Cooper, and others who spoke on behalf of public education and kindergartens emphasized the work those institutions could do to civilize children from these lower classes. The Practice of Racial Uplift With their foundational faith in evolutionary progress, coupled with their renegotiation of the specific narrative of progress, these women arrived at a practice of racial uplift that they argued would benefit the human race. Their vision of racial uplift supported the fair’s larger mission to illuminate and celebrate the advances of human civilization. The speeches examined here collectively celebrated the work of racial uplift—­that is, improving the condition of some women (and men and children) for the benefit of all humanity. By praising specific racial-­uplift work under way, they encouraged other women to follow the example being set. They further promoted this racial-­ uplift work as both a social good and a moral and civic duty to which women especially were called. They promoted racial uplift with the assumption that uplifting women as well as people from all races, classes, and nations would ultimately benefit all of women and humanity. Numerous speakers promoted the racial-­uplift work already under way, and in so doing, they provided models for audience members to replicate. The

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women who spoke about the status of African Americans especially praised the work that members of that group had done since emancipation. Williams pointed specifically to African American teachers who “have adapted themselves to the work of mentally lifting a whole race of people so eagerly and readily that they afford an apt illustration of the power of self-­help.”130 Cooper, Early, and Brown all noted the work that was being done through mutual aid societies and organizations such as the Colored Women’s League, YWCA, WCTU, King’s Daughters, and Christian Endeavor. Early described these groups’ work in detail: how they had run orphanages, cemeteries, churches, and other benevolent institutions; how they had collected money to grant death benefits that provided for widows and orphans; how they formed missionary societies; and much more. Lozier likewise, although not talking about a specific racial group, praised “the numerous moral reform and female guardian societies, midnight missions, and homes for the friendless,” which were doing “a noble work in rescuing myriads of women from the very mouth of the flaming pit.” She went into great poetic detail about the horrors of these brothels from which they were saving women.131 Sarah Cooper and her collaborators promoted the kindergartens as a venue for such uplift as well. Tupper claimed that the kindergarten was “the best means that have been discovered so far for the systematic development of the little members of the human race, those who are beginning life.”132 Schools that taught manual labor would make students into good workers, which would then make them good citizens, according to her logic. Education must “develop the industrial capacity of the masses, thus leading to virtue, prosperity, and peace.”133 Without education, she feared, children would only grow up “to form Jacobin clubs and revolutionary brigades which will be the beginning of the end of our greatness and prosperity, and of the republic itself.”134 Galpin concurred that “the safety and perpetuity of our national life” depended on the public schools. Those schools did not educate poor children so much as they provided the nation with “worthy citizens.”135 This technical education had the further potential to eliminate criminality by prevention. Cooper claimed that “seven-­tenths of the convicted criminals of the United States are persons who have never learned a trade, or followed any industrial pursuit.” Investing them with a trade would presumably reduce this lawlessness. With their faith in the mutability of humanity, these speakers encouraged women to emulate this practice of human uplift through education and kindergartens in particular. These speakers portrayed this racial-­uplift work as uniquely suited to women. Harper urged that “the hearts of the women of the world” might

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“throb as one heart unified by the grand and holy purpose of uplifting the human race.”136 She also described more specifically the work that women could do and were doing in the interest of racial uplift. She zeroed in on three vices that the “women of America” could fight: “intemperance,” “social evil” (prostitution), and “lawlessness” (lynching). On the latter, she demanded that women do all they “could by influence, tongue, and pen to keep men from making bonfires of the bodies of real or supposed criminals.”137 Lozier pointed women to the work of encouraging “cleanliness, thrift, and cheerfulness in the homes of the poor and wretched.”138 Other speakers pointed to women’s work in education for racial uplift. In particular, teachers could do the work of inculcating virtue. “A teacher who stands before her school the embodiment of conscientious duty-­doing, and of scrupulous truth and honesty,” Galpin explained, “can no more fail to teach duty-­doing, truth, and honesty than the sun can fail to warm when its rays fall.”139 Beyond showing women’s suitability for this work, these speakers implied that women had a particular moral or religious duty to racial uplift. Williams recognized an obligation to benevolence among African American women, who felt “the duties they owe to the sick, the indigent and ill-­fortuned.”140 She also recognized white benevolent women—­“women who are tender enough in heart to be active in humane societies, to be foremost in all charitable activities, who are loving enough to unite Christian womanhood everywhere against the sin of intemperance”—­and suggested that those same women “ought to be instantly concerned in the plea of colored women for justice and humane treatment.”141 Some of these speakers made women’s duty not just moral but also civic. According to de Miro Quesada, women’s uplift work was both the “moral duty” and the “practical interest of the North American people” who would benefit from the uplifting of the South American people.142 In de Miro Quesada’s treatment, the nation and the hemisphere had great need of women’s uplift work, so women had an obligation to respond to that need. Harper echoed this need, claiming, “The world has need of all the spiritual aid that woman can give for the social advancement and moral development of the human race.”143 Woman’s work, in her depiction, “is grandly constructive.”144 Cooper articulated yet another need that women’s uplift work could fulfill: “The prevention of crime is the duty of society,” she suggested.145 Through their work in the kindergartens, women could raise up children to avoid criminality. “We must call the little children from the very earliest years, and prepare them for useful and honorable citizenship,” Cooper urged her audience.146 Finally, Tupper made this civic duty the most explicit with a reference to the American Revolution. If the women

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of her generation did not do this uplift work, she argued, that great movement would have been in vain. In her words, “Unless this developing human race learns how to develop itself by the very best means in the world, that experiment inaugurated a century ago would necessarily be a failure.”147 The American Revolution obligated future generations to the work of racial uplift. Women’s work was also an extension of another tradition begun during the Revolution: republican motherhood. Especially in the kindergarten movement, women’s work for uplift simply extended the civic work they had long done to raise their sons and support their husbands as citizens. In her discussion of the kindergartens, Smith made this connection clear: the kindergarten “is essentially a woman’s work . . . and is only an extension—­a disciplined and orderly extension—­of the development and training of little children in nice homes with wise and loving mothers.”148 As these speakers lamented the lower-­class families where women failed to perform republican motherhood, they instead promised institutional structures where fit women could do the work of republican mothers for large groups of children. This racial uplift work was finally a civic obligation because it was a social good; it had the potential to improve the human race, an unquestioned objective of the fair and its generation. Cooper connected women’s uplift work to that larger goal directly: “The way to make a noble race is to make nobler women.”149 Likewise, Sewall assured her audience in print that “the highest development of the individual”—­and she was referring to women—­is “a means to the highest development of the race and the highest happiness of society.”150 Moreover, she was clear that the human race would benefit from the development of “all classes of women, and of all women in any class.”151 And Williams extended this uplift to include African American women. She explained, “The world always needs the influence of every good and capable woman, and this rule recognizes no exceptions based on complexion.”152 Bogelot extended this argument to the people of all nations. She urged her audience, “We can no longer ignore . . . the greater interests of entire humanity. So we are all one, without distinction of nationality, when it is a matter of humanity. . . . The progress which is attained by one country can not help being shared with others.”153 Cooper used metaphoric language to summarize what was common to all these speakers: “If one link of the chain be broken, the chain is broken. A bridge is no stronger than its weakest part.”154 Progressing toward civilization—­the overarching assumption and goal of the WCE—­would only be possible by raising up people, especially women, of all races, classes, and nationalities, according to this common line of argument.

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Collectively, these speakers praised the women engaged in racial-­uplift work—­including both benevolence on behalf of their own specific race and uplift of other social classes and national groups. They illuminated the range of efforts under way to help specific groups, from rescuing prostitutes to starting kindergartens. And they called women to engage in this work as both a moral and civic obligation. As they did so, they tapped at the rhetorical and ideological foundations of the fair and the era more generally—­those of white male supremacy and evolutionary progress to civilization. Racial uplift, as a practice of citizenship, was more radical than it might initially seem. It certainly carried with it racist and colonialist assumptions of benevolence, where better-off women had an obligation to help the less fortunate. But it also, crucially, assumed that people of all ethnic and economic groups, as well as women and men alike, were capable of progress toward civilization.

Conclusions and Implications Surrounded by discourses of progress and civilization that celebrated white men as the height of human achievement, these women intervened with a practice of racial uplift that assumed that people—­including women—­of all races and classes were equally capable of civilization. Taken collectively, these speeches offer an important intervention into the fair’s dominant racial logics and its discourses of evolutionary progress as well as the project of racial uplift beginning to be articulated by African American leaders outside the fair. These speeches show women adopting the most foundational assumption of evolutionary progress—­that humanity was undergoing a forward march to civilization—­shared by African American leaders and the fair’s white planners alike. And like African American leaders, they adapted the dominant discourse of evolutionary progress to assume environmental explanations for human difference and the resulting possibility of human mutability. These speeches also show women innovating beyond these dominant discourses in significant ways: they asserted solidarity across groups, they advocated human uplift in concert across groups, they claimed women’s leadership within the project of human racial uplift, and they made racial uplift a practice of citizenship rather than evidence for citizenship. Considering speeches by white and African American activists, this analysis shows how calls for human uplift traversed that racial divide, prioritizing uplift of the human race over any individual racialized group. These speeches show women collectively innovating within dominant discourses

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to produce a practice of citizenship accessible and valuable for themselves and their sisters. These speeches, importantly, were only a subset of the addresses given by women at the WCE, and they were only a subset of women’s work more generally. This analysis should not suggest that women generally resisted these dominant discourses of civilization and progress or that women generally called for racial uplift across race and class lines. After all, of the hundreds of speakers in the WCRW and the CWB, only seven were African American. Their inclusion does not negate the BLM’s larger practices of racial exclusion and antagonism. Illuminating their discourse of racial uplift does not absolve the fair’s female leadership for its racist behavior. It simply suggests how some women struggled against those larger practices of racism and classism. The women invited to speak at these congresses were largely elite women, and most of their uplift was directed at other women (and children), sometimes of their own race but rarely of their own class. In direct contrast to W. E. B. Du Bois’s later proposal, these women focused on uplifting the neediest and most depraved members of society. This uplift, then, had a benevolent nature and came with all the implications of such benevolence. These women were creating programs to help other women (and children) with the assumptions that they knew what was best for those others and that those others wanted to be “raised up” into their type of civilization. Moreover, these particular speakers directed their uplift energies so entirely toward others that they did not engage in any self-­uplift. They spoke as if they had progressed toward a higher level of civilization and they were reaching back for the others who had not had the opportunity to progress as far. Moreover, they promoted outreach to individuals in need of uplift rather than targeting the obstacles that hindered particular groups’ progress. Although they identified numerous environmental obstacles, including laws, customs, and economic disparities, few of them encouraged audience members to fight those obstacles at a systemic level, focusing instead on helping individual women and children overcome them. This limitation comes in starkest contrast with Ida B. Wells’s contributions to her coauthored pamphlet. She decried the evils of lynch law, the convict lease system, and so many other forms of systemic violence against African Americans. Harper did call women to fight against lynching—­what she called “lawlessness”—­ alongside prostitution and intemperance, but she was alone in doing so. In contrast to Wells’s pamphlet, these speeches propose a conservative sort of reform, promising to help the people facing environmental constraints rather than removing those constraints themselves.

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These speeches never questioned the bedrock assumptions of evolutionary progress—­specifically, that there was a natural order to the world and that humans were progressing. They never questioned the cosmic significance of this progress or the divine hand guiding this progress. They simply questioned some of the entailments of this narrative of evolutionary progress, including its enthusiasm for differentiation and hierarchy. And they made space for their own agency within this narrative. They still rested ultimate control with the divine, but they allowed women agency in doing the work to carry out the divine plan. Even acknowledging these women’s conservative impulses and the limitations of their politics, these calls for racial uplift were still radical in their moment. For a generation of white men terrified of atavism and regression, whose self-­confidence came from their place at the height of civilization, these speeches struck at the basic premises of their superiority. In suggesting that people—including women—of all races, classes, and nationalities were equally capable of achieving civilization, these speeches promised what white men most feared. This analysis raises questions about the reach of the discourses of progress and civilization at the fair. Scholars such as Bederman have portrayed these discourses as expansive, impenetrable, and unquestioned. In her treatment, the entire fair was a celebration of white masculinity, often at the expense of its opposites. These speeches from the women’s congresses suggest that either these discourses were not as dominant as Bederman and others have portrayed or they were at least more porous, and the rhetorical opportunities for resistance were accessible. In this case, earlier Enlightenment and Revolutionary discourses provided rhetorical resources for resistance. To the extent that those discourses of equality and environment continued to circulate alongside the discourses of natural progress, these speakers summoned the earlier discourses to undermine the latter. These speakers also appealed to what Trump has identified as the “reluctant modernism” circulating in this era. They resisted dominant values of Victorianism, modernism, and civilization in the same way that Trump has identified in the Woman’s Building exhibits, such as the MacMonnies and Cassatt paintings. Reading these speeches in concert with Trump’s analysis of those exhibits suggests the reach of women’s resistance to the fair’s guiding discourses. Showing how they resisted the circulating discourses around them, this analysis, then, highlights the rhetorical savvy of these speakers, in particular the African American women who were confronted with the most challenging rhetorical situation. All the fair’s dominant discourses, sentiments, and

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maneuvering conspired against African American women, explicitly excluding them from leadership, giving them only limited opportunities to display their successes, and making them objects of exploitation and fetish in the exhibits where they were displayed. Yet seven African American women spoke at the WCRW, and the six speeches collected testify to their rhetorical savvy in negotiating this hostile situation. They identified with the most refined women, creating associations within their common class status while also advocating on behalf of African American women of diverse class backgrounds. They simultaneously demonstrated the achievements possible for women of their race while also defending the women who had not yet achieved so much. Calling attention to differences of opportunity between the classes of women, these speakers advocated rectifying those differences. They performed a careful rhetorical balancing act between identifying with the white women who populated these congresses and maintaining solidarity with the African American women on whose behalf they spoke. Notably, white women joined the racial-­uplift chorus. These calls for racial uplift were not simply the self-­interest of African American women otherwise excluded from the fair and its narrative of progress. Women of all groups had been excluded from “civilization,” so they may have perceived a similar opportunity to undermine that exclusive discourse. Moreover, these discourses of racial uplift may not have reflected simple self-­interest, at least not in the sense of women wanting to uplift their own race and class groups. Instead, both white and African American women, and both U.S. and international women, were casting about for ways that they could contribute to their societies and nations. Given the general enthusiasm for progress and civilization, they seized upon the opportunity to recast these narratives in ways that allowed for their participation and respected their ongoing benevolent work. That is, with a bit of rhetorical maneuvering, they made space within these narratives of progress and civilization for the work that they had been doing through their civic and religious associations. These larger narratives—­imperfect though they were—­allowed space for translating their benevolent work into larger civic and social goods.

4 Organized Womanhood

In retrospect, it is clear that women’s participation in the WCE both relied upon and inspired women’s organizing. By the time the fair’s gates opened, women had been building their own voluntary associations for more than a century, with their organizing intensifying in the generation following the Civil War. Nowhere was this organizing more evident than in Chicago, where women had formed their first society in 1835, with dozens more to follow before the 1890s. In the years immediately preceding the fair, women had turned their attention to federating these local organizations, especially with the founding of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs in 1890. Even with this history of organizing, the fair and its era would prove to be a turning point for women’s organizing in Chicago and throughout the nation. In Chicago, Maureen Flanagan points to the fair in 1893 and the Pullman strike the next year, alongside the ongoing crisis in the local school system, as the events that “pushed activist women into forming more alliances and finding more aggressive ways to present to the public their ideas for the city’s development.”1 In the wake of the fair, African American women formed the Ida B. Wells Club, Catholic women formed the Catholic Women’s League, and other organizations, such as the Women’s City Club, would follow in subsequent years and decades.2 Considering women’s organizing nationally, Scott also treats 1893 as a turning point for the women’s club movement. The fair inspired “a wave of energy and organization” that resulted in “a rash of new organizations.”3 She points specifically to the North Carolina Federation of Women’s Clubs, the National Council of Jewish Women, and the National Home Economics Association as groups that were directly inspired by women’s work at the WCE. “There can be no doubt,” she concludes, “that the exposition was a major milestone in the history of American women’s associations.”4 Of course, women were not alone on the associational landscape of the United States. Tocqueville had identified organizing as a characteristically

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American practice as early as the 1830s, and Lord James Bryce confirmed Tocqueville’s observations in the 1890s. Indeed, American women’s voluntary associations participated in a larger civil society that scholars have come to see as vital to our democratic ecosystem. Although there is widespread agreement about the general value of vital civil society, there remains less clarity about exactly what benefits civil society confers or how it is most advantageously configured. We know even less about how civil society is gendered, including how women’s participation has been enabled and circumscribed. The congresses at the WCE, then, provide an opportunity to examine how women projected a vision of their role in civil society at what we now recognize was a turning point for women’s organizing. Women devoted significant attention in the congresses to these questions of organizing, amplifying and magnifying the organizing work under way. In this chapter, I focus specifically on sixteen speeches, primarily given in the World’s Congress of Representative Women.5 The sixteen speakers—­Susan B. Anthony, Rachel Foster Avery, Josephine Bates, Kate Bond, Maud Ballington Booth, Charlotte Emerson Brown, Hallie Q. Brown, Mary Lowe Dickinson, Sarah J. Early, Clara C. Hoffman, Mary E. Kenney, Harriette Keyser, Mary E. Richmond, May Wright Sewall, and Lily Alice Toomy—­include suffragists, reformers, philanthropists, and other prominent women, both white and African American, from both middle-­class and upper-­class backgrounds, who espoused a wide range of social and political positions. I assert, first, that women identified civil society, specifically voluntary associations, as a significant venue for their citizenship. Second, in doing so, I argue, they cast an expansive vision for the democratic functions of vital civil society, characterizing it simultaneously as the guarantor of the social safety net, the watchdog of the state, the watchdog of the market, and the space for public deliberation. Third, I suggest that, with few exceptions, they largely accepted the raced and gendered civil society that they knew in their own context. In the conclusion, I consider the implications of their model for social capital, race and gender justice, and the larger democratic ecosystem.

Civil Society At the WCE, women took stock of their participation in what scholars today might call “civil society.” At least since the late 1980s, with the revolutions in East Central Europe, scholars from around the globe have been interested in the capacity of voluntary associations operating outside the logic of the state

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or the market. Civil society has a long intellectual tradition that predates these recent revolutions. In classical thought, particularly articulated by Aristotle, civil society was indistinguishable from the state as the space—­the polis—­where men gathered to do the work of collective self-­governance.6 In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, civil society took on special resonance in the context of the revolutions and specifically the crisis they posed for the ruling order. Enlightenment thinkers came to view “civil society as a defense against unwarranted intrusions by the state on newly realized individual rights and freedoms, organized through the medium of voluntary associations. In this school of thought,” according to Edwards, “civil society was a self-­regulating universe of associations committed to the same ideals that needed, at all costs, to be protected from the state in order to preserve its role in resisting despotism.”7 This basic idea of civil society as a sphere separate from the state has dominated in subsequent theorizing. Flourishing civil societies in East Central Europe may have inspired renewed attention to the topic, but such civil societies have deep histories in Western Europe and the United States as well. Indeed, as latter-­day scholars are eager to note, Alexis de Tocqueville identified association building as a uniquely American characteristic.8 “From early in the nation’s history,” Skocpol explains, “Americans were preeminent organizers and joiners of voluntary associations that shape and supplement the activities of government.”9 In the 1960s, in their cross-­national analysis The Civic Culture, Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba confirmed Americans’ special tendency to form and participate in voluntary groups.10 In the last generation, two competing tendencies have emerged: enthusiasm for the potential of civil society around the world and concern over changes, particularly declines, in civil society in the United States. Not only was theorizing about civil society inspired by its successes in East Central Europe, but U.S. foreign policy has promoted civil society throughout the Arab world as part of its democratizing project.11 At the same time, panic in the United States has stemmed from a concern that “associational life in the ‘advanced’ capitalist and social democratic countries seems at risk.”12 Robert Putnam popularized this panic with Bowling Alone, but he has found good company in scholars who share his concern that Americans have somehow lost our civic mindedness.13 For as much common interest as exists in the potential of civil society and concerns about its decline, there is less agreement on what, exactly, civil society is. Gosewinkel and Kocka claim that civil society “means many things—­the concept varies and oscillates,” and Edwards notes the idea’s

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“chameleon-­like qualities” and fears that “an idea that means everything probably signifies nothing.”14 Often, those definitions are politically motivated, with Right-­leaning thinkers promoting civil society as a venue for promoting individual liberty, reducing government intervention, and bolstering the social safety net, and Left-­leaning thinkers treating civil society as an alternative to the “authoritarian state and the tyrannical market.”15 These differences are not purely hypothetical; the practice or form of civil society itself may vary, as Edwards explains, from context to context.16 Nonetheless, Edwards and others have intervened in this definitional disorder. Gosewinkel and Kocka offer a three-­part working definition: “Civil society refers to (a) the community of associations, initiatives, movements, and networks in a social space related to but distinguished from government, business, and the private sphere; (b) a type of social action that takes place in the public sphere and is characterized by nonviolence, discourse, self-­organization, recognition of plurality, orientation towards general goals, and civility; (c) a project with socially and geographically limited origins and universalistic claims which changes while it tends to expand, socially and geographically.”17 Their definition points our attention to civil society as a space, a form of behavior, and an aspirational project. Hagemann tries to separate out these various ways of defining civil society, noting three dominant approaches: field logical, normative, and action logical. Field-­logical definitions treat civil society as the space of civic engagement between the state, economy, and private sphere: “Civil Society is understood here as a public, non-­private sphere, which is connected with other social spheres.”18 The normative approach defines civil society as a project with some utopian features, a promise yet to be realized: “Civil society is, in short, a utopian vanishing point for the democratization of states and societies, formed after the Western liberal model.”19 An action-­logical approach “focuses on the actors of civil society and their types of social action,” including “self-­organization and autonomy,” publicness, nonviolence, and common good. Hagemann writes, “In the action-­logical approach, civil society thus refers to a specific form of social interaction that is supposed to be different from others, such as state administration and politics, dominance and all types of hierarchical relationships, violence, fighting and war, exchange and the market, as well as personal relationships in nonpublic spaces.”20 Edwards also tries to parse out various approaches to civil society, characterizing the three dominant approaches as associational life, the good society, and the public sphere. The associational life approach focuses civil society as the space and practice of building associations. The good society focuses on building a society and a

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political culture that are civil. And the public sphere focuses on nurturing the sort of discursive environment that Habermas promoted. Although Edwards separates out these three approaches, he ultimately argues that they can only be successful in conjunction with one another; that is, civil society must be all these things. Taking a historical rather than normative approach, this chapter focuses on civil society as the space between the state and the market as it existed in the late nineteenth-­century United States. I treat civil society as an identifiable space with its own practices of public discourse, relationship building, and associating, existing alongside a state and market with which it shared porous boundaries. Importantly, this civil society was largely defined by voluntary activity, neither prescribed nor circumscribed by the law. I assume that civil society had the capacity to fulfill any and all of the three relationships to the state that Edwards posits: “a bulwark against the state, an indispensable support for government reformers, or dependent on state intervention for its existence.”21 In the late nineteenth century, this civil society was visible in the extensive network of voluntary associations that Skocpol says proliferated following the Civil War. She notes how, in that era, “trade unions, business associations, and professional groups proliferated and attracted new members.” And at the same time, “churches, religious associations, fraternal and women’s groups, and many other long-­standing kinds of voluntary associations that attracted members across class lines” were also “spreading and growing.”22 As scholars have split over precisely what civil society is, they have likewise split over exactly what it does. That is, what is the value of civil society? How does or can it benefit democracy or the good life? While not always in agreement, scholars collectively have illuminated a wide range of benefits that a strong civil society can confer on its national and international community. Situated outside of both the state and the market, a strong civil society can serve as a counterbalance to both, guarding against their encroachments. This hope runs from Madison and Tocqueville through the dissidents in Eastern Europe and Western academics like Robert Putnam: collectively, they offer hope for “the value of voluntary associations in curbing the power of centralizing institutions, protecting pluralism and nurturing constructive social norms, especially ‘generalized trust and cooperation.’”23 More specifically, they resist the power of authoritarian states by promoting the virtues of good governance (such as transparency and accountability) and by accumulating and leveraging popular sentiment.24 Likewise, strong civil societies participate in guarding against the tendencies of unregulated

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markets. Edwards explains the hope that “the public, private, and civic must work together to overcome social and economic problems.”25 Civil society may also do the important work of creating relationships, and those relationships then serve the individuals involved as well as larger social and political structures. Skocpol explains the benefits that traditional large federated associations conferred upon members—­both personal interactions and the ability to contribute to a larger project: “Members of America’s classic voluntary membership associations could have it both ways: they could strengthen their ties to friends, neighbors, and family members in the local community and at the same express values and an identity shared by large numbers of other people they never met personally.”26 These personal ties sometimes brought concrete benefits to participants, including access to insurance, death benefits, orphanages, and other social safety net provisions. On the other hand, though, “the reasons people participated and cared so much went beyond the personal, the familial, and the local, for membership in translocal federations offered connections to—­and organizational routes into—­broader social and political movements.”27 Their motives were not purely self-­serving; participants gained personal benefits while also contributing to larger objectives. In creating relationships, the voluntary associations of civil society may also do the important work of fostering social capital, the function that Putnam has so successfully promoted. He notes its potential for nurturing both bonding (the relationships within groups) and bridging (the relationships between groups). Clifford Bob explains, “Associational life is thought to be a crucial means of creating the trust and reciprocity on which both democratic and market interactions depend. In this view, a vibrant organizational life is thought to build strong and cohesive societies, particularly if it crosses primordial divisions such as ethnic and racial lines”—­if it, in other words, both bonds and bridges groups.28 Skocpol has written extensively about the bridging capacity of federated voluntary associations, especially in the nineteenth century. She notes that many associations grew out of ethnic divisions (especially during periods of massive immigration), and they worked primarily to bring particular groups together. If those associations hoped to grow, however, they had to overcome those insular tendencies and divisions. Skocpol pays the closest attention to class, concluding that “the organizers of America’s greatest voluntary associations practiced cross-­class fellowship,” she asserts.29 Combing through extensive membership records and other archival sources, she is able to conclude that “virtually all chapters included men or women of different occupational and class backgrounds.”30

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For Skocpol, the primary significance of these large federated membership associations was their capacity to bridge class divides. Gosewinkel and Kocka note one more significant way that civil society can bridge divides: it can link people transnationally.31 Especially compared to nation-­states, which typically serve the people only within their borders, civil societies can connect people across borders. Civil society may also have the capacity to foster civility. Skocpol and Eliasoph both explain the potential of voluntary associations to teach people what Skocpol calls the “basic values of charity, community, and good citizenship,” which she has found in their rituals and written materials.32 Eliasoph elaborates upon how this potential has captivated “theorists and policy makers” who “hope that participation in ‘civic’ associations naturally teaches people how to be ‘civil’—­to be polite, respectful, tolerant, and decent to one another. They also hope that learning this face-­to-­face civility goes naturally with learning to act ‘civicly’—­that is, to press for wider changes, including political policies, that will extend respect and decency throughout society.”33 Not only can associations teach these values, but they can also provide a venue for practicing such behaviors. According to Walzer, “The associational life of civil society is the actual ground where all versions of the good are worked out and tested . . . and proven to be partial, incomplete, ultimately unsatisfying.”34 Promising though it may be, this civility is not guaranteed. Edwards is skeptical that civil society can impart shared values and norms because “norms and values do vary considerably between associations.”35 He concludes that “associational life is always incomplete as a path to the good society” because voluntary associations alone “cannot aggregate their interests in order to secure the political settlements that are crucial to development above the local level.”36 The most widespread hope for civil society is that it can bolster democratic legitimacy. Warren isolates three ways that civil society can do as much: first, it prepares individuals for political participation; second, it serves as the public sphere “from which collective decisions ultimately derive their legitimacy”; and third, it provides the institutional infrastructure through which democracy can operate.37 On the first count, Warren is echoing both Tocqueville and Schlesinger, who treated associationalism as a school for democracy.38 Nineteenth-­century federated associations were commonly modeled after U.S. constitutional structures, so participating in these associations taught citizens about tax paying, representative governance, elections, and other elements of “what they needed to know as U.S. citizens.”39 Likewise, members learned “the organizational skills they would need to participate effectively in

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democratic politics,” including Robert’s Rules of Order and participatory discussion, as well as how to run meetings, keep record books, make speeches, and organize events.40 These associations were especially important for teaching these skills of democratic citizenship to otherwise disempowered people, who likely would not have encountered these skills.41 Beyond just teaching democratic habits to individuals, these associations also became laboratories for testing new models of democratic organizing. Clemens has focused in particular on how these quasi-­public institutions “may provide platforms for the invention of new forms of political mobilization.”42 Focusing on the specific case of women’s associations around the turn of the twentieth century, she illuminates how they experimented with “a new style of politics focused on specific issues, interests, and legislative responses.” She credits them with adapting multiple models of organization, including “unions, clubs, parliaments, and corporations,” into novel forms of association.43 For all the promise that civil society affords, its promise is not guaranteed. In Edwards’s assessment, “voluntary collective action can influence the world for the better,” but it does not necessarily do so.44 It differs from context to context, and the attributes of a given civil society determine its social influence. Likewise, Warren points to types of voluntary associations that “are bad for democracy since they can cultivate hatred, violence, and sectarianism.” Those associations might also “abet political corruption, support clientelist political arrangements, and provide additional political advantage to those who already possess the advantages of income and education.”45 Skeptics of civil society—­or those who are skeptical of hyperbolic promises made in its name—­can point to the most familiar nefarious voluntary associations: the mafia, the Klan, al-­Qaeda, and the like. Surely, a civil society composed of such groups does not guarantee robust democratic citizenship. Scholars have identified some of the characteristics that lead to healthy civil society and allow civil society to foster healthy democracy. Above all, civil society benefits from social equality, and it has an obligation to combat inequality and safeguard equality where it exists. Kohn claims that “equality is an essential—­if not the essential—­ undergirding premise of civil society in theory and in practice. High levels of inequality distort the ability of associational life and the public sphere to articulate a democratic path to the good society.”46 Conditions of inequality, Edwards agrees, make civil society “a sphere of self-­reinforcing inequality and privilege.”47 Fostering strong civil society, then, requires “attacking all forms of inequality and discrimination, giving people the means to be active citizens, reforming politics to encourage

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more participation, guaranteeing the independence of associations and the structures of communication, and building a strong foundation for institutional partnerships, alliances and coalitions.”48 Civil society does not just require equality for its own purposes, however. Kohn goes further to argue that civil society has an obligation to foster equality that will then benefit other spheres of society. Indeed, civil society is interdependent with the state and the market, and it benefits from a carefully balanced relationship with those other spheres. On the one hand, civil society must retain the distance necessary to fulfill its role as a watchdog of the state and the market. Civil society associations and their leaders need a degree of independence, which governments must protect through “civil and political rights, especially rights of information, association and free speech.”49 Civil society theorizing in response to the revolutions in East Central Europe has been especially attuned to this need. Edwards notes how this theorizing grew in particular out of “broader political and intellectual trends that sought alternatives to the deadening effects of state centralization.”50 Civil society became one mechanism for resisting the state authoritarianism associated with Soviet Russia. But Skocpol has expressed concern about too sharp a separation between civil society and the state. She laments that in the context of U.S. politics, some of “America’s most visible and loquacious politicians, academics, and pundits have proclaimed that voluntary groups flourish best apart from active national government—­and disconnected from politics.”51 These calls tend to come from conservatives, who treat “active national government as inimical to a healthy civil society.”52 Promoting civil society becomes one more avenue for decreasing the power of the state, a proposition notably more controversial in the twenty-­first-­century United States than in the late 1980s and early 1990s in former Soviet republics. In contrast to these conservative pundits, scholars of civil society routinely suggest that civil society and democratic government benefit from strong relationships of mutuality, at least in theory.53 Skocpol roots the point in Tocqueville, claiming that he saw even in the 1830s how “vigorous democratic government and politics nourish and complement a participatory civil society.”54 Walzer agrees that strong democracy and civil society are symbiotic precisely because civil society teaches the behaviors that democracy requires, and the state can provide resources that nourish civil society. “Only a democratic state,” he contends, “can create a democratic civil society; only a democratic civil society can sustain democratic state. The civility that makes democratic politics possible can only be learned in the associational

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networks; the roughly equal and widely dispersed capabilities that sustain the networks have to be fostered by the democratic state.”55 He concludes that a vital civil society is “an elementary requirement of social democracy.”56 Even in its role as a watchdog, civil society needs access to the very institutions it critiques. “Social movements,” Edwards contends, “are most effective when they are anchored in a broader repertoire of contentious politics that connects them to their targets and their allies over time.”57 Skocpol provides historical evidence for this theoretical belief that civil society benefits from strong relationships with the state. She explains how “in the United States, democratic governance and civic voluntarism developed together,” and she points to the way that voluntary associations were modeled after the nascent federal government.58 The organizers who launched America’s major federated associations “took inspiration from America’s federally organized republican polity—­so much so that they modeled their organizations after U.S. governmental institutions, creating vast, nation-­spanning federations consisting of local chapters linked together into representatively governed state and national bodies.”59 On an even more mundane level, she explains how early associations benefited from the infrastructure behind party building and the postal service. This theorizing and this history point to the conclusion that civil society thrives with a relationship of mutuality with—­as well as a degree of independence from—­the market and especially the state. The relationships between civil society and the state have not always been reciprocal, and certainly not reciprocal for all participants. Clemens has examined how women’s groups developed strategies for political lobbying in the decades before women won federal enfranchisement. For women of that generation, “politics as usual was out of the question.”60 Women rejected such mechanisms as the party and patronage machines—­both because they were denied access and because they did not risk sullying their reputations with unsavory forms of politics—­and instead innovated new forms of political influence. In particular, she examines the corporate forms, bureaucratic forms and methods, and lobbying methods.61 In short, women developed civil society organizations that did not mimic contemporary political methods, and instead they used their organizational forms to try to influence politics.

