Beauty Beware!

 

August 1911 Delineator, clothes for school girls. Caption: the long vacation should help school girls grow tall and rosy. Pretty dresses and trim outing costumes help towards the fun and exercises which they need. The dress on the right is a semi-princess for a small woman. “The model looks extremely well-developed in a foulard, round or sailor collar and cuffs. A feature of the waist (blouse) is the kimono sleeve.

In Threshold Girl  I have Flora Nicholson peruse this very edition of the Delineator magazine. (Indeed, the cover is the cover of my ebook.) I have lots of nice colour plates in the book from various era Delineators.

This is the page that would have caught her attention: She was 18 in 1911, but a small,thin 18. In those days they tried to make thin 18 year olds look bigger. Today, the ideal woman (see Kate Middleton) is so thin she can blow away.

The ideal woman. She is a problem!

A couple of days ago my husband, on vacation, was watching Dr. Oz. He likes the show. But Oz was promoting some silly sounding method to instantly reprogram people (ie, women, his audience) out of their bad habits.

He brought a young woman out. Her problem, she wasn’t happy with her looks, her nose, her mouth, her skin, whatever. She was a plain woman.

I turned to my husband, “This woman isn’t happy with her looks because she has been bombarded with media images since birth saying her features are NOT the ideal! That’s NOT gonna go a way in five minutes. If if did, the stock market would crash. More than it has, anyway.”

I write this because the picture above features ‘models’ all with a certain round type of face. A few months later, Flora, who is not a pretty girl, writes home from college about a girl at school who is ‘one of those dolly face girls who pretends to be “so terribly nervous.” Dolly-faced girls were ‘in’ I guess.

This woman is popular and has stolen Flora’s roommate’s affections.

The Nicholson women were not brought up to be nervous, although they were somewhat  vain. Even the Mom, who was a beauty in her day from the early picture I have of her, but in the 1860′s and 70′s, young women were not bombarded with consumer-age images. That was only starting in 1900, for the middle class and only in these fashion magazines.

Beauty was considered dangerous by some people, mostly religious types.  ”Beware Beauty” advises the 1896 sex hygiene book, Light in Dark Corners.

I put that bit about Beauty in Biology and Ambition about Flora’s sister Marion, who was very popular with boys and girls, although not a classic beauty, just a charismatic girl. No shrinking violet she….no nervous Nellie.  I guess women in the era were taught that men liked ‘frail’ women but all evidence in Marion’s diaries proves quite the opposite. No one was more boffo than Marion Nicholson, who rose to be a Union Leader. (And even after that the men liked her.)

All this brings to mind an incident I heard of a few months ago. I was visiting a relation whose daughter was away at college in California. Her daughter was checking out sororities. She phoned her mother to say she was introduced, or whatever, at a certain sorority but she knew she wouldn’t get in. All the girls were beautiful.

“And your daughter isn’t beautiful? ” I asked.

“Not in the right way, ” my relation answered. Not tall, skinny and blond.

You see her daughter is a classic Egyptian or Middle eastern beauty. Indeed, when they visited the Louvre a year or so earlier, the Mom and Daughter went around comparing her to the statues there.

A goddess. But not the right kind of goddess!

Take about Dolly type of beauties. Barbie really has become the ideal. And Barbie doesn’t exist outside of Copenhagen. Not even in the suburbs of Copenhagen, because there you get Danish peasant stock, or so my sister in law (a Dane) told me.  Well, actually the modern ideal is not Danish, because most of  the modern (American) actresses and Kate Middleton are flat chested, pencil thin, modern day garconnes.

I recall a line from the bizarre satire 30 Rock, where most of the women except the protagonist are ideal women, blond pencil thin.  What’s her name, Jenna Maroney, the crazy blond lead actress with the preteen body, asks Liz Lemon if they can hire a big woman to stand behind her so she looks more tiny and vulnerable.

30 Rock satirizes society’s ideal woman while featuring loads of said woman – along with a lot of homely fat men. Kind of cake and eat it too…Like the very popular stage play Everywoman, Flora and sisters go to see in 1911, that proselytizes against female narcissism using gorgeous young actresses in pretty form fitting costumes.

