Toward A New Century: Women and The Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition 1876 y HISTORIANS OF nineteenth-century American culture have become increasingly sensitive to the relationship between women's awareness of themselves as a distinct group identified by common values and experiences, and the transformation of this separateness into a strategy for the collective advancement of their sex. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg has shown how intimate female friendships and emotional bonds provided channels for enhancing the self-dignity and energy of women within their private lives.1 Nancy Cott has sug- gested that sisterhood, rooted in women's shared domestic destiny and their supposed natural attributes of morality, piety, and self-restraint, may have been a precondition for strengthening the social positions of females. Their strong yearnings for respect, companionship, and se- curity often found expression in associations outside the home where "women's reliance on each other to confirm their values embodied a new kind of group consciousness, one which could develop into a political consciousness."2 Other scholars have demonstrated that female friend- ships and experiences offered powerful support networks for socially active women in the public sphere. Mari Jo Buhle, for example, by focusing on the separate institutions and specialized role of womanhood in society, has provided a valuable understanding of the behavioral patterns and combined demands of women within the context of their own sensibilities. "The woman's movement," Buhle argued, "repli- cated in philosophy, patterns of organization, and ritual its cultural 1 Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, "The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth Century America, "Signs, 1 (Autumn 1975), 1-30. 2 Nancy Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: "Woman's Sphere" in New England, 1780-1835 (New Haven, Conn., 1977), 188, 194. Cott has linked the origins of a female culture to the emergence of industrialism. Despite the nineteenth-century tendency to move production outside the home, women's continued occupation there, defined by responsibilities for home- making and child care, provided the basis for separating the qualities of women from those men. 1 14 MARY FRANCES CORDATO January underpinnings and enlarged the concept of womanhood to its ultimate political limits." Sorority, based upon feminine virtues and values, gave women both the strength and the justification to assert an active role in resisting the male-dominated social order and redefining it in woman's own moral terms.3 The cultural interplay between womanhood and sisterhood is clearly dictated in the consideration of women and their participation in the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876.4 Female organizers of the event drew upon deeply rooted traditions of separatism and sorority, as they planned, funded, and managed their own pavilion and devoted it entirely to the artistic and industrial pursuits of their gender. The Woman's Building institutionalized for the first time, at an interna- tional exposition, the intimate bonds, shared values, and material achievements of women. Its promoters propounded an ideology which combined commitment to woman's interest with resistance to a male- defined system. Female organizers attempted to translate the individual values and attributes of womanhood into social action, thereby in- creasing women's influence in the public realm. By expanding rather than rejecting woman's sphere, Centennial women employed a popular means for justifying female autonomy outside the home. Their in- volvement with the Exhibition, promoters of the Woman's Building believed, could go a long way toward boosting the collective con- sciousness and advancement of their sisters.5 Woven into the vision of organizers were an element of struggle between the sexes and a critique of the socio-cultural order which pushed women into subordinate positions. Centennial women showed disproval and often challenged 3 Mari Jo Buhle, Women and American Socialism, 1870-1920 (Urbana, 111., 1981), xv. See also Karen Blair, The Clubwoman as Feminist: True Womanhood Redefined, 1865-1914 (New York, 1980); Barbara Epstein, The Politics of Domesticity: Women, Evangelism, and Temperance in Nineteenth-Century America (Middletown, Conn., 1981). On the ideology of "womanhood," see Barbara Welter, "The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860," American Quarterly, 18 (Summer 1966), 151-74. 