Gendered Organizing Clemens’s work reminds us that ideas and practices of civil society are gendered. We know very little about the ways that civil society is gendered

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because, as Hagemann, Michel, and Budde point out, civil society scholars have largely ignored questions of gender, and feminist/gender scholars have largely avoided the concept of civil society.62 Edwards summarizes, “Gender considerations have not been high on the priority list for most civil society researchers. In reality, the composition of civil society associations, the norms and practices they embody, the barriers that inhibit civic participation for some over others, and the operations and achievements of citizen groups and their leaders are all highly gendered.”63 Even with minimal research into civil society and gender, we can draw a few conclusions. First, civil society has sometimes been explicitly and structurally gendered, typically by the systematic exclusion of women. Hagemann claims that “from the very beginning,” civil society excluded women, lower-­ class men, and racial minorities precisely because it was so closely related to nation building, a project limited to men alone.64 Like politics, civil society has long been premised on the idea of the independent, private individual, who is “de facto” a “male citizen who is also independent and free from most household and family responsibilities and thus free to pursue . . . every form of political engagement in civil society as well as state politics.”65 In this conception, civil society, like politics more generally, was gendered male in relation to the female domestic sphere. Hagemann’s perspective is explicitly European, however, and it is possible that women have played a larger role in U.S. civil society. Even if women’s participation has equaled men’s, civil society may also be gendered by its lower status as a sphere. Although Clemens is optimistic about the innovation that women’s organizations did in order to attain political influence, she still notes that they were “established alongside, but largely apart from, the nation’s formal political institutions.”66 Moreover, women’s associations may have less status than men’s. Hagemann explains how feminists became disenchanted with civil society’s “limited political potential” because “feminist countercultural or alternative associations were relatively weak” compared to the mainstream associations that, “even at the end of the twentieth century,” were “still male-­dominated and relatively closed to feminist demands.”67 Finally, debates over civil society and social service provision have gendered implications. In the nineteenth century, voluntary associations often did the social service work that the federal government would come to do over the course of the twentieth century. Women’s associations made great contributions to that social service work. Contemporary conservatives call for transferring social service provision back to civil society, which might place

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the burden disproportionately on women, who contribute disproportionately to the voluntary labor of civil society.68 These claims are largely speculative, as scholarly work on women, gender, and civil society has been limited. Nineteenth-­Century Organizing Whether or not scholars have paid attention, women have long been participating actively in civil society. Beginning as early as the Revolution—­which not only inspired organizing ideologically but also created a class of professional men whose wives had leisure time to organize—­women started forming associations. Anne Firor Scott calls this first generation of female organizers “the vanguard of benevolent organization.”69 Hannah Mather’s “women’s lodge” was formed in Boston in the 1770s, but the pace of women’s organizing would intensify over the next century. The Civil War especially provoked organizing, as it provided a cause that inspired women on both sides and that proved significant enough to warrant their activism outside the traditional domestic sphere. As the war effort demanded contributions from women, who could raise money, make supplies, and otherwise care for soldiers, they formed societies to coordinate this work. Thus Scott explains, “On both sides the war allowed women to hone organizational and political skills which had been a long time in the making.”70 Once the war ended, women sought new outlets for these organizational and political skills, and the pace of association building accelerated. They also found a nation transformed by urbanization and industrialization, which created social problems that women would work to solve. Thus, Scott explains, in the decades following the Civil War, “women in unprecedented numbers created or joined organizations. For many of them, war work had been the first step.”71 More of the national associations that would go on to be major national associations—­ both women’s and men’s—­ were launched during the five years immediately following the war than during any other five-­year period in American history.72 The women’s associations founded in the years following the Civil War took a wide variety of forms. Scott claims that three forms dominated: Protestant home and foreign mission societies, the WCTU, and the YWCA, all of which were federated associations of local chapters. But in the 1870s, ’80s, and ’90s, numerous local literary clubs also emerged, beginning with Sorosis and the New England Women’s Club in 1868.73 In 1877 came the founding of the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union (WEIU), which would become a major reform association.

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Women of all races and classes organized. Although middle-­class white women would ultimately win the most attention for their organizing, Scott explains that “free black women in New England and Pennsylvania were among the first to organize,” typically for mutual aid and self-­education.74 Not only did women organize within their own racial and class groups, but they also organized across class lines in particular. While some scholars have focused on the middle-­class women who organized to help their poorer sisters,75 the records of many groups belie that analysis. Certainly, some women and some clubs worked to maintain class boundaries, but many others worked to dissolve them. Scott especially challenges the simplistic explanation that middle-­class clubwomen typically worked to control the behavior of working-­class peoples.76 She shows that postwar associations “foreshadowed a more complex future in which the issue of cross-­class and cross-­race interaction would loom ever larger in women’s organizations. The groups integrated women of conservative and traditional mindset with those who were helping to shape the social gospel.”77 All these trends in women’s organizing could be found in Chicago, which proved a hotbed of women’s organizing.78 Women had begun to organize on the shores of Lake Michigan as early as 1835, just three years after the first city lots were drawn. That year, a small group founded the Dorcas Society, and later came the Ladies Benevolent Society in 1843, the Chicago Orphan Asylum in 1849, and the Home for the Friendless in 1858.79 As in other cities, the Civil War inspired further organizing, manifest in Chicago with the local Sorosis chapter, which was founded in 1868 by women who had worked with the Northwestern Sanitary Commission.80 More than the Civil War, what really inspired women’s organizing in Chicago was that city’s great fire of 1871. In response to what Flanagan characterizes as “a massive municipal problem,” women founded two major organizations, the Good Samaritan Society and the Women’s Industrial Aid Society, both of which would work independently of men and the male-­led relief associations.81 Through these efforts, women “would organize, direct their own activities, learn to forge alliances with one another, and work more openly in public view than ever before,” Flanagan explains.82 In subsequent years, Chicago women’s associations proliferated. The Fortnightly Club, a literary and cultural association, was organized in 1873 by Kate Doggett. The Chicago Woman’s Club, which was founded in 1876 by Caroline M. Brown, had a broader civic vision and operated as a department club. Its initial departments were Home, Education, Philanthropy, and Reform; Science, Art, and Literature were added later.83 By the late 1880s,

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it had moved into explicitly political organizing, with its members engaged in petitioning, canvassing, and even running for municipal office. In 1887, African American women, including Fannie Barrier Williams, Lottie McCary, and Viola Bently, founded the Prudence Crandall Club, which they opened to both women and men. Like their counterparts around the country, Chicago’s women’s associations integrated across class and racial groups. Connolly examines this integrated organizing among women’s groups, and he takes the Chicago Women’s Club as his exemplar.84 “By the end of the nineteenth century,” he argues, “the CWC was actively building coalitions with ethnic, religious, and neighborhood groups.”85 In 1895, its members passed a resolution that no applicant could be excluded based on race or color: “Soon thereafter the club amended its membership policies to note that the organization was open to women regardless of race, color, religion, or political affiliation.”86 Likewise, in her analysis of Chicago women’s groups in particular, Flanagan “found that between 1871 and 1933, a large number of Chicago activist women made common cause in politics despite differences of class, race, and age.”87 Although merchant-­class women dominated the groups that Scott studied, she noted that some of those women “consciously tried to build bridges to bring people from different parts of the class structure together.”88 Chicago proved especially hospitable to women’s most novel form of organizing: the settlement house. Epitomized by Jane Addams’s Hull House, settlements were places where women of all classes could band together. Although their work typically emphasized the well-­being of working-­class women, these settlements also proved important outlets for educated women seeking an alternative to the typical Victorian script for a woman’s life path. Addams and her associate Ellen Gates Starr founded Hull House in 1889, and by the time of the fair, it had already won some public notice. In addition to providing housing, Hull House had begun offering classes for women in the neighborhood as well as conducting systematic research on local working and living conditions. By the time Chicagoans started organizing for the WCE, then, the city had a robust system of women’s organizations in place. This organizational network became a crucial resource for the women involved in planning the fair, many of whom came from the ranks of Chicago’s women’s clubs. In that same era, female organizers grew ambitious toward federating. The first move toward national federation had come in 1873 with the Association for the Advancement of Women, initiated by Sorosis members and operating for more than twenty years. Then in 1888, suffragists commemorating

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the fortieth anniversary of the Seneca Falls convention founded the National Council of Women and the International Council of Women. Their organizing meeting brought together fifty-­three women’s organizations, which included suffrage, temperance, and other women’s groups, but Sorosis was the only literary club invited.89 Finally, the most significant effort to federate came in 1890, again led by Jane Cunningham Croly and the members of Sorosis. As the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, they brought together literary clubs and introduced them to the work of municipal housekeeping and associated reform (while avoiding formal politics) in addition to their literary and cultural interests.90 From its origins, the GFWC attracted “newsworthy, wealthy women,” such as Bertha Palmer and Ellen Henrotin, giving it a reputation for being fashionable and elite.91 Civic Value of Organizing Historians have offered contrasting interpretations of this organizing in terms of the trajectory of its development, what it meant for the women involved, and how it influenced women’s larger social and political role. In one dominant interpretation, women’s organizing developed in near-­ linear fashion from literary and voluntary to political organizations. Scott, for instance, claims that all the organizing she studied “came together . . . to make woman suffrage inevitable.”92 Likewise, Blair argues that through the ideology of “Domestic Feminism,” women made a slow transition from womanly ways of organizing, such as literary clubs, to full political enfranchisement.93 In this interpretation, women’s organization mattered for the political empowerment it ultimately brought women. Other interpretations, however, acknowledge a less linear trajectory in which organization, in all its varied forms, bestowed a wide range of personal and social benefits for women. Some women joined associations for the promise of self-­improvement, while others hoped for “sisterly communion” and “autonomy” from their husbands, fathers, and the other men in their lives.94 Organization also taught women a wide range of skills, such as correspondence, press relations, keeping order in a meeting, parliamentary procedure, participatory discussion, and fundraising. These skills then served women in the workforce as well as mixed-­sex civic groups and electoral politics. Women used their skills of speaking, calling meetings, leading meetings, keeping records, and raising money to participate in civic life beyond their own associations, whether that be in mixed-­sex voluntary federations, town hall debates, or political office.

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Over the course of their long history, women’s groups served all these varied functions. They provided an outlet for self-­education, reform work, sisterhood, political activism, and more. In 1893, when women met at the World’s Columbian Exposition, the possibilities for their groups seemed endless. They had witnessed the capacity of women’s associations to do all these things, and they remained divided over the most profitable and appropriate work for their associations to undertake. Indeed, the only thing of which they were certain was the limitless potential of “organized womanhood” itself.

Celebrating Organization Throughout these congresses, women both celebrated and promoted voluntary associations as the venue for women’s civic participation. These voluntary associations—­or what they called “organized womanhood”—­were both a major theme running through the speeches as well as the telos of the WCRW itself. By the structure of its program, the WCRW was oriented toward promoting the work of individual organizations and further inspiring women’s participation in such organizations. Of the WCRW’s three forms of meetings—­ general congresses, report congresses, and department congresses—­the latter two featured the work of women’s organizations. Report congresses brought together various organizations to describe and promote their work to a larger audience. As an example, one Tuesday-­ morning report congress featured presentations from the Woman’s Anti-­ Opium Urgency Committee, the National Woman Physicians’ Association, the Dominion Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, the Moral Reform Union, and the British Section of the World’s Christian Temperance Union. Those report congresses were typically held twice a day, two at a time, amounting to dozens of such organization reports over the course of the week. Department congresses gave those same organizations time and space to conduct their own business, sometimes with a larger or more diverse audience than one of their meetings alone would have attracted (a point that Sewall made explicitly in her closing speech).95 Wednesday included department congresses hosted by the National Christian League for the Promotion of Social Purity, Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, International Kindergarten Union, Women’s National Indian Association, and National Association of Loyal Women of American Liberty. These organizations worked for divergent ends and attracted women of different backgrounds, but they all

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found common space within the WCRW, as it promoted organization itself more than organization toward any specific end. The WCRW made its commitment to organization explicit with the orientation of its final sessions. On Saturday, its last regular day, even the general congresses were oriented to questions of organization. Two simultaneous afternoon congresses addressed the topic of “Organization Among Women as an Instrument in Promoting the Interests of . . .” Each panel featured more than a half dozen speakers who addressed organization’s potential in seven arenas: industry, philanthropy, moral reform, education, religion, literary culture, and political liberty. These speakers included some of the event’s most famous participants, including Jane Addams and Susan B. Anthony. Indeed, Anthony’s only official speech during the WCRW came as part of this final session. After she spoke, the meeting in the Hall of Columbus concluded with a speech by the WCRW’s primary planner, May Wright Sewall, titled “The Economy of Women’s Forces Through Organization.” Not simply expendable panels at the end of an overscheduled week, these sessions devoted to organization instead offered a climax to the week’s work. The speakers in those final sessions both reflected on the work that had been reported on during the week and called audience members to continue that work in the future. They suggested that participants could go forth and build organizations to continue the inspired work they discovered in the WCRW. Sewall’s speech in particular reads like an altar call at the end of a revival, encouraging the devout to recommit themselves to the work. Beyond the structure of the event, the speeches themselves promoted the work of particular organizations as examples of the capacity of organized womanhood more generally. The WCTU received the most repeated attention,96 but other organizations certainly figured into these women’s speeches as well. Susan B. Anthony ticked off numerous organizations that she had heard about in that week’s speeches—­King’s Daughters, WCTU, Portia Club, Sorosis, Relief Associations of Utah, and Federation of Clubs (GFWC)—­ noting in particular their membership relative to her own suffrage association’s membership. Lily Alice Toomy described the work of Catholic women’s organizations over a few centuries, including the Sisters of Charity, Sisters of Bon Secour, Little Sisters of the Assumption, Little Sisters of the Poor, Grey Nuns, Sisters of Mercy, and others. Maud Ballington Booth talked about her own organization—­ the Salvation Army—­ at length. Charlotte Emerson Brown referred specifically to the Association for the Advancement of Women and the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. Harriette A. Keyser introduced specific labor associations—­both women’s and mixed-­sex—­such

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as the Hannah Powderly Assembly and the Lady Gothams of the Knights of Labor, a female local of the International Hatters Union, and the Working-­ Women’s Club. Lide Meriweather explained that what she called “organized motherhood” could come in many different forms, among which she listed “the Woman’s Missionary Society, King’s Daughters, Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, Woman’s Suffrage Association, Free Kindergarten, Working Woman’s Guild, Association for Advancement of Women.”97 More than just listing these organizations, these rhetors described their work and promoted the value of such organization as an avenue for self-­ governance and social change. Meriweather collapsed the work of a number of associations but focused on the WCTU particularly as she narrated the work that women did through a vulnerable person’s life-­span. That is, first they provided a day nursery for the children of working mothers, then a baby hospital for sick children, then a free kindergarten for teaching virtues to young children, then a kitchen garden to teach girls domestic skills, and then a mission home for morally lost adults. Beyond describing this extensive charity and reform work, Meriweather summarized organized motherhood’s legislative work. As she narrated their efforts to lobby for legislation, she described the obstacles that women’s organizations faced, especially in the form of hostile or skeptical legislators, and yet she urged women to continue this unpleasant and unfortunate work. Early provided detail about the collective self-­help work that African American women had conducted in the decades following the Civil War and emancipation. They initiated “mutual aid societies, the object of which was to assist the more destitute, to provide for the sick, to bury the dead, to provide a fund for orphans and widows.”98 Toomy described Catholic women’s organizations’ charitable work in almshouses, hospitals, orphan asylums, industrial schools, homes for the aged poor, homes for lepers, education for the blind and deaf, and numerous other venues. These speakers promoted the merits of all this work conducted by women to audiences who, presumably, needed little convincing of its merits. Beyond the merits of the work, these speakers went to great lengths to promote organization itself as the best form for this work. They celebrated the intangible personal benefits—­such as skill building, character formation, individual empowerment, and sisterhood—­that organization could provide. Sewall, for instance, delighted in the solidarity that organization had created among women, or what she described as a “spiritual force, sympathy, a sense of the relations that exist between one set of people and another set of people.”99 Above these personal benefits, however, the promoters of organization dwelled especially on its efficiency and effectiveness—­both key

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Gilded Age values. Sarah Early, for instance, claimed that “in organization is found all the elements of success in any enterprise.” Only through organization, she argued, could come “the force and ability that have reared the grand structure of human society.”100 Clara C. Hoffman claimed that “there can be no doubt in the mind of any sensible man or woman that organization advances any cause.”101 Mary Lowe Dickinson explained that women valued organization, through which “one’s own forces many times multiplied in the larger hope of high accomplishment, and the gladness of greater success.”102 Lide Meriweather focused specifically on the efficiencies created by the WCTU. She asked, rhetorically, “Could the individual efforts of these two hundred thousand women ever have wrought out one tithe of the marvelous results that have been achieved by the combined and systematic action of this great organization?”103 For May Wright Sewall, the congresses themselves exemplified both the capacity of organized womanhood and the difficulties created by its absence. Noting the great work that had taken place in those congresses, she still lamented the “prodigal expenditure of time, money, and strength” that had been poured into the WCRW “simply because to convene it [they] were obliged to bring together isolated individuals from the ends of the earth.” She promised future congresses characterized by the great efficiencies that organized womanhood would provide. Celebrating its effectiveness and efficiency, these speakers made organization a tool, an instrument helpful in achieving a greater end. Likening organization to a water pump, Charlotte Emerson Brown called it “the Archimedes screw that moves the world.”104 They also made analogies to other types of tools. Avery called women’s federations “the proper vehicle for expressing the highest attainments of organizations among women,”105 and Kate Bond called organization “the only remedy to right the wrong.”106 Most commonly, they likened organized womanhood to a military force. Not surprisingly, Booth used military language to describe the women workers of the Salvation Army, who were “an advance-­guard who have fought their way through the tangles and difficulties of an untrodden path.”107 Describing the workers as privates, officers, and commanders, she claimed, “Our women are organized for war,” with “vice and sin” as their “enemies.”108 Even representatives of less explicitly militaristic organizations used this language, however. Meriweather, for instance, called organized motherhood a “band . . . organized, armed and equipped with the weapons of offense and defense.”109 And Avery used militaristic language to talk about the WCRW specifically. It was a “disorderly rout” compared to the next women’s congress, which would be “the march of an army.” She elaborated, “Strongholds which, to the

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undisciplined forces of free-­lances, seem impregnable, promptly haul down their banners and send out their flags of truce on the approach of a disciplined, well-­trained, well-­officered army.” Such could be organized womanhood, in her account. Practice of Organized Citizenship These speakers’ and congresses’ collective enthusiasm for organization is clear. They believed in the capacity of organization, and they had great examples of the work that voluntary associations had been able to achieve. Their speeches said almost nothing about the individual women involved in these organizations or the work that individual women could do. A few speakers mentioned the leaders of the organizations they discussed—­including Frances Willard, the longtime president of the WCTU, who Clara Hoffman called “our beloved chieftain.”110 Toomy made passing mention to some of the women—­ including Katharine Drexel, Angela Merici, and Jane de Chantal—­who had founded the various Catholic sisterhoods she described. Mary E. Richmond praised the handful of women—­Dorothea Dix, Josephine Shaw Lowell, and Katie Fay—­who had demonstrated “their ability to administer public charitable trusts.”111 None of these speakers talked in depth about the work that these women had done. They did not talk about how they had raised money, written organizational bylaws, pleaded with male leaders to allow women’s auxiliaries, composed petitions, rented spaces for their charities, or built networks of volunteers. They also did not talk about those individual volunteers themselves either. They certainly did not name any rank-­and-­file members, but they also didn’t describe the individual work of such members. They did not describe members taking minutes of meetings, circulating petitions, preparing goods for fundraisers, or countless other unimaginable tasks—­unimaginable, in part, because these speakers, who were the most public promoters of women’s organization, did not explain the work that such participation would entail. Moreover, for as much as they called women to take up this work of organization, they offered no specific instructions for how to do so. They did not offer any contact information, they did not offer any tips for starting a local chapter of these groups, and they did not offer subscription cards to any of the associations’ organs. The only way in which they considered the role of the individual in organization was by suggesting that humans have an innate, foundational drive to organize. Just as Aristotle claimed that humans were fundamentally political creatures whose fullest humanity could only be realized through politics, these

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women suggested that humanity had a basic imperative to organize. They drew heavily on natural metaphors and analogies to do so. Both Lide Meriweather and Harriette Keyser made extensive analogies to flora and fauna. Noting the organization among stars, leaves, sand, and the water in the ocean, Keyser called organization “a great force of nature.” By her account, even “our own bodies are results of organization. We might be irresponsible, vagrant, shifting atoms flying apparently helter-­skelter through the universe; instead we are organisms, and organization continues until we become an organization of organisms and a social force.”112 Likewise, Meriweather pointed to the systems of organization among locusts, ants, and birds. “The gospel of organization is preached in all of nature’s temples,” she maintained. “From the tiny ant beneath our feet to the huge bison of our Western plains,” she explained, all of nature exemplifies the truth that “‘in the multitude of council there is wisdom.’”113 They pointed to nature’s biological imperative to organize in the simplest of humans: children. Keyser described how even “children, who do not know the meaning of the word, organize for their sports.” So too do lambs, and they grow into organized flocks of sheep, just as “men who have put away childish things, still continue to organize for every purpose under the sun.”114 Both lambs and children exemplify the most basic forms of their species, so their inclination to organize suggests that organization is a simple instinct throughout the natural world. These natural metaphors and analogies extended easily to suggest that women’s organizing grew “upward and outward” in a grassroots fashion.115 Dickinson began with the smallest seeds, those “women who, staying at home, have organized every hamlet in the land, have created in every church its woman’s auxiliary, its young people’s union, and its little children’s mission bands.”116 Avery described a similar trajectory: “From the individual woman working alone, through all the links of the local organizations, county, state, and national, along one line of work to the National Council, inclusive of the lines of the International . . . women have now perfected a strong and flawless chain—­a chain with which womanhood can bind the whole world together in peace and unity.”117 Early depicted the same organizational pattern among African American women coming out of slavery. They organized into local groups that “have widened into State societies, and some of the stronger bodies into national organizations, meeting in annual assemblies to transact business and to discuss their future well-­being.”118 They situated individual women as the originators of the vast federated voluntary associations that by then dominated civil society. They vaguely credited those

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individual women with starting what had now grown naturally into a powerful force. But they breezed past those individual women, focusing ultimately on the associational ecosystem that their grassroots seeds had produced.

Organized Womanhood in the Democratic Ecosystem These speakers conveyed sophisticated models of the work that organized womanhood could do in their local communities and their nations. They did not, however, convey a harmonious or unified model of this work. Indeed, the orientation of the final panels in the WCRW encouraged speakers to set out competing objects for organized womanhood. They were assigned to talk about organization as a means toward promoting the interests of various spheres—­industry, moral reform, and political liberty, among others. This orientation made organization a tool that could be applied to progress in all these various spheres. Collectively, then, these women suggested a wide-­ ranging set of functions for women’s associations—­as a charitable safety net, as a watchdog of the state, as a watchdog of the market, and as an arena for forming public sentiment. These models, however, clashed with each other and competed for the most central resource at stake: women’s participation. Charity In these speeches, organized womanhood was most commonly characterized as a provider of charity. By banding together and working through these associations, women could care for the neediest in their communities and possibly, by extension, reform their communities as well. For instance, Toomy focused almost entirely on Catholic women’s charitable work, even though she set out to talk about “the organized work of Catholic women in respect to religion, philanthropy, education, moral reform, and political liberty.” She talked about the three hundred or more hospitals in the United States run by Catholic sisterhoods, the foundling asylums and kindergartens where Catholic sisters took care of orphan children, and the industrial schools where they taught boys and girls “to be good and useful citizens,” among many other initiatives. Focusing on African American women, Early described their work through the WCTU as “hospital work, prison work, social purity, and flower mission work, and the distribution of literature among all classes.”119 She described mutual aid societies that worked by largely charitable means: their object, she claimed, “was to assist the more destitute, to provide for the

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sick, to bury the dead, to provide a fund for orphans and widows.”120 African American women also cared for soldiers on the battlefield by “stanching the bleeding wounds, and cooling the parched lips with water, and raising the fainting head, and fanning the fevered brow.”121 When some of those soldiers did not return, the women cared for their orphans and widows. Likewise, Brown described African American women’s efforts to organize chapters of federated societies, such as the YWCA and WCTU, as well as their work to establish “homes for orphans, for the aged and infirm, and many benevolent societies for the amelioration of the condition of the poor and helpless about them.”122 Collectively, these speakers enumerated a long list of charitable endeavors undertaken by women’s societies. Importantly, these speakers did not treat this charity as oriented toward narrow and immediate goals of individual uplift. That is, they did not characterize this work as only capable of alleviating individuals’ poverty and illness. Instead, these organized women articulated their charitable work as a way to reform society. Lide Meriweather characterized the work of “organized motherhood” in three categories, exemplified by the work of the WCTU. In their efforts toward “the extermination of the liquor traffic,” she and her kin worked “along three great lines”: prevention, reformation, and legislation. The first two fall clearly within the realm of charity, in the spirit of larger social reform through that charity. She reviewed all of her organization’s charitable work done in the spirit of preventing intemperance: caring for children in day nurseries, nursing sick children in hospitals, educating children in free kindergartens, teaching “neglected girls” domestic skills in kitchen gardens, and providing refuge for prostitutes (those “whose name must never be breathed by a good woman”) in mission homes.123 These institutions were clearly acts of charity: they cared for impoverished children and adults. In Meriweather’s words, they responded to “outstretched hands imploring help—­the drunkard’s wife, the convict’s mother, the murderer’s child, the poor, the weak, the ignorant, the guilty.”124 Charity was only a means to a larger end, however. These institutions, at least by Meriweather’s description, aimed by their charity to encourage larger social reform. Other speakers, including Booth and Hoffman, echoed this call for charity as an avenue to social reform. Maud Ballington Booth talked about women’s gospel call to be “social and moral reformers.” Women were called to bring “reformation into all those social and moral relations which through sin have become so chaotic and perverted.”125 Clara Hoffman claimed that “we can benefit humanity best by teaching humanity to live rightly.”126 Like Meriweather, Hoffman illustrated this intersection between charity and social reform with the

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work of the WCTU. In the kindergartens they were establishing, “they teach the little girls the very things they must do in domestic life—­to sweep, to make bread, to lay the table, to cook beefsteak.” Blaming men’s intemperance on the lack of good cooking at home, she claimed that the way to solve intemperance was to teach women (from girlhood) how to cook.127 Sarah J. Early illuminated yet another outgrowth of such charitable civil society work: it both practiced and demonstrated self-­governance. The organizations she described were mutual aid societies, which meant that their charity was reciprocal more than beneficent or paternalistic. They thus allowed for African American women’s collective self-­dependence. As Early described it, through these mutual aid societies, “our people have shown self-­ dependence scarcely equaled by any other people.”128 Such charitable mutual aid societies evidenced the practice of collective self-­rule not in terms of legislative governance but in terms of cooperatively providing for the needs of the collective. These mutual aid societies taught their participants, according to Early, “the art of self-­government.”129 Watchdog of the State While charity was certainly the dominant function of civil society in these speakers’ treatment, some also illuminated civil society’s capacity to serve as a check against the state. In the case of U.S. women in the late nineteenth century, civil society provided a venue for questioning the most obvious failing of the federal government: its refusal to enfranchise them. Susan B. Anthony devoted her speech about organization to the power of women’s associations to do precisely this work. She urged women to harness the capacity of their organizations to lobby for their own enfranchisement. Anthony promoted a model of the democratic ecosystem in which the organizations that constituted civil society should first lobby for legislative change—­women’s enfranchisement, in this case—­and then trust that that legislative change would benefit their associational work. She gave a long list of the organizations she had heard from that week, including “a Portia club, a sorosis . . . a federation of clubs . . . a missionary society to reclaim the heathen of the Fiji Islands . . . an educational association,” and she claimed that what they had in common was “that what they are waiting for is the ballot.”130 She assessed “that political equality is the underlying need to carry forward all the great enterprises of the world.”131 As she put it most succinctly in the opening of her speech, “All roads lead to Rome,” where Rome was women’s enfranchisement.132 Only with that enfranchisement could women pursue their associations’ ambitious agendas.