Ok, to the other dresses. The first one on the right anyway: The top is a waist for a small women, resembling a Norfolk jacket . Applied straps, simulating box plaits, conceal the side seams front and back. The waist closes in double breasted style and is particularly smart when worn over a skirt with a patent leather belt. Linen, poplin, duck and serge are used extensively for the design and the cuffs and broad sailor collar are generally made of a contrasting material.

A neckband for wear with different high collars is rather better for the regular shirt waist style, that is usually made with full length sleeves.

If you are going to read any of my three books about the Nicholsons in 1911, you had better get it in your head what a ‘waist’ is. The women are always writing about them. Waists or shirtwaists are blouses or blouses in a male shirt style.

In the 1910 era, as young women went off to work in the big city, they adopted male dress habits (on top, not below, which was illegal…hence harem pants, ah, skirts) like shirts and ties!! and then they fancied them up!! Below, from the same magazine a ‘mannish’ shirtwaist.  I have no pictures of Marion or Flora in working women garb, but I do have a couple of Edith, so that’s good enough.

Edith, second top. In her Mannish Shirtwaist, 1911 era. Right in style, because she liked to be fashionable to her dying days. The Nicholsons made their own waists.. and wrote about it a lot.

Lupins and Ideology

A high school class in the 1910 era.

It’s hard to find pictures of elementary school classes.

Anyway, as I write Biology and Ambition, about Montreal teacher Marion Nicholson in 1910, the follow up to Threshold Girl about her sister Flora;s year at Macdonald Teaching College and Diary of a Confirmed Spinster, about her older sister’s life and loves at Westmount Methodist Institute, I have decided to look over some textbooks from the era to see what she was teaching her 3rd and 4th grade students.

It’s not that hard to find. Years ago I found a document at Mcgill  revealing the curriculum of the Montreal Board.

I have a list of recommended text books, from Flora’s Mac portfolio and see they used Ontario Public School texts in their courses.

These texts are online at archive.org

The Hygiene Text is most interesting. Hygiene was a subject taught, although I read that it was basically a ‘free marks’ class – which means it wasn’t really about knowledge but about something else.

Ideology, perhaps. Remember with the age of Purity and the Hygienist movement was quite racist and classist.

The book I have must have been for older classes, middle school perhaps. It has typical topics (see below) and one not so typical. Family Stock. The final chapter is on eugenics! And amazingly it uses the same case study Jukes/Edwards by a Mr. Winslip that Carrie Derick used in her speech to the Montreal Literacy Society in 1910 and that I put in Diary of a Confirmed Spinster.

Now, imagine a child of poverty who just happened to be a good scholar and who got himself or herself through to Middle School or High School on scholarship or something. There he would meet with an official text that says he was ‘inferior’ and destined to remain so, due to genes. He might also be confused by the chapter on housing, that claims that a family home at minimum  should have 1000 sq foot per family member, since he might well live in a two room flat with 8 siblings with no windows or running water.

Now, people might ask what does it serve to bring up these ‘embarrassing’ bits from history. I think it provides a great service.

Because one thing doesn’t change and hasn’t changed over the century: human nature. No doubt, there’s a lot of ‘official blah blah’ today that passes for ‘truth’  that is nothing but ideology. Well, as Homer S says “DUH.”

Well, take Finance Minister Flaherty’s remark the other day ‘that there are no bad jobs.’  If you interpret bad to mean ‘beneath human dignity’ well, then it’s debatable, I guess. Although a question best left to philosophers and kept out of the hands of conniving politicians. If you interpret bad to mean undesirable, dirty, unsafe, disgusting, soul-crushing, stressful, tiring,  stultifyingly boring, not respectable or not respected, or merely not paying enough to raise a family in this day and age, then there’s no debate. The statement is patronizing ideological bunk, coming out of the mouth of a privileged patriarch who thinks he knows best but who is way way WAY out of touch, but who controls the country’s money, our money! You know that Monty Python Sketch. Dennis Moore. Takes from the poor, gives to the rich, Stupid Bitch. I love that skit. What more Lupins?

