This is the eleventh in a series of excerpts from letters that my grandfather, Garfield V. Cox, wrote home from France during his service with the American Friends Service Committee as a Conscientious Objector during and immediately following the end of World War I.
This particular post is the second of three based on two letters he wrote, one to his wife ranging April 28 to May 1, 1919 and another dated May 2 to his parents, that mostly cover the same subjects. The first of these three posts can be read here.
Last evening Neuvilly, Courcelles, & Aubreville equipes were to have had a ball game, but rain set in in the afternoon, & instead 36 of us from the three equipes piled onto one big truck & went to Grange to meet Jane Addams, Jeanette Rankin, & four other dignitaries who are spending several days at the Friends headquarters at Paris & at Grange. I had interesting talks with both Miss Addams & Miss Rankin. I was very much impressed by Miss Rankin. She is a live wire & has the social point of view from toe to scalp. She told us of her campaign for election, of her most significant experiences in Congress, & of her defeat in the campaign for re-election. She opposes the short “hang-over” session of Congress held each time after election & before the elected take their seats, & she insists upon larger Congressional districts represented each by several persons elected at large by proportional representation. She also talked about her hobby, which is a free public press system as completely organized & universal as our public school system & run for true education instead of for profit or propaganda. She answered a lot of questions about the I.W.W. and about labor conditions in Am. in general. Everything was in accordance with our view of things.
Oh my God Grandma and Grandpa were socialists!
In 1920 my grandfather went to the University of Chicago to teach and to pursue graduate studies in economics. He became a Professor of Finance there and later Dean of the School of Business retiring in 1958. I am unclear how and when the change occurred but he was most definitely not a socialist economist. He was a senior colleague to Milton Friedman and his crew. He was what was called a conservative economist in his day and would still have qualified as conservative up until the last few years when such labels have really become nonsensical along with the economic views of the right wing. I have posted a diary covering some of his economic views based on a speech he gave in 1946 and some more in a diary on The Chicago Plan memorandum he and his colleagues wrote to FDR following his inauguration in March 1933.
He was not a socialist but reading these early letters and seeing his early views is both stunning and fascinating. I wish I had more material on the change that occurred in him. From what little I can tell it was a long process starting with his graduate studies during the 1920's and taking shape in his disagreements with economic policy in the 1930's.
In fact Jeannette Rankin wasn’t a socialist either. She was a Republican. So were Grandma and Grandpa later in life though I am not sure about these years. It is hilariously funny to read the conservapedia entry on Rankin and see them label her a “conservative Republican” while also saying she was a pacifist, supported labor, voted against both world wars, etc, etc. Sheer nonsense.
But enough of my personal amazement at learning my conservative economist grandfather was a socialist.
Jeannette Rankin was the first woman elected to Congress (1916). This happened at a time when women did not yet have the vote in the United States as a whole though some western states, including Montana which she represented, were ahead of the curve in allowing women the franchise. In 1918 she ran for the US Senate which is the election Grandpa is incorrectly referring to as a “re-election” that she lost. She was elected to the US House again in 1940 and has the distinction of being the only Representative to have voted against entering both World War I and II. She was a Social Worker and activist her entire life. A founder of the ACLU, active in the Women’s Suffrage movement, later a student and proponent of Gandhian principles of non-violence and in the last years of her life was a leader of protests against the Vietnam War.
Ojibwa posted a recent diary on Jeannette Rankin at DailyKos in March 2011 and there was a very thorough biography of Jeannette Rankin posted at DailyKos in 2009.
My grandparents were to know Jane Addams of Hull House better in the years to come. When they moved to Chicago in 1920 they joined with the local Indiana Avenue Friends Meeting which in 1925 was invited by Jane Addams to meet at Hull House.
Miss Addams told of the international conference of the Women’s Committee for Permanent Peace, & of the efforts of the later to influence the terms of peace & to get certain matters incorporated into the League of Nations covenant (which Covenant I learned just this evening has been formally accepted by the Peace Conference). Mrs Wald (I know little about her) was the only woman delegate to the International Conference at Cannes on “Public Health & Human Welfare”. This last body also influenced the actions of the League of Nations committee.
