Modelo de integración

Despite financial constraints, the Woman‟s Department continued to take shape, and local journalists assigned to cover the exhibits did so generously. To reach the department on the gallery of the Government Building, a visitor crossed fourteen acres of artifacts and services of the federal government (in the center of the building, under a bank of skylights) surrounded by curious and preposterous arrays of natural resources and products from forty-four states. Finally then, a visitor would the staircase to a sea of women‟s work. Exhibits from women of New England occupied “a large space at the head of the left flight of stairs, going up into the

Woman‟s Department,” as the Times-Democrat told. Needlework both dainty and frivolous filled

the outside portion of the gallery, much of it from leisured hands. Occupying the center of the department was the “rose-colored bower” of the Christian Woman‟s Exchange, an honored

9

“WWW,” Picayune, February 15, 1885; Picayune, February 10, 1885. Although there is no byline on this piece, it immediately follows Cole‟s description of the Woman‟s Department and is indicative of her impeccable style.

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location rewarding the organization‟s early support. Next to that space was the Temperance

Pavilion, replete with banners, flags, frills, and a raised platform.10

Several graceful alcoves held items of special interest. Art reigned in one of these, surrounded by cream-colored pongee curtains, “stained glass windows, flowers, and graceful lace draperies at windows.” Literary and Scientific nooks in the care of Miss Maud Howe and

Mrs. Evelyn Ordway, respectively, shared a long, narrow alcove, its “pretty arched window daintily draped with screen curtains.” Maud Howe placed books on open shelves arranged by states, and over her desk, she hung a group of portraits of “Eminent Women,” the “next best

thing to having the authors there in person,” the Picayune asserted. A dainty woman‟s desk filled one space and a “wide work-a-day table” another. The Literary Department was a “quiet and peaceful place of repose” with potted plants softening the corners. Nearby in the patent

department, excitement reigned, as dual-purpose and ingenious space-saving household inventions arrived: a combined commode and dressing case, a combined kitchen table and ironing board, a pie-lifter, a portable kiln, a controllable beehive. More industrial items included a cistern spout trap, a flexible halter for hitching horses, new draft flues on a section of a brick chimney, and a machine for cutting books. 11

Exhibits of women‟s work arrived well into February, almost two months after the

Exposition opened, and reporters captured the various displays “from the iron chain to the finest laces.” The Tennessee space near the Literary alcove was “dainty and inviting,” and overflowed

with art and portraits. The Picayune called it “one of the popular places of resort for Southern women” with its pale blue and white lace curtains draping the central pavilion and pulled back

10

Times-Democrat, February 28, 1885.

11

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into “fanlike” shapes over arched separations that divided Tennessee from other states. On the other hand, Rhode Island emphasized woman‟s role in industry, showing 11,400 spools from the Rhode Island Thread Works and products from Bannister Button Manufactory, Goff‟s Braid

Manufacturing Company, and Slater Stocking Works, where labor was done entirely or mainly by women and girls. The Dakota Territory exhibit was like no other, the Times-Democrat

declared, with its “predominance of grains, grasses and birds.” Pennsylvania brought “one of the

most unusual exhibits in the entire Exposition”—silk culture—and began placing it in the north end of the gallery beyond displays from the Northwestern States. The Picayune recommended that drawings and designs from Pennsylvania‟s School of Industrial Arts “should be examined by every woman and young girl in that wretched state of indecision when she is asking herself what she shall do for a living and how she shall use her life. It may be that here she will find the answer, and . . . will say to herself, „I can do that. I can earn my living at that.‟” 12

It was exactly what Catharine Cole hoped the Woman‟s Department would accomplish.

Cole noted the various displays from Louisiana women. Those exhibiting with the state on the lower floor of the Government building showed their items “against turkey red walls,” on screens, and in showcases. Cole assessed their origin with “house-keeping women bending over their embroidery frames, or in happy perplexity over the colors for a wreath of hand painted flowers.” It was a rather back-handed compliment for the quilts and pillow shams, afghans and

toilette covers, and other such everyday handwork, probably from Baton Rouge and smaller towns around the state. The display included a “picture of a colored woman” who had “been decorated by the French Government with a medal of honor for her services to the [local] Soniat

12

For the Tennessee exhibit, see the Times-Democrat, February 6, 1885; for the Rhode Island exhibit, see the Times-Democrat, February 9, 1885; for the Dakota and Pennsylvania exhibits, see the Picayune, February 11, 1885.