Also one of my favorite 1909 excerpts. A college undergraduate degree ain’t worth much these days (although it may put a student from a poorer background  in great debt.)  And Flaherty seems to want to help turn the middle class into the working poor, wage slaves by cutting UI which helps people with good jobs keep their good jobs in uncertain times…like today.

 

 

From Educational Foundations June 1909

(A.S. Barnes and Company)

 

Opening to Essay Education-The Economic Side by Will Scott.

 

The state would educate the young in order to make them better citizens; in order to advance civilization. It being desirable that all of its people be good citizens, the state strives to educate the children of all.

 

The theory held by the state is also the theory of the individual – so far as other people’s children are concerned. They are to be educated so they will not violate the law – not cross swords with society.  But as to their own children, that is quite a different matter. They should be educated not only to make them good citizens, and not chiefly for that purpose, but to give them an advantage in the struggle for existence.  The object of education for one’s own children is not so much to live better but to get a better living; not so much to do better work but to get better pay….Education gives the individual an advantage in the struggle for existence only when he has more of it than his fellows…From an industrial viewpoint, education is a labor-saving machine, enabling one man to do what ten did before. Like other improvements, it tends to decrease the number of jobs, and thus to sharpen competition and decrease wages.

 

….

Excerpt from School Power: A Pressing Necessity (Frank Tate, Australian Director of Education).

 

We must recognize, that in the struggle for existence, the law of the survival of the fittest applies to nations as to individuals, and that in this struggle for existence there is not only the struggle that results in the open shock of war, but the less obtrusive but no less intense struggle of peace, the struggle for trade supremacy. We must realize too how different modern conditions are from those that obtained even fifty years ago. The history of the past thirty years yields ample evidence that command of markets is to be won by the nation that brings knowledge and training to bear upon the operations of producing and marketing commodities which the world wants.

 

 

Husband hunting 1910

Sophia Nicholson, Norman’s niece gets married in October 1912.

I don’t know her story, but she visited Richmond area in July 1911 before going out West. She visited Tighsolas twice, ‘but did not take off her hat’ despite being asked to spend the night.

(Interesting! She must have stayed a while, not a few minutes I gather. So if in those days you came for say, tea,you kept your hat on. Was this because putting on a hat was not an easy thing? Or fixing up the hair once the hat was taken off was not an easy thing.)

Her Father Gilbert and Brother were in Edmonton already. Gilbert is widowed, so likely Sophia was raised with someone else and just then rejoined the family.

And then she goes out West and within a year is married.

This is not an invitation,only an announcement. Maybe Gilbert was afraid the Nicholsons, who were having money issues, would descend on him and stay. His brother Norman often asked him to if he should go West and Gilbert said NO, This is Young Man’s Country.

 

Marion Watters marriage announcement, 1914. She is often mentioned my books, especially Threshold Girl but also in Diary of a Confirmed Spinster (about to be posted) and Biology and Ambition, Marion Nicholson’s story, being written.

In 1912/13, Mae lives with Flora and Marion on Hutchison in the great experiment. She has another boyfriend named Minty. Edith calls her ‘a great flirt.’ Well, it worked and Edith never married.

All this goes to show is that the two years Marion and Hugh waited to get married was a long period.

There were reasons. Firstly, Hugh was seeing another woman in May 1911, when he meet Marion. I know because he blew her off in a letter in September. He told her they had ‘no understanding’ and he only thought of her as ‘a very good friend.’

 

Letter from Donald Nicholson of Lingwick to Norman Nicholson “Bark Dealer” in 1893. “Sorry they are so poorly at Gilbert’s.” May be when wife died.  Beautiful handwriting for a man.

Love and Marriage, Consent and Dowry

Marriage place settings.  Marion Nicholson Hugh Blair 1913. Home-made and on the cheap.

I’ve completed my draft of Diary of a Confirmed Spinster the follow up to Threshold Girl.

