WOMEN’S CLUBS IN U.S.

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27075, 25 June 1953, Page 2

WOMEN’S CLUBS IN U.S.

SUCCESSFUL CAMPAIGNS FOR REFORMS The 3000 representatives of women’s clubs throughout Asia, Europe, and the Americas who met in Washington, D.C., recently for the sixty-second annual convention of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs symbolise a powerful force for peace, freedom, and progress, says an American correspondent. In the United States alone there are now 15,000 affiliated clubs, with a membership of more than 5,000,000. The federation played a major role in establishing a United States Children’s Bureau in 1912, and in 1918 the Women’s Industry Service, which became the present United States Women’s Bureau. It also conducted a campaign for birth registration and progressive maternity and infancy programmes, and helped secure nationwide voting privileges for women. The American Lib’ary Association credits women’s clubs with establishing 85 per cent, of ?J1 the libraries in the United States. The federation has provided scholarships and loans to 20,000 students from nearly 40 countries. Its efforts to promote vocational education brought about a Federal Board for Vocational Education. It also proposed the establishment of the present United States Public Health Service, and advocated Cabinet status for the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. One of America’s greatest health reforms, the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, is credited to the action of the federation’s clubwomen.