The Women's Joint Congressional Committee and the Politics of Maternalism, 1920-30

8. The Impact of Right-Wing Attacks on the WJCC and Its Social Reform Agenda, 1924-30

148 8 The Impact of Right-Wing Attacks on the WJCC and Its Social Reform Agenda, 1924–30 In 1928, Elizabeth McCausland of the League of Women Voters coined the phrase “the blue menace” to describe the tremendous visibility of Boston-based patriotic organizations, whose self-appointed guardianship of national virtue and intolerance for views outside their own narrow definition of “true” Americanism made them, in her view, as dangerous as any of the “radicals” they so obstreperously maligned.1 Originating in former antisuffrage organizations like the Woman Patriots, the “blue menace ” metastasized in the American body through the systematic efforts of patriotic associations, extreme conservatives, and employer organizations to “red-smear” any group, individual, or program that demanded federal intervention in social and industrial problems.2 Not surprisingly, the favorite targets of patriotic organizations and manufacturers during the 1920s were the individuals and organizations associated with the WJCC, for their far-reaching legislative agenda had the potential to expand significantly the federal government’s role in industry and human welfare. An examination of the WJCC from 1924 to 1930 demonstrates that right-wing attacks, more than any other factor, greatly undermined organized women’s ability to pursue social reform during the decade following passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. By the mid-1920s, the WJCC found itself expending less time promoting the legislative programs of its members and more time refuting the persistent charges of its politically Impact of the Right-Wing Attacks 149 powerful opponents. Ultimately, skillful attempts to link the WJCC’s membership and agenda to an interlocking communist scheme weakened the committee internally and eroded its public support. Without the ability to claim that its agenda represented the public interest, the WJCC began to lose its once powerful influence with the American people and national lawmakers, and, eventually, its significant role in the formation of social welfare policy. On March 15, 1924, Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent published an article titled “Are Women’s Clubs ‘Used’ by Bolshevists?” The article’s anonymous author claimed that national women’s organizations in the United States were controlled by an “interlocking directorate” of communists , socialists, pacifists, and other dangerous subversives who were carrying out orders from Moscow under the guise of reform, peace, and child welfare. With strong international links and an overlapping membership united under the broad umbrella of the Women’s Joint Congressional Committee, “the ‘Women’s Bloc,’” the author charged, “can in cooperation with the radicals in Congress practically dictate our legislation, and our women.”3 One week after this article appeared, the Dearborn Independent published a chart demonstrating how fourteen national organizations—including the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), the LWV, the WTUL, and the NCL—were linked to the WJCC and the National Council for Prevention of War (NCPW) in a web of communist conspiracy and how such links were established through the interconnected leadership of these organizations. Screaming across the top of the chart was the heading “The Socialist-Pacifist Movement in America Is an Absolutely Fundamental and Integral Part of International Socialism.”4 A fall 1923 report from the NCPW first brought the “Spider Web Chart,” as it came to be known, to the attention of the WJCC. Investigation by the WJCC revealed that Lucia Maxwell, a secretary in the Chemical Warfare Service division of the War Department, had authored the chart. At the bottom of the chart, Maxwell had appended the following poem: Miss Bolshevik has come to town, With a Russian cap and a German gown, In women’s clubs she’s sure to be found, For she’s come to disarm America She sits in judgment on Capitol Hill And watches appropriation bills And without her O.K., it passes—nil For she’s there to disarm America 150 women’s joint congressional committee The male of the species has a different plan He uses the bomb and the fire brand, And incites class hatred wherever he can While she’s busy disarming America His special stunt is arousing the mob, To expropriate and hate and kill and rob, While she’s working on her political job awake! arouse!! america!!! Further inquiry by the WJCC revealed that the chart had been widely distributed with the knowledge and consent of General Amos Fries, head of the Chemical Warfare Service division.5 Before the committee had the opportunity to formulate a response to the War Department...