It has to be typed and put into pdf.

As I turn to Marion’s Story, I have marriage on my mind, 1910 marriage.

It’s still considered cute today, on sitcoms at least, for men to ask the father of their intended for his consent to a marriage.

I’ve only heard of one or two real life people who did that.

I think Wolowitz did it on Big Bang. He got married to Bernadette yesterday. Not a bad episode, the wedding on the roof with Google Earth was cute. (It’s hard to write an original marriage scene and that was fairly original.)

But I think I’ve figured out what a father’s consent meant, at least in Canada in 1910, at least for the middle class. It meant the father would give money, a dowry, set the young couple up.

So when a father didn’t give his consent, it didn’t mean he didn’t like the guy or want the daughter to marry, it meant he couldn’t afford it.

This reality is at the heart of my story Diary of a Confirmed Spinster. Norman Nicholson, Edith’s father would not even comment on her favorite, even when introduced to him. So in the book I have her beloved, Charlie, go to extremes to make money for marriage – and get killed. In real life he died in a fire at at Hotel in Cornwall, the Rossmore. His body was never identified.

As for Marion, well, she gets engaged in May 1913, a decision made only by the couple, although she has indeed ‘asked’ her father for his opinion of her intended earlier in October 1912.

In June 1913 Edith writes to her Mother, saying she wishes father would write and give his FULL CONSENT as Marion has to tell her principal whether she wants her teaching job back the next year. And Hugh, her fiance, wants to start looking for a house.

Norman does write to Marion a long letter saying “He doesn’t know what to say as he is dead broke.”

Norman and Marion’s fiance, Hugh Blair, come to some agreement and I have a letter from Hugh saying he as received whatever  and thank you. (In letters, if someone is thanking someone for money, it is never spelled out. Thank you for ‘the favour’ of the 12th instant.)

Hugh also asks for something from his own father (not sure what) and the father writes a jolly letter back but never mentioning Marion or the marriage.

Hugh’s parents do not attend the wedding in October in Richmond.

I also have a marriage contract, drawn up in Richmond a few days before the wedding, saying that Marion brings nothing to the marriage but her clothes and wedding presents.

So if she leaves Hugh, he keeps the furniture.

In 1910 In Canada, marriage was still a financial contract, although like Marion and Hugh, couples in love could get married without consent and suffer the consequences. Hugh had to go out into business on his own as a lumber merchant. He got shut out the family business, for a while at least.

The ideal marriage is where a man with prospects and education, although perhaps no money of his own, married a woman whose dowry could set him up in life and business. My own grandfather married 1901 was an example. He was Jules Crepeau and Assistant City Clerk in Montreal in 1901. He married the daughter of a master butcher, who brought if my mother is correct, 40,000 to the marriage. (Hard to believe, although Master Butchers were prominent citizens. The woman he married also had prominent connections, a Monsigneur and such.)

So what if they spent their marriage throwing crockery at each other.

Hugh and Edith

From what I see the Nicholson marriage was on the cheap. 6.65 for a cake and a few dollars for material and new shoes for outfits from Hudon’s.

Love and Marriage Dear Sir, I wish to consult you on a subject that deeply interests me while it indirectly concerns you and I hope that my presentation of the matter will meet with your approval. For sometime past your daughter Marion and I have been on intimate terms of friendship which has developed into affection on my part, and I have reason to believe my intentions are not indifferent to her, so I would therefore request your consent to our marriage. Yours sincerely, Hugh Christian Blair (PIC BELOW: Marion draws her ring!)

Start of School 1909 and 1910

Dominion Park, postcard, colourized. The woman looking at the camera looks like Marion! Similar white dress!

This is one of my favorite letters from the Nicholson stash. Margaret is talking about being forced to buy a big hat…Hats were getting big in 1909. But the latest fashions are worn by young women. Trouble is, in towns like Richmond, in 1910, young women (like Edith and Marion) were moving to Montreal and buying their big fashionable hats at stores like Ogilvy. So the local town milliner had to push her hats on reluctant older buyers. (Seems that way.)