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family.” Louisiana ladies also made a twelve-foot-square quilt “in the shape of a magnificent and gigantic map of the State” with various parishes in colored satin, embroidered with pertinent “pictorial representations.” In the Woman‟s Department, in addition to the Exchange‟s central

space, Louisiana women created a “striking feature” of “beautiful work made by aged women” in their 80s. Because the Louisiana Historical Society‟s display was elsewhere, Mexican women

occupied the alcove originally allotted for Louisiana in the Woman‟s Department, an action “much applauded,” this foreign display giving the department a trace of the international.13

As spaces in the Woman‟s Department began to look complete, fund-raising efforts to

cover expenses continued. At last, the office of the Superintendent and Secretary (Given and Auzé) was carpeted, a stove was in place, and the room became “quite cozy” and a place where visitors were made “heartily welcome.” To raise additional funds, her Majesty‟s Opera Company

gave a benefit concert that the Picayune declared a “social and financial success.” But, the newspaper reported, there were still no toilette rooms in the building, and ladies were “rightly and justly indignant at such absolute and criminal indifference to their health and comfort.” Tempers flared, and among some local women, covert sectional rumblings apparently continued. On February 10, 1885, an unidentified New Orleanian wrote Eliza Nicholson urging the

publisher‟s presence at a meeting at the St. Charles Hotel “apropos of the Woman‟s Day at the

Exposition” and begging the influence of her paper, the Picayune. The woman asked Nicholson

13

Turkey red refers to a complicated, therefore expensive, dye process that produced a luscious color highly prized in the nineteenth century, especially by quilters. For description of the Louisiana display, see the Picayune, January 16, 1885; for the quilt, see “World‟s Exposition: A Map of Louisiana,” Picayune, February 2, 1885; for the Exchange‟s space, see “WWW,” Picayune, February 1, 1885; for space for a Mexican exhibit, see the Picayune, January 30, 1885. Miss Halleran (“Clara Bridgeman”) urged Mexican representatives to place a Mexican exhibit in the Woman‟s Department. The Picayune declared that Halleran “corresponded all summer with Mrs. Secretary Auze [sic],” confirming that New Orleans women were soliciting exhibits long before management appointed Howe. Picayune February 10, 1885.

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to write an editorial about Woman‟s Day “which we are all desirous of making a great success, for every reason.” The “underlying thought” to make the day a huge success, she confided, was “to out-do old Julia Ward Howe and her clique of Boston women!”14

At the least, Howe‟s presidency galvanized local women, keeping factionalism to a minimum, and motivated them to show what southern women could do.

Publicly, women affirmed Howe‟s leadership. Lady Commissioners met to endorse her

management and express confidence in her leadership by issuing a formal Resolution. The women acknowledged “the difficulties of her position” and “her strict adherence to duty, her high sense of honor and her devotion to the work” in a “manner gentle, winning and impressive that allowed the department to overcome many of the obstacles found in its way.” The

resolution was “furnished the Associated Press for publication throughout the country.” The

Times-Democrat published the formal document and a return “Letter of Thanks” from Howe expressing “great obligations” to many friends for “united efforts” and to the management of the

Times-Democrat for “frequent mention and generous commendation of our undertaking.”15 According to the Picayune, this Resolution was “not an expression of a shaky condition of affairs in the woman‟s department, as some might suppose.” Howe had the support of the

State Commissioner and was in harmony with all of the women, the paper claimed. Then the reporter (probably Cole) claimed, with a barb, that Howe “is held in the highest esteem by the few Southern women who have places on her board of management.” The journalist applauded

14

For offices ready, see the Picayune, January 23, 1885; for the benefit concert, see the

Times-Democrat, February 4, 8, 1885; for no toilette rooms, see the Picayune, January 20, 1885; for letter, see (unknown) to Eliza Nicholson, February 10, 1885 (final pages missing), Nicholson (Mss 219, Box 1, folder 134) The Historic New Orleans Collection, New Orleans, LA.

15

For the resolution, see the Times-Democrat, February 6, 1885, Picayune, February 5, 1885; for Howe‟s letter of thanks, see the Times-Democrat, February 8, 1885.

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the “inestimable value of the pioneer work that Auzé and Given had achieved” that offered

Howe, when she arrived, “willing, friendly, enthusiastic support from the Southern women and their two representatives, and it is good to be able to record how that support has been

received.”16

Received poorly was, of course, the implication.

Cole also made pertinent observations about what was missing in the department. Ignoring the fact that the work of factory women was scattered among general exhibits

everywhere, Cole complained that these workers were “scarcely represented at all.” Like critics before her, she wanted to see professional products in the Woman‟s Department made by women who earned a living with their labor, not “the amateur work” of hand-painted dainty teacups and

saucers. It was “curious to note that not a single dressmaker or milliner” was represented. “There is not a dress nor a bonnet,” she complained, and added: “Somebody suggests that such was

debarred as smacking of advertisement, but this can hardly be true. Exhibitors from all over the world have taken part in this Exposition in order to advertise their goods, and there are many other exhibits in the Woman‟s Department that advertise their exhibitors quite as much as a

beautiful dress would a dressmaker.” Cole thought it did not look well that “not one New Orleans modiste, or from any other city” took the trouble to send “specimens of her art” to the department, an art so highly valued and so much a part of a woman‟s self-presentation. 17