4 Recent works on the Centennial include Dee Alexander Brown, The Year of the Century: 1876 (New York, 1966); John Maass, The Glorious Enterprise: The Centennial Exhibition of 1876 andJ.H. Schwarzmann, Architect-in-Chief(Watkins Glen, N.Y., 1973); Robert C. Post, ed., 1876: A Centennial Exhibition (Washington, D.C. 1976); Hayes Historical]ournal, 1 (Spring 1977). 5 Elizabeth Duane Gillespie, Address of the Women's Executive Committee to the Chairman of the Several Committees of Women in Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1873). 1983 WOMEN AND THE PHILADELPHIA CENTENNIAL EXHIBITION 1 1 5 patriarchal power and privilege, while they asserted woman's own creativity and virtue in reshaping society. In legitimizing the expanded role of womanhood, promoters of the pavilion provided women with a clear set of goals. To a considerable extent, these goals were influenced by and, at times, meshed quite favorably with the ideals of contem- porary feminists. Through the celebration of woman's culture, or- ganizers of the pavilion aimed to strengthen the bonds of sisterhood, increase female confidence and choices, win woman's social, economic, and legal advancement, abolish unfair restrictions discriminating against their gender, encourage sexual harmony, and gain influence, leverage, and freedom for all women in and outside of the home.6 The Woman's Building was the project of the Women's Centennial Executive Committee, a national women's group, appointed in 1873 by the all-male United States Centennial Board of Finance. By engaging women's help, men hoped to generate greater enthusiasm in the cele- bration. Women, it was believed, would increase subscriptions to Centennial stock and raise the much needed revenue for the Exhibition. 6 Historians of women have struggled over the meaning of feminism when applying it retroactively to the nineteenth century. Ellen DuBois, for example, made no clear distinction between feminism and women's equal rights. Gerda Lerner, on the other hand, distinguished between women's emancipation (which she defines as the demand for freedom from oppressive restrictions imposed by sex; self-determination; and autonomy of women), and women's rights (the more limited demands for civil, legal, and property rights of women). Lerner considers both concepts feminist. In another context, Lerner argued that woman's culture is also a feminist activity. She has definied women's culture as "women's redefinition in their own terms." The concept "implies an assertion of equality and an awareness of sisterhood, the communality of women." According to Lerner, women live their existence within the general culture, and "whenever they are confined by patriarchal restraint or segregation into separateness (which always has subordination as its purpose), they transform this restraint into complimentarity (asserting the importance of woman's function, even its 'superiority') and redefine it." Woman's culture is the basis for women's resistance to male dominance and their assertion to reorder society in woman's terms. Out of this separate experience rise several levels of feminist con- sciousness: the recognition of a collective wrong suffered; efforts to remedy these wrongs; the institutionalization of these efforts; and the rise of autonomously defined demands and theory. See Ellen DuBois et al, "Politics and Culture in Women's History: A Symposium," Feminist Studies, 6 (Spring 1980), 50-3. Although more research is needed to test Lerner's thesis, I think it is safe to assume, as Estelle Freedman does, that any female-dominated activity which fosters the advancement of women, places positive value on her contributions, provides helpful support channels, and is not controlled by antifeminist leadership, has feminist potential. Whether this potential is realized depends on larger historical conditions, such as the strength of political, cultural, egalitarian, and economic forces, the status of feminist leadership and ideology, and the 1 1 6 MARY FRANCES CORDATO January Female involvement might also soften antagonism that remained in the aftermath of the Civil War. Because of their special qualities, women had the ability to "soften man's more rugged nature" and to encourage him to "abandon local and sectional jealousies."7 Woman's role as domestic conciliator was enlisted in the task of American reconciliation. The leading figure of the Women's Centennial Committee was its president, Elizabeth Duane Gillespie, a great-granddaughter of Ben- jamin Franklin. Prompt and shrewd in her decisions and unwilling