Anyway, Edith spends TWO days ironing to get ready for her work at Ecole Westmount Methodiste.

She starts later than Marion, who works on the Montreal board. I was just writing a scene for September 1909, when both Marion and Edith start jobs in the big bad city, and Marion has already gone in and visited Dominion Park.

Margaret warns her not to see Pauline. Pauline is a hypnotist.

Edith tells her mom that she has no interest in going to Dominion Park, but Marion had to go because their brother Herb has gone many times and told them all about it and Marion is not to be outdone.

Dominion Park was a thrill park opened in 1904 in the East End of Montreal. It had a fun house, an exhibit re=enacting the recent San Francisco quake and famously, the Infant Incubator exhibit, with real babies on display and nurses taking care of them. Shades of things to come with the Dionne Quintuplets.

October 2, 1909 Dear Marion, I had a letter today from Father written from the Queen’s. You saw his new suit, do you like it. He says it is all right. Also said he met Edith at the train. He did not say he met Charlie G. Of course, that is their last flirtation as he is going to Mexico. Grandma is here and we are not entirely alone but we feel lonesome. Father said you were well. You have got over your cold. I am glad that you are out of the church. Today we had Mr. Ross of Montreal as it was our Anniversary Service. Tomorrow we have our usual supper and entertainment. After seeing E off I went to Miss Hudon’s to cancel the order I had for a hat. She had already trimmed it, she did not wait for some trimming I was bringing. I think the hat too large. It would look well on you. Still, Mrs. Montgomery thinks it is becoming to me so I shall have to wear it. I met Edith McCourt at the church door with an immense black one on so I told her to come and sit with me. Mine would not look so large. So she did. So I guess it was all right. I don’t know whether Healy could see the Minister or not. We had a grand sermon, so I forgot about the size of my hat. I heard an old story that suited me about an old Scotch man who had two sons Jamie and Willie. Jamie went away from home to earn his living. The old man was praying that Jamie might be kept from all danger, sickness and evil temptations. But he said, don’t bother your head about Willie. I’ll keep him straight. I was telling them, that was like me, always worrying about the absent ones. Edith went away being tired. Just as you did, she ironed for two days. Have you heard from Herb? Write soon, Your loving mother, Margaret

Titanic Era Life of Women

Coats from Eaton’s Catalogue, winter 1913-14, range 12.00 to 25.00. Mid range. The catalogue opens with glamour coats, fur coats worth 80 dollars or more, muskrat, seal and the most expensive, persian lamb.. There are also some coats for 10.00 and 5.00. In the 16.oo range, cheviot, vicuna, or, a bit more expensive, wool.

Following is an ‘edited’ letter from late 1912. Margaret Nicholson is visiting her girls in Montreal. You see, Marion, her gung-ho daughter, has taken the brave step of finding a flat for herself and her sister and two friends, all teachers, very bold of her. But it’s near impossible in 1913 for working girls (sic) to  keep a flat and a job. So Mom has to come to help. (Besides, without Mom there, people are very suspicious.

My Threshold Girl story (on free ebook) tells the story of Flora Nicholson’s year at Macdonald Teachers College 1911/1912. I am writing the follow up, Diary of a Confirmed Spinster, about sister Edith’s life in the era, where she loses her great love in a Cornwall hotel fire. I end in August 1912, in Boston, where she is on a trip with sister Marion. Edith has no prospects, work or romantic, for she has quit her teaching job in May.

Marion’s story, the third book in the digital trilogy, will tell about her life between May 1911 to May 1913, the two years she is courted by Hugh Blair, while working as a teacher in Little Burgundy.  Despite her huge ambitions, she ends up giving up teaching to marry Hugh. This letter suggests some reasons why.

2401 Hutchison

November 11, 1912

Dear Norman,

You see by the heading that I am still in the city.

Marion and Flora won’t hear to me going home and E writes for me to stay as she is getting on all right – has one of the Pepplers when she stays in the house. I will not stay more than another week. I do wish Edith was here and that we could be together for the winter as they ought to have someone here. Your letter did not reach me until Friday pm, as Edith sent it–so I felt a little worried as I always got them Thursday.