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Given her characterization of the ideal democratic ecosystem—­where associations would lobby the state for just laws and rights and those laws and rights would then serve the work of associations—­Anthony illuminated major faults in the associational ecosystem she saw around her. She lamented the membership disparities between the hugely popular Federation of Clubs, Relief Associations of Utah, King’s Daughters, and others compared to her own suffrage association. She lamented that it was more difficult “to organize women for the one purpose of securing their political liberty and political equality” than to “congregate thousands and hundreds of thousands of women to try to stay the tide of intemperance; to try to elevate the morals of a community; to try to educate the masses of the people; to try to relieve the poverty of the miserable.”133 Anthony’s comparison elevated the work of civil society as the watchdog of the state relative to its charitable work to uplift humanity. Other activists also depicted the capacity of civil society to resist and refute additional failings of the state. Certainly, speakers showed how women’s associations could serve as a watchdog of the state as they advocated for reform legislation central to their various causes, foremost among them temperance. Meriweather described it as “by no means the least painful and pitiful”—­women’s petition and legislation work. Meriweather, recall, had divided women’s associational work into three categories—­prevention, reform, and legislation. The first two parts of their work fell into the broad category of charity with an eye to social reform. The third part characterized women’s organizing oriented to the state. Meriweather had no illusions about that work; she detailed at great length the hostile and condescending reactions that temperance activists met from legislators. Yet she still portrayed it as an integral part of women’s associational work. Women’s organizational lobbying extended beyond temperance. Kate Bond, for instance, suggested that women’s labor associations could lobby for better protective legislation. She explained that the equality promised by the law “has its limitations,” so individual freedoms could “only be attained when, by organization, protection is secured to the entire community.”134 In the case of labor, as with temperance and the franchise, women’s civil society associations could resist the shortsighted power of the state. Watchdog of the Market Labor activists in particular also depicted the capacity of women’s civil society associations to serve as watchdogs of the market. In promoting labor organizing among women, Mary E. Kenney, Kate Bond, and Harriette A. Keyser

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all depicted organization as capable of checking the power of the market and the practices of individual corporations. They focused on the status of working women, especially under the conditions of unbridled profit seeking. They described the women’s pitiful existence at length. Kenney, for instance, depicted women and girls who were “poorly clad, poorly fed, and poorly housed.”135 They gave “their whole time, labor, and skill from seven o’clock in the morning until six o’clock at night for a bare existence.”136 Bond portrayed “women who work sixteen and eighteen hours a day to secure the shelter of a dilapidated tenement, a few cups of tea and bits of bread, meager clothing, and perchance quick release in death.”137 Winning sympathy for such decrepit creatures, their efforts bordered on the charitable as they essayed to alleviate this suffering. These organizers, however, promoted advocating better working conditions in place of (or in addition to) salving these wounds. Kenney, Bond, and Keyser trusted organization among working women, potentially in solidarity with women of all classes and working-­class men, as the surest avenue to improving unjust and inhumane working conditions. In Kenney’s words, organization had the capacity to “demand justice and abolish that system which compels [women] to accept wholesale prostitution, crime, and degradation.”138 Bond made the same point by comparison, lamenting the early days of the factory system, when “there was no organization to guard the interests of women and children as participants in labor.”139 She pointed especially to male wage earners who had improved their status by organization. In her account, “Until men were organized in trades societies and labor organizations they had no way of redress under bad conditions of industry.”140 Although all three promoted organization as a structure to counterbalance the power of corporations—­no small task in the Gilded Age—­they did not universally depict those organizations as antagonistic or hostile to corporations. Bond in particular optimistically described a relationship of cooperation between capital and labor, mediated by organization. She predicted that “the fancy that the employer and the employé must remain separate in interest will eventually become a thought of the past. The signs of coöperation and conciliation are even now visible” in labor unions, trade societies, and other such groups.141 She praised particular methods, including “conciliation, arbitration, profit-­sharing, and recognition of labor,” all of which required collaboration between capital and labor, typically mediated through an organization.142 In her model, organization could be a friendly watchdog of the market, gently encouraging it to correct its exploitative ways.

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Public Sphere A few speakers—­foremost among them congress organizers May Wright Sewall and Rachel Foster Avery—­focused on the capacity of women’s voluntary associations to create grand opportunities for public deliberation. As described in chapter 2, both women envisioned permanent, ongoing, global parliaments of women—­what Sewall called a “Republic of Ideas”—­and they suggested that such grand structures could only be realized through the work of women’s voluntary associations. Sewall talked at length about the inefficiencies in planning for the WCRW, inefficiencies caused by inadequate organization among women and inadequate communication between the organizations that did exist. If they had been better organized, “what an easy thing it would have been to send along the line all of the watchwords necessary to advise every member of the preparations for this great Congress.”143 Enumerating the successes of this congress—­its large and diverse audiences, the economies created by meeting together—­she encouraged the audience to build on that success. She projected forward, optimistic that in five years’ time, the next congress could be planned even more efficiently because of increases in organization. Participants in the congresses caught Sewall and Avery’s vision. Speaking of the progress of organized motherhood, Meriweather appreciated that by her day, “in conference and convention these mother-­hearts meet and discuss great social, moral, and political questions, and nobody marvels.”144 Other activists treated women’s civil society organizations not so much as facilitators of a specific public sphere for deliberation but more as contributors to a larger, preexisting public sphere. That is, they promoted the capacity of organized womanhood to influence public sentiment as it was formed through public dialogue. Kate Bond offered the clearest explanation of the relationship between civil society and public sentiment. She treated labor organizations as places to “create public sentiment in favor of legislation that shall protect the helpless, and that shall give to the wage-­woman recognition and protection through legal stature.”145 Those organizations could encourage the press to call attention to wage-­earning women: “Without public sentiment in favor of a cause, be it ever so just, action can never arise in its behalf.”146 In particular, she urged “women of wealth, alignment, and luxury” to join labor organizations, where they could “study how best to adjust women toward labor and toward society, and when the public are made cognizant of woman’s wrongs . . . good feeling will manifest itself and will formulate itself in law.”147 Those laws would include protection of equal

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wages for equal labor and limitations on working hours. The model of influence is clear: members of organizations would develop understanding of the working conditions, and they would use their knowledge to influence the press and public sentiment. That public sentiment would then encourage the creation of favorable laws. Relations Between the Spheres As these speakers depicted wide-­ranging functions for women’s civil society organizations, they showed the permeable boundaries between civil society and other spheres within the democratic ecosystem. Lily Toomy and Mary E. Richmond took contrasting positions on the question of the relationship between civil society and the state in the case of charity. Toomy characterized charitable work as the unique province of civil society. She explained that charity had long belonged to religion and not the state. “In the early ages of the church,” she explained, “there were no public or State institutions of charity, such as almshouses, hospitals, orphan-­asylums; all these were the work of the church and of religious houses.”148 Although she limited her purview to religion, in the United States, religion is part of civil society. Mary E. Richmond, conversely, talked about recent changes in classifications for charities. Those new classifications had made “the criminal, the prostitute, the insane, the vagrant, the idiotic, and all other defective classes” objects of care “not only to the individual philanthropist, but, through him, to the State.” She talked in detail about women’s and men’s work with state boards of charity, which illuminated the intersection between the state and civil society in doing charitable work. But Richmond also noted how gendered this work had been, with men tending to do the state-­oriented charity work (which was more official and bureaucratic), while women did the personal civil society work. As Richmond hoped that those gendered distinctions would blur, she further blurred the distinction between state and civil society when it came to charity. She envisioned a future in which men and women alike would share in the responsibility of sitting on state boards of charity as well as offer “personal service in the homes of the needy . . . [and] care for individual cases of weakness, temptation, and misfortune.”149 They would, in short, share in both the state and civil society work of charity provision. Other speakers attended specifically to the complications prompted by women’s lack of enfranchisement. Recognizing the important intersection between civil society and the state, some speakers suggested that women’s participation in both was hindered by their disenfranchisement. Bond, for

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instance, noted how men could “secure to themselves a voice in legislation: and the laboring-­man’s ballot counts as high as that of the luxurious idler.”150 Because of their organizing, in her account, “the rights of working-­men have been recognized by society.”151 Bond went on to illuminate women’s relative depravation in this respect: woman “has no vote, and therefore can not introduce to office men who will legislate in her behalf.”152 Meriweather talked at length about the difficulty women’s associations—­especially the WCTU—­had in petitioning and lobbying for legislative reform. Male legislators and newspapers made light of women’s work. She quoted one legislator who, though he agreed with temperance sentiment, refused to vote for their proposed legislation because women could not vote.153 Both Bond and Meriweather assumed the interdependence of the state and civil society, and they suggested that women’s leadership of civil society was hindered by their incomplete membership in the nation-­state.

Requirements of Vital Civil Society While these speakers invested great faith in the capacity of civil society, they made few demands of civil society. That is, they articulated few requirements for healthy functioning of civil society, and they made few commitments to improving civil society. They certainly called for increased participation in civil society. The speeches in the final panels on organization at the WCRW in particular were calls to continue the organizing beyond the congresses. The various speakers urged women to join their pet organizations as well as others. Meriweather made pathetic appeals to encourage women to join the charity and social reform work that organizations such as the WCTU were undertaking. “Dear sister woman,” she asked her audience, “you who have been standing far off, folding idle hands and sitting ‘at ease in Zion,’ do you feel no pulse of pity for the great multitude who live and weep and sin and suffer all around you? Do you see nothing helpful, noble, grand in this great band of organized motherhood?”154 She continued with more of these pleading questions and then implored her audience, “Awake, arise, and fight the good fight ere yet your sun has set.”155 In keeping with the pattern described earlier, she did not provide any concrete instructions or models for how to get involved in an organization, but she implied that women’s moral and religious sensibilities obligated them to do so. Bond encouraged women to join labor organizations. She pleaded, “All working-­women, and all women who do not need to work, but who know the wrongs done to their sisters in

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service, should unite to reform evil practices, and to secure righteous measures.” Susan B. Anthony tried to poach other organizations’ flocks for her own suffrage association. After enumerating the impressive membership numbers of the WCTU, King’s Daughters, and other voluntary associations, Anthony urged “every single woman of every single organization of the Old World and the New . . . to register herself” with the suffrage association.156 Anthony’s call for participation was shallow in that she wanted women only to register on the membership rolls of her group, not to sign petitions, host meetings, or give speeches. In addition to greater participation, some speakers, particularly May Wright Sewall, appealed for greater efficiency and federation among organizations. Sewall lamented the “vast extravagance” and “prodigal expenditure of time, money, and strength” the WCRW had required because women were not sufficiently organized.157 She described these inefficiencies at great length, and she also speculated how much greater the inefficiencies might have been had organizations of women not existed. Her speech moved from problem to solution, calling women to a greater federated structure of organization to alleviate these inefficiencies. This organizing would eventuate in Sewall’s vision: “The national council is a republic composed of national organizations, each standing for a separate purpose. The international council is a republic composed of national councils.”158 Her vision of federation squared with the larger trend of the moment, as exemplified by the newly formed General Federation of Women’s Clubs, which organized local women’s clubs into a national structure. The labor organizers among these speakers called for cross-­class organizing, in keeping with what Skocpol portrays as a hallmark of nineteenth-­ century federated organizations. In particular, Bond and Keyser pleaded with upper-­and middle-­class women to join working women in solidarity in labor unions. Bond urged, “Women of superior conditions must ally themselves with the oppressed women in organization.” They must use their advantages in life to promote “legislation that shall protect the helpless, and that shall give to the wage-­woman recognition and protection through legal statute.”159 Likewise, Keyser asked her audience at the WCRW, “And is there nothing for you to do who are not working-­women?” She answered her question by urging her listening audience, “Organize for their protection. Enforce the laws in their favor. Memorialize legislatures until new laws are enacted.”160 In contrast, none of these speakers called for cross-­ racial organizing. Of the speeches considered here, only the two by African American women—­Sarah J. Early and Hallie Q. Brown—­addressed questions of race at

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all. Both of them accepted, or even celebrated, segregated organizing among women. Sarah J. Early celebrated the merits of African American women’s organizing separately from white women and from African American men. “The women, being organized separately, conducted their societies with wonderful wisdom and forethought,” she claimed. That separate organizing allowed them to demonstrate “a self-­dependence scarcely equaled by any other people, a refined sensibility in denying themselves the necessities of life to save thousands of children from want and adults from public charity.”161 This separate organizing had allowed African American women to create “a grand sisterhood, nearly one million strong, bound together by the strongest ties of which the human mind can conceive, being loyal to their race, loyal to the government, and loyal to their God.”162 She did describe African American women’s work in conjunction with the predominantly white groups such as the WCTU and the YWCA, but she did not mention any race dynamics, nor did she call for any further integration of these groups. Brown also commented upon these groups, noting that African American women in the South had “organized among themselves various societies,” including YWCA, WCTU, King’s Daughters, and Christian Endeavor groups. Like Early, she did not note that these were segregated chapters of predominantly white federations, nor did she express any discontent with that system. These speakers only attempted to negotiate the gendered dynamics of civil society in minor ways. They generally accepted that women had a unique affinity for organizing and for the types of charitable work that women’s organizations typically undertook. Booth claimed that women were “especially fitted by God” for the work of social and moral reform because of their “gifts of tenderness, affection, and persistency.”163 In trying to explain the success of the WCTU, Dickinson ruled out a few potential explanations before concluding that it had been successful “because it struck this one chord to which the hearts of women answer. It made a union.”164 Only Richmond really tried to intervene in this gendering of civil society. She explained changes in the classifications of charities, particularly increasing complexity among those classifications, and she lamented that this new system “brought about an artificial division of labor between the sexes. Men monopolized official and impersonal service, women cared for the private and more personal side of the work.”165 But she further posited that the transition was ongoing. Official charity would become more personal, and private charities would take on “more practical and business-­like methods.”166 Women were increasingly taking on official state positions, which Richmond explained with statistical data: women served alongside men on state boards

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of charities in six states, and in eleven states, they were appointed to visit and report on particular charities, among other metrics. As these speakers expressed great enthusiasm for civil society and the work of women’s associations within it, they largely accepted civil society as it was. Certainly, they wanted their organizations to grow in numbers, strength, and efficiency. But they did not recognize any limitations of racism, sexism, or other kinds of inequality that inhered in their system, nor did they push for civil society to exemplify values such as equality or openness. They saw no room for improvement beyond continuing their current work in bigger, stronger fashion.

Conclusions and Implications In these congresses, speakers were unabashed in their celebrations of organized womanhood. And rightfully so in this context: those organizations had been instrumental in the success of these congresses themselves. As Charlotte Emerson Brown noted, “Every member of the committee for arranging and conducting the Congress of Representative Women belongs to some federated club. This is true of most of the American speakers who are appearing on the platform, and of most of the committees arranging for woman’s part in the mixed congresses of men and women yet to be held.”167 What Brown and her sisters couldn’t know for certain was that, as much as the congresses and the fair in general had relied on preexisting voluntary associations of women, so too would those associations benefit from that summer’s work in Chicago. The WCE would prove a boon to subsequent women’s organizing. Speakers in the congresses projected a vision that would shape voluntary associations and the larger civil society that would grow out of that summer. This chapter has suggested that female speakers in these congresses not only encouraged women’s participation in voluntary associations but cast that participation as an outlet for their citizenship—­specifically, as a venue through which they could shape their social order. They afforded civil society the capacity to provide for the social safety net, to guard against the excesses and limitations of both the state and market, and to foster public deliberation. In this case, as in the other cases in this book, we yet again see disenfranchised women capitalizing on the rights afforded to them, as they innovated serviceable practices of citizenship. Though legally excluded from the

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franchise, they were not legally excluded from other constitutional guarantees, such as the rights to free speech and assembly. As some women increasingly had leisure time and control of other resources, they could commit themselves to this voluntary organizing. This analysis illuminates how legal and extralegal practices of citizenship were symbiotic. In her speech, Susan B. Anthony was emphatic that the demands of voluntary associations would ring hollow until backed up by the ballot. Meriweather made the same clear in her litany of examples of women’s temperance legislation being disregarded by male lawmakers. For Anthony, the path—­or what she called the road to Rome—­was clear: women would have to be enfranchised to win these legislative reforms. Women’s organizing would always be anemic without their enfranchisement. But this analysis suggests that the reverse was true as well: women’s enfranchisement would have been anemic without their organizing. Their participation in civil society allowed them to lobby the state, guard against the excesses of the market, and contribute to public deliberation. Those practices of citizenship would enrich their voting when it finally came. This analysis attends to two specific limitations of these women’s vision of civil society. They largely settled for the civil society around them and barely challenged its raced and gendered foundations. In doing so, they fostered bonding social capital over bridging. Indeed, they even reveled in the bonding social capital their associations created, calling it sisterhood, solidarity, or self-­dependence. But at least in these speeches, they did not try to foster much bridging social capital. The labor organizers appealed for cross-­class organizing, which had clear, immediate, instrumental value for their political goals; women of means could agitate on behalf of working women. And as Skocpol has amply demonstrated, cross-­class organizing was the primary form of bridging that nineteenth-­century federated membership organizations already did well. To the extent that these speakers shaped women’s organizing in this era, they ensured that women’s associations would create relationships among in-­groups at the expense of relationships between groups. Finally, these celebrations of organized womanhood ring hollow to the extent that they did not provide pathways to participation for individual women. As much as these speakers waxed philosophical about the value of organizing, and as many pathetic appeals as they made for the necessity of women’s participation, their pleas never moved from the abstract to the concrete. Maybe the logistics of an international event proved insurmountable: How could these speakers possibly connect a global audience with the

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local chapters of the WCTU, YWCA, and myriad other associations? The implication is nonetheless important: women gained few resources for joining organizations beyond those they already knew, specifically beyond those already accessible from their raced, gendered, classed position. The congresses had great potential to promote organized womanhood, but not to radically restructure and undermine its limitations.

5 Economic Participation

The Western political imagination, at least since Aristotle, has conjured a political sphere pure from the taint of economic concerns. Aristotle assumed a sharp divide between the polis, where men came to exercise political reason and develop political virtue, and the oikos, where men, women, and slaves managed economic production and reproduction.1 In this system, membership in the polis depended upon successful leadership of the oikos; that is, only men who commanded their domestic economy could enter the polis, and they left the women and slaves on their homestead behind as they did so.2 This vision of the political-­economic ecosystem has cast a long shadow. Michael Ignatieff claims that “the Western political imagination remains haunted by the ideal of citizenship enunciated in Aristotle’s politics.” In particular, we are captivated by the idea that through participating in the public realm, “the citizen transcends the limits of his private interest and becomes, in his deliberation with others . . . a political animal.”3 In rhetorical studies, this preference for a political sphere sharply divided from the economic has appeared in our eager embrace of Jürgen Habermas’s idea of the public sphere. Habermas posited a place for—­or practice of—­public deliberation outside of the state and the market. In his account of the Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Habermas lamented that the expansion of the state and the market had eclipsed this public sphere. Feminists illuminated the limitations of this model, articulated best by Nancy Fraser, who pointed out the privilege inherent in being able to “bracket” individual concerns and enter the public sphere to deliberate for the common good. Only people who already have advantages can afford to bracket their personal needs for the sake of the supposed common good. Feminists, then, have shown how dangerous and disingenuous it is to act as if political deliberations can bracket economic concerns. The political and economic must be fundamentally intertwined.

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This chapter attends to female activists who were implying as much at the World’s Columbian Exposition. They treated economics as an arena for civic leadership. In an analysis of fourteen speeches given by eleven women—­Bertha Palmer, Ellen Henrotin, Mary A. Lipscomb, Kirstine Fredericsen, Kate Bond, Louise Starkweather, Juana A. Neal, Electa Bullock, Karla Machova, Lydia Prescott, and Augusta Cooper Bristol—­I illuminate the practice of economic citizenship they projected collectively. To do so, I first argue that citizenship is imbued with economic assumptions, and I review three prominent traditions of economic citizenship. Then, second, I characterize the World’s Columbian Exposition as a civic-­commercial enterprise, fitting with the character of the Gilded Age. Third, I address the speeches, showing how these rhetors promoted women’s industrial participation and their financial leadership as practices of citizenship in the language of both liberalism and republicanism.

Citizenship and Economics Although some traditions of political thought have tried to distinguish economics from politics, intersections between the two are inevitable. Even Aristotle’s sharp separation between the oikos and the polis ironically made the political sphere economic by requiring a certain economic status to enter. The potential intersections between politics and economics are limitless, but in this section, I illuminate three particular intersections that have recurred and the models of economic citizenship they have produced. First, as in Aristotle’s vision, political citizenship has required economic status. Second, citizenship status has guaranteed economic rights. Third, economic practices of consumption and nonconsumption are means of influencing politics. The first way of thinking about economic citizenship—­where economic status purchases political access—­has roots in ancient Greece but was evident in early U.S. laws as well. According to Glenn, the U.S. founders ensured that “citizenship status (recognition as a full adult citizen) was tied to labor status (position as a free independent producer).”4 Both laws and practices in the colonies tended to yoke voting status to landholding status. Even once the landowning requirement gave way to a tax-­paying requirement, over the first half of the nineteenth century, the assumption remained the same: economic independence purchased access to political self-­governance. That assumption persisted long after both landowning and tax paying had ceased to be prerequisites for the franchise. Alice Kessler-­Harris suggests that policymakers after the Great Depression assumed that wage-­earning status demonstrated

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“the independent status that provides the possibility of full participation in the polity.”5 Whether the mechanism was landowning, tax paying, or wage earning, the principle has remained steady across U.S. history: economic participation legitimates political citizenship. This principle has been raced, gendered, and classed. In the Politics, Aristotle excluded slaves, women, and “the vulgar” (or those who worked out of necessity) from the polis. Through much of U.S. history, only men were allowed the landholding or tax-­paying status capable of purchasing political citizenship. Thus laws and assumptions that premised political citizenship on economic participation systematically excluded women, along with slaves and other classes of laborers. T. H. Marshall articulated the second formulation of economic citizenship—­ citizenship as a guarantor of social rights—­in his oft-­cited and authoritative 1950 essay “Citizenship and Social Class.” Heavily indebted to the liberal tradition, Marshall traced the historical development of different classes of rights attendant upon citizenship—­civil rights in the eighteenth century, political in the nineteenth, and social in the twentieth. In the category of the social, he included “the whole range from the right to a modicum of economic welfare and security to the right to share to the full in the social heritage and to live the life of a civilised being according to the standards prevailing in the society.”6 Although the United States has not acknowledged such social rights to the extent of Western European welfare states, our laws and policies have allowed for a right to work—­at least for men. In tracing twentieth-­century legislative and judicial discourse in the United States, Alice Kessler-­Harris identified two points of consensus: citizenship confers the right to work (for deserving men), and social benefits depend on wage-­ earning status. In the first half of the twentieth century, she claimed, the U.S. Supreme Court “repeatedly and fervently upheld rights to work.”7 Each of these popular ideas made gendered assumptions. Both lawmakers and courts conferred the right to work narrowly upon male heads of household, especially in the context of the Depression, when jobs were scarce, and the most equitable distribution was to limit each household to one job. Kessler-­Harris maintains, “By the early twentieth century few people believed that women had rights to work in the same sense as men and that, as a result, women’s constitutional liberties were severely circumscribed.”8 The courts rejected protective legislation that would interfere with men’s ability to negotiate employment contracts, but they accepted such protective legislation for women, who did not have a right to work.9 Laws that granted social rights based on wage-­earning status were further gendered. Such economic benefits as unemployment and old-­age insurance were tied to

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specific employment categories—­the ones typically filled by white men—­and excluded categories such as domestic work, typically filled by women of all races. Third, historians and rhetorical critics have identified consumerism as a model of economic citizenship. Lawrence B. Glickman suggests that citizens have used consumption and nonconsumption as a civic tool from the Revolution up through the present day, even if historians have long been blind to the consumer activism in the nineteenth century.10 According to Glickman, these practices of strategic consumption—­buycotts and boycotts—­are expressions of citizenship.11 “Consumer activists have agreed, and often challenged others in society with the belief,” he claims, “that consumption was inherently political, which is to say bound with the use of aggregate purchasing power to promote justice.”12 While Glickman examines consumer activism on a wide range of issues—­from abolition to Sabbatarianism—­Meg Jacobs has illuminated what she calls “pocketbook politics,” or citizens’ advocacy on behalf of themselves as consumers. More than the first two models of economic citizenship, this consumer citizenship has invited and encouraged women’s participation. Women joined and even led the nineteenth-­century boycotts that Glickman describes. Then as major consumers in the new industrial economy, women especially adopted the consumer identity in their political lives. As policymakers worked to set prices and cultivate purchasing power, they often did so on behalf of the women who they imagined alternately as hysterical bargain hunters or naïve shoppers in need of protection. More than the other two models of economic citizenship, this consumer citizenship has also been subject to the harshest treatment from rhetoric scholars, who have portrayed it as a dangerous mirage that obscures real political power. Greg Dickinson, for instance, reviewed advertisements placed in major newspapers in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attack, claiming that they made patriotic appeals that positioned consumption as the most meritorious performance of citizenship in that moment of national crisis. He worried that this model of consumer citizenship asked Americans “to compromise or even substitute one set of freedoms (those we might call civil) for the assurance of another set (those we might call consumptive).”13 Joan Faber McAlister saw a similar logic at work on the ABC television show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, and she lamented that the show “solves social problems with corporate philanthropy and stages patriotism as a kind of domestic labor constituted through gendered acts of sacrifice and consumption.”14 Finally, Karrin Vasby Anderson and Jessie Stewart have shown

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how presidential campaigns treat voters as consumers more than citizens, which makes women, in particular, “sexualized consumers of politics rather than engaged citizens of the nation-­state.”15 Focusing on the consumer model of economic citizenship, rhetoric scholars have deemed it an inadequate practice of citizenship. Of the three dominant models of economic citizenship that scholars have identified across U.S. history, two have systematically excluded women. And the one that has made space for women has been resoundingly critiqued by rhetoric scholars. Our histories of economic citizenship for women look bleak. Fortunately, those histories are also incomplete. Female activists have articulated countering models of economic citizenship for themselves, models that our histories have not yet incorporated. In the Gilded Age, women articulated models of economic citizenship specific to the conditions of rapidly changing political economy in that era.