to accept defeat, Gillespie proved herself an efficient manager.8 Under her direction, female organizers sold subscriptions to Centennial stock and held receptions to stimulate interest. They canvassed neighbor- hoods to gain approval and support. Within two days, the Philadelphia committee obtained 82,000 signatures needed to raise an additional one million dollars for the fair from that city. When Congress hesitated to back the Exhibition, Gillespie and fourteen of her aides testified before the Senate where they produced letters from American women, proving power of antifeminism at a given time. See Estelle Freedman, "Separatism as Strategy: Female Institution Building and American Feminism," Ibid., 5 (Fall, 1979), 527. Like Lerner and Freedman, I do not subscribe to the idea that nineteenth-century feminism should be defined narrowly as suffragist or as an unyielding ideology for equal rights. Although both concepts may represent demands or strategies of feminism, to concentrate exclusively on these ideas diminishes the importance of the larger, separate, cultural experience of women and their attempts to re- shape and influence historical conditions. Feminism should be viewed in its widest sense to describe any struggle to advance the power, status, and autonomy of women in both the public and private spheres. Feminism implies an attack on patriarchy. It demands, among other things, an end to sex-stereotyped restrictions; women's freedom to make decisions and to transform these decisions into actions; and the right of women to choose their own life-styles, vocations, and destinies. On feminism, see Gerda Lerner, "Women's Rights and American Feminism," originally published in 1971 and reprinted in Gerda Lerner, The Majority Finds Its Past: Placing Women in History (New York, 1979), 48-9; Linda Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America (New York, 1977), xiv; DuBois et al, "Politics and Culture in Women's History," 28-64; Buhle, Women and American Socialism, 290-97. 7 "The Centennial: Women's Meeting at the Academy," n.d., Women's Centennial Exec- utive Committee (Hereafter referred to as WCEC), Clippings File, The Historical Society of Pennsylvania. See also WCEC, First Annual Report (Philadelphia, 1874), 1, 6-7; WCEC, Second Annual Report (Philadelphia, 1875), 19, 25; WCEC, Final Report (Philadelphia, 1877), 6-7; Journal of the Proceedings of the United States Centennial Commission at Philadelphia, May 1873 (Philadelphia, 1873), 6, 25. On the organization of the WCEC, see WCEC, Officers and Members of the Women's Centennial Executive Committee and By-Laws (Philadelphia, 1873). 8 National Society of the Colonial Dames of America, Pennsylvania, In Memoriam. Elizabeth Duane Gillespie, 1821-1901; Prairie Farmer, May 27, 1876; Brown, The Year of the Century, 139-40. 1983 WOMEN AND THE PHILADELPHIA CENTENNIAL EXHIBITION 1 17 a lively enthusiasm of all sections of the country. Congress responded by lending $1.5 million for the celebration.9 The Women's Centennial Committee's main activity was to organize a special exhibit of woman's work, for which ample space had been reserved in the Main Building. In June 1875, however, the men of the Centennial Commission advised female organizers that this display was no longer possible. Requests from foreign exhibitors had multiplied so rapidly that the area allotted to each applicant had to be substantially limited. If women hoped to pay tribute to their work, they would have to erect a separate building for its display and bear the entire cost themselves.10 Perturbed at the Centennial Commission for advising female or- ganizers of its change in plans at such late notice, but far from being discouraged or resentful, the Women's Centennial Committee set in motion its successful fund-raising machinery for its own pavilion.11 Appeals were made, through local committees, to the women of the various states and territories. The response was so favorable that in less than four months the entire cost of $31,160 for the Woman's Building had been raised and construction begun. Thousands of additional dol- lars were obtained to meet related expenses. Promoters, for instance, paid Richard Wagner $5,000 in gold to compose the "Centennial In- auguration March," and they sponsored a woman's journal, a kinder- garten, a Catalogue of Charities, a national cookbook, and a series of symphony concerts.12 9 Elizabeth Duane Gillespie, A Book of Remembrance (Philadelphia, 1901), 283-87, 296- 305; WCEC, Final Report, 9-10, 40-57, 79-83; Brown, The Year of the Century, 139-40; Maass, The Glorious Enterprise, 121. 