I am so sorry about your coat. I gave the right add to Lann McMorine. You better make some enquiries there about it. Might be at Cochrane.

Edith writes that Mr. Dyson said he bought thirty cords of wood and would supply our winter’s wood and would bring a cord any time and to let him know so don’t worry any more about wood. She also sent me notice that taxes were due.

Now I am very sorry that Herb seems to be so careless, debt seems to be no worry to him. I hope you have just let him know how hard it is for you to be away from your family and that he might try and do better. He has not written me for several weeks . I really cannot understand how he can do it.

Well, the weeks are going by and Xmas will soon be here I don’t know what the girls can do with the flat; or if they will be able to get someone to keep fires if they want to go home. They will have two weeks holidays. They were talking it over but said they would decide when you came. The weather has been quite nice since I came in here.

I have not bought a coat. Takes more than I had. Marion got a long navy blue one that will be very comfortable this winter. Paid 16.50 and Flora got a brown the same price. They really needed them.

I have not gone anywhere not been up to Cleveland’s yet. I have been having trouble with my teeth and as Marion was having work done at Cleveland’s Friday, I had him look at mine. He said he would do an hours work for me Monday so I am to go at three o’clock, Too bad yours are giving you trouble. I think it is caused from cold, my front teeth at least one of them felt loose, but he said he did not think it was but found cavities in others. M. had five filled.

Marion said she was going to write you and tell you about Mr. Hugh Blair. He seems very nice. Went home Saturday to Three Rivers. There are a good many things that he can do such as fixing window blinds, but Marion won’t let me ask him much. We are trying to put the double windows on here. I want to see them on before I go, although so far they are not needed.

I don’t think there is any danger of them getting behind: the four girls pay 25 dollars each. They would rather do it than board. They say it amounted to about that at Mrs. Ellis’s.

Now don’t worry about Herb. We cannot help it now. If the work stops there you must just take a trip out west. See why he does not at least keep himself. He must know that Marion paid Aunt Han’s note. He never wrote her or mentioned it to me. Write when you get this and add to Richmond.

They say I will be here two weeks more but I don’t like to leave Edith alone . She said she would go to Kingsbury for a visit but she thought it was too cold and just stayed at home.

Your loving Wife

Margaret

Flora is always saying she is going to write but there is so much going on they don’t have time and when I write often they think I tell all.

Me in the Press

In was on the Front Page of the Sherbrooke Record this Easter Weekend. The story: Century Old Townships Letters Capture Titanic Era Life. I was promoting Threshold Girl my ebook, the first in a digital trilogy as the Record Reporter Corrinna Pole described it.

Last November I got some press in Cornwall promoting the second book in the trilogy: Diary of a Confirmed Spinster. I had expected to have that book finished by now, indeed, I gave myself until the Anniversary of the Titanic’s sinking, but I got sidetracked with injuries and a trip to California. Lucky for the trip, I got my hair done so I had a decent pic for the Record Story. I was on the front page, yikes!

The Cornwall Story is still online, without the pic. Here’s the pic. Edith and her beau Charlie, who died in a 1910 hotel fire in Cornwall.

Anyway, I am getting to the story. The Cornwall Standard Freeholder reporter will likely report on it when it is posted, just like Threshold Girl, on my www.tighsolas.ca website for free.

Anyway, another reason I haven’t finished the Spinster story is because I was missing a piece. I finally found it! An article from the April19, 1912 Votes for Women Magazine about Teachers and Suffrage.

I will have Edith get this issue and read this article and be incensed at a certain part, where an older teacher mocks younger ones for being so radical. (Edith was a radical suffragette, but never did anything about it. )

Here’s the article.

From Votes for Women Magazine, April 19, 1912: The Question of Women’s Suffrage was again discussed by the national congress of teachers at Easter. As was the case last year there was a very heated debate.