The International Committee of Women for Permanent Peace (ICWPP) was formed, with Jane Addams as President, at the first International Women’s Congress for Peace and Freedom held at The Hague from April 28-30, 1915. This conference was attended by over a thousand women from both neutral and warring nations in opposition to World War I.
A photograph of the US delegation, including identification of all three women mentioned by my grandfather, to the 1919 conference can be seen in the Swarthmore archives here.
More, much more, on the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) can be found in the Swarthmore Peace archives.
Lillian Wald was a nurse inspired by Jane Addams who helped establish the Henry Street Settlement in New York City. She was active in civil rights helping to establish the NAACP in 1909 and protesting the KKK and the white supremacist movie Birth of a Nation.
An article (PDF) in the New York Times dated April 10, 1919 talks of their sailing to Europe for the conference being held in Switzerland. (You may need to click "reload" in order to get the pdf to display properly.)
Interesting to note in this article about these frontline women’s rights activists is that the married women are still referred to as Mrs “husbands name”. Worth noting is that the photo identifications in the Swarthmore collection refers to these women as individuals in their own standing.
And in a thoroughly bizarre juxtaposition delegates of the South African Boer Party sail on the same ship on their way to speak with the Dutch and English governments demanding their independence. The Boers of course being the people who created the horrible apartheid state of South Africa following their successful push for (white) independence.
I’m watching with great interest the action of Italy since Wilson has taken his definite stand. I believe & hope she will have to modify her extremely imperialistic demand.
When Italy came into the war on the side of Britain and France the three signed a treaty guaranteeing Italy major territorial gains from both the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires. Italy pushed these demands at the Peace Conference and negotiations over them began on April 19. On April 23 Wilson apparently published a statement saying the Treaty of London had to be nullified and granting Italy only a small amount of territory where the population was largely Italian. The Italians left the conference and returned to Rome. They didn’t return until May and in the end Italy did have to give up its imperialistic demands. However, this result was used by the growing fascist movement in Italy to strengthen their own hand and weaken the government that had failed. There was in fact a brief war of sorts with Mussolini's predecessor over the city-state of Fiume.
Last night Libby got back from his business trip to Bordeaux. A few days ago at that place Am. soldiers & French troops broke into a riot in which 3 Americans & eight Frenchmen were killed. Am. troops can’t get home too soon. The relations between them & the French are becoming bitter. It is too bad that the Americans have had to outstay their welcome. Also an Am. Lieut. was hanged recently for raping a young French girl who died because of his act.
So much for the French wanting the American troops to stay to protect them from the possibility of revolution amongst their own people and troops (referenced in an early letter and post).
The letter to his parents describes these events in much the same language except that he states that the other 4 dignitaries are “four other noted American women.” The article from the times identifies 6 women as delegates traveling to the conference. Addams, Rankin, Alice Thacher Post (misidentified as “Amy” in the Swarthmore photograph - she appears to have been an editor and publisher), wife of Louis F. Post, Assistant Secretary of Labor (and important inside opponent of the Palmer raids), Dr. Alice Hamilton of Chicago, Lucia Ames Mead (Mrs Edward D. Mead), and Miss Emily Walsh of Boston who I am certain is a misidentification of Emily Greene Balch.
However, Lillian Wald is not listed here and Jane Addams is quoted as saying that some of the delegates would go direct to Berne, Switzerland while others would stay a few days in France. So it is not possible to know exactly who the other four women are but they are likely part of this group or the other American delegates.
Grandpa also states in the letter to his parents in discussing Jane Addams talk…
She told of the Women’s Peace Conference held two years ago in an attempt to reconcile the belligerents and showed the similarity between the peace program they drew up and Wilson’s later fourteen points.
He also adds:
Did I tell you that recently a U.S. Congressmen’s special train came through Aubreville and stopped for an hour? The dignitaries strolled over town looking at the ruins and occasionally watching us at our work. We worked right on paying no attention to them! It would be fun to know what they tho’t of us.
I guess we know who rates the attention of Friends.
His closes his letter to his parents…
Day after tomorrow I shall be 26 years old. David Tatum’s birthday is the 3rd.
The Friends are expecting to send workers to Germany soon after peace.
With much love,
Garfield.
Tomorrow… Verdun.