The Age of Money and the WCE The World’s Columbian Exposition proved a fitting occasion for articulating practices of economic citizenship. It was a civic-­commercial enterprise that exemplified and encapsulated the Gilded Age. Mark Twain’s apt phrase captured the era’s abiding interest in money, characterized by the growth of industries and finance, the rise of the capitalist barons, the unstable economy they presided over, their recurrent clashes with labor, and the conspicuous consumption made possible by mass production industries, for starters. An era of small government and uninspired politics, the Gilded Age’s hot-­ button political issues—­currency and tariffs—­even revolved around money. Twain’s phrase captured both the optimism and despair inherent in this fixation with money; “gilded,” after all, suggested that the era was only coated with its beloved gold, no thicker than a veneer, ultimately no more than a “superficial gleam.”16 Women at the World’s Columbian Exposition articulated models of economic citizenship that would capitalize on new forms of leadership accessible in the industrial economy and through which women could work for financial security for themselves and their nation. Industrial Production The Gilded Age witnessed the full fruition of the industrialization that had been under way for more than a century. Mechanization made mass

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production possible, in both industry and agriculture, and new developments in rail and telecommunications expanded markets. As such, farms and factories became the loci of production, replacing the home-­based economic production so determinative of Jefferson’s vision for the new nation. Whereas in the early agrarian republic, “families had constituted the nation’s primary economic institutions, the sites of property ownership, labor, and credit relations that allowed households to bring property into productive use,” according to Elizabeth Blackmar, after the Civil War, agriculture and manufacturing became large-­scale operations.17 This shift had major implications for women, as it removed much of the work they had traditionally done in the domestic sphere. Spinning, weaving, knitting, sewing, candle making, soap making, and the cultivation of meat and vegetables could all be done more efficiently on a large scale outside the domestic sphere. This evolution was gradual, but the implications for women were significant nonetheless. On the one hand, the Gilded Age celebrated material production, which had long been women’s underappreciated province. On the other hand, mass production removed that production from women’s private domestic sphere and moved it to the male-­dominated public industrial sphere. These discourses thus celebrated what had been women’s province while taking it away from them. Women responded to these shifts in various ways, often dictated by their class position. Some women went to work in the new industries while others became consumers of industrial products, participating in a cash-­based economy. This shift also had major implications for workers and the economy in general. The Gilded Age economy was relentlessly unstable, prompting both financial crises and backlash from workers. The Gilded Age economy, Trachtenberg explains, was “wracked with persisting crises,” exemplified by the Panics of 1873 and 1893, the latter beginning just a week after the WCE opened its gates.18 These panics revealed the precarious nature of the financial system: the Panic of 1873 was triggered by the failure of one firm, Cooke & Company, and the Panic of 1893 was triggered by the failure of the National Cordage Company. In both cases, multitudes of businesses followed suit. In 1893, banks started folding; the New York, Lake Erie & Western Railroad failed; and the economy spiraled downward from there, ultimately prompting a gold shortage. This instability, in conjunction with newly visible wealth disparities, prompted a populist backlash among both laborers and farmers. Banding together in Farmers Alliances and the Knights of Labor, the two groups found collective voice for their grievances.19 Farmers Alliances objected to dramatic

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price declines for crops and exorbitant transportation costs prompted by railroad monopolies. The Knights of Labor decried dangerous working conditions and inadequate wages. Together, the two groups articulated a discourse of producerism—­that is, a language that celebrated the virtues of the nation’s producers, of both food and material goods. Michael Kazin calls it a “producer ethic” that “asserted the moral superiority and practical necessity of common people and the work they performed.”20 With this producerism, populists constructed what Kazin calls “a moral community of self-­governing citizens.”21 This discourse of producerism typically pitted these producers against “parasites,” such as lawyers, bankers, and financiers, who built their wealth from the labor of producers. Workers defined themselves, according to Lears, as “heroic producers confronting commercial parasites—­knights of labor challenging lords of capital.”22 So too did farmers see themselves, in Lears’s words, as “aggrieved producers, plundered by parasitical bankers, brokers, and other magicians of money.”23 In concert with the Jeffersonian vision, they saw the truest virtue in the men who produced the goods that sustained the nation. Banded together with this sense of identity, these farmers and laborers found the strength to challenge their capitalist bosses, most notably in a series of high-­profile strikes, including the 1877 Great Railroad Strike, the 1886 Knights of Labor action against Jay Gould’s railroad as well as the Chicago strike against the McCormick factory, and then the 1894 strike against George Pullman, whose company town was situated just seven miles from the WCE grounds. Financial Incorporation The new industry of mass production also inspired a supporting financial industry of joint stock corporations, banks, and loan associations. Trachtenberg has called the final decades of the nineteenth century “the age of incorporation,” noting two interrelated senses of the term—­first, “a specific form of industrial and business organization,” in which investors join together in a shared business endeavor, and second, “in a figurative sense . . . a more comprehensive pattern of change” in how Americans organized themselves, their economy, and their associations outside the economic sphere.24 The importance of the first cannot be underestimated: mass production and national markets required capital, and corporations proved an efficient way to raise capital. Corporate charters had long been granted for organizations promising to do a public good, but those standards relaxed in the decades following the Civil War, and the pace of incorporation intensified. Trachtenberg

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claims that by the 1870s, “it had become commonplace, changing the face and character of American capitalism.”25 And by the opening of the twentieth century, incorporation had realigned and consolidated economic power in the United States. This industrial-­financial system also produced a novel breed of public figures: the corporate titans. Most of the new industries could be identified with a single name—­Carnegie in steel, Rockefeller in oil, Morgan in finance, Vanderbilt in railroads, and so on. These men became household names, according to Trachtenberg, “better known in the press and pulpit than those of labor leaders. . . . Men of business seemed the epitome of the era, models who served to lure ‘men of ambition and ability’ into the fray of competition.”26 The popular press followed their exploits avidly, covering them in the column inches once filled by Civil War battles. These men won outsized public influence. They controlled massive populations as they set wages, opened and closed factories, and smashed unions. Some, such as George Pullman, ran company towns that orchestrated their workers’ lives. They developed official influence in their intimate dealings with the federal government. Big industry came to rely on the federal treasury to fund their entrepreneurial endeavors, especially building the railroads.27 In exchange, they bailed out the federal government when necessary. For instance, when the Panic of 1893 prompted a run on government gold, President Grover Cleveland turned to financial titan Pierpont Morgan to stabilize the treasury. A gold crisis that could have resulted in the U.S. government defaulting on its obligations was settled by a handshake between the two men who Brands describes as “the elected leader of the United States and the unelected but hardly less powerful head of the country’s most powerful financial empire.”28 Only Morgan had both the financial and political capital to avert this crisis. By winning government support for their projects and supporting the government when necessary, these men built a novel form of political-­ economic leadership, the influence of which cannot be overestimated. Brands claims that although Morgan never sought elected office, “his mastery of finance afforded him more power than any elected official save the president, and sometimes even more than the president”29—­likewise with Carnegie, who controlled the lives of his dependent workers more than any elected official ever controlled their constituents. And Rockefeller “held whole regions hostage to his petroleum monopoly; he browbeat city governments, extorted favors from the states, and defied the federal government to rein him in.”30

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These men’s heroism filled the role long reserved for presidents and kings. According to Morris, “In post-­Civil War America, business had acquired the sense of excitement and purpose that men had once associated with great feats of statecraft or conquest.”31 Where once George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Daniel Boone’s exploits may have exemplified American leadership, the great industrial leaders of the late nineteenth century would come to serve as the figureheads of their own era. Likewise, Brands compares Carnegie and Rockefeller to Alexander and Napoleon. Whereas the latter created political empires, the former created industrial empires.32

Economic Citizenship at the WCE In the second half of the nineteenth century, world’s fairs became fitting sites for displaying these economic transformations as well as their associated anxieties. At their foundation, these fairs were opportunities to display material goods, broadly defined—­from art and sculpture to farm equipment to books to cultivated plants—­for both specialist and popular audiences. Nations and enterprising businessmen built displays that showcased their ingenuity and their material contributions to the progress of humanity. The WCE was no exception. Not only did it have to supersede the American ingenuity displayed at previous fairs—­McCormick’s reaper and Samuel Colt’s repeating firearm at London’s Crystal Palace, followed by the typewriter, telegraph, and telephone at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia—­but it also had to compete with the recent 1889 exposition in Paris and its signature Eiffel Tower. The fair’s buildings contained endless displays of munitions, farm implements, domestic time-­saving machines, mass-­produced crops, and other commodities sure to amaze audiences in 1893, not to mention the novel electrical system powering it all.33 In this section, I argue that women in the congresses capitalized on these economic tendencies of the fair, in concert with larger economic transformations under way in the era, to articulate their own economic contributions as a practice of citizenship. Industrial Production As female speakers in the congresses addressed women’s economic status, they struggled with what the transformations of the Gilded Age—­particularly the move from home-­based to industrial production—­meant for them. Some speakers dealt with this loss by romanticizing more primitive cultures and

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particularly women’s economic role in those primitive cultures. Drawing upon the fair’s fascination with such primitive cultures as those displayed on the Midway, these speakers explained women’s central role in those home-­ based economies. According to Bristol, “In early forms of society the responsibility of the then narrow domain of economics fell almost entirely upon woman.”34 She called woman “the principal factor in economics . . . the original source from which all world-­wide economics are evolved.” As illustration, she pointed to a Central African village where the work “is done chiefly by the women; they hoe the fields, sow the seed, reap the harvest. To them too falls all the labor of building the houses, grinding the corn, brewing the beer, cooking, washing, and caring for almost all the material interests of the community.”35 Kirstine Fredericsen of Demark pointed to the examples of Indians, Greenlanders, and some of the people of the smaller islands in Denmark. In these societies, men did the hunting and fighting and left woman “to do outside as well as inside work, to dig the ground, to build the houses, to look after the cattle.”36 Women did, in short, all the labor necessary for making the homestead productive. Fredericsen celebrated these women who were “by no means subjugated” but were instead “very independent.”37 Romanticizing women’s work in these primitive economies intervened in Gilded Age economic discourse in a number of ways. More than just expressing nostalgia for an earlier economic system, these accounts asserted a place for women in the Gilded Age economy. At the very least, they reclaimed women’s originary economic role, which the industrializing economy threatened to deny. “From time immemorial,” Karla Machova explained, “woman has controlled industry and economy in the home.”38 But they also extrapolated from women’s originary domestic role into the modern industrial economy, suggesting that the domestic homestead had served as a prototype for industry. Bullock expressed pride in the advances in manufacturing but noted that they were “the outgrowth of the hand-­card, the old and revered spinning-­wheel, and the family hand-­loom, the knitting and sewing needles,” all of which had been women’s province.39 Machova went on to explain how woman “stepped from the home circle into the wider field of manufactures and public economy.”40 Industrialization, in this account, had simply expanded women’s opportunities to contribute to economic production. Women further capitalized on the opportunities offered by the fair to showcase their current material production. The fair’s dominant rhetorical form was the scientific display, filling acres and acres of exhibition buildings and demonstrating the status, capabilities, and progress of humanity. G. Brown Goode, who was in charge of the fair’s classification scheme,

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envisioned an exhibition of ideas, embodied by objects, “capable of teaching some valuable lesson.” The guiding lesson of the WCE was progress, so the fair’s exhibits would become “an illustrated encyclopedia of civilization.”41 The fair’s object lessons had both educational and epistemic goals—­both to teach individual citizens and to construct common knowledge about the progress of humanity. From their earliest planning meetings, the Lady Managers worked to solicit exhibits and devise schemes for exhibiting women’s contributions within these scientific classification systems. Bertha Palmer explained in a letter to the secretary of state, “The Board of Lady Managers of the World’s Columbian Commission earnestly desires to procure a more comprehensive and adequate presentation of woman’s work and progress than has ever been made.”42 She told Chicago’s Fortnightly Club that the Lady Managers aimed “to present a complete picture of the condition of women in every country of the world at this moment, and more particularly of those women who are bread-­winners.”43 She continued on to explain that the Lady Managers aimed “to show, also, the new avenues of employment that are constantly being opened to women.”44 They hoped to offer a comprehensive assessment, with statistical data, of the professional status of women, including the number working in various industries and the number working for their own subsistence.45 They would “enlarge upon the work of statisticians and make a thorough canvass in order to discover . . . the condition of women.” They wanted to do so, Palmer explained, in order “to secure for her work the consideration and respect which it deserves, and establish her importance as an economic factor.”46 By demonstrating woman’s importance, Palmer hoped that the Lady Managers would promote “woman’s industrial equality, and her receiving just compensation for services rendered.”47 From the start of their deliberations about these exhibits, the Lady Managers wrestled with the question of whether to integrate or segregate women’s work. “The first important point” the BLM addressed, in Palmer’s account, “was whether the work of women at the Fair should be shown separately or in conjunction with the work of men under the general classification.”48 On the one side, Palmer told the Fortnighly Club, some Lady Managers “favored a separate exhibit” because they believed “that the extent and variety of the valuable work done by women would not be appreciated or comprehended unless shown in a building separate from the work of men.”49 Conversely, some Lady Managers argued “that women had reached the point where they could afford to compete side by side with men with a fair chance of success, and that they would not value prizes given upon the

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sentimental basis of sex.”50 The latter argument won out initially, and the Lady Managers approached the fair’s male leadership with a proposal to integrate the exhibits and display placards noting the contributions made by women. That plan was never fully realized, and the Lady Managers ended up displaying scores of women’s contributions in their own building, which the integrationists had otherwise envisioned as a meeting and reception hall, not an exhibition hall. In the end, the Woman’s Building housed the work of more than thirteen thousand exhibitors and more than eighty thousand items.51 The “Official Directory” of the fair gave a careful accounting of the building’s exhibits, according to the fair’s elaborate scientific classification scheme. It counted displays in most of the fair’s main categories: agriculture, horticulture, livestock, fisheries, mines and metallurgy, machinery, transportation, manufactures, fine arts, liberal arts, ethnology, and forestry. Its listing of women’s exhibits in the category of manufactures was especially extensive, noting women’s contributions in twenty-­eight groups and more than sixty classes, ranging from chemical and pharmaceutical products to furniture to fabrics to rubber goods to appliances.52 The Lady Managers also worked to integrate women’s exhibits throughout the fair, and they kept careful records of their successes in doing so. They reported that 19 percent of exhibits in the Transportation Building came from women, 25 percent in the Fisheries Building, and 46 percent in the Horticulture Building.53 Collectively, fair chronicler Rossiter Johnson concluded, the women’s displays pointed to “the high rank that had been attained in art, science, literature, and industry by exceptional women in all parts of the world . . . and also the diversified achievements of the women of our own day with the view of showing the great change in their relation to practical affairs and the marked increase in their usefulness.”54 These exhibits, in short, did just what Bertha Palmer promised they would do. In their speeches in the congresses, women provided oral complements to these displays of women’s economic capacity and contributions. Lina Morgenstern, for instance, sent a prepared speech to the WCRW in which she explained that she was compiling a book called Die Frauenarbeit in Deutschland, which would “give a complete survey of the position and activity of women in all departments of domestic and social life” in Germany.55 She promised that she had compiled “a report concerning the condition of women in my native land,” which included evidence “that woman is capable of working in all departments of industry.”56 In her paper, she listed dense statistical data, including the number of women and men in Germany,

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the number of workers of each sex, the increase each year, plus the number of women by job categories. Ultimately she compared percentages of women workers to men workers in various industries. Like Morgenstern, Bristol offered a broad vision of women’s economic contributions, explaining that “the number of industries and professions now open to woman runs into the hundreds.”57 Through both forms of display—­material objects and speeches—­these female activists exhibited women’s economic capacity. For fairgoers who came to Chicago expecting displays of humanity’s progress, these women evidenced their own material production as a marker of that progress. Upon the opening of the fair, these organizers acknowledged the successes of their displays. In her speech to the WCRW, Augusta Cooper Bristol concluded of the fair, “It is no less than a world-­wide announcement of her coming on in every form of art, literature, and industry.”58 Likewise, Ellen Henrotin noted that “the exhibits at the Columbian Exposition testify to the tremendous advance which she has made during the last half century in the industrial world.”59 They were, in short, object lessons in women’s economic potential. Lipscomb concurred that there was “no more beautiful and encouraging example of women in the financial world than the work that has been accomplished by her at this Exposition now in progress. These walls and all that they contain are grand monuments to her energy, patience, and financial skill.”60 Women translated this capacity for economic production into a practice of citizenship in the language of liberalism and republicanism. They construed work as a natural and inherent right. Bertha Palmer, for instance, referred to woman’s “natural and inherent right, to pursue her self-­development in her chosen line of work.”61 Likewise, Bristol claimed that “it is preëminently a matter of equity that woman should receive equal wages with man for like quantity and quality of work.”62 Because these economic rights were so natural and inherent, these speakers portrayed any threats to these rights as injustices. According to Palmer, “Of all the existing forms of injustice, there is none so cruel and inconsistent” as the “ignoring of [women’s] rights and responsibilities” in the economic sphere.63 Extending liberalism’s language of natural rights to the financial realm, Palmer and Bristol both suggested that women had fundamental rights to economic development, akin to their established rights to property or sovereignty under the law. Speakers at the WCE also treated women’s economic participation in republican terms, making it an act of civic duty to their communities and their nation. On an individual level, financial security allowed women to

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escape the “immorality” that could corrupt communities. Sometimes that immorality could refer to women’s basest deprivation—­prostitution—­but it could also refer to financial calculations in the context of family. Prescott, for instance, argued that “economic pressure” made women less moral and less virtuous because it forced them to “marry for mercenary reasons” and “pecuniary” considerations.64 Only with economic independence could a woman “properly estimate her value as a source of strength to others through power and influence of a noble life.”65 In an extended syllogism, Prescott suggested that “the advance of humanity” depends on the development of a moral nature. Woman’s “moral nature is stunted by her environment—­her slavery,” Prescott suggested. Therefore, the advance of humanity depended on women’s economic freedom as mediated through the morality that she was only able to develop under the conditions of freedom. In the language of republicanism, Prescott suggested that women’s economic independence would allow for a more virtuous, more moral society. These speakers also appropriated producer language to make their economic contributions an act of service to the nation, language that echoed republicanism. Palmer promised that their displays would include “the most distinguished and useful products that our sex has given to the world.”66 Women’s material contributions, she explained, “have rendered exceptional service to the cause of humanity.”67 Fredericsen concurred that what makes woman “influential is real usefulness.”68 Prescott made the same point in her allegorical language: if the “shoes of Dependence” were removed from woman’s feet, she would grow into “knowledge of her possibilities for usefulness and her sacred obligations to the race.”69 In the context of the fair, these economic contributions became symbols of the nation’s strength and virtue. Citing Henry George, Bristol claimed that a nation’s capacity for producing wealth determined its place among nations.70 So important was this wealth production that neither the nation nor humanity could risk ignoring women’s contributions. In Palmer’s words, “We can not afford to lose the reserve power of any individual.”71 Bullock celebrated women’s labor for its contribution to “the advancement of all that is good and great.”72 More ominously, Bullock suggested that if women were removed from labor, the schools, the arts, and related spheres, “the wheels of progress would turn backward and the retrogression of society would be the inevitable result.”73 Catching the producerist spirit so evident at the fair, these speakers suggested that economic participation made women useful to their nation. At an exposition whose central virtue was progress, and its central anxiety was atavism, these speakers yoked women’s economic participation to the national progress on display.

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Finally, the labor organizers who spoke made women’s production an act of self-­governance through these organizations. Kate Bond in particular showed how labor organization could be a sphere of self-­governance. Both capital and labor alike would benefit from greater cooperation, she claimed. Calling it a “thought of the past” that the employer and employee must remain separate, she noted instead “the signs of coöperation and conciliation . . . now visible” especially in “labor unions, trade societies, corporations, and syndicates.”74 She urged women to capitalize on this new sentiment to advocate for their own needs. An individual’s rights “can only be attained when, by organization, protection is secured to the entire community.”75 Bond explained how poor women’s working conditions were where no organization existed, and she argued that “organization among women is the only remedy to right the wrong; but organization should be conducted with dignity and by wise methods, and right-­thinking, educated women should join hands with the down-­trodden, ignorant workers.”76 Importantly, Bond offered a broad vision for organization, which would allow for capital and labor to cooperate and for both educated and working-­class women to advocate for improving women’s labor conditions. Bond claimed that such cooperative organizing would benefit all parties together. Collective self-­ governance, in her depiction, promised the most efficient and effective means for improving both working conditions and productivity within industry. Financial Incorporation As some speakers and exhibits celebrated women’s material production, in continuity with the productive work women had done since primitive times, other speakers celebrated the new opportunities specifically made possible by the Gilded Age. Ellen Henrotin explicitly noted that whereas woman once “was the hewer of wood and bearer of water,” she no longer did those things because now “mechanical appliances perform for humanity the tasks in which primitive woman was engaged.”77 Palmer elaborated how “the removal from the household to the various factories where such work is now done, of spinning, carding, dyeing, knitting, the weaving of textile fabrics, sewing, the cutting and making of garments, and many other laborious occupations, has enabled her to lift her eyes from the drudgery that has oppressed her since prehistoric days.”78 In Henrotin’s account, women’s economic advance was best marked by her entry into the new financial sphere. Whereas she “has always been recognized as a worker, but as a worker along the lines in which her financial rewards did not render her subject to special consideration in

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the moneyed world,” now, Henrotin argued, “all this is changed: the money she earns, or the savings which she accumulates, are invested in moneyed institutions, as building and loan associations, real estate, insurance, railroads, and banks.”79 Bristol agreed. She claimed that “the creation of wealth” was “the new economic area to which woman has attained in this latter half of the nineteenth century.”80 No longer was woman “limited to the application and distribution of supplies.” Instead, she had become “a wealth-­producer.”81 Rather than romanticizing woman’s earlier economic contributions, Henrotin instead explored avenues for women’s participation in the new Gilded Age economy, particularly as bankers and shareholders in the new financial sector prompted by large-­scale industry. Henrotin was echoed by other speakers, including Louise Starkweather and Mary Lipscomb, who illuminated similar opportunities. Henrotin, who spoke at the World’s Congress of Bankers and Financiers in June and at the CWB in July, amassed data illuminating the extent of women’s financial participation. She set out “to demonstrate how important a factor are women investors in modern civilization.”82 The clearest marker of woman’s new economic status, according to Henrotin, was that “the money or savings which she accumulates are invested in moneyed institutions, as building and loan associations, real estate, and mortgages on real estate. The amount thus invested is in the hundreds of millions.”83 To demonstrate this new status, she amassed extensive data, including testimony and statistics from the Department of Labor enumerating women’s participation in banks and building and loan associations. She even noted that “nothing is harder to collect than statistics.”84 In the published version of the speeches, she appended a table showing, state by state, the shares and value of national bank stock owned by women as well as the number and salaries of women employed in banks. Henrotin’s use of evidence underscored and exemplified her explicit point: women were capable of the numeracy that financial management required. Starkweather set out to illuminate “three important branches of investments” for women: “insurance, banking and loan associations.”85 Without the extensive data that Henrotin marshaled, Starkweather nonetheless asserted that “a very large portion of bank stock in the United States is owned by women.”86 Although the major thrust of Starkweather’s speech was to illuminate women’s missed opportunities in finance, she nonetheless nodded to and described some of women’s successes in that sphere. For instance, she told the story of “a woman of more than ordinary business ability in a western town” who purchased a piece of property for $3,000 with the promise that, with a few improvements, it could be rented out for a 15 percent profit

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every year. Starkweather went on to describe the trials that followed: the endless renovations to the property, the loss of tenants, and the unrealized profit. After two years, she had made a net profit of only $1.50. On its face, this story revealed the failings of a businesswoman, but its other messages are equally important. Starkweather illuminated that women were engaged in business dealings with impressive sums of money. She demonstrated her own acumen for understanding these business dealings. Finally, she offered a savvier alternative to the businesswoman’s real estate scheme: insurance. She claimed that if this woman had instead invested in insurance, she would have seen 40 percent dividends on her investment. Starkweather simultaneously showed women’s financial capacity and pointed to the new financial sphere where their investments would be most successful. Like Starkweather, Lipscomb also exemplified women’s financial acumen through anecdotes and through her own command of financial vocabulary. She demonstrated this vocabulary when she urged that, starting from girlhood, women must be “taught to draw checks and give receipts, balance books, and all else. . . . Later on they should know something of the nature of contracts and deeds; of stocks and bonds; of securities and interest.”87 Lipscomb enumerated examples of successful women to prove her conclusion that woman had settled the question of “her capacity to manage finances . . . so far as she has been tested.”88 In promoting women’s entry into finance, these speakers also struggled with the separate-­spheres ideology that was so prominent in their context. On the one hand, some of them exalted women’s unique characteristics, which suited them for financial leadership. Henrotin, for instance, celebrated that woman “dearly loves a plain statement, especially about financial matters. She hates to be in debt, and extended lines of credit present to charms to her.”89 Lipscomb called woman “even a safer custodian of funds than man.”90 She clarified that woman was not “more honest” or “wiser” than man, simply “more careful.”91 Other speakers, however, undermined these separate-­spheres assumptions by using highly masculine language to assert women’s entry into new financial and industrial spheres. They framed their arguments in the evolutionary language so common around them, drawing easily on the Darwinian language of struggle. Henrotin described women’s “struggle for existence.”92 Palmer claimed that too often, women were “thrown upon their own resources,” with “a frightful struggle to endure.”93 But they also talked about the triumphs that resulted from that struggle. In Palmer’s treatment, even the fair’s own Board of Lady Managers, which grew out of women’s

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attempts to be involved in previous fairs at Philadelphia and New Orleans, “came by the natural process of evolution.”94 Bristol attributed women’s “struggle” and their increasing triumphs to the “increasing complexity of our civilization.” To these natural metaphors, these speakers added militaristic metaphors. Starkweather likened the current financial arena unfavorably to “the history of war of cruelty or justice,” explaining that while in war, “hundreds have been swept out of existence in a single hour on fields of battle,” economic distress inflicted longer, more painful suffering.95 Nonetheless, Starkweather urged women’s participation in the masculinized battle zone of finance, where men had been left to die. Bristol likened women’s entry to the professions to a general telling his soldiers to take “the enemy’s intrenchments.”96 Women had made inroads, but not so many that they were yet justified in “laying aside our armor or staking our arms. The hopefulness of the outlook arises from the fact that the area yet to conquer narrows, the line of struggle shortens, the intrenchments of opponents weaken and diminish.”97 In promoting women’s financial acumen and asserting the propriety of their entrance into the financial world, these speakers offered models of female financial leadership akin to the male civic titans who had become so familiar. In the limited space of their speeches, they were unable to match the familiarity that Americans already had with such men as Andrew Carnegie and George Pullman, but they nonetheless alluded to individual women whose financial skills could parallel or surpass these men’s. Prescott’s examples were historical. She told the story of Hatasu, who she described as the daughter of a king of Egypt. Not only did she serve as her father’s “counselor in affairs of state” and “his chief advisor” in building his capital city, but she also “evolved the present system of foreign commerce in all of its essential details.”98 Lipscomb added one historic example—­the Virgin Queen, who “restore[d] prosperity to a people whose ruin had nearly been effected by the errors of the two preceding kings”—­ but most of her examples were contemporary. She described women bank directors in her home state of Georgia, whose management was so successful that “in these perilous times of embarrassment and failure not one of these banks has been seriously threatened,” alongside women who run a Kansas town whose finances “are more prosperous than those of any other place in the Union.”99 In all, she gave examples of eight women or groups of women successful in their financial dealings. Her examples were mostly brief and vague, not offering the detailed exploits that newspaper readers had come to know from the male captains of industry. Yet the mythic narrative was basically the same: these successful businesswomen were capable

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of ensuring the financial security of their communities as much as Morgan, Vanderbilt, or anyone else. As much as they exalted these female nouveau titans, they also acknowledged that women’s participation in the financial sphere was still inchoate and unrealized. Henrotin, Starkweather, and Lipscomb all lamented the current limitations of women’s participation and called for women to learn more about financial leadership so that their potential could be fully realized. Henrotin paraphrased a bank president who had told her that women lacked “a knowledge of matters of finance, self-­confidence, and firmness.” But these lacks were temporary and fixable. That is, “all that is lacking to woman’s financial success is the acquisition of knowledge of financial matters,” and taking ownership of her responsibilities would give her the self-­confidence and firmness she lacked.100 Starkweather complained about a female bank vice president in Texas who participated actively in managing her investments, “but as to any knowledge of the securities held, money, markets, etc., she had none further than that her money was in the bank’s business and she was notified regularly of the dividends, and had money to use as she chose.”101 She also related the example of Suffolk County, Virginia, where “two-­thirds of the bank stock is owned by women, yet . . . many of these women do not know how to draw a check and cannot discover the difference between a dividend and an assessment and who would be as pleased over a notice of one as the other until better informed.”102 Both Henrotin and Starkweather took special concern about the women who did not exercise the financial influence they had, especially those who allowed men to vote their shares by proxy.103 This collective ignorance of financial affairs, combined with women’s abdication of their powers, made women vulnerable to financial scams or just general misfortune in these turbulent economic times. Starkweather described at length how some financial firms would prey upon elderly women who had come into money. “That women should be such weaklings is a matter of both regret and shame to all the world, and that such a case could be recorded against her good sense and judgment is a great blot upon her,” Starkweather lamented.104 These speakers, then, encouraged women to learn more about financial management. For Lipscomb, the education began with young girls, who “should be taught early the care of money. They should be encouraged to open a bank account. They should be taught to draw checks and give receipts, balance books,” and she continued on to list the various financial tools girls should learn.105 Starkweather encouraged women to capitalize upon their

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unrealized influence. Women, she insisted, “must occupy chairs in directors meetings; must keep informed on the subject of money making, as well as money spending; must know her check book from her bank book; her deposits from overdrafts; dividends from assessments of stock, and be willing and ready to vote and lend her ideas in this branch, as she has elsewhere in the world with such good effect.”106 She and Henrotin both urged women to reclaim their corporate influence and stop allowing men to vote on their behalf by proxy. Beyond just demonstrating women’s capacity for financial leadership and calling for women’s increased financial participation, these women’s speeches also made that leadership an act of citizenship. Drawing upon both republican appeals to duty and liberal appeals to rights, they suggested that by investing in stocks and managing banks, women could perform the work of citizens. Echoing republican appeals to duty, they emphasized women’s usefulness as bank directors and investors. In an era of repeated financial panics and failures, they promised women’s capacity to shore up the nation’s finances. Henrotin made this case most clearly: she blamed the ongoing economic insecurity on men’s busyness; that is, a “large number of business men, or men active in outside business, who are officers of banks, are so busy they have no time to devote to the affairs of the bank.”107 Those men, she explained, “are constantly saying they are overworked.”108 Women could relieve them of this burden. She reasoned by analogy from the example of France, where the women were admirably conservative. The French woman’s “constant participation in the commerce of the nation is creating of that country the financial stronghold of the world, prosperous, wealthy, and economical.”109 If the women of the United States were “to realize their power, the sense of ethical responsibility born of power would rise within them.”110 She elaborated later in her speech: “If once the feeling of moral responsibility toward the financial interests of the country could be aroused in woman, it would be greatly to the interests of the country.”111 Henrotin articulated specific ways that women could fulfill these civic obligations. She had claimed that small-­ town banks were failing because men had been too busy to supervise them, so it only seemed natural that women could become bank directors. She explained, “Now in most of the small towns where banks are situated there are three or four women possessed of good fortunes and great leisure, and living as they do in the town could easily acquire the necessary information to become useful bank directors.”112