 

The Yorkshire Observer refers to Women’s Suffrage as “the great bone of contention at Aherysteryth in 1910 and as the topic hotly discussed by local associations throughout the year and, again, as the dividing whirlwind at Hull. ‘No man,’ it said, “could hold the storm. It broke with the violence of a northerly gale. Again and again the meeting was stopped by rival cries and calls. The assembly heaved with crosswinds and currents of feelings churned by an angry sea.”

 

Eventually, the previous question was carried and the discussion was once more shelved as far as the Congress is concerned.

 

But we shall be greatly disappointed if the women teachers, who are in an enormous majority as members of the NUT allow the question to remain where it is.

 

When the Congress arrived at the motion of Parliamentary Franchise for Women, it was met with deafening applause.

 

Miss Isabel Cleghorn, M.A. ex President of the Congress, moved the following resolution.

That this conference expresses its sympathies with those members of the National Union of Teachers,

who desired to possess and exercise the Parliamentary Franchise, but because they are women, and for that reason alone, are by law debarred from it.

 

She remarked that there were three reasons given last year why the suspension of standing orders should not be carried so that this resolution could be discussed: 1)That the motion had been sprung upon the executive; 2) that the associations had not had the opportunity of discussing it; 3)that this was a political question and should not be discussed by the National Union of Teachers.

 

This year they could not advance these reasons.

 

The association had discussed the motion and the result was that the motion was now sent forward by 17, 062 votes for its discussion and 6,728 against it. (Applause)

 

In addition, the associations had sent it up as the number 3 resolution to be discussed among the members.

 

 

Parliament from the London Eye, 2006. Taken by Me.

 

With reference to the argument that it was a political question, she said that the conference would agree, that  the parliamentary influence of their union was one of their greatest assets (Applause) that they were continually in their meetings and in their conferences discussing politics. They had not only discussed the question of the franchise but they had expended union money to extend the franchise to people who resided in their schoolhouses. (Applause.) And in the past they had discussed education bills. It seems to her that if their political power (and they had political power)depended on the vote, then if they were going to add more of their members as voters it must increase their political power. (Applause). Women were earning their own living. They were teaching in the schools of the country. They had to teach their children citizenship, loyalty patriotism and all that was necessary to make them good citizens of the future and  yet they had not the power of the vote which made for the good of the  country in the making of its laws. (Applause)

 

Mr. Dakers VP seconded the resolution and amidst cries of dissent reserved his remarks.

Mr. A E Cook NW London was loudly cheered on rising to move the previous question. He belonged to a large association in connection with which was an active ladies committee and they unanimously decided that it was not part or parcel of the union to interfere in this question. One of the objects of the association was to unite the member and this would bring disunion. Another object was to extend influence and dignity of the profession. The only cause of their object which touched the question was that which referred to securing of effective representation in Parliament. But this was not an education question: it was absolutely a political question.

 

Mrs. Bergwin seconded. She said all the sophistry, all the arguments of the suffrage association dissolved when she thought of the  actualities of life as she knew them. (Loud and prolonged applause and one call of Traitor). She had been asked if her position was not illogical. She reminded council that she had to support illogical things before when common sense opposed them.

It was no argument at all to say that because men had the vote women should too. What women would have the vote? ( Cries of ‘That’s the question’ and an interruption from some young women delegates who Mrs. Bergwin addressed as ‘dear girls’, adescription which created great laughter.

 

They might soon be happy wives but they would commence their married life with a grievance. “See what I have had to give up? I am not fit to have a vote now.”

I have a personal grievance, said Bergwin. We have had a government who would have carried social reform, remedied evils burning to be remedied.(Applause). But that government has been hampered and hindered…(Cries of dissent drowned out final words of sentence..

And this in atime that men’s passions may have been easily aroused. It was the job of her sex to shout PEACE. Peace with honour. Because her sex, womanhood and motherhood convinced her that this was not the time, nor was it opportune to give votes for women.

Mrs. Allan Croft said he was responsible for the appearance on the motion on the agenda. And he was proud.

