NATIONAL COUNCIL OF WOMEN IN CENTURY OF PROGRESS EXPOSITION

Evening Star, Issue 21073, 9 April 1932, Page 23

NATIONAL COUNCIL OF WOMEN IN CENTURY OF PROGRESS EXPOSITION

Members of the National Women s Christian Temperance Union will enter with a genuine spirit of consecration into the plans of the National Council of Women for an International Congress in connection with the Chicago Century of Progress Exposition in 1933. For them it will bo a case of history repeating itself, and also an opportunity to pay tribute to a beloved leader. Frances E. Willard, founder of the National Women’s Christian Temperance Union, was one of the moving spirits in an international meeting held in Washington, D.C., in 1888, to celebrate tho fortieth anniversary of the first woman’s rights meeting. Mmh Susan B. Anthony, Clara Barton, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and other noted women of the day, slio took tho initiative in urging the formation ot a National Council of Women to unite the leading women’s groups which were working for social progress. It was she who drafted the constitution of tho new organisation, and who was elected its first president. Hardly was tho National Council organised before plans were under way for an International Congress of Women to he held in connection with the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. A hostess committee of one thousand two hundred members was created, with Mrs Potter Palmer as chairman. Women from twenty-seven countries served as members of an advisory council. So well were plans laid and so brilliantly executed that over 600 women participated in tho seventy-six sessions of tho congress, and the aggregate attendance for tho week was over one hundred and fifty thousand. Tho congress, sponsored by the National Council of Women and its twenty-one affiliated organisations at tho Century of Progress Exposition in 1933 will therefore have somewhat the character of an anniversary. Again it will bring women of many countries together to discuss the causes which arc close to their hearts. Again it will offer occasion for an exhibit typical of women’s progress. It will also afford an opportunity to review the dramatic accomplishments of organised womanhood for an entire century. Already tho National Council of Women has leased 2,400 square feet of iloor space in the Social Science Building at Chicago for tho use of its affiliated organisations. There it will picturise for tho benefit of exposition visitors the evolution of women’s groups from tho early cultural society to tho complex organisation of to-day, with its highly developed civic programme. Under the chairmanship of Dr Kathryn M'Halo, executive director of the American Association of University Women, a research into the origin and programme of women’s organisations has been started. Out of Dr M'Halq’s findings an eminent woman author will weave a permanent record of what women have accomplished in such great causes as social reform, suffrage, Prohibition, and world peace. This book will bo published at the time of the exposition. Approximately 5,000,000 women in organisations connected with the National Council are co-operating.