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Women could also help the nation in a larger sense as wealth producers. Recognizing that wealth production “determines a nation’s place among nations,” Bristol celebrated that woman had “found entrance as an active agent among” these “complex forces” of wealth production.113 Bullock also claimed that “upon all the stupendous monuments of the century’s advancement will be the refining touch and gilded finish of woman’s work, inspiring society to higher and nobler efforts and still grander achievements.”114 In her treatment, women’s industrial production became a symbol of national achievement. These speakers collectively suggested that women’s financial and industrial participation was an ethical and moral responsibility to the nation; it was a republican civic duty. Drawing upon the language of liberalism, some of these speakers depicted financial management as a right. Lipscomb called woman’s “ability as a financier” one of the “God given rights with which she is endowed.” She elaborated to suggest that “man in full justice to her is bound to recognize” these rights.115 Other speakers drew upon the language of liberalism by appropriating its central symbol: the franchise. Specifically, they isolated the corporate franchise as the tool of women’s national leadership. While some women’s rights activists were advocating for women’s inherent right to the political franchise, these advocates instead depicted self-­ governance through the corporate franchise, specifically within the form of financial organization that defined the Gilded Age—­the joint stock corporation. Henrotin, Starkweather, and others celebrated the corporate ballot as the key to women’s empowerment. Henrotin complained throughout her speeches that women had not taken advantage of their corporate enfranchisement, noting that they tended instead to vote by proxy. She complained about the older women who “carry out old-­fashioned methods of giving their proxy to anyone who desires to vote it.”116 Too often, those women “content themselves with giving their proxy and never voting themselves or attending a stockholders’ meeting.”117 Starkweather too lamented that women’s shares were given to “some man who by proxy votes as best suits his purpose, and attends to her loans and interests as is most profitable to himself.”118 They urged women instead to capitalize on this latent power. Henrotin urged every female stockholder to “attend the meetings of the institutions in which she holds stock, and vote to the best of her ability for good men or women, as the case may be, as directors.”119 Starkweather too urged that women must “be willing and ready to vote and lend her ideas in this branch.”120 She looked forward to the day when woman would “exercise her right to the ballot,” the corporate ballot.121

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Conclusions and Implications Collectively, these ten speakers in thirteen speeches projected economic participation as a practice of citizenship both accessible to and valuable for women. They promoted women’s entry into the Gilded Age’s signature economic forms, such as joint stock corporations and mass production. And they seized upon the WCE, an international civic-­commercial enterprise, to do so. While these speakers collectively articulated the promise of this practice of economic citizenship, they split over whether it served as a complement to or substitute for political enfranchisement. For some speakers, this economic citizenship was significant precisely because it would lead to political enfranchisement. For others, this economic citizenship could obviate political enfranchisement. Augusta Cooper Bristol made the clearest case for economic citizenship as a step in the great evolutionary development toward what she called “complete citizenship.”122 Bristol’s speech, which considered “woman as the oldest as well as the newest factor in economics,” took a broadly chronological and evolutionary perspective, thick with organic metaphors, on women’s development collectively. Within this narrative, “the line of movement is forward and upward” for women.123 Woman’s new economic status—­as wealth producer, for Bristol—­was just one step in this greater trajectory that would ultimately arrive at “the fullness of time.”124 Backed by the momentum of history, Bristol saw women “proceeding straight to the inevitable goal of largest social and political responsibility. . . . Industrial emancipation broadens by an inevitable principle into social and political equality.”125 With analogies to plants and machines alike, Bristol suggested that this development was inevitable: economic equality would necessarily lead to social and political equality. Among the speakers concerned with women’s economic citizenship, Bristol found herself alone on this count: she was the only one who explicitly showed a path from economic participation to political enfranchisement. Some of the others—­Palmer, Lipscomb, and Starkweather—­argued exactly the opposite. They drew a sharp distinction between economic and political citizenship and, at least in some cases, argued that the former could substitute for the latter. All three explicitly decried women’s activism for political citizenship. Palmer, in describing the Lady Managers’ work to display women’s achievements, explained that they did this work without concern for politics, aiming only to promote “woman’s industrial equality . . . and establish her importance as an economic factor.”126

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Lipscomb took care to explain her own position. “I am not an advocate of woman’s rights in the opprobrious sense of that expression,” she explained. “I do not care to see—­hope never to see the women of American leave the quiet sanctity of their homes and thrust themselves out into the political world.”127 Starkweather even lamented that this objectionable political work had come at the expense of women’s full economic empowerment. She bemoaned, “For many long and weary years,” woman had “been clamoring for political rights and political honors, equal suffrage and men’s clothing, the pantaloons in particular.”128 All that misguided clamoring had obscured women’s real “importance and responsibility in the financial world.”129 Women, in Starkweather’s account, held far more power through their investments than political enfranchisement could ever bring. Women stockholders “might wield a power far more telling, far more vital than anything politics could give.” Their corporate vote bought them more power than a Kansas senator or a ward politician. Their model of economic citizenship, especially in contrast to other models of economic citizenship, fit their Gilded Age context. Given the dominant trends around them—­a growing financial sector, economic instability, powerful corporate titans, hostility between “producers” and “parasites”—­these rhetors’ collective discourse of economic citizenship sought the power of self-­ governance where it resided. In a time when newspapers covered the exploits of the titans of industry more than any political leaders and a time in which those corporate leaders enjoyed outsized influence on public policy, these women rightfully sought public influence through industrial leadership. In a time when mass-­scale industrial production removed women’s domestic work, they attempted to follow their traditional economic production to its new sphere. In a time when the chasm between labor and capital grew, as labor articulated itself in “producerist” terms, women appropriated those terms, articulating their collective contributions to the nation’s productivity. In a time of economic insecurity, marked by panic after panic, women seized upon the opportunity to offer themselves up as the saviors of the nation’s economy. In what Trachtenberg called “the age of incorporation,” that time when corporations became the dominant form of financial organization, women pursued the opportunities for collective self-­governance inherent in that rapidly spreading system. That is, when industry consolidated and voting became a key mode of decision-­making, women sought access to its ballots. And finally, they offered up this model of economic citizenship at the World’s Columbian Exposition, an unparalleled celebration of the Gilded Age economy.

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At the same time, some women’s attempt to separate political from economic citizenship was short-­sighted in light of the public-­private partnerships growing in their context. As private industry and government had developed relationships of reciprocal dependence—­as exemplified by Morgan’s bailout of the U.S. treasury—­these speakers sought to win women influence on only one side of this relationship. If the Gilded Age governing logic relied on dual political and economic power, women’s economic participation was surely important but ultimately always incomplete. Even if their economic contributions were recognized, and even if they assumed leadership of banks and corporations, women’s access to these public-­private partnerships would remain incomplete without enfranchisement and the associated right to assume office. This case study then illuminates numerous lessons about citizenship. First, practices of citizenship are historically situated. These women articulated a practice of economic citizenship that drew upon the unique features of their developing economy and that positioned them to participate in that political-­economic system. Second, practices of citizenship are interdependent. This model of economic citizenship is important, but it could not work independently of enfranchisement or the other practices of citizenship that women articulated at the WCE. Third, this model is significant because it forces us to admit that citizenship is always imbued with economic status, and that economic status has typically been gendered. These women’s intervention was significant because they carved out a practice of economic citizenship for women, whose contributions were excluded or minimized in other models of economic citizenship. They abandoned the Aristotelian model so apparent in Western political thought, including suffrage ideology. Instead of assuming that women should leave behind the economic sphere of necessity to enter the virtuous sphere of politics, they encouraged women to capitalize on the civic influence inherent in the political sphere. The Gilded Age economy undermined that sharp separation between Aristotle’s oikos and polis because mass-­ scale industry made economic production a public affair. Women capitalized on this new economic system by taking their traditional role as economic producers and inserting themselves into public industry, thus challenging the separate-­spheres ideology that would have once restricted them to the domestic sphere of economic production. Under this new form of capitalism, their traditional economic role made them public actors. Asserting their own economic worth, once achieved in the home, these women traversed the public/private divide alongside economic production.

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Their intervention thus undermined the first practice of economic citizenship that scholars have identified, as it also challenged and sidestepped the other two. They attempted to co-­opt the second practice of citizenship, social citizenship. At least three women in the congresses—­Starkweather, Palmer, and Sewall—­insisted on social citizenship in their appeals to women’s rights to work. Using the language of liberalism, they claimed the natural, inherent, God-­given right to work, which Marshall treated as a benefit of “social citizenship.” Through their common language of liberalism, these rights were made equivalent to the rights of individual sovereignty, private property, access to the franchise, and others codified by the Constitution. We know in retrospect, however, that this right to work for women did not crystallize, at least not immediately. As early as the Supreme Court’s decision in Mueller v. Oregon, and certainly in the policy discourse of the Great Depression era, lawmakers assumed that women did not share the right to work or the right to negotiate a contract. Their employment could be curtailed by protective legislation, and it could be sacrificed to men’s need to earn a “family wage.” These women did not lay claim to any other rights of social citizenship—­such as unemployment or social security provisions—­which would not be articulated in the United States for another generation and would not be widely applied to women. These women sidestepped the final practice of economic citizenship—­consumerism—­almost entirely. Of the hundreds of speeches in the congresses, I have not found any where women appeal to their sisters to buy or avoid a product—­ other than insurance—­or otherwise use the power of their pocketbooks or purses to influence social change. In the midst of an industrializing era, when women would become mass consumers and when Meg Jacobs says politicians would start catering to their needs as consumers, it is remarkable that women did not articulate themselves as consumers. Given the limitations latter-­day scholars have identified in such practices of consumer citizenship, it may have been an unanticipated blessing that these rhetors did not encourage their sisters to pursue such practices of citizenship. While these women at the WCE renegotiated two practices of economic citizenship that had excluded them, their most important contribution was to articulate another practice of economic citizenship suitable for their own context and appropriate for their gender. As women, they had legal rights to work in the new industrial economy, to own property, and to control their own investments, including the right to invest in banking and loan associations and joint stock corporations. They could even serve as officers in these new entities. Their primary rhetorical contributions were to illuminate

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these new opportunities for other women and to show how these economic choices took on civic character, which they did through the language of republicanism and liberalism. Fourth, this case is significant because it illuminates that women worked on behalf of other practices as citizenship nearly as much as they did for suffrage. Economic citizenship required as much effort to secure as political citizenship, even as much as these women suggested that finance and industry were already radically equitable places. These speakers also revealed that women were not equally represented in corporations, banks, or labor unions, nor were women prepared or empowered to exercise what influence they were rightfully owed. As such, these and like-­minded women fought for their own entry into those spheres of influence just as suffragists fought for women’s political enfranchisement. Unlike the suffrage movement, which arrived at a definitive victory,130 this advocacy for economic citizenship was gradual and, ultimately, incomplete. Although the women at the Columbian Exposition identified important inroads for women into economic citizenship, their generation was not able to forge their way into economic leadership in any systematic fashion. Fifth, this case is significant because, relative to contemporaneous woman’s rights activism, these calls for economic empowerment were radically inclusive of women across different social classes. Ellen Henrotin went to great lengths to show women of varying economic means investing in building and loan associations. She noted, for instance, that one New York banking and loan association had sixty-­three chambermaids as members, and she referred to a teachers’ association in which 90 percent of the members were female wage earners. She described one investor who earned her money by sweeping a wealthy woman’s house twice a week and another who baked bread for three different families. Henrotin’s examples made the point clearly: women of all different economic statuses could invest. Henrotin’s openness comes in stark contrast to the suffragists of her era who were making racist and classist arguments.131 Surely Henrotin’s assessment was idealistic: many working women likely needed to spend their money to feed their families immediately rather than invest to buy a home later. And surely women of greater means could win more influence via economic citizenship than women of lesser means. Yet the inclusiveness of these appeals to economic citizenship remains important and liberating in their Gilded Age context. Sixth and finally, the practice of economic citizenship that they articulated is significant because their political and economic context was not so

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different from our own. These speeches remind us that full citizenship still depends on economic status. We too live in an era of financial might relative to government might. Our economic instability tends to be characterized as “bubbles” rather than “panics,” but the last generation has seen two burst bubbles—­the dot-­com and real estate bubbles—­that led to widespread unemployment, declining tax revenue, and other markers of financial distress. Moreover, we live in an era of remarkable corporate power in the political realm. We are confronted repeatedly—­as in the Citizens United decision—­with the hard truth that the vote is not the most valuable coin in the realm of politics. Whereas Gilded Age political leaders looked to J. P. Morgan to bail out a financial crisis, contemporary political leaders look to corporate titans to fund their campaigns. In both cases, the lesson is clear: access to capital wins access to the capitol. And finally, in both the Gilded Age context and our own, this powerful financial sector is dominated by men. In today’s context, we are inundated by discourse from and about the few women who have made inroads into financial and corporate leadership—­Sheryl Sandberg, Marissa Meyer, and others—­yet those women remain largely tokens. We must continue to interrogate how dominant ideas of economic citizenship are gendered and how women continue to be systematically excluded from certain performances of economic citizenship.

Conclusion

This book began with a simple premise: that women in the late nineteenth-­ century United States were casting about for ways to understand and practice their citizenship. The Supreme Court had confirmed their citizenship in Minor v. Happersett, but it had decided that their citizenship did not entail the right to vote. That decision set some women on an activist path to win enfranchisement legislatively. Other women surely accepted their citizenship status. This project set out in search of the others: women who sought novel ways to practice the work of a citizen outside Election Day. To find these alternatives, I looked to the World’s Columbian Exposition—­ a grand civic and rhetorical event that projected the aspirations and anxieties of its era. The fair itself mobilized elected officials and businessmen, who devoted public and private money, from both local and national sources. They produced an exposition remarkable by almost any measure—­ the aesthetics of its Beaux-Arts architecture and its manicured grounds, the revenue of its twenty-­seven million ticketed entries, or the novelty of its attractions, from the moveable walkway to the Ferris wheel to the electricity powering the fairgrounds after dark. The exposition was also a remarkable rhetorical event. Lasting six months and involving thousands of speakers and hundreds of thousands of audience members, the WCE’s congresses produced voluminous discourse that reached even broader audiences via print circulation. The exposition and its congresses made space for unprecedented leadership by women. Where women had been excluded from the official leadership of previous fairs, the WCE allowed for a Board of Lady Managers and a Woman’s Branch of the World’s Congress Auxiliary. These bodies drew together diverse rosters of women who had distinguished themselves not only as reformers but also as professionals, philanthropists, and socialites. The fair enabled relationships between accomplished women who had no other occasions to work together. The congresses gave them opportunities to

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engage collectively with the changing status of women alongside dozens of other pressing topics of the day. I have contended that as these women considered topics ranging from foreign missions to prison reform to scientific cooking, they also experimented with various practices of citizenship suitable in their context, given their constraints. I have isolated four such practices of citizenship—­deliberative democracy, racial uplift, organized womanhood, and economic participation—­but my attention to those four should not suggest that they were the only ones that emerged in these congresses. I saw them recurring across the programs and circulating throughout numerous speeches, but I have left hundreds of speeches untouched. Indeed, textual riches from these congresses remain to be mined. In the remainder of this conclusion, then, I first reflect upon some of the methodological choices and consequences evident in this project. Second, I offer a brief meditation on one more understanding of citizenship that emerged in these congresses. Third, I end by thinking broadly about citizenship, elaborating on the value of seeing citizenship beyond the ballot and encouraging future scholarship in that vein.

Notes on Method This analysis has focused on the World’s Columbian Exposition because of its capacity to speak for its era. It uniquely had the size, scope, and multiplicity to capture and refract the circulating discourses of its era. In contrast to previous scholars, I have treated the WCE not as a representation or a mystification of its era but instead as a rhetorical projection of the Gilded Age’s greatest hopes and anxieties. The WCE, through its voluminous texts—­its speeches, exhibits, newsletters, guidebooks, buildings, sculptures, and more—­shows America projecting itself to the world for a brief historical moment. Like an image projected from a campfire on a cave wall, the fair was fundamentally ephemeral. It captured just that one moment before the dawn recast the light and the projection disappeared. For women, 1893 was a pivotal moment, and it remains a fruitful moment for inquiry. At the midpoint between the Minor decision and the Anthony Amendment, their citizenship status remained ambivalent. Suffragists had won a handful of victories in western states (Wyoming, Utah, Idaho) while losing many more referendum campaigns. They would soon slip into “the doldrums.” As represented by the campaign for suffrage, 1893

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signaled the movement from the optimism of the postwar years into the stagnation at the turn of the century. This transformation was even more acute for African American women, who saw the gains of emancipation and Reconstruction slip quickly away with the rise of Jim Crow rule and new state constitutions being enacted; they were entering the “nadir” of their own history. In studying the fair, and specifically its congresses, I made a series of methodological commitments, which I spelled out in chapter 1. Prompted by the character of the fair itself, I choose to analyze dozens of texts, to consider texts from a diverse group of speakers, to attend to curation more than recovery, and to focus on a tiny morsel of the fair’s riches. Each of these choices had implications that have surely become clear in the book’s analysis chapters. In analyzing dozens of texts together in each chapter, I focused on commonalities—and specifically the practices of citizenship that those texts collectively amplified for a watching and listening world. In doing so, I hope I have captured the circulation and reach of these ideas; none of these practices of citizenship were the wild imaginings of a single rhetor. Indeed, each analysis chapter drew together the voices of women who had never worked together and may have never even met, and yet the echoes and resonances of their ideas became clear. Considering dozens of texts together came at the expense of fully introducing any of the speakers or situating any speech in its historical moment. I don’t take that limitation lightly; as I have gotten to know these women—­May Wright Sewall, Bertha Palmer, Sarah Cooper, Frances Harper, and dozens of others—­I wished I could share their stories and the historical conditions of production for their rhetorical acts. Instead, I presented them to contemporary readers the same way visitors to the fair would have encountered them: briefly and in conjunction with dozens of other speeches and displays. My second methodological commitment—­to engaging speeches from a diverse roster of speakers—­led me to study speeches by women who were famous and unknown, black and white, urban and rural, American and international, and reformers, professionals, and socialites. My analysis has elevated nameless women, putting them in conversation with the event’s headliners. Some of these women were well practiced at speechwriting and delivery, while others had little experience to their names. While a few of these speeches bore the markers of rhetorical excellence, the vast majority were simple and banal. Their rhetorical power came from the event, its reach and circulation, and the novelty of their ideas. As such, I have focused less on the texture of these speeches—­though I have certainly attended to texture

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where important—­and more on the ideas of citizenship they articulated and the practices they embodied. My third methodological commitment—­ to curation in place of recovery—­ means that this project does not introduce any previously unknown speech texts. Instead, I acknowledge that the published proceedings of these congresses circulated widely in their own day and remain digitally accessible in the twenty-­first century. Just because they are digitally accessible does not mean that these congresses are easy to encounter, however. The work of curation helps students of the fair, of women’s rhetoric, and of citizenship find entry points into this voluminous discourse. In the few years that I have been working with these texts, I have encountered more than a dozen other scholars—­in print and in person—­who have found these volumes of proceedings from the congresses and are trying to make sense of them. Often, they have pulled one or two speeches from the proceedings, but their analyses are left wanting for lack of insight into the congresses themselves. They have made historical errors, typically in confusing and conflating the various congresses or not understanding their role within the WCE. Indeed, the congresses are one of the most rhetorically rich repositories of women’s public discourse in the late nineteenth century, and digitization has made them widely available, and until now, we have not had a historical treatment that contextualized these speeches collectively. I hope this book makes it easier for future scholars to access and illuminate women’s extensive rhetorical contributions at the WCE. My fourth methodological commitment—­to focus on a narrow slice of the fair’s work—­has allowed me to illuminate women’s discourses of citizenship, but it has left significant material for future scholars to engage. Readers have routinely asked me about the hundreds of speeches I did not touch, the paintings and exhibits that filled the Woman’s Building, women’s work on the fair’s Midway, women’s work in the fair’s main exhibits, and women’s work at the fair’s periphery, including Wells’s publication of The Reason Why. All this work merits scholarly inquiry, whether into the practices of citizenship embodied or into what else the fair might teach us. By focusing narrowly on the fair itself, this project amounts to a synchronic analysis more than a diachronic one. By choosing the WCE as a focal rhetorical event, I have been able to talk about dozens of different women and their differing visions—­women and visions who have not been included in previous scholarship—­but only as they emerged in that one moment in the summer of 1893. My analysis thus tells us little about changing visions of women’s citizenship between the Minor decision and the Anthony

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Amendment. Instead, I’ve been able to capture this one snapshot in time and dwell upon women’s visions in the summer of 1893. I hope this analysis has suggested the value in parsing competing practices of citizenship because it would be most useful in conversation with a larger body of scholarship about such practices over that long time span. This analysis would find useful complements in analyses of women’s work to articulate practices of citizenship in literary clubs, churches, reform conventions, fiction, and other rhetorical sites over a period of time longer than six months.

Global Citizenship Most of this book has focused on what I called, in the introduction, the what of citizenship. I have illuminated women articulating the civic work that they might take on in service to their nation and humanity—­work that included rescuing women from prostitution, fundraising for mutual aid societies, speaking publicly, and investing in the stock market. I have paid little attention to the who questions of citizenship. I have not attended to these women questioning who belongs or even who decides who belongs. In part, that perspective has been dictated by the questions driving this project, questions concerned more with the practice of citizenship than the membership in the citizenry. But that perspective has also been guided by the speeches themselves, which are largely oriented to the work that women can do rather than who can do this work. To the extent that these speeches concerned themselves with the who questions of citizenship, they were remarkably global in their orientation. That is, at a historical moment when nation-­states were legally excluding women from dominant practices of citizenship like enfranchisement, these congresses made possible a global form of belonging. They oriented women’s allegiance to the global collective of women rather than to the nation-­ states that undervalued women’s membership. These congresses were explicitly and avowedly international. Their leaders set out to invite and incorporate women from around the world, which for them meant primarily English-­speaking nations and Western Europe. The WCRW’s international ambitions were evident from its title as well as its status as a meeting of the International Council of Women. The auxiliary congresses in general—­both men’s and women’s—­took on an international character as they received the endorsement of the Department of State, which instructed consular officers to build relationships on behalf of the fair and its

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congresses. Bertha Palmer explicitly promoted the Board of Lady Managers’ work when she traveled through Europe in the years leading up to the fair. At the auxiliary congresses, including the WCRW, their international character was on display in the form of flags around the congress halls. Sewall described how “the flags of all the countries of the world float above platforms crowded with distinguished women of a score of nationalities.”1 On the opening two days of the WCRW, in what I described previously as a practice of “greeting,” international representatives were invited to make short addresses to the general congresses. Most used their time to convey the warm feelings of their nations to the assembly, and a few spoke briefly about the work women were undertaking in their country. Devoting the first day and a half of the general congresses to those speeches indicated the high value placed on the international character of the WCRW. Sewall elaborated on these greetings by enumerating the written greetings she had received: “I hold in my hand cablegrams from England, Scotland, Russia, Finland, Holland, Belgium, and France, from organizations of women in all these countries, who send their loving greetings, their words of cheer and sisterly affection.”2 In the case of the daily congresses held in the Woman’s Building, their international character was evidenced in the program, where speakers were listed by name and hometown. Over the course of the summer, those programs promised ten speeches by English women alongside one or more speakers from Australia, Sweden, France, Bohemia, Germany, Brazil, Denmark, Turkey, Scotland, Syria, Spain, Ireland, Italy, Iceland, and Russia. These planners celebrated the congresses’ worldliness as one of the markers of their distinction. In her opening address to the WCRW, Palmer predicted optimistically, “Wisdom will be drawn from women of all nations; all bring their votive offerings to help build and make beautiful the great temple of truth.”3 After the congresses had concluded, Sewall gave a careful accounting of the international participation in the WCRW. In its planning, she claimed, “the women of twenty-­seven distinct, separate countries were represented on the Advisory Council by five hundred and twenty-­eight names. Of these, two hundred and nine served as official representatives of hundred and twenty-­six organized bodies of women.”4 Her edited volume of the event’s proceedings contained a table that broke down those organizations by nation, noting that fifty-­six came from the United States, thirty from England, nine from Germany, and so on. Her accounting simultaneously showed the international character of this event and the dominance of U.S. women’s organizations.

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These women came to the congresses on behalf of nations that afforded them no political status. They expressed no irony in doing so, instead framing themselves as representatives sometimes of their nation, other times of their nation’s women, and still other times of their nation’s women’s association(s). At the opening of the WCRW, Margaret Windeyer announced solemnly, “It is no light matter to stand among you as the representative of that country of great actualities and greater possibilities, Australia.”5 Both the Countess of Aberdeen and Kirstine Fredericsen of Denmark introduced themselves as the representatives of their nations’ women. The Scottish woman announced, “I feel it is an enormous responsibility to stand here as the representative of the women of my own country.”6 Fredericsen likewise claimed, “I for my part stand here with the greetings of nine hundred Danish women, all members of our Danish association of women.”7 Like Fredericsen, Augusta Foerster represented women’s associations. She announced, “I have the honor to bring you the cordial greeting from three German associations of women.”8 As proudly as these women represented their nations, they also promised to unite those nations, and they implied that their participation in these congresses might transcend national belonging. At the opening of the WCRW, Isabel Bogelot celebrated “all the nations uniting at Chicago.”9 More than just uniting nations, these women promised to elide perceived differences between nations. The Canadian representative to the WCRW, listed only as Mrs. John Harvie, talked at length about the commonalities between the women of her nation and the United States. She explained, “We have much in common with our American sisters. We proudly boast the same noble ancestry. Our countries are geographically contiguous, and we are very near together in many respects, so near that we feel we are almost one. It seems to me that we feel the differences more on account of the political lines which separate us. On the higher plane thought and power we can see and feel that we are one.”10 Harvie’s comments here are fairly concrete and literal: Canadian and American women are united by ancestry, geography, and ideas but divided by political lines (presumably meaning national boundaries). Other speakers drew more heavily on figurative language to transcend national boundaries. Some, including Harvie, talked about a global “sisterhood” of women. She claimed that the women gathered there were bound “all together in a great sisterhood of women, regardless of nationality.”11 They stood “shoulder to shoulder with the long procession” of women working on behalf of their own emancipation. Likewise, Laura Ormiston Chant referred to a “noble order of womanhood” that transcended national boundaries. It

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existed in “God’s world over, in whatever country and under whatever name, and speaking whatever outward language.”12 To this language of sisterhood, some women added more familial language, particularly appropriate to their traditional domestic role. Elizabeth M. Tilley said at the opening of the WCRW, “We were introduced as foreign delegates, but I assure you that we don’t feel like that at all. We are more like members of the same family, with some slight differences perhaps, but all the same we are of one kin.”13 This familial language could be extended into religious terms. Laura Ormiston Chant suggested that the women assembled “are all one, children of one common Father, sunning ourselves in the magnificence of our common humanity.”14 Gullen’s religious language was even clearer: in prophetic terms, she promised that soon, nations would be transcended until “there will be but one country, and that the whole earth; but one hope, and that the whole heaven.”15 These “representatives” to the WCRW, then, articulated their belonging in terms of global citizenship. They were simultaneously representatives of their nations, their nations’ womanhood, and their nations’ women’s associations. They claimed the status of representatives of nations that afforded them no political status. At the same time, they also claimed membership in this grand global womanhood, which afforded the possibility to transcend those individual nation-­states, which further allowed them to transcend their limited political status, as well as the fighting between nations, which women as peacemakers were expected to resist. These congresses, then, afforded women an opportunity to transform not just the what of citizenship but also the who. In creating this global deliberating body of women, they were able to profess their allegiance to it over their nations. Although they arrived as citizens and representatives of their nations, they became member citizens of this global body.