10 Letter from Thomas Cochran to Elizabeth Gillespie, June 9, 1875, and letter from Alfred Goshorn to Elizabeth Gillespie, June 11,1875, WCEC, Final Report 84-5; Gillespie, A Book of Remembrance, 311-14; Maass, The Glorious Enterprise, 121. 11 Woman's Journal, November 25, 1876; Gillespie, A Book ofRemembrance. 313-15. 12 The WCEC raised a total of $138,750. See Gillespie, A Book of Remembrance, 327; WCEC, Final Report, 23-36; New Century, May 13, June 3, 1876. On special projects, see WCEC, Final Report, 9-11, 14-7; Women's Centennial Music Hall. Programme of Theodore Thomas' UnrivaledSummer Night Concerts (Philadelphia, 1876); WCEC, The National Cookery Book Compiled from Original Receipts, for the Women's Centennial Committees of the International Exhibition of 1876 (Philadelphia, 1876); Mary Rose Smith, comp., Catalogue of Charities Conducted by Women as Reported to the Women's Centennial Executive Committee of the United Stater (Philadelphia, 1876). 1 1 8 MARY FRANCES CORDATO January In their anxiety to have the Woman's Building completed in time for the Centennial's opening, May 10, 1876, female organizers over- looked one important feature. Either by ignorance or oversight, the contract for the pavilion was awarded to a male architect, Hermann J. Schwarzmann, chief engineer and designer of many buildings at the Exhibition. Soon afterwards, promoters, hearing high praise of Emma Kimball, an architect from Lowell, Massachusetts, realized that their committee had made its "first great mistake" by failing to engage a woman for this charge. In her memoirs, Gillespie confided: "I feel pained because I fear we hindered this legitimate branch of women's work instead of helping it."13 Although plans for the Woman's Building were designed by a male architect, its other activities were the products of women's efforts and thought. At the doorways of the pavilion, visitors were greeted by the words of Proverbs 31: LET HER WORKS PRAISE HER IN THE GATES.14 Spectators had little difficulty grasping the message of this inscription. What they found in the department rendered obsolete the notion of woman as submissive, nurturing, and completely non-pro- ductive. Instead, visitors found exhibits that demonstrated her positive achievements and influence: industrial and fine arts; wood-carvings, furniture-making, and ceramics; fancy articles, clothing, and woven goods; philanthropy; philosophy, science, and medicine; education; literature; and inventions.15 The displays illustrated the power, skill, and organizational talents of women and suggested the various, yet limited, opportunities opened to them. Contemporary feminists ac- cepted the pavilion as a viable sign that women had the potential to do more to help themselves if they were determined and courageous.16 The 13 Gillespie, A Book of Remembrance, 315-16; WCEC, Final Report, 12. For a description of the Woman's Building, see United States Centennial Commission, Specifications for the Con- struction, Erection and Finishing of a Building to Exhibit Woman*s Work, to be Erected in Fairmount Park (Philadelphia, 1875); The Centennial Eagle, August 8, 1876; Dorsey Gardner, Interna- tional Exhibition. 1876. Grounds andBuildings of the CentennialExhibition (Philadelphia, 1878), 117-18. 14 New Century, May 13, 1876. 15 United States Centennial Exhibition. 1876. Official Catalogue, III (Philadelphia, 1876), 85-97. 16 New Century, May 13, 20, July 1, 1876; The Independent, December 7, 1876; Woman's Journal, May 27, July 1, 1876. 1983 WOMEN AND THE PHILADELPHIA CENTENNIAL EXHIBITION 1 19 Woman's Building demonstrated all that "woman has been able to do" despite "the limitations that social prejudices, and the Laws of Medes and Persians have set to her working at all."17 Implied in the gender orientation of the Woman's Building was a self-conscious bid for collective strength and sorority. Its promoters brought together, under one roof, the work of women of different social classes, ethnic backgrounds, and levels of productive activities. Ex- hibitors planned displays to illustrate the interlocking interests exper- ienced and understood by all women, regardless of status or heritage. "A dainty damask, whose flaxen threads were spun by Queen Victoria" received no greater or less distinction than the "fairy fabrics which grew into matchless beauty beneath the fingers of the Belgium peasantry."18 The unifying theme was gender. Each exhibit represented the product and shared experience of a woman's labor. To demonstrate their interest in sorority