Colorado Women: A History

5. Organizing for Change

97 Although not nearly as large or industrialized as cities in the East, Denver shared urban characteristics with them. Streets were filled with the pungent aroma of horse “road apples,” rotting garbage, and roving bands of dogs. Soot from wood and coal fires darkened clothing, faces, and buildings. The poor lived in dimly lit, poorly heated, sparsely furnished, overcrowded dwellings.1 The city’s elite increasingly moved out to virgin property, untainted by city industries and the working poor. One characteristic Denver did not share with eastern cities was its reputation as a refuge for tuberculosis sufferers. Although leaders shunned the label and city newspapers would not print the word, many consumptives came to Colorado hoping the dry climate would cure them or at least lessen the severity of their illness. In August 1892 Frances Wisebart Jacobs left her home in Denver and began her daily rounds. Walking the clay-packed, windy streets, she administered to those she found huddled in doorways and the dark recesses of alleys. F i v e Organizing for Change (1878–1900) DOI: 10.5876/9781607322078.c05 98 O r g a n i z i n g f o r C h a n g e Upon entering a shanty, she found sickness and abject poverty. Not all her patients were consumptives, but after seeing so many people sick with any one of a number of diseases, she could quickly recognize the ragged cough and gaunt face of impending death. Often there was little she could do. In her basket she carried soup, medicine, and soap. She left these items behind with a family before moving on to another home.2 Friends, concerned about her health, tried to dissuade Jacobs from making personal visits, but she ignored their pleas. She believed that if she stayed away, there was a good chance the sick would die. Her efforts, although gallant , could not help all the coughing and expectorating consumptives in Denver, so she founded a hospital for the poor. Unfortunately, in August 1892 it was only a foundation. There were not enough funds to begin building . After one visit, Jacobs collapsed. Overworked and worn down, she died three months later.3 The entire city joined her sister clubwomen in mourning the loss of a generous soul. Women’s Clubs The women’s club movement in the United States was initiated in 1868 by journalist Jane (Jennie June) Cunningham Croly, who founded the Sorosis (the botanical name for a fruit formed from the receptacles of many flowers merged together) Club in New York City, and reformer Caroline Severance, who founded Boston’s New England Woman’s Club. Between 1868 and 1900, white middle- and upper-class women banded together to form clubs across the nation. In 1890 Croly suggested a national organization. The General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC) was organized to “bring intocommunicationwitheachotherthevariousclubsthroughouttheworld, in order that they may compare methods of work and become mutually helpful .”4 By the height of the Progressive Era in 1914, the GFWC’s membership had grown to nearly 2 million American women active in reform legislation, public health, conservation, philanthropy, household economics, and child labor. The first women’s literary clubs were formed primarily for intellectual stimulation. Women studied classical literature, languages, history, and art. Clubs became, in Croly’s words, “the middle-aged women’s universities.”5 Meetings were held weekly or fortnightly for two hours in the evening or afternoon between the months of October and June when school was in session , which allowed women to meet, free of immediate motherly duties. To join, a candidate was sponsored by two or more members and approved by a 99 O r g a n i z i n g f o r C h a n g e large percentage of the executive committee or by the entire club. Most sponsors informally sounded out other members before a formal nomination was made, so a candidate was rarely rejected. In the early years of the club movement , criticisms were often directed toward the clubs for being pro–woman’s suffrage. To avoid that label, many clubs chose innocuous names and forbade discussion of suffrage and religion. A city library was usually the clubwomen’s first project, many times in response to their own need for books for their club papers and discussions. In the 1870s and 1880s several clubs began to study the living and working...