California Women and Politics: From the Gold Rush to the Great Depression

6. “CITIZEN BIRD": California Women and Bird Protection, 1890–1920

123 6. “CITIZEN BIRD” California Women and Bird Protection, 1890–1920 michelle kleehammer At the turn of the twentieth century, a nationwide movement emerged to protect a variety of wild bird species, many of them in urgent danger of extinction due to overhunting. At the heart of this effort was the organizing power of middle- and upper-middle-class white women across the country whose political activism has come to typify a broad swath of progressive era reform. Though years away from formal suffrage, granted in California in 1911 and nationally in 1920, these women used their vast social networks and extraordinary civic organizing skills to challenge what they perceived to be a system of complacency and negligent stewardship of the nation’s resources by male policymakers, businessmen, and scientists. Clubwomen in particular spearheaded a national campaign that secured the legal protection of several species of birds, and the women of California ’s bird-conservation movement came to exemplify this confluence of progressive efficiency, environmental activism, and moral imperative. By 1920, California women had succeeded in initiating and offering educational programs for schoolchildren, authoring and circulating informational materials throughout their communities, creating and enforcing hunting and commercial restrictions, establishing bird refuges, and securing the passage of significant protective legislation. The organizing power demonstrated by California women committed to bird protection offers a unique window into the nature of women’s political culture at this time. Without the grassroots work and conservation ideology of local Audubon societies and women’s clubs, it is unlikely that the protective legislation would even have been introduced, much less passed, as quickly as it was. Such women as Alice L. Park, Catherine Hittell, and Mary McHenry Keith of San Francisco’s prominent California Club used their social influence and networks to agitate for legislative reforms in many aspects of wildlife and habitat conservation. Local Audubon leaders throughout California, including Harriet Williams Myers, Anna Head, 124 and Josephine McCracken, waged parallel lobbying and educational campaigns to promote community-wide and statewide interest in protecting birds through social and legal means. California clubwomen authored legislation and lobbied state and county governments, but these activities served as only a piece of their overarching agenda and, on their own, do not reveal the women’s broader commitment to progressive goals. In addition to overtly political work, these women consciously participated in a campaign of “organized womanhood” that blended women’s traditionally defined domestic and nurturing roles with a progressive era interest in social improvement and a broad understanding of conservation. Their concern for birds emerged not only from the growing popularity of amateur ornithology and an appreciation for nature study, but also out of an interest among progressive women to advocate for creatures with whom they were often connected in the popular discourse. Middle- and upper-class white women fighting for suffrage and political influence frequently found their contributions devalued or dismissed because they were reputed to prefer triviality, fashion, beauty, and decoration , which paralleled much of the contemporary rhetoric about birds. For 8. Harriet Williams Myers, California Audubon Society Secretary, checking on a recovering bird in the rescue station she built and maintained. Thomas Gilbert Pearson, The Bird Study Book (1917), illustrated by Will Simmons. Garden City ny: Doubleday, Page, 1917. “citizen bird” 125 California women the bird-protection cause mirrored late nineteenthcentury gender ideologies in surprising ways. The reformers who became involved in the bird-protection movement, and the Audubon movement in particular, had many motivations. They responded to a wide array of concerns, such as the effects of urbanization and industrialization on the natural environment, the professionalization of the natural sciences, and a specific interest in popular ornithology and “citizen science” that emerged in the late nineteenth century. Foremost among these concerns was the fear that in the United States and internationally bird populations suffered dramatically due to human destruction. Sport and commercial hunting of birds came under attack, as did the professional fields of ornithology (bird study) and oölogy (egg study) for encouraging the collection of numerous specimens. Hunting at this time was generally unregulated. The U.S. Department of Agriculture did not officially define “game” birds or regulate hunting until 1916, despite estimates that there were three million active hunters in 1912 and six million in 1920.1 In the end, however, the millinery trade’s ruthless harvesting of birds most captured the imagination of the public and catalyzed the reform...