in another way, organizers arranged a special opening ceremony for the Woman's Building. Un- like most pavilions of the Exhibition, which were formally dedicated by dignitaries like President Grant and Emperor Dom Pedro II of Brazil, the doors of the woman's department "refused to fly open at the magic touch" of a man.19 Instead, Centennial women invited Empress Theresa, the wife of Dom Pedro, to preside at a very simple ceremony which took place at the conclusion of the Exhibition's grand opening. Although both men and women were free to inspect the pavilion after its opening, the official dedication was reserved for females only. The idea of a separate ceremony, headed by a foreign celebrity and attended by women, reminded women of the emotional bonds of sisterhood shared by all women of the world.20 From the start, Centennial women expressed their greatest concern over the question of woman's advancement. To make their sisters fully aware of the commitment of organizers to this goal, the latter published the New Century, an eight-page weekly paper, printed on premises at 17 New Century, May 13, 1876. 18 Godey's Lady's Book and Magazine, July 1876. 19 Woman's Journal, June 10, 1876. 20 Public Ledger, May 11, 1876; New Century, May 13, November 11, 1876; The Inde- pendent, May 18, 1876; Gillespie, A Book of Remembrance, 327-30; Brown, The Year of the Century, 141-42; William D. Andrews, "Women and the Fairs of 1876 and 1893," Hayes Historical Journal, 1 (Spring 1977), 178. 1 20 MARY FRANCES CORDATO January the Woman's Building and financed entirely by the Women's Centen- nial Committee. This pro-feminist journal, edited by Sarah Hallowell of Philadelphia, attacked the cultural and institutional barriers which prevented women from obtaining equality and justice.21 Its editorials argued for dress reform, married women's property and inheritance rights, changes in the divorce law, and an end to other discriminatory, sex-stereotyped legislation. The journal demanded abolishment of "femme couverte," and it challenged a father's absolute authority, within the family, over decisions concerning his children.22 The paper called for women's financial autonomy and insisted upon equitable compensation and opportunity for all female endeavors.23 Equally noteworthy, the New Century served in effect as the organ for the Third Woman's Congress, held in Philadelphia in 1876; and it accepted articles and correspondence from feminist reformers like Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Eliza Sproat Turner, Elizabeth Churchill, Kate Doggert, Julia Ward Howe, and Anna Garlin.24 In welcoming the New Century, the Woman's Journal, published by the American Woman Suffrage Association, hailed the new woman's weekly as a "coadjutor in the field of woman's rights."25 In propounding its ideology of woman's advancement, the Women's Centennial Committee showed a particular interest in female labor. Like other feminist-inspired groups, its members considered woman's industry the surest and most important means to increase women's in- fluence, respect, and power in society.26 In struggling for this goal, organizers confronted two related dilemmas, both of which had pro- found impact on their reform impulse. In the first place, promoters sympathized with the emotional and material difficulties experienced by their less fortunate sisters who had 21 On Hallowell, see Woman's Journal, December 2, 1871. 22 On dress reform, see New Century, June 3, July 8, 22, August 19, September 16, 1876. On discriminatory laws, see Ibid., July 1,8, August 12, September 23, October 7, 14, 1876. 23 Ibid., May 13, June 3, 10, 24, July 1, August 5, October 7, 1876. 24 The Woman's Congress was sponsored annually by the Association for the Advancement of Women. On the AAW, see William Leach, True Love and Perfect Union: The Feminist Reform of Sex and Society (New York, 1980), 185-89; Blair, The Clubwoman as Feminist, 39-56. The New Century published the activities and several of the texts of papers delivered at the Congress. See New Century, September 30, October 7, 14, 1876. 25 Woman's Journal, May 13, 1876. See also Ibid., May 27, December 23, 1876. 26 WCEC, Final Report, 19. 