Mr. Cook had missed out the very object of the NUT which was the justification for the motion on the agenda.  Object number 5 is to secure effective representation of education in Parliament. What better way could we devise to secure effective representation of education in Parliament than by greatly largely augmenting the ranks of voting members of the NUT.(Here. Here.)

 

The women members of the NUT provided the greater part of the parl. Fund. (Here here.) Over 4,000 pounds went every year into the fund directly from the pockets of the women members of the union.

 

Mr. Dakers pointed out that there was one department of social life in which women had a special interest. The department of the home. Therefore he claimed women had a special interest in the laws and regulations which determine the education of their children. Children were the shuttlecocks .of the party politicians. With their special interests in the welfare of the children who were a part of the home women would make a much better case of it.

 

 

A Soap Forgotten

Sapolio Soap, a brand forgotten, but according to Wikipedia a best selling soap at the turn of the last century, one that advertised heavily and one that subsequently lost its market because it stopped advertising heavily.

Hmm.

A soap with a name that sounds like the most dreaded disease of the 20th century (also off wikipedia).

In the era of light, soap and water and above all PURITY.

Not a mention of the P word in the copy.. What was the copywriter thinking?

“Look into the homes and see the service Sapolio gives cleaning pans, kettles, paint, marble, woodwork and floors….Cleans, scours, polishes, works without waste.”

Virtues certainly, but not the appropriate one for the new century. Just ask Procter and Gamble and their advertiser J. Walter Thompson and anyone back then who read the Ladies’ Home Journal.

OK. So I turned my very very messy house upside down looking (once again) for my 1911 Magazines, the Delineator and the Pictorial Review.

That’s because I have figured out how to design my Threshold Girl e-book or ebook, with bits about fashion…High fashion and low fashion that are self-explanatory. That will interest girls and also underscore my point about child labour.

And it will look pretty.

The Delineator, in the public domain, has beautiful plates and also little drawing of fashion items, many the delicate ones.

I want to scan and put them in the book at areas where the reader can pause for a moment.. and at chapter heads.

Anyway, I will spend the next few days cleaning the crap out of my house, while still looking for those magazines. My sons are home for a few days and all they do is talk about violent video games and poker. One is an astrophysicist and one is about to finish a philosophy degree while training as a high end chef, but because they are so advanced in their fields the ONLY subjects they appear to have in common, today, are video games and poker.

Driving me berzerk, except my son made great lamb burgers and fennel salad the other day. (Neither is big anymore into pro sports.)

Shirtwaists and Social Studies

Shirtwaists. 1909 Delineator. The Nicholson women made their own shirtwaists, but the Sears and Eaton’s Catalogues were filled with ready-made ones. In 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New Jersey burned down, killing many workers, many of these young girls. This spurred the union movement in the United States. (YouTube has a piece on the event.)

As I continue with Flo in the City, my novel in progress about the coming of age of a girl in the pivotal 1908-1913 era, based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/ I feel energized, a bit, by something I discovered yesterday.

I know that some scholars appreciate the work I did with http://www.tighsolas.ca/ , a rather humble social studies website, with letters from the 1910 era. I also know that over the years many schools have visited the site, especially in BC and in the Catholic sector of Ontario. (Not many schools in Quebec come to my site, which is sad.)

Anyway, yesterday, I found evidence that the website is being used to good purpose in some classrooms. A social studies teacher posted an assignment asking his students to examine http://www.tigholas.ca/ and write about 1) what things have changed 2) what things have stayed the same 3) and what family letters can teach us about history.

The students’ answers were very interesting. In fact, THEY GOT IT! They saw that people back then were no different from people today, although their lives were a bit different. “They wrote letters. They had no email or text messaging.” The students were particulary struck by the fact that some kids dropped out of school in the elementary grades and that grown women couldn’t live on their own or with other women. And, of course, they were struck by the fact women covered their entire bodies in cloth. One student remarked that they had social classes back then.

Another student observed that people gossiped a lot back then. So right! In fact, gossip is a major feature of my story, Flo in the City.

So, now I will continue with this exericise, writing my first draft of Flo in the City buoyed by the fact that students today can, indeed, learn something useful (and original) from this story.