Expanding Women’s Citizenship Taking these women’s WCE speeches seriously encourages—­even requires— ­us to expand how we understand women’s citizenship in the late nineteenth century. Doing so asks us to decenter, not deny, suffrage as a performance of citizenship. Certainly, some of the most prominent women at the congresses had built their public careers as suffragists, and a few even advocated on behalf of woman suffrage at the congresses. The two principal planners of the WCRW, May Wright Sewall and Rachel Foster Avery, were both avowed suffragists who had worked with Susan B. Anthony and the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Anthony addressed the WCRW, as did Lucy

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Stone, Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Lillie Devereux Blake, and Anna Howard Shaw, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton sent a paper. Suffragists also participated actively in the department and report congresses of the WCRW. The report congresses featured speeches by representatives of such groups as the Dublin Woman’s Suffrage Committee, the Womanhood Suffrage League of New South Wales, and the Central National Society for Woman’s Suffrage (England). The National-­American Woman Suffrage Association held a department congress on Thursday, May 18, as part of the WCRW. Its program promised speeches by renowned suffragists, including Anthony, Stanton, Stone, Carrie Lane Chapman, Laura M. Johns, and Clara Bewick Colby.16 Anthony addressed the department congress of the National Council of Women in the United States as the president of the National-­American Woman Suffrage Association. She did so in a session featuring addresses by presidents of the council’s member associations; thus she spoke alongside and with equal billing to women who led such groups as the National Woman’s Relief Society, the National Christian League for the Promotion of Social Purity, the International Kindergarten Union, and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.17 Many of these same women—­including Blackwell, Stone, Anthony, Shaw, and Sewall—­addressed the CWB, alongside other suffragists, such as Abigail Scott Duniway, who had not been featured in the WCRW. Suffice it to say, women who had built their reputations advocating for suffrage were highly visible at the WCE congresses. It has never been the aim of this analysis to minimize the work of these suffragists, only to present a fuller picture of women’s civic activism in their generation. These suffragists shared the platforms at the WCE with women who espoused an endless list of causes, who held competing attitudes toward enfranchisement, and as this book has contended, who articulated multiple practices of citizenship for women. The most fundamental point I hope this book makes is that women’s citizenship in the late nineteenth century was not simply a question of suffrage or not. Women did not divide neatly into two camps—­one that advocated women’s enfranchisement and one that passively accepted women’s disenfranchised, second-­class citizen status. Instead, women in the late nineteenth century innovated with the available means they knew. They built upon women’s earlier tradition of contributing to the nation as republican mothers, and they looked for other ways they could contribute to the grand objectives of the nation at what was an ambitious, optimistic moment in history. While Americans perceived that they approached the precipice of something great—­the fin de siècle—­women of all races, classes, professional statuses, and political orientations clamored to contribute. They did

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not settle for the received models of civic participation, such as republican motherhood, nor did they focus single-­mindedly on what was then a losing proposition, the franchise. Instead, they actively innovated to identify meaningful, practical, and influential ways that they could participate in the collective self-­governance of their nation and world. These women’s alternative models of citizenship matter in part because they force us to encounter multiple formations of citizenship. At moments across U.S. history, suffrage has been the highest-­profile practice of citizenship, as exemplified by the Reconstruction Amendments, the Nineteenth Amendment, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Indeed, it may be no coincidence that much of the scholarly focus on the nineteenth-­and early twentieth-­century women’s suffrage activism came in the wake of that signature civil rights victory. As Michael Schudson has portrayed so clearly, the ballot has not been a stable symbol of citizenship, and its civic operation has evolved over U.S. history, from an enactment of virtue to a tool of corrupt party machines to an avenue for enlightened and engaged participation. Keyssar has shown, additionally, how access to the ballot has expanded and contracted and the rationales for inclusion and exclusion have changed. At the same time, other practices—­military enlistment, jury service, factory work, civil disobedience, campaign donations—­have been celebrated as exemplary modes of citizenship across U.S. history. Complementing such diachronic analyses as Schudson’s and Keyssar’s, which trace a single emblem of citizenship (the vote) across centuries of U.S. history, this analysis dwells on a single moment (the WCE) and illuminates competing and circulating practices of citizenship that emerged. These women’s alternative models of citizenship also force us to confront the ways that citizenship is gendered, not just legally, but also socially and culturally. Various practices of citizenship are differently available to men and women, or men and women face different barriers in accessing different practices of citizenship. Legal barriers, such as the ones obstructing the franchise in the nineteenth century, are the most obvious, but the social and cultural barriers are equally significant. Feminist critics have illuminated the barriers that inhibited women’s public speaking in the early nineteenth century.18 This analysis suggests that by 1893, those barriers had been sufficiently lowered that women could participate rhetorically in collective self-­ government. Yet I have suggested that some rhetorical performances—­those focused on informing and discussing—­grew more easily out of women’s accepted social roles as homemakers. I have also attended to rhetors, including Ellen Henrotin and Louise Starkweather, who themselves claimed that

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the barriers to some forms of participation—­namely, investing—­were sufficiently low for women to get involved. These practices of citizenship of course continued to evolve; as more women adopted a given practice, it became gendered more feminine, which brings its own set of implications, as Polletta and Chen note in the case of deliberative democracy, for instance. Acceptable practices of citizenship are also inflected by race. Nowhere were the racial politics of citizenship laid barer than at the WCE—­a civic event dedicated to celebrating the progress of nation and civilization, in which African Americans were explicitly excluded from the official ranks of leadership and the discourses of citizenship were explicitly premised on racial hierarchies. Where previous scholarship has dwelled on these racial hostilities at the fair, and I certainly wanted to acknowledge them, it is also important to see how African American and white women actively resisted the racial exclusions of the fair—­specifically, how they articulated antiracist practices of citizenship. Rather than accepting racial hierarchy as a constituent feature of citizenship status, some women maintained that eradicating racial difference through racial uplift was itself a practice of citizenship. The other practices of citizenship modeled at the WCE were also inflected by race. Women tended to engage in racially segregated “organized womanhood.” Further analysis would surely suggest ways that African American and white women’s organizing was shaped by the resources available to them based on race. Likewise, as much as its proponents liked to suggest that economic participation was a radically open practice of citizenship, access to the necessary capital was not universal. Former slaves and their dependents in particular did not have access to the wealth necessary for investing. As many whites, especially immigrants, also did not have access to such wealth, these racial divisions are not simple. These questions of race and citizenship—­particularly how the various practices of citizenship have been constrained along racial lines—­deserve significant inquiry. The WCE—­its women’s congresses, its congresses on such topics as “the Negro” and “Africa,” as well as its congresses on nonraced, nongendered topics—­would be just one starting point for such inquiry.

Ongoing Questions of Citizenship As I noted in the book’s opening pages, women’s discourses of citizenship at the WCE are precursors to the messy, uneven practices of citizenship familiar in our own twenty-­first century context. As long as both the legal status and the

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discursive norms surrounding citizenship remain uneven, we need to continue to develop scholarship that sees citizenship in all its complexity. As I implied in the opening chapter, recognizing this complexity is a feminist imperative. Concerned with inequities of sex, gender, race, class, and other markers of difference, feminists must be attentive to the way that access to citizenship is inflected by all these markers. We must illuminate those inequities and work toward their eradication. At the same time, we must also remain attuned to the ways that people excluded from certain practices of citizenship still find other ways to practice citizenship. Just as disenfranchised nineteenth-­century women served as bank directors and founded mission societies, today undocumented residents march in Fourth of July parades and volunteer at their kids’ schools, paroled felons mentor youth at risk of getting into trouble, and international graduate students in the United States on visas teach our foundational classes in rhetoric and civic life. Feminists in particular must attend to all these varied practices of citizenship as a way of seeing how people across sexes, genders, races, classes, and other markers of identity contribute to our collective practice of self-­governance. Critical scholars must supplement the work already under way by social scientists, who have done invaluable work to generate survey data about the wide-ranging ways that Americans are involved in their communities.19 For instance, in a 2012 survey, Pew Research Center researchers measured civic engagement in four ways: percentage of adults who (1) “directly take part in a civic group or activity,” such as a community problem-­solving meeting or political rally; (2) “recently contacted a government official or spoke out” in an offline public forum; (3) recently contacted an official or spoke out online; and (4) engaged in “political or civic activities on social networking sites.”20 This survey data allows the researchers to see powerful relationships between these forms of participation and education level, annual income, and age. When compared with their previous survey data, it allows them to show changes over time in these forms of participation. It does not, however, allow researchers to see how Americans justify these forms of civic engagement or articulate them as habits of citizenship. We can see only in the crudest sense how these practices might be motivated by a sense of civic duty or ego gratification or economic insecurity or boredom. We learn little about how Americans encourage their fellow citizens in these practices. We learn little, in short, about the rhetorical sustainability of these practices of citizenship. This research on contemporary practices of citizenship would benefit from a humanist or critical sensibility.

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At the same time, as we consider contemporary practices of citizenship, we should also recognize the historical trajectories embedded within them. In other words, contemporary practices of citizenship are not cut from whole cloth; they have antecedents, which may include the Gilded Age practices that I have identified. For instance, both parents and schools continue to worry about training good citizens, bequeathing the legacy of republican motherhood, a practice of citizenship well-­known among Revolution-­era mothers and of which traces were still easily evident in the Gilded Age practices of organized womanhood and racial uplift. The Pew researchers’ 2012 survey looked to practices of civic engagement, such as speaking out in a public forum, that clearly stem from the tradition of deliberative democracy that was so evident at the WCE. Textual analysis of these contemporary practices can show their continuities and discontinuities with earlier practices of citizenship. In the conclusions to chapters 2 through 5, I have tried to point to the contemporary legacies of the four practices of citizenship—­deliberative democracy, racial uplift, organized womanhood, and economic participation—­that I have identified at the WCE. But ultimately, the specificity of those practices historically or today is less important than the general point they underscore: that citizenship comes in the actions of citizens as much as in laws or political doctrines. Even individuals who are legally excluded from the most visible practices of citizenship find ways to assert themselves in the collective practice of self-­governance. Whether these four specific models have any continuing relevance today remains for scholars of contemporary political and rhetorical culture to explore. But their larger lesson must endure. At the advent of the twenty-­first century, we live with fluid, open, and inconsistent discourses of citizenship that place scores of Americans in exactly the situation of women in 1893: citizens without access to the primary tool and symbol of citizenship, the ballot. There remains ample space and impetus to innovate practices of citizenship while also continuing to advocate politically and legally for universal and equal access to all the rights and obligations of citizenship. The capacity to innovate, then, remains our most American birthright. We must continue to venture, articulate, and practice various modes of citizenship, knowing that our innovation will strengthen our shared democratic life.

Notes

Introduction 1.  Seager and Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions, Dawn of Religious Pluralism. 2.  Rudwick and Meier, “Black Man in the ‘White City,’” 354. 3. Aristotle, Politics; Dewey, “The Ethics of Democracy,” 227–­49; Dewey, “Creative Democracy,” 224–­30; Asen, “The Multiple Mr. Dewey,” 174–­88. 4. Lister, Citizenship, 13. 5.  I don’t mean here to underestimate the significance of citizenship as a legal status. If citizenship is the practice of self-­governance, that practice has historically been codified in laws that clarified both membership in the nation-­state and the rights and duties of citizenship. Those laws ensured, and continue to ensure, that not everyone has equal access to the practice of self-­governance. Likewise, I don’t mean to suggest that these laws can be created and recreated easily—­only that they are contingent constructs whose continual renegotiation maintains our framework for citizenship. 6.  Brubaker, “Migration, Membership, and the Modern Nation-­State,” 64. 7.  Kymlicka and Norman, “Return of the Citizen.” 8. Welke, Law and the Borders of Belonging, 2. 9. Keyssar, Right to Vote, 2. 10.  Engels, “Demophilia,” 131. 11.  Ibid., 145. 12. Ibid. 13.  Von Burg, “Stochastic Citizenship,” 351. 14. Welke, Law and the Borders of Belonging, 11. 15.  Cisneros, “(Re)bordering the Civic Imaginary,” 26. 16.  Ibid., 27. 17. Welke, Law and the Borders of Belonging, 2. 18. Ibid. 19.  Ibid., 35. 20. Keyssar, The Right to Vote, 27. 21. Welke, Law and the Borders of Belonging, 54. 22. Keyssar, The Right to Vote, 112. 23. Welke, Law and the Borders of Belonging, 54. 24. Keyssar, The Right to Vote, 134. 25.  Ibid., 7. 26.  Ibid., 5. 27.  Ibid., 12. 28.  Ibid., 85. 29.  Ibid., 101. 30.  Asen, “Discourse Theory of Citizenship,” 190. 31.  Cisneros, “(Re)bordering the Civic Imaginary,” 30.

196   Notes to Pages 10 –16 32. Welke, Law and the Borders of Belonging, 3. 33.  Asen, “Discourse Theory of Citizenship,” 196. 34.  Levasseur and Carlin, “Egocentric Argument and the Public Sphere,” 408. 35.  Eliasoph, “Where Can Americans Talk Politics,” 65–­94. 36. Allen, Talking to Strangers. 37. Putnam, Bowling Alone. 38.  Skocpol, “How Americans Became Civic,” 27–­80. 39.  Cisneros, “(Re)bordering the Civic Imaginary,” 38. 40.  Von Burg, “Stochastic Citizenship,” 368. 41.  Hahner, “Practical Patriotism,” 114. 42.  Ibid., 115. 43.  Murphy, “Romantic Democracy,” 193. 44.  Ibid., 193. 45.  McAlister, “Domesticating Citizenship,” 84–­104; Anderson and Stewart, “Politics and the Single Woman,” 595–­616. 46. Zukin, A New Engagement? 47.  Asen, “Discourse Theory of Citizenship,” 191. 48. Ibid. 49.  Bennett, Wells, and Freelon, “Communicating Civic Engagement,” 838. 50. Ibid. 51.  McKinnon, “Citizenship and the Performance of Credibility,” 206. 52. Beasley, You, the People. 53. Maddux, Faithful Citizen. 54.  Murphy, “Romantic Democracy,” 193. 55.  Pocock, “Ideal of Citizenship Since Classical Times,” 29–­52. 56.  Murphy, “Romantic Democracy,” 193. 57.  Schudson, “Good Citizens and Bad History,” 4. 58.  Ibid., 5. 59.  Ibid., 6. 60.  Ibid., 7. 61. Campbell, Man Cannot Speak for Her, 1–­2. 62.  Conrad, “Transformation of the ‘Old Feminist’ Movement,” 286. 63.  Dow, “Historical Narratives,” 322. 64. Ibid. 65. Campbell, Man Cannot Speak for Her, 8. 66. Ibid. 67.  Stanton in Campbell, Man Cannot Speak for Her, 54–­55. It is important to note that both of these speeches have since faced authenticity challenges. See, for instance, Croy and Catt, “The Crisis,” 49–­73. 68.  Linkugel, “Speech Style of Anna Howard Shaw,” 171–­78; Linkugel, “Woman Suffrage Argument of Anna Howard Shaw,” 165–­74; Huxman, “Mary Wollstonecraft, Margaret Fuller, and Angelina Grimke,” 16–­28; Huxman, “Perfecting the Rhetorical Vision of Woman’s Rights,” 307–­36; Lewis, “Winning Woman Suffrage in the Masculine West,” 127–­47; Mansfield, “Abigail S. Duniway,” 24–­29; Keith, “Abigail Scott Duniway,” 146–­57; Jones, “Breathing Life into a Public Woman,” 352–­69; Ostergaard, “Silent Work for Suffrage,” 137–­55; Gayle and Lattin, “Religious Rhetoric of Mary Ashton Rice Livermore,” 61–­70; Hayden, Evolutionary Rhetoric; Solomon, “Autobiographies as Rhetorical Narratives,” 354–­70. 69.  Woodyard, “If by Martyrdom,” 272–­326; Miller, “From One Voice a Chorus,” 152–­89; Poirot, Question of Sex; Huxman, “Perfecting the Rhetorical Vision of Woman’s Rights”; Hogan and Hogan, “Feminine Virtue and Practical Wisdom,” 415–­35; Solomon,

Notes to Pages 16–24    197 “Autobiographies as Rhetorical Narratives”; Hogan, “Elizabeth Cady Stanton,” 23–­41; Hogan and Hogan, “Feminine Virtue and Practical Wisdom,” 415–­35. Meridith Styer, “Inventing and Delivering the Woman Citizen: Susan B. Anthony’s Extemporaneous Speaking as a Performance of Citizenship in Service of Woman Suffrage” (PhD diss., University of Maryland, 2017). 70.  See Kern, Mrs. Stanton’s Bible. 71.  Hurner, “Discursive Identity Formation of Suffrage Women,” 234–­60; Southard, “Militancy, Power, and Identity,” 399–­417; Ramsey, “Inventing Citizens During World War I,” 113–­47; Ray, “Rhetorical Ritual of Citizenship,” 1–­26; Borda, “Woman Suffrage Parades of 1910–­1913,” 25–­52; Palczewski, “1919 Prison Special,” 107–­32. 72.  Solomon, “Autobiographies as Rhetorical Narratives”; Bennion, “‘New Northwest’ and ‘Woman’s Exponent,’” 286–­92; Lomicky, “Frontier Feminism and the Woman’s Tribune,” 102–­11. 73.  Dickinson, “Whited Sepulchres,” 239. 74.  Hogan and Hogan, “Feminine Virtue and Practical Wisdom,” 431. 75.  Ibid., 431–­32. 76.  Huxman, “Mary Wollstonecraft, Margaret Fuller, and Angelina Grimke”; Vonnegut, “Poison or Panacea?,” 73–­88; Japp, “Esther or Isaiah?,” 335–­48; Daughton, “Fine Texture of Enactment,” 19–­43; Browne, “Encountering Angelina Grimké,” 55–­73; Carlacio, “Ye Knew Your Duty,” 247–­63. 77.  Zaeske is vague about what that “identity of national citizenship” looked like, and she does not link the petitions to suffrage specifically. Zaeske, Signatures of Citizenship, 6. 78.  Dow, “‘Womanhood’ Rationale,” 298–­307. 79.  Slagell, “Rhetorical Structure,” 1–­23. 80.  Heider, “Suffrage,” 85–­107. 81. Zaeske, Signatures of Citizenship, 6. 82. Scott, Natural Allies, 2. 83. Knupfer, Toward a Tenderer Humanity. 84.  Maddux, “When Patriots Protest,” 283–­310. 85. Ibid. 86.  Woman’s Protest, “National Association.”

Chapter 1 1. Truman, History of the World’s Fair, 157. 2. Ibid. 3. Johnson, History of the World’s Columbian Exposition, 351. 4.  Ibid., 62. 5.  “What Will Be Seen,” September 1891, 3. 6. Trachtenberg, Incorporation of America, 209. 7. Johnson, History of the World’s Columbian Exposition, 333; Gilbert, Perfect Cities, 121. 8. Gilbert, Perfect Cities, 122. 9.  McGovern, “On the Wheel,” 596. 10. Johnson, History of the World’s Columbian Exposition, 78. 11. Truman, History of the World’s Fair, 267. 12.  Ibid., 309. 13. Johnson, History of the World’s Columbian Exposition, vol. 4, 221; Nordstrom, “Utopians at the Parliament,” 351. 14. Truman, History of the World’s Fair, 160.

198   Notes to Pages 24–34 15. Johnson, History of the World’s Columbian Exposition, 344. 16.  Ibid., 350. 17.  “Dedicate the Home,” May 2, 1893, 4. 18.  Palmer, “Address Delivered at the Dedicatory Ceremonies,” 114. 19.  Ibid., 119. 20.  Sund, “Columbus and Columbia in Chicago, 1893,” 444; Gullett, Becoming Citizens, 65. 21. Gilbert, Perfect Cities, 121; Trachtenberg, Incorporation of America, 209–­11. 22.  Draper, “Introduction,” xiii. 23.  Wiggs, “What Do the Wives Think?” 24.  Draper, “Introduction,” xi. 25.  Wiggs, “What Do the Wives Think?,” 79. 26. Badger, Great American Fair, 127. 27. Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 12. 28. Trachtenberg, Incorporation of America, 209. 29. Badger, Great American Fair, x. 30.  Ibid., 116. 31.  Ibid., 118, 123. 32. Bederman, Manliness and Civilization, 30. 33. Burg, Chicago’s White City of 1893, 308. 34. Johnson, History of the World’s Columbian Exposition, 30. 35. Trachtenberg, Incorporation of America, 221. 36.  Ibid., 230. 37.  Behling, “Reification and Resistance,” 177. 38.  Wood, “Managing the Lady Managers,” 291; Wiegand and Wadsworth, “By Invitation Only,” 4. 39.  Wiegand and Wadsworth, “By Invitation Only,” 4. 40.  Cordato, “Toward a New Century,” 117. 41. Badger, Great American Fair, 79. 42.  Cordato, “Toward a New Century,” 130–­31. 43. Truman, History of the World’s Fair, 21. 44.  Ibid., 21, 23. 45. Badger, Great American Fair, 44–­45. 46. Truman, History of the World’s Fair, 23. 47. Johnson, History of the World’s Columbian Exposition, 12. 48.  Rebecca S. Graff, “Dream City, Plaster City,” 697; Badger, Great American Fair, 34. 49. Weimann, Fair Women, 27. 50.  Ibid., 28. 51.  “Queen Isabella Association Duties of Officers,” n.d., Queen Isabella Association, miscellaneous pamphlets, Chicago Historical Society; Weimann, Fair Women, 28. 52. “Isabella Promotion,” n.d., Queen Isabella Association, miscellaneous pamphlets, Chicago Historical Society. 53. Ibid. 54.  Woman’s Tribune, “Isabella Corner,” 37. 55. Weimann, Fair Women, 39. 56.  Chicago Daily Tribune, “Great Progress Made This Week,” 9; Sunday Inter Ocean, “Queen Isabellas,” 8. 57.  “Isabella Subscription,” n.d., Queen Isabella Association, miscellaneous pamphlets, Chicago Historical Society.

Notes to Pages 34–41    199 58.  Avery, quoted in Anthony and Harper, History of Woman Suffrage, 232–­33. Weimann agrees that Anthony was working behind the scenes in Washington. Weimann, Fair Women, 31. 59.  See also Weimann, Fair Women, 31; Bederman, Manliness and Civilization, 33. 60. Bederman, Manliness and Civilization, 33, citing Weimann, Fair Women, 31. 61. Weimann, Fair Women, 31. 62. Johnson, History of the World’s Columbian Exposition, 196. 63. Weimann, Fair Women, 35. 64.  “Act of Congress,” 15. 65.  Banks, “Lady Managers Columbian Exposition,” 258. 66. Ibid. 67. Weimann, Fair Women, 36. 68.  Ibid., 39. 69.  Ibid., 40. 70.  Chicago Daily Tribune, “To Be Equally Divided,” 9. 71.  Chicago Daily Tribune, “Palmer’s Coup D’etat,” 2; Weimann, Fair Women, 40–­41. 72.  Chicago Daily Tribune, “Women and the Fair,” 30; Chicago Inter Ocean, “Representative Women,” 9. 73.  Chicago Inter Ocean, “From Many Nations,” 1. 74.  Chicago Daily Tribune, “Begin the Congresses,” 1. 75. Johnson, History of the World’s Columbian Exposition, 197. 76.  Banks, “Lady Managers Columbian Exposition,” 258; Woman’s Tribune, “Board of Lady Managers,” 293. 77. Johnson, History of the World’s Columbian Exposition, 199. 78. Ibid. 79.  Quoted in ibid., 201. 80.  Ibid., 226. 81.  Daily Inter Ocean, “Cash Is Needed,” 1. 82.  Woman’s Journal, “Lady Managers Columbian Exposition,” 258. 83. Johnson, History of the World’s Columbian Exposition, 226. 84.  Ibid., 212. 85.  Ibid., 213. 86.  Corn, Garfinkle, and Madsen, Women Building History. 87. Johnson, History of the World’s Columbian Exposition, 203, 238. 88.  Ibid., 219. 89. Ibid. 90.  Ibid., 212; Wadsworth and Wiegand, Right Here I See My Own Books. 91. Johnson, History of the World’s Columbian Exposition, 205. 92.  Ibid., 253. 93.  Ibid., 220–­21. 94.  Woman’s Tribune, “Isabella Corner,” 37. 95.  Bismark Daily Tribune, “Ladies Busy as Bees,” 4. 96.  “Queen Isabella Association Duties of Officers.” 97.  Woman’s Tribune, “Isabella Corner,” 37. 98.  Los Angeles Times, “World’s Fair Matters,” 4; Idaho Daily Statesman, “Barred Out of the Fair,” 1. 99. “Isabella Club House and Congress Hall,” n.d., Queen Isabella Association, miscellaneous pamphlets, Chicago Historical Society. 100. Ibid.

200   Notes to Pages 41–56 101. “Queen Isabella Association Law Department Meeting of Women Lawyers,” n.d., Queen Isabella Association, miscellaneous pamphlets, Chicago Historical Society; American Lawyer, “Congress of Women Lawyers,” 20; “Isabella Club House and Congress Hall.” 102. Weimann, Fair Women. 103.  San Francisco Chronicle, “The World’s Fair.” 104.  Milwaukee Journal, “A Woman’s Note Book.” 105. Trachtenberg, Incorporation of America, 221. 106.  L. S., “The Columbian Exposition.” 107. Bederman, Manliness and Civilization, 37. 108. Rydell, All the World’s a Fair, 52. 109.  Ibid., 52–­53. 110.  Rydell, “Editors Introduction,” xvi. 111.  Freeman, “Of Great Interest to Colored Women,” 3. 112. Ibid. 113. Giddings, Ida, 248. 114. Bederman, Manliness and Civilization, 37. 115. Giddings, When and Where I Enter, 86–­87. 116. Giddings, Ida; Chicago Defender, “National Association of Women.” 117. Giddings, Ida, 256–­57. 118.  Wells and Douglass, “How to Secure Equal Rights,” 3. 119. Rydell, All the World’s a Fair, 53. 120.  Rydell, “Editors Introduction,” xix. 121. Scott, Natural Allies, 128. 122.  Ibid., 134. 123. Giddings, Ida, 332.

Chapter 2 1.  Quoted in Johnson, History of the World’s Columbian Exposition, 10. 2.  Bryan, “World’s Congress Auxiliary,” 619. 3. Johnson, History of the World’s Columbian Exposition, vol. 4, 18. 4. Sewall, World’s Congress of Representative Women, 66; my analysis considers the third edition of this program, which was distributed on the second day of the WCRW. 5. Bessette, Mild Voice of Reason, 60. 6.  Schudson, “Good Citizens and Bad History,” 5. 7.  Bohman and Rehg, Deliberative Democracy, ix. 8.  Gastil and Keith, “Nation That (Sometimes) Likes to Talk,” 6. 9.  Ibid., 9. 10. Bessette, Mild Voice of Reason, 42–­43. 11.  Gutmann and Thompson, Why Deliberative Democracy?, 9. 12.  Karpowitz and Mendelberg, Silent Sex, 5. 13.  Polletta and Chen, “Gender and Public Talk,” 291–­317. 14. Badger, Great American Fair, 9. 15.  Quoted in Howe, Historical Account, 5. 16. Ibid. 17.  Daily Inter-­Ocean, “Congress of Women.” 18.  Stanton and Anthony, “Certificate of Incorporation,” reel 29. 19.  Chicago Tribune, “Noted Women to Meet,” 9. 20. Ibid.

Notes to Pages 57–61    201 21. Ibid. 22.  Bonney, “World’s Congress Auxiliary of World’s Columbian Exposition,” 325. 23.  Ibid.; Badger, Great American Fair, 77; Johnson, History of the World’s Columbian Exposition, vol. 4, 3. Later, Howard O. Edmonds and Clarence E. Young both served as secretaries. 24.  Bonney, “World’s Congress Auxiliary of World’s Columbian Exposition,” 327–­28. 25. Johnson, History of the World’s Columbian Exposition, vol. 4, 8. 26.  Bryan, “World’s Congress Auxiliary,” 623. 27.  “The World’s Congress Auxiliary of the Columbian Exposition of 1893. General Programme of the Series of World’s Congresses to Be Held at Chicago in Connection with the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893,” n.d., 4–­11, Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition World’s Congress Auxiliary, Chicago Historical Society. 28.  Avery, “World’s Congress of Women,” 142; “World’s Congress Auxiliary General Programme,” 14–­15. 29.  Bonney, “World’s Congress Auxiliary of World’s Columbian Exposition,” 333. 30.  Ibid., 335. 31. Johnson, History of the World’s Columbian Exposition, vol. 4, 4. 32.  Programme of the World’s Congress of Women, 14; Henrotin, “Congress Auxiliary of the World’s Columbian Exposition.” 33.  Bonney, “World’s Congress Auxiliary of World’s Columbian Exposition,” 335. 34.  Woman’s Tribune, “Book Reviews,” 15; Badger, Great American Fair, 101; Reed, All the World Is Here! Reed offers an extensive explanation of the Congress on Africa, held in August. 35.  Nordstrom, “Utopians at the Parliament,” 351. 36. The Mormons were not invited, the Archbishop of Canterbury declined to attend because the gathering’s ecumenism concerned him, and the Baptists boycotted because of the long-­running dispute over Sunday opening for the fair. Muccigrosso, Celebrating the New World, 128. 37. Ibid. 38.  Ibid., 129. 39.  Henrotin, “Congress Auxiliary of the World’s Columbian Exposition.” 40. Ibid.; Daily Inter-­Ocean, “They Will All Come,” 5; Chicago Daily Tribune, “Women’s Fair Work,” 3; American Woman’s Journal, “World’s Congress of Women.” Sewall also promoted the WCRW in a trip through Europe. 41. Johnson, History of the World’s Columbian Exposition, 5. 42. Ibid. 43. Sewall, World’s Congress of Representative Women, 45; Minutes of the National Council of Women executive committee meeting, May 9–­­10, 1892, in Stanton and Anthony, “Certificate of Incorporation,” reel 29. 44.  “Women’s National Council,” Woman’s Exponent, June 15, 1892, in Stanton and Anthony, “Certificate of Incorporation,” reel 29. 45. Boomhower, But I Do Clamor. 46.  Henrotin, “Report of Committee,” 4–­5. In another report, she claims that there were 81 meetings, with 330 speakers and 837 women involved in total (between speaking and serving on committees); Henrotin, “Congress Auxiliary of the World’s Columbian Exposition,” 14. 47.  They named Mrs. James P. (Mary) Eagle as chair of the committee and Helen Barker, Laurette Lovell, Eliza M. Russell, Mrs. L. M. N. Stevens, Susan R. Ashley, and Jennie Sanford Lewis as members of the committee. Lewis would die during the course of the committee’s work, and Mrs. John J. Bagley and Mrs. L. Brace Shattuck were added to the group. Given the logistical challenges of meeting, much of the work was entrusted to Eagle; Eagle, “Woman’s Congress.”