1983 WOMEN AND THE PHILADELPHIA CENTENNIAL EXHIBITION 12 1 become victims of the male-controlled economic system. By the post- Civil War period, historical conditions had alerted most reformers to the dangers created by mechanization and industrial capitalism. The collapse of woman's traditional domestic industries, coupled with the rapid expansion of the factory system and the unpredictable necessity of female self-support, had combined to endanger the destinies of thou- sands of destitute women.27 Centennial women criticized unjust prac- tices of industry, such as its hazardous, unhealthy, and immoral working conditions, its long, tedious hours of toil, and its meager monetary compensation for female wage-earners. Organizers also de- fended women's right to command equal pay and status in the work force as masculine counterparts received for comparable labor.28 At the same time, female organizers resented the plight of many bourgeois homemakers who had become victims of a masculine-defined culture characterized by dependency and leisure. Centennial women chastised those who called work degrading and improper "for the delicate or refined" woman.29 They criticized the sexual stereotype which labelled women as idolent and wasteful. "The wife who cooks, mends, makes clothing, washes, irons, and does an untold amount of labor that would cost every year hundreds of dollars if paid for by the husband," promoters argued, "should receive a better and nobler re- ward than being told she is extravagant."30 Female organizers were aware that all women, regardless of social position, shared a common economic injustice, whether it be defined by hardships in the male-controlled marketplace or by the humiliating condition of financial dependence on husbands and fathers. Mari Jo Buhle has called this dilemma "woman's dual inheritance." Nineteenth- century women were plagued by either "the physical injury of poverty and exploitation or the spiritual poisoning of idleness and dissipa- tion."31 Centennial women recognized both factors as sources of wom- an's inequality and lack of autonomy. Their critique of work took on a 27 Buhle, Women and American Socialism, 53-5; Leach, True Love and Perfect Union, 163-67. 28 WCEC, Final Report, 7; New Century, May 13, 27, July 1, August 5, September 2, October 28, 1876. 29 New Century, August 5, 1876. 30 Ibid., June 17, 1876. 31 Buhle, Women and American Socialism, 54. 122 MARY FRANCES CORDATO January character influenced not only by issues of class but, more significant, by problems unique to their gender. Promoters aimed "to give woman a definite place as a worker, to help her to understand her power, see her opportunities, and to aid her in the terrible fight she has to make for equal wages, equal position."32 Centennial women proceeded to promote their ideology by demon- strating to visitors of their pavilion by what means some women were making a profitable living. Organizers did not "shrink from compe- tition with the works of men;" rather, they planned a separate exhibit to make female labor a more distinctive feature of the Exhibition.33 It was an opportunity to display what would have been overlooked as potential careers for women in another building. Exhibitors intended to show to their "more timid sisters that some women have outstripped them in the race for useful and remunerative employment, and to encourage these to the perseverence sure to be followed by a larger measure of success."34 There was nothing unusual about a dental exhibit, for example, but when one compared its generous income to that of "a drudging teacher, dragging out her life on her few hundred a year," the symbolic and real value of the display for women became apparent.35 Similarly, the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania might have challenged its male competitors by placing its exhibit of "Materia Medica" in the Main Building alongside other pharmacies. "As the intention was to offer to women a new industry and a richly paying field," the College chose instead to display its "highly commendable work" in the Woman's Building.36 Not only did "Materia Medica" prove that the apothecary's trade was opened to women, but it also criticized, in a subtle way, female dependency on a growing consumer drug market controlled by men. The exhibit proved that women could "be more profitably employed in putting up medicine than in swal- lowing it."37 32 NewCentury, May 20, 1876. See also Ibid., June 3, 24, August5, October 28, 1876. 33 WCEC, Final Report, 7-8; New Century, September 8, 1876. Female organizers were, in fact, very supportive of worsen who chose to display their work alongside that of men. Every issue of the New Century praises the activities and achievements of women throughout the other pavilions of the Exhibition. 34 WCEC, Final Report, 8. 35 New Century, July 1,1876. 36 Ibid., September 8, 1876. See also Ibid., October 14, 1876; WCEC, Final Report, 14.