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93. 24 May 1898: Florence Kelley to ECS
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222 & 21 may 1898 Englishmen with republican ideas, aided the American Revolution and defended the French Revolution. 6. Possibly she named Henry Charles Carey (1793–1879), an American political economist, but she knew Samuel Fenton Cary (1814–1900), a labor reformer, Greenbacker, and member of Congress from Ohio who worked closely with the National Labor Union after the Civil War. John Stuart Mill (1896–1873) was an English philosopher,politician,and distinguished supporter of woman suffrage in the United States and his home country. Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) published his utopian novel Looking Backward in 1888 and inspired a Nationalist movement to realize the book’s vision of a cooperative commonwealth. Henry George (1839–1897), reformer and advocate of a single tax imposed on land, ran for mayor of New York City in 1886 and secretary of state of New York in 1887. 7. On this quotation, see note above at 30 June 1897. 8. The idea is found in the Old and New Testaments.See Lev.19:18,Matt.19:19, 22:39, Mark 12:31, Rom. 13:9, Gal. 5:14, and James 2:8. 9. This quotation is widely attributed to ECS, though its point of origin in her work is not known. As a concise summation of nineteenth-century ideas about progress, any intellectual of her generation might be its parent. ••••••••• 93 • Florence Kelley1 to ECS Chicago May 24th. 1898 My dear Mrs. Stanton, I was very sorry,indeed,not to be able to avail myself of Mrs.Lawrence’s kind invitation to call upon you during my brief stay in New York. I was leaving the next day, after the Consumers’ League meeting 2 and was only able to go with my mother, 3 who is very lame, to her train for Philadelphia, and then catch my own train for Chicago. It would have been a great pleasure to see you; and I have always remembered with pleasure a little visit which I made to you several years ago. I have read with great interest your expression of my own opinion about the war. 4 It is most extraordinary how melo-dramatic the good people do get over this episode in our history! Although my young brother 5 has undergone some acute hardships with his battery already, they do not seem to me to compare with the strain of effort for even a little amelioration of our social conditions. That long, steady, disappointing effort which we all have to make for civil improvements has none of the charm and excitement of the war; but how infinitely more vital ^ 223 it is! I think my brother stated the just attitude as to the war when he wrote to a friend who was begging him not to go with the battery: “I understand that there is,down below Tampa,a nuisance which must be abated at once. When it is abated, I’ll come home and talk it over with you.” When I next come to New York, I shall hope to stay longer than four days, and shall count upon seeing you then. Yours sincerely U Florence Kelley [in hand of ECS] I send my my article that grew out of my letter to you. 6 If you had not suggested to me to write on the war, the world would not have had this letter so highly complimented. Read & return enclosed letter . in haste U E. C. S. U TLS, on letterhead of Hull-House, ECS Papers, DLC. 1. Florence Kelley (1859–1932), who grew up in Philadelphia, lived at HullHouse in Chicago, where she had already established her reputation as one of the country’s leading researchers into the working and living conditions of urban immigrants. Kelley’s father was well-known to both ECS and SBA, but she also had her own connections to the suffrage movement. In 1882, she was appointed assistant corresponding secretary of the National Woman Suffrage Association, and in the winter of 1898, she took part in the National-American’s convention in Washington. In 1899, Kelley left Chicago to become secretary of the National Consumers’ League in New York. (NAW; ANB; Papers, 4:136.) 2. Called by the eight-year old Consumers’League of New York,this was a conference to organize the National Consumers’ League, to coordinate local efforts to improve conditions for people working in stores and for those making the goods sold in those stores. At a mass meeting when the conference concluded, Kelley spoke about...