202   Notes to Pages 61–68 48. Johnson, History of the World’s Columbian Exposition, vol. 1, 244. 49.  Eagle, “Woman’s Congress.” 50.  Ibid., 2. 51. Ibid. 52.  Ibid., 1. 53.  Avery, “Organization and Its Relation,” 926. 54.  Sewall, “Economy of Woman’s Forces Through Organization,” 44. 55.  Brown, “Organization as a Means of Literary Culture,” 151. 56.  Avery, “Organization and Its Relation,” 926. 57.  Elster, “Market and the Forum,” 3. 58.  Hauser, “Vernacular Discourse,” 334. 59. Sewall, World’s Congress of Representative Women, 49. 60.  Ibid., 50–­51. 61.  Ibid., 53–­54. 62.  “World’s Congress Auxiliary,” 3. 63.  Avery, “World’s Congress of Women,” 142. 64. Ibid. 65.  Woman’s Tribune, “Book Reviews,” 15. 66.  Avery, “World’s Congress of Women,” 142. 67. Ibid. 68.  Young, “World’s Congress of Representative Women.” 69.  Avery, “Congress of Representative Women,” 88. 70.  Avery, “World’s Congress of Representative Women,” Woman’s Standard, 1. 71. Sewall, World’s Congress of Representative Women, 63. 72.  Ibid., 62. 73.  Ibid., 1. 74.  Avery, “World’s Congress of Women,” 142. 75. Ibid. 76. Sewall, World’s Congress of Representative Women, 62. 77.  Chicago Daily Tribune, “On Work of Women.” 78.  Detroit Free Press, “The Woman’s Congress.” 79.  Gutmann and Thompson, Why Deliberative Democracy?, 7. 80.  Some theorists in this vein even go so far as to delimit the types of reasons that are appropriate in deliberation. John Rawls has famously argued that citizens must ground their arguments in “public reason” rather than “comprehensive doctrines,” while Gutmann and Thompson’s “principle of the economy of moral disagreement” requires citizens to make an effort to use reasons that minimize disagreements with others. Habermas has responded to Rawls with a broader account of the types of reasons that might factor into deliberation, allowing space for people of faith to articulate the lessons and values of their traditions. These theorists, however, do not question the basic assumption that deliberation must consist of reason giving. 81. Bessette, Mild Voice of Reason, 49. 82. Ibid. 83.  Aune, “Only Connect,” 341. In that same special issue, Huspeck also tries to introduce faith in rhetoric into deliberative schemes. Huspek, “Normative Potentials of Rhetorical Action,” 356–­66. 84. Asen, Democracy, Deliberation, and Education, 10. 85.  Elster, “Market and the Forum,” 18. 86.  Gutmann and Thompson, Why Deliberative Democracy?, 51. Importantly, Gutmann and Thompson stop short of radically opening the rhetorical bounds of public deliberation. They gesture toward undermining the dichotomy between reason and

Notes to Pages 69–80    203 passion as they suggest that “in the political arena passionate rhetoric can be as justifiable as logical demonstration.” Yet they go on to list types of “nondeliberative politics,” which include “antiwar marches, sit ins, and workers’ strikes,” precisely the tools of marginalized communities historically. They ultimately limit deliberation to reasoned discourse, which circumscribes its capacity to welcome all people and all positions, even those that cannot be advocated on strictly rational grounds. 87.  “World’s Congress Auxiliary General Programme,” 3. 88.  Avery, “World’s Congress of Women in 1893,” 6. 89.  Avery, “World’s Congress of Women,” 142. 90.  Avery, “World’s Congress of Representative Women,” Woman’s Journal, 88. 91. For point of comparison, consider other discourse circulating in the era. Although woman’s rights conventions typically featured many speeches whose titles followed the conventions of these speech titles listed here, they were also punctuated by slightly more incendiary—­or at least revealing—­titles. At the 1893 National American Woman Suffrage Association convention, for instance, Ellen Batelle Dietrich gave a speech titled “Best Methods of Interesting Women in Suffrage,” Carrie Lane Chapman on “Comparisons are Odious,” and H. B. Blackwell on “Presidential Woman Suffrage by Statute.” One of the most famous women at the congresses, Susan B. Anthony, had built her reputation giving such speeches as “Is It a Crime for a U.S. Citizen to Vote?” and “Woman Wants Bread Not the Ballot.” And throughout the fair, Ida B. Wells and collaborators were distributing a pamphlet called “The Reasons Why the Colored American Is Not at the World’s Fair,” and she would soon begin giving her speech called “Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in all Its Phases.” Although such attention-­grabbing titles were rare, they provide an important point of contrast to the conservative titles contained in the women’s congresses. 92.  “World’s Congress Auxiliary General Programme,” 11. 93.  Ibid.; see also Sewall, World’s Congress of Representative Women, 45. 94.  Bryan, “World’s Congress Auxiliary,” 627. 95.  “World’s Congress Auxiliary General Programme,” 11–­12. 96.  Young, “Difference as a Resource for Democratic Communication,” 385. 97.  Young, “Communication and the Other,” 129. 98. Ibid. 99. Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere,” 109–­42; Ryan, “Gender and Public Access,” 259–­88. 100.  Bohman, “Political Communication,” 350. 101.  Mansbridge, “Using Power/Fighting Power,” 57. See also Squires, “Rethinking the Black Public Sphere,” 446–­68; Asen, “Seeking the ‘Counter,’ in Counterpublics,” 424–­46. 102.  Avery, “World’s Congress of Women,” 142. 103. Ibid. 104. Sewall, World’s Congress of Representative Women, 2. 105.  Ibid., 3. 106. Ibid. 107.  Henrotin, “Congress Auxiliary of the World’s Columbian Exposition,” 11–­12. 108. Bessette, Mild Voice of Reason, 44. 109.  Bohman, “Political Communication,” 354. 110.  Ibid., 351. 111.  Benhabib, “Democratic Moment and the Problem of Difference,” 9. 112.  Benhabib, “Toward a Deliberative Model of Democratic Legitimacy,” 74. 113. Ibid. 114.  Hauser, “Vernacular Discourse,” 334.

204   Notes to Pages 80 –94 115.  Gutmann and Thompson, Why Deliberative Democracy?, 18. 116.  Cohen, “Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy,” 75. 117.  Quoted in Sewall, World’s Congress of Representative Women, 45. 118.  “World’s Congress Auxiliary General Programme,” 12. 119.  Young, “World’s Congress of Representative Women.” 120.  Woman’s Exponent, “World’s Congress of Representative Women,” 212. 121.  Habermas, “Political Communication in Media Society,” 411–­26. 122.  Zaeske, “‘Promiscuous Audience’ Controversy,” 191–­207. 123.  Palmer, “Address Delivered at the Dedicatory Ceremonies,” 116.

Chapter 3 1. Thompson, End of Time, 118. 2. Ibid. 3. Cotkin, Reluctant Modernism, 3. 4.  Ibid., xii. 5. Russett, Sexual Science, 6. 6. Cotkin, Reluctant Modernism, 52. 7. Ibid. 8.  Ibid., 58. 9.  Trump, “Primitive Woman—­Domestic(ated) Woman,” 221. 10. Bederman, Manliness and Civilization, 28. 11.  Domosh, “‘Civilized’ Commerce,” 185. 12. Bederman, Manliness and Civilization, 24. 13. Russett, Sexual Science, 27. 14. Bederman, Manliness and Civilization, 22. 15. Cotkin, Reluctant Modernism, 69. 16.  Ibid., 57. 17. Russett, Sexual Science, 11. 18.  Ibid., 12. 19.  Ibid., 143. 20.  Domosh, “‘Civilized’ Commerce,” 185. 21. Russett, Sexual Science, 131. 22. Jensen, Infertility. 23.  Many nations also hosted their own buildings on the main fairgrounds. From Western Europe, Great Britain, Germany, Sweden, Norway, France, and Austria were all represented. Even some of the less civilized parts of the world—­Colombia, Haiti, Brazil, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Ecuador, Turkey, Ceylon, and Japan—­managed to host their own exhibits as well. 24. Cotkin, Reluctant Modernism, 71. 25. Bederman, Manliness and Civilization, 33. 26. Trachtenberg, Incorporation of America, 35. 27. Ibid. 28.  See also ibid., 12–­13. 29.  Ibid., 15. 30.  Trump, “Primitive Woman—­Domestic(ated) Woman,” 215. 31.  Ibid., 218. 32.  Ibid., 247. 33. Logan, We Are Coming, xi. 34. Ibid.

Notes to Pages 94–104    205 35. Gaines, Uplifting the Race, xix, 4. 36. Logan, We Are Coming, 153. 37. Gaines, Uplifting the Race, xiii. 38.  Ibid., 2. 39.  Ibid., 20. 40.  Ibid., 5. 41.  Ibid., 11. 42. Logan, We Are Coming, 153. 43. Gaines, Uplifting the Race, 4. 44. Reed, All the World Is Here!, 3. 45. Gaines, Uplifting the Race, 20. 46.  Ibid., xiii. 47. Reed, Not Alms but Opportunity, 1. 48. Gaines, Uplifting the Race, 3. 49. Logan, We Are Coming, 153. 50.  Ibid., xii. 51. Gaines, Uplifting the Race, 130. 52. Logan, We Are Coming, 177. 53.  Ibid., 176. 54.  Ibid., 18. 55.  Ibid., 52. 56.  Ibid., 53, 64. 57. Gaines, Uplifting the Race, 134. 58. Ibid. 59. Logan, We Are Coming, 154. 60.  Ibid., 165. 61. Gaines, Uplifting the Race, 12. 62.  Ibid., 11. 63.  Ibid., 21. 64.  Ibid., 5. 65.  Ibid., 4. 66.  Ibid., 3. 67. Reed, All the World Is Here!, 2. 68. Gaines, Uplifting the Race, 20. 69.  Ibid., 4. 70. Rydell, All the World’s a Fair, xvi. 71.  Rudwick and Meier, “Black Man in the ‘White City,’” 358. 72.  Rydell, “Editors Introduction,” xiii. 73.  Ibid., xix. 74.  Behling, “Reification and Resistance,” 181. 75.  Rydell, “Editors Introduction,” xxxiii. 76.  Rudwick and Meier, “Black Man in the ‘White City,’” 359. 77.  Rydell, “Editors Introduction,” xxvi. 78.  Rudwick and Meier, “Black Man in the ‘White City,’” 361. 79.  Wells-­Barnett and Rydell, Reason Why, 18. 80.  Rydell, “Editors Introduction,” xiii. 81.  Bogelot, “Solidarity of Human Interests,” 634–­39; Brown, “Discussion of Same Subject,” 724–­29; Cooper, “Discussion of the Same Subject,” 711–­15; Cooper, “Kindergarten as a Character Builder,” 296–­300; Cooper, “Kindergarten as an Educational Agency,” 90–­99; Coppin, “Discussion Continued,” 715–­18; Early, “Organized Efforts,” 718–­23; Galpin, “Ethical Influence of Woman in Education,” 107–­14; Harper, “Woman’s Political

206   Notes to Pages 105–112 Future,” 433–­37; Lozier, “Educational Training,” 127–­31; Quesada, “Woman’s Position in the South American States,” 650–­56; Sheldon, “African Expedition,” 131–­34; Smith, “Kindergarten,” 178–­80; Tupper, “Discussion of Mrs. Cooper’s Paper,” 99–­103; Wheelock, “Children of the Other Half,” 323–­25; Williams, “Intellectual Progress,” 696–­711. 82.  Cooper, “Discussion of the Same Subject,” 711. 83. Ibid. 84.  Early, “Organized Efforts,” 719. 85.  Harper, “Woman’s Political Future,” 433. 86.  Tupper, “Discussion of Mrs. Cooper’s Paper,” 100. 87.  Early, “Organized Efforts,” 718. 88.  Brown, “Discussion of Same Subject,” 727. 89.  Cooper, “Discussion of the Same Subject,” 714. 90.  Quesada, “Woman’s Position in the South American States,” 650. 91. Logan, We Are Coming, 45. 92.  Ibid., 99. She acknowledges that they deviated from this pattern occasionally, based on the situation, and Logan concludes that Cooper was less willing than Williams “to accommodate or identify with the white women to whom she spoke”; ibid., 113. 93.  Williams, “Intellectual Progress,” 700. 94.  Ibid., 704. 95.  Early, “Organized Efforts,” 722. 96.  Williams, “Intellectual Progress,” 709. 97.  Cooper, “Discussion of the Same Subject,” 715. 98.  Lozier, “Educational Training,” 127. 99.  Early, “Organized Efforts,” 718. 100.  Sheldon, “African Expedition,” 131. 101. Ibid. 102.  Ibid., 132. 103. Her personal narrative certainly was not free of colonialist language and assumptions. She described the area where she traveled as “a much-­reviled section of East Africa among alleged hostile as well as some peaceful tribes.” She offered a familiar list of the goods she brought along for trade with the natives, including iron, brass and copper wire, beads, and cloths. She articulated her own concerns about being able “to control” the slaves in her caravan and to “make them subservient to [her] commands.” Ibid., 131–­32. 104.  Ibid., 133. 105.  Ibid., 134. 106.  Williams, “Intellectual Progress,” 697. 107.  Ibid., 709. 108.  Ibid., 698. 109.  Ibid., 703–­4. 110.  Ibid., 704. 111.  Cooper, “Discussion of the Same Subject,” 713. 112.  Early, “Organized Efforts,” 719. 113.  Williams, “Intellectual Progress,” 696. 114.  Early, “Organized Efforts,” 273. 115.  Brown, “Discussion of Same Subject,” 726. 116.  Ibid., 728. 117.  Quesada, “Woman’s Position in the South American States,” 652. 118.  Williams, “Intellectual Progress,” 697. 119.  Ibid., 698. 120.  Wheelock, “Children of the Other Half,” 323.

Notes to Pages 112–122    207

121.  Ibid., 324. 122.  Smith, “Kindergarten,” 178. 123.  Lozier, “Educational Training,” 130. 124.  Cooper, “Kindergarten as a Character Builder,” 299. 125.  Smith, “Kindergarten,” 179. 126. Ibid. 127. Ibid. 128.  Williams, “Intellectual Progress,” 709. 129.  Coppin, “Discussion Continued,” 716. 130.  Williams, “Intellectual Progress,” 699. 131.  Lozier, “Educational Training,” 130. 132.  Tupper, “Discussion of Mrs. Cooper’s Paper,” 100. 133.  Cooper, “Kindergarten as an Educational Agency,” 91. 134.  Ibid., 97. 135.  Galpin, “Ethical Influence of Woman in Education,” 108. 136.  Harper, “Woman’s Political Future,” 437. 137. Ibid. 138.  Lozier, “Educational Training,” 129. 139.  Galpin, “Ethical Influence of Woman in Education,” 112. 140.  Williams, “Intellectual Progress,” 702. 141.  Ibid., 710. 142.  Quesada, “Woman’s Position in the South American States,” 656. 143.  Harper, “Woman’s Political Future,” 433. 144.  Ibid., 434. 145.  Cooper, “Discussion of the Same Subject,” 96–­97. 146.  Ibid., 98. 147.  Tupper, “Discussion of Mrs. Cooper’s Paper,” 99. 148.  Smith, “Kindergarten,” 178. 149.  Cooper, “Kindergarten as a Character Builder,” 296. 150. Sewall, World’s Congress of Representative Women, 633. 151. Ibid. 152.  Williams, “Intellectual Progress,” 707. 153.  Bogelot, “Solidarity of Human Interests,” 637. 154.  Cooper, “Discussion of the Same Subject,” 714.

Chapter 4 1. Scott, Natural Allies, 55. 2. Flanagan, Seeing with Their Hearts, 57. 3. Scott, Natural Allies, 131, 133. 4.  Ibid., 134. 5.  Anthony, “Organization Among Women Liberty,” 463–­66; Avery, “Organization and Its Relation,” 924–­26; Bates, “Address,” 151–­53; Bond, “Organization Among Women Industry,” 605–­16; Booth, “Organization as an Instrument,” 371–­73; Brown, “Organization as a Means of Literary Culture,” 147–­51; Brown, “Discussion of Same Subject,” 724–­29; Early, “Organized Efforts,” 718–­23; Hoffman, “Same Subject Continued,” 258–­59; Kenney, “Organization of Working Women,” 871–­74; Keyser, “Address on the Same Subject,” 617–­22; Richmond, “Organization Among Women Considered with Respect,” 254–­58; Sewall, “Economy of Woman’s Forces Through Organization,” 37–­44; Toomy, “Organized Work of Catholic Women,” 260–­67.

208   Notes to Pages 123–129 6. Edwards, Civil Society, 6. 7.  Ibid., 7. 8.  Ibid., 19. 9.  Skocpol, “Civil Society in the United States,” 109. 10.  Ibid., 109–­10. 11.  Ibid., 5. 12.  Walzer, “Civil Society Argument,” 154. 13.  Skocpol and Fiorina, Civic Engagement in American Democracy, 12–­13; Skocpol, Diminished Democracy; Skocpol, “Civil Society in the United States,” 6. 14. Edwards, Civil Society, ix. 15.  Ibid., 2–­3. 16.  Ibid., 33. 17.  Gosewinkel and Kocka, “Editors’ Preface,” ix. 18.  Hagemann, “Civil Society Gendered,” 20. 19. Ibid. 20.  Ibid., 21. 21. Edwards, Civil Society, 4. 22. Skocpol, Diminished Democracy, 46. 23.  Skocpol, “Civil Society in the United States,” 7. 24. Edwards, Civil Society, 15; Skocpol and Fiorina, Civic Engagement in American Democracy, 15. 25. Edwards, Civil Society, 11. 26. Skocpol, Diminished Democracy, 78. 27.  Ibid., 85. 28.  Bob, “Civil and Uncivil Society,” 210. 29. Skocpol, Diminished Democracy, 6. 30.  Ibid., 108. 31.  Gosewinkel and Kocka, “Editors’ Preface,” x. 32. Skocpol, Diminished Democracy, 113. 33.  Eliasoph, “Civil Society and Civility,” 221. 34.  Walzer, “Civil Society Argument,” 162. 35. Edwards, Civil Society, 53. 36.  Ibid., 57. 37.  Warren, “Civil Society and Democracy,” 381. 38. Skocpol, Diminished Democracy, 106. 39.  Ibid., 100. 40.  Ibid., 100, 104; Skocpol, “Civil Society in the United States,” 115. 41.  Warren, “Civil Society and Democracy,” 388. 42.  Clemens, “Organizational Repertoires and Institutional Change,” 82. 43. Ibid. 44. Edwards, Oxford Handbook of Civil Society, 13. 45.  Warren, “Civil Society and Democracy,” 378. 46.  Kohn, “Civil Society and Equality,” 232. 47. Edwards, Oxford Handbook of Civil Society, 24. 48.  Ibid., 110. 49.  Ibid., 112. 50.  Ibid., 4. 51. Skocpol, Diminished Democracy, 8. 52.  Ibid., 9. 53.  Warren, “Civil Society and Democracy,” 377–­80.

Notes to Pages 129–139    209 54. Skocpol, Diminished Democracy, 11. 55.  Walzer, “Civil Society Argument,” 170. 56.  Ibid., 173. 57. Edwards, Civil Society, 32. 58. Skocpol, Diminished Democracy, 13. 59.  Ibid., 6. 60.  Clemens, “Organizational Repertoires and Institutional Change,” 87. 61.  Ibid., 91. 62.  Hagemann, Michel, and Budde, Civil Society and Gender Justice, 1; see also Hagemann, “Civil Society Gendered,” 17–­18. 63. Edwards, Oxford Handbook of Civil Society, 57. 64.  Hagemann, “Civil Society Gendered,” 24. 65.  Ibid., 36. 66.  Clemens, “Organizational Repertoires and Institutional Change,” 86. 67.  Hagemann, “Civil Society Gendered,” 37. 68. Hagemann, Michel, and Budde, Civil Society and Gender Justice, 2; see also Hagemann, “Civil Society Gendered,” 36–­37. 69. Scott, Natural Allies, 11. 70.  Ibid., 73. 71.  Ibid., 77. 72. Skocpol, Diminished Democracy, 47. 73. Blair, Clubwoman as Feminist, 57; Scott, Natural Allies, 111, 113. 74. Scott, Natural Allies, 13. 75. Connolly, Elusive Unity, 122. 76. Scott, Natural Allies, 4. 77.  Ibid., 110. 78. Connolly, Elusive Unity, 125. 79. Scott, Natural Allies, 21. 80. Flanagan, Seeing with Their Hearts, 31. 81.  Ibid., 18. 82.  Ibid., 13. 83.  Ibid., 32. 84. Connolly, Elusive Unity, 128. 85.  Ibid., 129. 86. Ibid. 87. Flanagan, Seeing with Their Hearts, 6. 88. Scott, Natural Allies, 4. 89. Blair, Clubwoman as Feminist, 94. 90.  Ibid., 93. 91.  Ibid., 95. 92. Scott, Natural Allies, 2, 4. 93. Blair, Clubwoman as Feminist, 67. 94.  Baxter, “Preface,” xiii. 95.  Sewall, “Economy of Woman’s Forces Through Organization,” 39. 96.  For instance, Dickinson, “Organization Among Women,” 292–­97; Hoffman, “Same Subject Continued.” 97.  Meriweather, “Organized Motherhood,” 748. 98.  Early, “Organized Efforts,” 719. 99.  Sewall, “Economy of Woman’s Forces Through Organization,” 40. 100.  Early, “Organized Efforts,” 718. 101.  Hoffman, “Same Subject Continued,” 258.

210   Notes to Pages 139–149 102.  Dickinson, “Organization Among Women,” 292. 103.  Meriweather, “Organized Motherhood,” 748. 104.  Brown, “Organization as a Means of Literary Culture,” 148–­49. 105.  Avery, “Organization and Its Relation,” 925. 106.  Bond, “Organization Among Women as an Instrument,” 615. 107.  Booth, “Organization as an Instrument,” 371. 108.  Ibid., 372. 109.  Meriweather, “Organized Motherhood,” 748. 110.  Hoffman, “Same Subject Continued,” 259. 111.  Richmond, “Organization Among Women Considered with Respect,” 256. 112.  Keyser, “Address on the Same Subject,” 617. 113.  Meriweather, “Organized Motherhood,” 747. 114.  Keyser, “Address on the Same Subject,” 617. 115.  Dickinson, “Organization Among Women,” 293. 116.  Ibid., 294. 117. Avery, “Organization and Its Relation,” 926; Sewall, “Economy of Woman’s Forces Through Organization,” 44. 118.  Early, “Organized Efforts,” 720. 119.  Ibid., 722. 120.  Ibid., 719. 121.  Ibid., 722. 122.  Brown, “Discussion of Same Subject,” 728. 123.  Meriweather, “Organized Motherhood,” 748–­49. 124.  Ibid., 749. 125.  Booth, “Organization as an Instrument,” 371. 126.  Hoffman, “Same Subject Continued,” 259. 127. Ibid. 128.  Early, “Organized Efforts,” 719. 129.  Ibid., 720. 130.  Anthony, “Organization Among Women Liberty,” 463. 131.  Ibid., 465. 132.  Ibid., 463. 133.  Ibid., 464–­65. 134.  Bond, “Organization Among Women Industry,” 605. 135.  Kenney, “Organization of Working Women,” 872. 136.  Ibid., 874. 137.  Bond, “Organization Among Women Industry,” 610. 138.  Kenney, “Organization of Working Women,” 874. 139.  Bond, “Organization Among Women Industry,” 611. 140.  Ibid., 613. 141.  Ibid., 607. 142.  Ibid., 609. 143.  Sewall, “Economy of Woman’s Forces Through Organization,” 38. 144.  Meriweather, “Organized Motherhood,” 748. 145.  Bond, “Organization Among Women Industry,” 613. 146.  Ibid., 615. 147.  Ibid., 616. 148.  Toomy, “Organized Work of Catholic Women,” 260. 149.  Richmond, “Organization Among Women Considered with Respect,” 257. 150.  Bond, “Organization Among Women Industry,” 614. 151. Ibid.

Notes to Pages 149–162    211

152. Ibid. 153.  Meriweather, “Organized Motherhood,” 750. 154.  Ibid., 749. 155. Ibid. 156.  Anthony, “Organization Among Women Liberty,” 465. 157.  Sewall, “Economy of Woman’s Forces Through Organization,” 38. 158.  Ibid., 44. 159.  Bond, “Organization Among Women Industry,” 612–­13. 160.  Keyser, “Address on the Same Subject,” 621. 161.  Early, “Organized Efforts,” 719–­20. 162.  Ibid., 720. 163.  Booth, “Organization as an Instrument,” 372. 164.  Dickinson, “Organization Among Women Religion,” 295. 165.  Richmond, “Organization Among Women Considered with Respect,” 255. 166. Ibid. 167.  Brown, “Organization as a Means of Literary Culture,” 150–­51.

Chapter 5 1.  Foley, “From Infantile Citizens to Infantile Institutions,” 387. 2.  Pocock, “Ideal of Citizenship Since Classical Times,” 32; Elshtain, Public Man, Private Woman, 41. 3.  Ignatieff, “Myth of Citizenship,” 53. 4. Glenn, Unequal Freedom, 2. 5.  Kessler-­Harris, In Pursuit of Equity, 5; see also p. 12, where she defines economic citizenship as “the achievement of an independent and relatively autonomous status that marks self-­respect and provides access to the full play of power and influence that defines participation in a democratic society.” 6. Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class, 8. 7.  Kessler-­Harris, In Pursuit of Equity, 11. 8.  Ibid., 21. 9.  Ibid., 29. 10. Glickman, Buying Power, 19–­20. 11.  Ibid., xi. 12.  Ibid., 5. 13.  Dickinson, “Selling Democracy,” 282. 14.  McAlister, “Domesticating Citizenship,” 85–­86. 15.  Anderson and Stewart, “Politics and the Single Woman,” 606. 16.  Graff, “Dream City, Plaster City,” 698. 17.  Blackmar, “Inheriting Property and Debt,” 116. 18. Trachtenberg, Incorporation of America, 39. 19. Brands, American Colossus, 480. 20. Kazin, Populist Persuasion, 53. 21. Ibid. 22. Lears, Rebirth of a Nation, 86. 23. Ibid. 24. Trachtenberg, Incorporation of America, 4. 25. Ibid. 26.  Ibid., 80. 27. Brands, American Colossus, 6.

212   Notes to Pages 162–169

28.  Ibid., 78. 29.  Ibid., 8. 30. Ibid. 31. Morris, Tycoons, 28. 32. Brands, American Colossus, 104. 33. Truman, History of the World’s Fair, 355–­63. 34.  Bristol, “Woman the New Factor in Economics,” 540. 35. Ibid. 36.  Frederiksen, “Looking Backwards,” 237. 37. Ibid. 38.  Machova, “Bohemian Woman as a Factor,” 561. 39.  Bullock, “Industrial Women,” 510. 40.  Machova, “Bohemian Woman as a Factor,” 561. 41.  Quoted in Rydell, All the World’s a Fair, 45. 42. Johnson, History of the World’s Columbian Exposition, 218. 43.  Palmer, “Address to the Fortnightly Club of Chicago,” 44. 44.  Ibid., 45. 45.  Palmer, “Address Delivered on the Occasion,” 135. 46.  Palmer, “Address Delivered at the Dedicatory Ceremonies,” 116. 47. Ibid. 48.  Palmer, “Address to the Fortnightly Club of Chicago,” 42. 49. Ibid. 50.  Ibid., 43; emphasis in the original. 51. Johnson, History of the World’s Columbian Exposition, 219. 52. Handy, Official Directory of the World’s Columbian Exposition, 1041–­49. 53. Weimann, Fair Women, 259. 54. Johnson, History of the World’s Columbian Exposition, 226. 55.  Morgenstern, “Discussion Was Introduced,” 551. 56. Ibid. 57.  Bristol, “Woman the New Factor in Economics,” 543. 58.  Ibid., 547. 59.  Henrotin, “Financial Independence of Women,” 348. 60.  Lipscomb, “Woman as a Financier,” 470. 61.  Palmer, “Address Delivered at the Dedicatory Ceremonies,” 118. 62.  Bristol, “Woman the New Factor in Economics,” 546. 63.  Palmer, “Address Delivered on the Occasion,” 132. 64.  Prescott, “Economic Independence of Women,” 530. 65.  Ibid., 529. 66.  Palmer, “Address to the Fortnightly Club of Chicago,” 44. 67.  Palmer, “Address Delivered on the Occasion,” 138. 68.  Frederiksen, “Looking Backwards,” 238. 69.  Prescott, “Economic Independence of Women,” 527. 70.  Bristol, “Woman the New Factor in Economics,” 543. 71.  Palmer, “Address Delivered on the Occasion,” 138. 72.  Bullock, “Industrial Women,” 510. 73. Ibid. 74.  Bond, “Organization Among Women as an Instrument,” 607. 75.  Ibid., 605. 76.  Ibid., 615. 77.  Henrotin, “Financial Independence of Women,” 348. 78.  Palmer, “Address Delivered at the Dedicatory Ceremonies,” 117.

Notes to Pages 170 –177    213

79.  Henrotin, “Woman as an Investor,” 264. 80.  Bristol, “Woman the New Factor in Economics,” 542. 81. Ibid. 82.  Henrotin, “Woman as an Investor,” 269. 83.  Henrotin, “Financial Independence of Women,” 349. 84.  Henrotin, “Woman as an Investor,” 269. 85.  Starkweather, “Woman as an Investor,” 62. 86.  Ibid., 63. 87.  Lipscomb, “Woman as a Financier,” 469. 88.  Ibid., 469–­70. 89.  Henrotin, “Woman as an Investor,” 353. 90.  Lipscomb, “Woman as a Financier,” 469. 91. Ibid. 92.  Henrotin, “Financial Independence of Women,” 348. 93.  Palmer, “Address Delivered on the Occasion,” 133. 94.  Palmer, “Address to the Fortnightly Club of Chicago,” 41. 95.  Starkweather, “Woman as an Investor,” 62. 96.  Bristol, “Woman the New Factor in Economics,” 543. 97.  Ibid., 544. 98.  Prescott, “Economic Independence of Women,” 527. 99.  Lipscomb, “Woman as a Financier,” 470. 100.  Henrotin, “Woman as an Investor,” 271. 101.  Starkweather, “Woman as an Investor,” 63. 102. Ibid. 103.  Henrotin, “Woman as an Investor,” 273. 104.  Starkweather, “Woman as an Investor,” 64. 105.  Lipscomb, “Woman as a Financier,” 469. 106.  Starkweather, “Woman as an Investor,” 64. 107.  Henrotin, “Woman as an Investor,” 269. 108. Ibid. 109.  Henrotin, “Financial Independence of Women,” 353. 110.  Henrotin, “Woman as an Investor,” 268. 111.  Ibid., 273. 112.  Ibid., 269. 113.  Bristol, “Woman the New Factor in Economics,” 543. 114.  Bullock, “Industrial Women,” 510. 115.  Lipscomb, “Woman as a Financier,” 470. 116.  Henrotin, “Financial Independence of Women,” 352–­53. 117.  Henrotin, “Woman as an Investor,” 268. 118.  Starkweather, “Woman as an Investor,” 63. 119.  Henrotin, “Woman as an Investor,” 268. 120.  Starkweather, “Woman as an Investor,” 64. 121.  Ibid., 63. 122.  Bristol, “Woman the New Factor in Economics,” 548. 123.  Ibid., 545. 124.  Ibid., 547. 125.  Ibid., 549. 126.  Palmer, “Address Delivered at the Dedicatory Ceremonies,” 116. 127.  Lipscomb, “Woman as a Financier,” 470. 128.  Starkweather, “Woman as an Investor,” 62. 129.  Ibid., 63.

214   Notes to Pages 180 –193 130. I don’t mean to overstate the significance or simplicity of the Nineteenth Amendment. After its passage, African American women were still largely disenfranchised across the South. I only mean to suggest that it proved an important symbolic victory that diffused the energy of that movement. 131.  Southard, “Rhetoric of Inclusion,” 129–­47.

