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xi Foreword Long before the term “networking” was created, women had worldwide networks that arguably were stronger than comparable ones today. With handwritten letters as their primary method of communication, feminists organized large international meetings from the 1870s onward. The International Woman Suffrage Alliance, for example, met in Berlin, Copenhagen, Liverpool, London, Paris, and Stockholm, as well as in the United States. Its last major gathering was in Budapest in 1913, just before World War I. Soon after the war ended, women had voting rights in northern Europe, Canada, Australia, and the United States—which brought an effective end to the organization. Ironically, in the Roaring Twenties, as communication became easier with telephones and radio, feminism was increasingly seen as passé. The largest and indisputably the most important of these international gatherings was in conjunction with the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus’s voyage to the Western Hemisphere. Held in Chicago, it officially began on October 12,1892,four centuries after the Spanish fleet arrived in the Caribbean. That exploration was sponsored by Queen Isabella, who not only was a coequal monarch with her husband, but also was more scientifically curious than he. Without her support and that of other women—including his mother-inlaw —Columbus might never have sailed. Americans in the 1890s recognized that,and the first U.S.postage stamp honoring a woman was for Isabella; it was issued for this anniversary. Women’s participation in the event—variously called the World’s Columbian Exposition or the Chicago World’s Fair—arguably began with their experience in 1876, when the United States celebrated the centennial of its birth in Philadelphia. That event, with 180 structures on a huge fairground, attracted almost ten million visitors and exhibits from some fifty nations—but women xii Foreword were not included in its planning. After repeated requests, centennial officials finally allotted a small space to the American Woman Suffrage Association, headed by Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe. Although most of its exhibits focused on domesticity, other works by women also were displayed: among them were Rocky Mountain wildlife shown by a female taxidermist with the U.S. Geological Survey and pharmaceutical products that were prepared by students at the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania.The event also featured books by women, including not only the expected novels and poetry, but also nonfiction on unconventional subjects such as astronomy, marble carving, and even watch repair. Centennial authorities, however, refused to grant space to the rival National Woman Suffrage Association, which was led by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The status of women at the time is clearly seen in the fact that when officers of the National decided to rent space outside of the fairground , they had to wait for Anthony’s arrival: she was the only unmarried officer, and under Pennsylvania law, married women could not sign a rental contract. On the Fourth of July, Anthony led others in taking over a bandshell and reading aloud a “Declaration of Rights” modeled on the Declaration of Independence. (Stanton had written a similar one in 1848, when the world’s first women’s rights “convention” was held in her hometown of Seneca Falls, New York.) The 1876 rebels expected to be arrested for their disruption of the ceremonies, but instead, interested men fought each other to obtain copies of the document. An older and presumably wiser Anthony took a more pragmatic approach to the Columbian celebration. The rival suffrage organizations had merged in 1890, but she nonetheless expected that radicals such as herself would be dismissed as they had been in 1876,and she quietly recruited women who were not part of the suffrage movement.Early in 1890,these women presented a petition to Congress asking for women on the Board of Managers for the event.Because the petition was signed by hundreds of Washington’s finest ladies—including the wives of Cabinet members, Supreme Court justices, and their own wives and daughters—congressmen could not ignore it. The eventual result was legislation creating a Board of Lady Managers that included two women from each state—and a generous appropriation of money for expenses and salaries. Although she contributed it to the cause, Bertha Honoré Palmer, who chaired the board, was entitled to an annual salary of $9,000, a munificent sum at the time. Usually known by her formal married name, Mrs. Potter Palmer, she was a rare woman who combined an elite social status with active feminism...

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