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Chapter 5 the “red Menace” roils the Grass roots: the conservative insurgency reshapes Women’s organizations in 1926, antiradical consciousness-raising efforts bore fruit. a conservative insurgency erupted in women’s clubs across the country. the polemics and surveillance reports amassed by antiradical groups did not sit collecting dust in the nation’s capital. instead, they were used by antiradical leaders to remake the landscape of women’s politics from the ground up. the dar’s national defense committee distributed reams of propaganda to its chapters in all corners of the nation. the result was a correspondence course in countersubversion. dar members were encouraged to fashion themselves into experts on revolutionary radicalism. Mastering this “study material” was more than just an intellectual exercise. it fostered awareness that demanded action. Frances cone, a dar leader in south dakota, declared that “all americans who are real lovers of our republic will not sit still and do nothing when they are really convinced of what is going on.”1 this woman patriot was the most outspoken member of a group that mobilized on the northern prairie, where cone bragged that her chapter had taken “the lead” in rooting out “subversive movements . . . in various south dakota cities” and showing the people of Huron “the ‘red’ menace to our institutions and our form of government.”2 constant mailings inspired cone and her compatriots to roil local voters’ forums and women’s clubs. this new purpose brewed what one league of Women Voters member described as an “antagonistic storm” between traditional reformers and newly zealous antiradicals .3 regional lWV leaders instructed their Huron members to keep the “sensational charges” going “back and forth between the league and other 146 chapter 5 organizations” out of the local newspaper. and Huron reformers vowed to keep “quiet for a while” to allow the dar to “destroy their own organization . . . through such methods.” But national leaders of the maternalist coalition soon discovered that it was futile to ignore the insurgency boiling up all over the country.4 dispatches from Washington prompted some newly galvanized conservatives to march directly into the heart of radical politics. they snooped on summer camps and infiltrated political rallies.5 But most clubwomen gave little time to avowed revolutionaries. these activists chose to attack what they saw as more sinister manifestations of radicalism: the Bolshevik influence on female reform. Frances cone led her Huron dar chapter when it came together in the winter of 1927 to pass resolutions condemning the sheppard-towner Maternity and infancy Protection act and the proposed constitutional amendment to ban child labor. she explained that the innocuous -sounding legislation was an example of “state socialism” conceived by “red” organizations.6 convinced that middle-class reformers had pushed the nation to the brink of revolution, conservative clubwomen in south dakota and other states lobbied to block key measures assumed to enjoy the support of all women voters. they denounced the type of legislative reform that had won nearly universal support from women’s organizations before the nineteenth amendment. they used the moral authority they enjoyed as middle-class clubwomen to challenge female reformers, who had built their political influence on their claim to represent all women. By 1926, female antiradicals ’ grassroots insurgency illuminated the constricting boundaries of the female dominion. supporters of the children’s Bureau were blindsided by this new nemesis, which blocked the renewal of the sheppard-towner act at the beginning of 1927. the demise of sheppard-towner was a heartbreaking defeat for female reformers. Yet newly mobilized conservatives were not content to prevent the passage of particular bills. they sought to destroy the political reputations of female reformers. they were determined to dissolve the veneer of political respectability enjoyed by female policymakers and lobbyists, championing the idea that there was little difference between female reformers and revolutionaries . “the epithet ‘bolshevist’ or ‘communist’” was used to “discredit both the women leaders and the reforms they seek,” wrote reformer Maud Wood Park.7 the charge first advanced by the overman committee—that “important women’s organizations” were “peculiarly susceptible to bolshevistic propaganda”—gained an ever-wider circulation, even as public con- the “red Menace” roils the Grass roots 147 cern with revolutionary radicalism appeared to be waning. a letter to the Boston Herald pointed out that they are “continually listening to all sorts of speakers representing bodies with nice sounding names, a great many of which may be traced to soviet russia.”8 this type of guilt-by-association logic was...

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