Conclusion 1. Sewall, World’s Congress of Representative Women, 7. 2.  Ibid., 18. 3.  Bertha M. Honoré Palmer in Sewall, World’s Congress of Representative Women, 11. 4.  Ibid., 5. 5.  Margaret Windeyer in ibid., 24. 6.  Countess of Aberdeen in ibid., 20. 7.  Frederiksen in ibid., 30. 8.  Foerster in ibid., 25. 9.  Bogelot in ibid., 24. 10.  Harvie in ibid., 31. 11.  Harvie in ibid. 12.  Chant in ibid., 34. 13.  Tilley in ibid., 33. 14.  Chant in ibid., 34. 15.  Gullen in ibid., 32. 16.  Programme of the World’s Congress of Women, 27. 17.  Ibid., 13. 18.  Zaeske, “‘Promiscuous Audience’ Controversy,” 191–­207. 19. Childers has done such textual analysis of high school newspapers over a decades-­long span; Childers, Evolving Citizen. 20.  Smith, “Civic Engagement in the Digital Age.”

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Index abolition movement, 16 Addams, Jane, 134, 137 Africa, 105, 109–­10 African American women and BLM, 2–­3, 41–­46 and exhibits, 43–­44 speakers in congresses, 2–­3, 44, 49, 75 organizing, 18, 44, 94, 96, 133–­34, 138, 142, 151 Afro-­American Advocate, 103 Afro-­American Press Association, 43 aggregative democracy, 52, 53, 63, 80, 83 Allen, Danielle, 10 Almond, Gabriel, 123 American Revolution and civil society, 123, 132 and consumer activism, 158 and enfranchisement, 8 ideas of, 5, 14, 119 rhetorical appeals to, 115–­16 Anderson, Alexander D., 32 Anderson, Karrin Vasby, 12, 158–­59 Anthony, Susan B. appearance at Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, 48 and National Council of Women, 56 and organizing for women’s participation at the WCE, 34–­35, 42, 45 protest at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, 31 scholarship on, 16 as speaker at WCE, 2, 47, 60–­61, 122, 137, 189–­90 speech on organization, 144–­45, 150, 153 and suffrage organizing, 60, 189 visibility at WCE, 49 and voting, 83 antisuffrage movement, 19 Aristotle, 4, 123, 140, 155, 157, 178 Art Institute of Chicago, viii, 1, 24, 58, 69 Asen, Robert, 9, 12, 14, 68 Association for the Advancement of Women, 56, 67, 134, 137, 138 Atlanta University, 100, 111 attendance, congresses, 24, 58, 61

Aune, James Arnt, 68 Aunt Jemima, 24, 44, 100 Auxiliary Executive Committee. See Women’s Department of WCE Avery, Rachel Foster on deliberative democracy, 61–­62, 65–­66, 72, 76, 83 on organized womanhood, 122, 139–­41, 147 and organizing for women’s participation in WCE, 34 and planning for WCRW, 52, 60 and suffrage organizing, 85, 189 award juries, 37 Badger, Reid, 27 Banks, Nancy Houston, 35, 39 Barnett, Ferdinand L., 86, 99, 101–­2 Barton, Clara, 56 Bates, Josephine, 122 Bates, Octavia Williams, 67 Baudrillard, Jean, 27 Beasley, Vanessa, 14 Bederman, Gail, 27–­28, 89, 92, 109 Behling, Laura, 30, 100 Benhabib, Seyla, 79–­80 Bennett, W. Lance, 12–­13 Bently, Viola, 134 Bessette, Jean, 54, 68, 79 Blackmar, Elizabeth, 160 Blackwell, Antoinette Brown, 60, 67, 190 Blair, Karen J., 135 Blake, Lillie Devereux, 41, 189 Board of Lady Managers (BLM) composition of, 35–­36 and dominant ideologies, 30 and exclusion, 41–­46 and exhibits, 165 organizing for the WCE, 2, 25, 33–­41, 56, 171, 182, 187 and racism, 41–­46, 86, 102, 118 and sponsorship of congresses, 51, 59, 61 at the WCE opening ceremonies, 24 Bob, Clifford, 126 Bogelot, Isabelle, 65, 104–­6, 116, 188

234   Index Bohman, James, 54, 75–­76, 79, 80 Bond, Kate, 122, 139, 146–­47, 148–­50, 156, 169 Bonney, Charles, 51, 57, 59–­60, 66 Booth, Maud Ballington, 122, 137, 139, 143, 151 Borda, Jennifer L., 17 Bradwell, Myra, 32, 34, 36 Brands, H. W., 162–­63 Brayton, Helen C., 43 Bristol, Augusta Cooper, 156, 164, 167–­69, 172, 175–­76 Bronson, Minnie, 19 Brown, Caroline, 133 Brown, Charlotte Emerson, 62, 122, 137, 139, 152 Brown, Corinne, 41 Brown, Hallie Quinn and formation of Colored Women’s League, 44, 105 and organized womanhood, 122, 143, 150–­51 and racial uplift, 106–­7, 111, 114 speaker at the congresses, 86, 104 Brubaker, Rogers, 5 Bryan, Thomas B., 57, 66, 72 Bryce, Lord James, 122 Budde, Gunilla, 131 Bullock, Electa, 156, 164, 168, 175 Burg, David, 28 Burnham, Daniel, 28 Butterworth, Benjamin, 57 Cabell, W. D., 70 Campbell, Karlyn Kohrs, 15–­16 Carlin, Diana B., 10 Carnegie, Andrew, 162, 172 Carse, Matilda B., 36 Cassatt, Mary, 93, 119 Catholic Church, 121, 137–­38, 140, 142 Catt, Carrie Chapman, 16, 190 Chace, Mrs. J. B., 43 Chant, Laura Ormiston, 67, 188–­89 charity, 142–­44, 148, 151–­52 Chen, Pang Ching Bobby, 55, 192 Chicago, 26 African American women’s clubs in, 18 chosen as site for WCE, 32, 34 city planning, 28 fire, 29, 32, 133 symbolism of, 29 women, 36 women’s clubs in, 121, 133–­34 Chicago Woman’s Club, 73, 83, 105, 133–­34

Children’s Building, 39 Chinese Exclusion Act, 7, 13 Christian Endeavor, 114, 151 churchgoing, 10 Cisneros, David, 6, 9 citizenship, vii actualizing, 12–­13 belonging, 5–­7, 15, 20, 87, 186 blood, 6 citizenship-­as-­desirable-­activity, 5 citizenship-­as-­legal-­status, 5 definition, 4 dutiful, 12–­13 everyday, 10, 11, 12 formal, 5 global, 21 land, 6 substantive, 5 City Beautiful movement, 28 civility, 127 civilization, 21, 28, 30, 86–­120 civil society, 121–­54 Civil War, 75, 132–­33 Clapp, Romelia L., 56 Clark, Edward H., 90 Clemens, Elizabeth S., 128, 130, 131 Cleveland, Grover, 22, 24 Cohen, Joshua, 80 Colby, Clara Beckwith, 41, 190 Colby, June Rose, 16 Colored People’s Day. See Jubilee Day Colored Women’s League, 44, 105, 114 Colt, Samuel, 163 Columbus, Christopher, 22, 25, 31, 36 Commission, WCE, 24, 37, 43, 86 Congress, U.S., 22–­23, 51, 57, 68, 78, 79 congresses in the Woman’s Building, 1, 51 planning for, 61 proceedings, 81 programs, 21, 47, 53, 67, 70–­71, 78, 187 Congress of Commerce and Finance, 60 Congress on Geology, 77 Congress on Insurance, 78 Congress on Labor, 78, 100 Congress on Pharmacy, 77 Congress on the Negro, 1, 100 Congress on the Public Press, 60 Connolly, James J., 134 Conrad, Charles, 15–­16 Constitution, U.S., 2, 13, 79, 127, 179 Constitutional Convention, 8, 79 consumerism, 19, 156, 158–­59, 179 Conway, Clara, 71 Cook, Mary V., 97

Index   235 Coonley, Mrs. John C., 60 Cooper, Anna Julia biography, 104–­5 and racial uplift, 97, 104, 107–­8, 111, 113–­14, 116 as speaker at congresses, 44, 60, 86 Cooper, Sarah, 104, 105, 112–­15, 184 Coppin, Fannie Jackson, 86, 104, 107, 108 Cotkin, George, 89 Couthoui, Jesse, 24 Couzins, Phebe, 31, 42, 46 critical method, 46–­48, 183–­86 Croffut, William A., 24 Croly, Jane (Jenny) Cunningham, 56, 135 Dahomey people, 91, 100 d’Alcala, Carolina, 106–­7 Davis, Thomas, 24 Dawes Act, vii, 7, 13 debate, 71–­72 de Chantal, Jane, 140 Declaration of Independence, 31, 79 deliberative democracy, 3, 21, 46, 51–­85, 192, 194 DeMerritte, Laura A., 67 democratic legitimacy, 54 demophilia, 5–­6 demophobia, 5 Department of Government, WCA, 77–­78 Department of Literature, WCA, 60 Department of State, 57 Deraismes, Marie, 107 Dewey, John, 10, 55 Dickinson, Anna, 17 Dickinson, Frances, 36, 41 Dickinson, Greg, 158 Dickinson, Mary Lowe, 122, 139, 151 diffuse deliberation, 52, 78–­82, 84 disenfranchisement, vii, 9, 84, 148–­49, 152–­54, 186 Dix, Dorothea, 140 Dodge, Josephine, 19 Domestic Feminism, 135 Douglass, Frederick, 17, 44, 86, 100, 101–­3 Dow, Bonnie J., 16, 18 Draper, Joan E., 26 Drexel, Katharine, 140 Du Bois, W. E. B., 94, 97, 98, 118 Dunbar, Paul Laurence, 86, 101 Duniway, Abigail Scott, 16, 61, 190 duty, 4, 20

Eagle, Mary, 60, 80, 105 Early, Sarah J. biography, 105 and organized womanhood, 122, 138–­39, 141–­44, 150–­51 and racial uplift, 104–­9, 111, 114 as speaker at congresses, 86 Eastman, Crystal, 16 economic participation, 3, 21, 45, 155–­81, 192, 194 Edwards, Michael, 123–­25, 127–­28, 130–­31 Eliasoph, Nina, 10, 127 Elster, Jon, 63, 68 enfranchisement, vii, 2 of African Americans, 94 and landholding, 156 military service, 9 as symbol of citizenship, 3, 8–­11, 178, 191 tax-­paying requirements, 9, 156 of women, 18, 135, 144, 153, 178 women’s attitudes toward, 18–­20, 42, 84–­ 85, 148–­49, 176–­77, 190 Engels, Jeremy, 5 enlightenment thought, 88, 112, 119, 123 evolutionary thought, 29, 86–­120, 171 exhibits, 23, 25, 27–­29, 51, 164–­66 of African American accomplishments, 43, 86, 99–­100, 102, 120 and critical method, 46, 48, 183, 185 managed by BLM, 2, 30, 37–­39, 43, 45–­ 46, 119, 165–­66 planning for, 33–­35, 37–­38, 42 Farmer’s Alliances, 160–­61 Fay, Katie, 140 federated membership associations, 10, 121, 126–­27, 130, 132, 141, 143, 150, 152–­53 Fenwick, Mrs. Bedford, 24 Ferris wheel, 23, 182 Ferry, Thomas, 31 Field, Kate, 56 Fifteenth Amendment, 9, 13 Fiske University, 111 Flanagan, Maureen, 121, 133–­34 Fletcher, Alice C., 56 Flower, Mrs. J. M., 42, 59 Foerster, Augusta, 188 Ford Hall, 63 Fortnightly Club, 133, 165 Foucault, Michel, 30 Fourteenth Amendment, vii, 2, 9, 13 franchise, vii, 4 Fraser, Nancy, 155 Fredericsen, Kirstine, 156, 164, 168, 188

236   Index Free Kindergarten, 138 French Revolution, 14, 123 frontier thesis, 1, 92 Gage, Lyman, 38, 57 Gage, Matilda Joslyn, 31 Gaines, Kevin Kelly, 94–­98 Galpin, Kate Tupper, 60, 70, 104, 114, 115 Gastil, John, 54–­55, 63 General Federation of Women’s Clubs, 50, 121, 135, 137, 145, 150 George, Henry, 168 Giddings, Paula, 44 Gilded Age fair as projection of, 25–­31, 49, 87, 183 restrictions on citizenship, 7 Ginty, Mrs., 43 Glenn, Evelyn Nakano, 156 Glickman, Lawrence B., 158 global citizenship, 186 Goode, G. Brown, 164–­65 Gosewinkel, Dieter, 123–­24 Grant, Ulysses S., 9 Great Depression, 156–­57, 179 Green, Nancy, 44, 100 greeting, 52, 69, 72–­74, 83, 187 Grimké, Sarah and Angelina, 17 Gullen, Augusta Stowe, 189 Gullett, Gayle Ann, 25 Gutmann, Amy, 55, 68, 80 Habermas, Jürgen, 63–­64, 68, 75, 82, 125, 155 Hagemann, Karen, 124, 131 Hahner, Leslie, 11 Hampton Institute, 100, 111 Harbert, Elizabeth Boynton, 56, 60 Harlan, A. W., 32 Harper, Frances biography, 104–­5 on racial uplift, 97–­98, 106, 108, 114–­15, 118 as speaker at congresses, 2, 44, 86, 104 Harvie, Mrs. John, 188 Hauser, Gerard, 63, 80 Hayden, Sophia, 39 Hayes-­Tilden Compromise, 94 Heider, Carmen, 18 Henrotin, Ellen as fair organizer, 42, 59–­60, 73, 83 reports on congresses, 77–­78 as speaker at congresses, 2, 72 speech on economic participation, 156, 167, 169–­71, 173–­75, 180, 191–­92

on woman suffrage, 84 and women’s clubs, 135 heterotopia, 30–­31 Hoffman, Clara C., 122, 139, 140, 143 Hogan, J. Michael, 17 Hogan, Lisa S., 17 home and foreign mission societies, 132 Hooker, Isabella Beecher, 41 Horticulture Building, 23 Hosmer, Harriet, 33 Howard, Joan Imogen, 100 Howe, Julia Ward, 56, 60, 67 Hull House, 134 Hultin, Ida, 24, 41 Hurner, Sheryl, 16 Ida B. Wells Club, 121 Ignatieff, Michael, 155 immigration, vii, 7, 10–­11, 13, 192–­93 imperialism, 28 incorporation, 161–­63, 169, 176, 177 Indianapolis Equal Suffrage Society, 60 Indianapolis Freeman, 43, 101, 103 industrialization, 159–­60, 164 industry, 33–­34 International Council of Women, 56, 59–­ 60, 105, 135, 186 International Kindergarten Union, 136, 190 Jackson Park, vii, viii, 23, 25, 29 Jacobs, Meg, 158, 179 Jefferson, Thomas, 5, 160, 161 Jensen, Robin, 90 Johns, Laura M., 190 Johnson, Rossiter, 22, 24, 39, 59, 166 Jubilee Day (a.k.a. Colored People’s Day), 44, 86, 101, 103 jury service, 4, 10 Karpowitz, Christopher F., 55 Kasetowsky, Frau Professorin, 24 Kasson, John F., 27 Kazin, Michael, 161 Keith, William, 54–­55, 63 Kemin, Emilie, 107 Kenney, Mary E., 122, 146–­47 Kessler-­Harris, Alice, 156, 157 Ketcham, Emily B., 71 Keyser, Harriette, 137, 140, 146–­47, 150 Keyssar, Alexander, 5, 8, 191 kindergartens, 2, 104, 115, 143 King’s Daughters, 114, 137, 138, 145, 151 Knights of Labor, 160–­61 Knupfer, Anne Meis, 18

Index   237 Kocka, Jürgen, 123–­24 Kohn, Sally, 128–­29 Kymlicka, Will, 5 labor organizing, 145–­47, 161, 169 Lamarck, Jean-­Baptiste, 88 Laney, Lucy Craft, 97 Lears, Jackson, 161 Leonard, Anna Byford, 70 Levasseur, David G., 10 Lewis, Florence, 86, 107 liberalism, 4–­5, 64, 156–­57, 167, 174–­75, 179 Lindsay, A. D., 55 Linkugel, Wil, 16 Lipscomb, Mary A., 156, 167, 170–­73, 175–­77 Livermore, Mary Ashton Rice, 16, 56 Logan, Mary, 43 Logan, Rayford, 93–­94 Logan, Shirley, 94, 97, 108 Loudin, Frederick, 44 Lowell, Josephine Shaw, 140 Lozier, Jennie de la M., 70, 104–­5, 109, 112, 114–­15 Machova, Karla, 107, 164 MacMonnies, Mary, 93, 119 Madison, James, 125 Mansbridge, Jane, 76, 78 Mariotti, Mme., 24 Marshall, T. H., 157, 179 Martin, Ellen A., 41 Massa, Ann, 100 Mather, Hannah, 132 McAlister, Joan Faber, 12, 14, 158 McCary, Lottie, 134 McKinnon, Sara, 13 mechanization, 159–­60, 176 Meier, August, 100, 101 Mendelberg, Tali, 55 Merici, Angela, 140 Meriweather, Lide, 138–­40, 143, 145, 147, 149, 153 Methodist Church, 104–­5 Michel, Sonya, 131 Midway Plaisance, 28, 29, 91, 164 Mill, John Stuart, 55, 63 millennialism, 28 Miller Stewart, Maria W., 16 Minor v. Happersett, vii, 2, 20, 182, 183, 185 Modern Woman (painting), 93 Morgan, John Pierpont, 162, 178, 181 Morgan, Lewis Henry, 89–­90, 92 Morgenstern, Lina, 166–­67

Mosher, Frances Stewart, 70 Mueller v. Oregon, 179 Murphy, Troy, 11–­12, 14 mutual aid societies, 142–­43 nadir (of African American progress), 93–­ 94, 98, 184 National American Woman Suffrage Association, 16, 50, 189, 190 National Association of Colored Women, 96, 105 National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, 19 National Christian League for the Promotion of Social Purity, 136, 190 National Council of Jewish Women, 121 National Council of Women, 56, 59–­60, 73, 135, 190 National Woman Suffrage Association, 60 Naturalization Acts, vii, 7 Neal, Juana A., 156 New Departure, 17 Nineteenth Amendment, 2, 13, 20, 183, 185–­86, 191 Nordstrom, Justin, 58 oikos, 155–­56, 178 opening ceremony of WCE, 22–­25 organized womanhood, 3, 21, 121–­54, 192, 194 Palczewski, Catherine H., 17 Palmer, Bertha appointment to BLM, 36 attitude toward woman suffrage, 42, 84–­85, 176 as fair organizer, 38, 42, 56–­57, 59, 73, 83, 165–­66, 187 on including African Americans, 43 at opening ceremony, 24–­25 as speaker at congresses, 2, 72 speech on economic participation, 156, 167–­72, 176, 179 and woman’s clubs, 135 Palmer, Thomas, 35 Panic of 1893, 26, 172, 177 Paris Exposition of 1889, 55–­56, 163 Parker, Hale G., 86 Parker, Margaret, 70 Parren, Callirhoe, 106 Pateman, Carole, 63 Penn, Irvine Garland, 86, 101–­3 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, 1, 31, 56, 99, 163

238   Index Platt, Orville Hitchcock, 34 polis, 155–­56, 178 political friendship, 10 Polletta, Francesca, 55, 192 Poplin, Marie, 107 Portia Club, 137 practical addresses, 61 Prescott, Lydia A., 168, 172 Price, J. C., 99 Primitive Woman (painting), 93 producerism, 161, 168, 177 programs, 52–­53, 69–­71, 136 progress, discourses of, viii, 1, 27–­28, 163–­68 and congresses, 57, 64–­67 and racism, 21, 86–­120, 192 women’s, viii, 36, 38–­39, 65, 77 projection, 21, 25, 28–­29, 49, 183 protest, 10 Prudence Crandall Club, 134 public sphere, 147–­48, 155 Pullman, George, 162, 172 Pullman strike, 121, 161 Putnam, Robert, 10, 12, 123, 125–­26 Queen Isabella, 33, 45, 48 Queen Isabella Association, 33, 35, 40–­41 Quesada, Matilda G. de Miro, 104, 106, 108, 112, 115 race and citizenship, vii, 2, 6–­7, 9, 87, 192 and civil society, 122, 153 Gilded Age discourses of, 29, 45, 87–­93, 103 and organizing, 18, 133–­34, 150–­51 represented in congresses, 1, 3 racial uplift, 3, 21, 86–­120, 194 racism responses to, 21, 43, 86–­87, 103–­4, 118, 152 scholarship on WCE and, 3, 49, 86, 100 at WCE, 44, 86, 101 railroads, 32 Ramsey, E. Michele, 17 Rankin, Jeannette, 16 Ray, Angela, 16, 17 Reagan, Ronald, 11 Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition, The, 44, 86, 101–­4, 185 Reconstruction, 96, 184 Reconstruction Amendments, 7, 9, 191

Reed, Christopher Robert, 95–­96, 100 reform conventions, 56 Rehg, William, 54 Relief Associations of Utah, 137, 145 Republic (statue), 22 republicanism, 4–­5, 64, 130, 167–­68, 174–­75 republicanism and deliberation, 54–­55 republican motherhood, 116, 190–­91, 194 Richmond, Mary E., 122, 140, 148, 151 Rideout, Alice, 39 rights, 4, 20 right to vote, vii, 2, 9, 15, 182, 191, 193 Rockefeller, John D., 162 Ross, Alf, 55 Rudwick, Elliott M., 100, 101 Russett, Cynthia, 90 Rydell, Robert, 44, 100, 103 Salvation Army, 137, 139 Sandberg, Sheryl, 181 Sandes, Margaret Isabella, 34 Schahovskoy, Mary A., 24 Schirmacher, Kaethe, 71 Schudson, Michael, 14–­15, 54, 68, 74, 191 Scott, Anne Firor, 18, 49, 121, 132–­34, 135 sculpture, 28 segregation, 99 self-­help, African American women and, 138 Seneca Falls Convention, 16, 56, 135 separate spheres ideology, 97, 131, 179 settlement house, 16, 19, 134 Sewall, May Wright edited collection of speeches, 104, 106–­7, 116 as speaker at congresses, 72, 190 speech on organization, 122, 136, 137–­39, 147, 150 and WCRW, 52, 60–­62, 64–­66, 76–­77, 83, 187 on woman suffrage, 85, 189 work with Isabellas, 41 Shaw, Anna Howard, 16, 42, 47, 60, 61, 189 Sheldon, May French, 104, 105, 109–­10 Skocpol, Theda, 10, 123, 125–­27, 129–­30, 150 Slagell, Amy R., 18 slavery, 95, 99 Smith, Julia Holmes, 56, 57, 60 Smith, Virginia Thrall, 104, 105, 112–­13 social citizenship, 157, 179

Index   239 social class and citizenship, 6, 13, 19 and economic participation, 157, 160, 169, 180 and organizing, 18, 126–­27, 132–­34, 146, 150, 153 projected at WCE, 29–­30, 45, 91, 104, 106 and racial uplift, 94–­99, 113, 116–­20 represented in congresses, 3, 75 social security, vii, 179 social work, 134 Solomon, Martha M., 17 Sorosis, 105, 133, 134, 144 and deliberation, 62, 73, 83 founding, 56 and women’s club movement, 132–­35, 137 Spencer, Herbert, 90 Springer, William, M., 34–­35 Squires, Catherine, 76 Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 16–­17, 47, 56, 70, 190 Starkweather, Louise, 156, 170–­77, 179, 191–­92 Starr, Eliza Allen, 34, 41 Starr, Ellen Gates, 134 statuary, 39 Stevenson, Sarah Hackett, 60 Stewart, Jessie, 12, 158–­59 Stillion Southard, Belinda, 17 Stone, Lucy, 2, 42, 60, 189–­90 Stowe, Emily Howard, 70 Stromberg, Marie, 107 Sullivan, Louis, 28 Supreme Court, U.S., 157, 179, 181 Temperance Congress, 60 temperance movement, 16, 18 Tennyson, Alfred Lord, 62 Terrell, Mary Church, 44 Thomas, M. Louise, 70 Thompson, Dennis, 55, 68, 80 ticket sales, WCE, 23 Tilley, Elizabeth M., 189 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 121–­22, 123, 125, 127, 129 Tonn, Mari Boor, 68, 74 Toomy, (Lily) Alice Timmons, 67, 122, 134, 137, 138, 148 Trachtenberg, Alan, vii, 27, 29, 160–­62, 177 Truman, Benjamin C., 24 Trump, Erik, 92–­93, 119 Tupper, Mila Frances, 104, 106, 114, 115–­16 Turner, Bishop Henry M., 86, 101

Turner, Frederick Jackson, 1, 92 Twain, Mark, 158 universal suffrage, 9 Upton, Harriet Taylor, 41 Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 162 Verba, Sidney, 123 Vignier, Tauthe, 106 voluntary associations, 121–­54 volunteering, 10, 12 Von Burg, Alessandra Beasley, 5, 10–­11 voting, 53–­54, 80 practices of, 14–­15, 17 Voting Rights Act of 1965, 9, 191 Wadsworth, Sarah, 30 Waite, Catharine V., 41 Wallace, Emma R., 32 Wallace, M. R. M., 36 Walzer, Michael, 127, 129–­30 Warren, Mark E., 127–­28 Washington, Booker T., 94, 96–­97, 98, 100 WCA, 51, 57–­58, 69, 72, 76, 80 WCRW, 1, 40, 58 and African American women, 3–­4, 30, 44, 86, 100, 120 attendance, 2 and internationalism, 186–­89 and organization, 136–­39, 149 planning for, 51, 60 proceedings, 81 program, 47, 52–­53 promotions, 52 purpose, 62, 64–­69, 76–­78, 186 receptions, 73 rhetorical practices, 70, 72, 136 and suffrage, 189–­90 WCTU at congresses, 136, 190 as model of organization, 19, 108, 114, 137–­44, 149–­51, 154 relationship to other clubs, 50 scholarship on, 16, 132 Webster, Helen, 107 Weimann, Jeannette, 35 Welke, Barbara, 6–­7, 10 Wells, Ida B. and Jubilee Day, 44, 101, 103 and Labor Congress, 100–­101 and pamphlet, 44, 48, 86, 101–­3, 118, 185 westernization, 29, 32, 92

240   Index Wheelock, Lucy, 104, 105, 112, 113 Wiegand, Wayne A., 30 Wiggs, Anna Oldfield, 27 Wilberforce University, 100, 104 Wilbour, Charlotte B., 56 Wilkinson, Flora, 24 Willard, Frances, 18, 56, 60, 140 Williams, Fannie Barrier biography, 44, 105, 134 and BLM, 43, 86 on racial uplift, 104, 107–­8, 110–­16 as speaker at congresses, 44, 60, 86 Windeyer, Margaret, 67, 188 Woman’s Branch of World’s Congress Auxiliary, 58, 60, 182 Woman’s Building art, 93, 119 exhibits, 43, 45–­46, 100, 119, 166, 185 library in, 30 opening day, 24–­25 planning for, 37–­40 scholarship on, 30–­31 symbolism of, 92 Woman’s Exponent, 17, 80, 82 Woman’s Journal, 17, 42, 82 Woman’s Tribune, 17

woman suffrage movement, 2, 50, 180, 182 scholarship on, 15–­18 woman suffrage organizations, 135, 137, 145, 150, 189–­90 woman suffrage sentiment at WCE, 45, 81, 189–­90 women’s clubs, 18, 19, 121 women’s congresses, history of, 55–­57, 59–­62 Women’s Department of WCE (a.k.a. Auxiliary Executive Committee), 33, 35 Wood, Andrew, 30 Woodhull, Victoria, 16 World’s Congress Auxiliary, 1, 24 World’s Congress of Bankers and Financiers, 170 World’s Fair Bill, 35 World’s Parliament of Religions, 1, 24, 58–­59 Young, Clarence E., 58, 65, 81 Young, Iris Marion, 68, 72–­74, 75–­76 YWCA, 19, 114, 133, 143, 151, 154 Zaeske, Susan, 17–­18 Zaremba, Carlos W., 31–­32

D RD RHETORICANDDEMOCRATICDELIBERATION Other Books in the Series Karen Tracy, Challenges of Ordinary Democracy: A Case Study in Deliberation and Dissent / Volume 1 Samuel McCormick, Letters to Power: Public Advocacy Without Public Intellectuals / Volume 2 Christian Kock and Lisa S. Villadsen, eds., Rhetorical Citizenship and Public Deliberation / Volume 3 Jay P. Childers, The Evolving Citizen: American Youth and the Changing Norms of Democratic Engagement / Volume 4 Dave Tell, Confessional Crises and Cultural Politics in Twentieth-­Century America / Volume 5 David Boromisza-­Habashi, Speaking Hatefully: Culture, Communication, and Political Action in Hungary / Volume 6 Arabella Lyon, Deliberative Acts: Democracy, Rhetoric, and Rights / Volume 7 Lyn Carson, John Gastil, Janette Hartz-­Karp, and Ron Lubensky, eds., The Australian Citizens’ Parliament and the Future of Deliberative Democracy / Volume 8 Christa J. Olson, Constitutive Visions: Indigeneity and Commonplaces of National Identity in Republican Ecuador / Volume 9 Damien Smith Pfister, Networked Media, Networked Rhetorics: Attention and Deliberation in the Early Blogosphere / Volume 10 Katherine Elizabeth Mack, From Apartheid to Democracy: Deliberating Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa / Volume 11 Mary E. Stuckey, Voting Deliberatively: FDR and the 1936 Presidential Campaign / Volume 12 Robert Asen, Democracy, Deliberation, and Education / Volume 13 Shawn J. Parry-­Giles and David S. Kaufer, Memories of Lincoln and the Splintering of American Political Thought / Volume 14 J. Michael Hogan, Jessica A. Kurr, Michael J. Bergmaier, and Jeremy D. Johnson, eds., Speech and Debate as Civic Education / Volume 15 Angela G. Ray and Paul Stob, eds., Thinking Together: Lecturing, Learning, and Difference in the Long Nineteenth Century / Volume 16

Sharon E. Jarvis and Soo-­Hye Han, Votes That Count and Voters Who Don’t: How Journalists Sideline Electoral Participation (Without Even Knowing It) / Volume 17 Belinda Stillion Southard, How to Belong: Women’s Agency in a Transnational World / Volume 18 Melanie Loehwing, Homeless Advocacy and the Rhetorical Construction of the Civic Home / Volume 19