Page 18

[newspaper clipping]
The Aims of Club Women
A DEFINITE statement of the aims of club
women to educate themselves, to serve
their communities, and to support their
Government has been made by Mrs. John Dickinson
Sherman, president of the General Federation
of Women's Clubs, at the biennial council
meeting in Grand Rapids.

Mrs. Sherman began by referring to the courage,
perseverance and vision of the pioneers in
women's organizations, who joined clubs
despite the wholesale criticism of their times,
to work for that which they believed to be right.
Incidentally, she settled a long-standing controversy
between women's clubs as to which
has the right to the title of "oldest by giving
that honor to the "Ladies' Education Society"
of Jacksonville, Ill., organized in 1833, and followed
in 1838 by the "Maternal Association,"
formed by "all of the white women in the Northwest,"
in what was then Oregon and is now
Washington. The Alphadelphian of Alfred, N.Y.,
was started in 1846 with a membership of 125,
a large number for those days, and then came
the "Ladies' Physiological Society" of Boston
and vicinity in 1848, presided over for two years
by Professor Bronson of Harvard University,
such was the opposition to a woman in that
position.

Sorosis of New York City, previously regarded
by many as one of the oldest clubs, was placed
in 1867 by Mrs. Sherman, but to that club belongs
the additonal honor of being known as
the "mother of clubs" because it was the inspiration
for so many other groups and was
instrumental in forming both the General and
the New York State Federations.

The same aims for self-improvement and public
welfare which animated these groups characterize
women's organizations today, she
pointed out, refuting recent attacks in which
they have been called "hotbeds of Communism,"
"directed from Russia." and "designed to tear
down American government."

"It is not the club women who want to tear
down government, but our opponents, "asserted
Mrs. Sherman: "those who fear our support of
the prohibition amendment as a part of the
United States Constitution, and those who never
have become reconciled to the Nineteenth
Amendment conferring the right of suffrage
upon women."

Coupled with her defense of the club movement,
Mrs. Sherman called upon the 2,500,000
members of the General Federation to support
the Constitution as a whole, to co-operate with
government agencies, to combat Communistic
propaganda in their communities, and to present
a united front against atheistic activities
which she declared "constitute a far more widely
extended conflict than the war itself" and are
a challenge to God-loving womanhood.