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7. SAVING REDWOODS: Clubwomen and Conservation, 1900–1925
- University of Nebraska Press
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151 7. SAVING REDWOODS Clubwomen and Conservation, 1900–1925 cameron binkley On January 17, 1900, delegates from women’s civic associations from around California converged at the Ebell clubhouse in Los Angeles. Their meeting was organized by the prominent women’s club leader, Clara Bradley Burdette, and on that date they founded the California Federation of Women’s Clubs (cfwc). Since assuming the presidency of the Ebell club in 1898, the ambitious Burdette had worked tirelessly to bring together a union of the state’s growing list of women’s clubs.1 As she retold it, the event was brought about by “progressive, thoughtful women, who had come into the fullness of life through the one law of greatness—‘greatness by service and greatness for service.’”2 Be that as it may, the delegates to Burdette’s meeting were drawn together by specific concerns, common cause, and a deep intent to promote their views and effect change. Burdette offered two immediate projects that the new federation would facilitate. First, she called upon women to improve children’s welfare through educational reform. Second, and no less important, she appealed to women to cooperate to help protect “our world famous Sequoias” from “men whose souls are gang-saws.” In other words, she sought to mobilize women by harnessing their desire to improve their children’s potential and by urging women to cooperate in restraining the excesses of an industry that was turning the state’s great redwood trees “into planks and fencing worth so many dollars.”3 Burdette was persuasive. The gathered clubs unanimously adopted her agenda, elected her to be the cfwc’s first president, elected other statewide officers, drafted a charter and bylaws, and resolved immediately to ally themselves with the national General Federation of Women’s Clubs (gfwc). By the end of the year, the cfwc represented one of the national organization’s largest affiliates, with sixty-one associated clubs of some six thousand members.4 Burdette was an astute observer of politics. She later contended with Sarah Platt Decker of Colorado for the presidency of the gfwc and served cameron binkley 152 with distinction in several high-level positions in that organization. During World War I she managed California’s food-conservation program, which brought her to the attention of Herbert Hoover, who later asked her to run his presidential campaign in California. Certainly, Burdette understood the utility of coordinating women’s efforts through linked associations or federations. Numerous other states in the East and the West had already been federated, but two previous attempts had failed to organize the women of California on a similar basis. Sheer geographic breadth was a major reason for the delay, a challenge Burdette met by grouping the state’s women into districts, each of which elected its own vice-president.5 The main reason Burdette succeeded in organizing the cfwc, however, was that she understood her constituents. Burdette had toured the state to sound out issues of common concern and had shrewdly allied herself with influential northerners—most importantly, Laura White, the wife of a wealthy San Francisco financier. White had founded the California Club, the largest and probably most influential women’s civic society in the San Francisco Bay Area. It was a trendsetter in championing children’s causes and also in espousing the desire, as early as 1898, to cooperate with others to protect California’s redwoods from logging.6 After Burdette was elected cfwc president, it was not a coincidence that White was next elected to the cfwc’s second-highest post, vice-president at large. Hence, by including children and redwoods in her plans to federate the state, Burdette secured the support of the California Club, which helped bind the state’s northern and southern clubs, and she found two statewide issues that middle- and upper-class clubwomen could generally support with unproblematic passion. The creation of the cfwc in 1900 was a benchmark for the rising political power of California’s women. Nature preservation, known to early proponents as “forestry” and later as “conservation,” was a major factor that aided women’s mobilization. To understand why, one must consider the basis of club values and how these related to conservation. First, women were attracted to the club movement because its leaders—Clara Burdette, Laura White, and others—espoused a commitment to one of the major social constructions of the era—the notion that men and women belonged in separate spheres and that respectable middle- and upper...