Procesos metalmecánicos básicos

Like Howe, Cole mastered her daily work and reviewed exhibits in the Woman‟s Department in great detail, especially the unusual ones. She commended the New York women

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Howe listed the topics of Twelve O‟Clock talks in her final Report and Catalogue, 29- 31. They proved so popular that women used the idea again eight years later at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, according to Laura E. Richards and Maud Howe Elliott with Florence Howe Hall, Julia Ward Howe: 1819-1910 (Boston: Houghton, 1915) II: 107.

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Richards and Elliott, Julia Ward Howe, II: 105.

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for having no “crazy quilts, no crocheted baby sacks and shoes” and instead focusing on benevolent and philanthropic work and fine designs from the Women‟s Technical School of

Design on Fifth Avenue. She highlighted the valuable machine for sewing straw braid with which Mrs. Mary Carpenter Harper of Brooklyn had already “made a fortune.” She listed

industries that supplemented the otherwise unremarkable paintings, needlework, and such. Among these were a noteworthy health stocking, suspenders, and braces; patented dolls; and paper nuns fashioned by an invalid woman. She admired a cloth embroidered with moose hair and other items that Indian women sent. She wrote about Miss Alice C. Fletcher of New York, “widely known for her work among the Omaha Indians,” who spent her life among them

prompted by her interest in archaeology. According to the Times-Democrat, Howe also engaged Fletcher for a Twelve O‟Clock Talk in which she disputed the stereotype of Indians as

continually in a state of warfare, an image projected by Buffalo Bill‟s Wild West show. Instead, she spotlighted their home life.38 This emphasis on home life was in keeping with a familiar theme among women at the Cotton Centennial Exposition. Repeatedly, they were considering how women used their homes, especially when they reaped a monetary reward.

The Times-Democrat also reported on Indian exhibits shown with the state of Louisiana exhibit on the ground floor of the Government Building. Mrs. Charles E. Whitney of New Orleans had amassed the collection and had “made a special study of the Indian tribes

represented.” She said she had wrested these specimens from Indian “savages” with “infinite difficulty” because they had “an intense aversion to the whites.” Among the items were basket

work, long cane blow-guns, beadwork, and gaudy-colored “peculiar costumes” of the

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Chitamachas and the Tchuahas [sic] from the Bayou Teche.39 In 1885, there was not yet the voyeuristic exoticism that came later, when villages of indigenous peoples from many nations were on exhibit on the entertainment strips of World‟s Fairs, beginning with the Midway at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. In New Orleans, the artifacts were of interest.

Indian work and inventions were major features and curiosities in the Woman‟s Department as part of the exhibits of Women of the Pacific Slope. From the Washington

Territory, a “curious collection of Indian treasures from the Skokomish Indians, especially shell

beads, formerly used as money, and water tight baskets woven from roots of cedar trees.” From the Clallam tribe, among other items were “head straps for carrying bundles which the Indians

swing from across their foreheads.” From the Navajos were three “brilliantly colored” blankets, and purses, shoes, and other “curious articles.” From Mescalero Apache women, a buckskin garment (scrappe) and some beaded articles. From Indians at Forest Grove Training School in Oregon, a sample of their monthly newspaper, the Indian Citizen, and “some good pieces of Mojave pottery, fur rugs,” and more.40

The native displays were another connection among women from various sections of the country and an opportunity for them to assess (if they were aware) how they supported, appreciated, or denigrated the indigenous peoples around them.

Aside from the Picayune‟s account of Indian displays from the Pacific Slope states, its

description of the Slope‟s frilly décor matched that of other Victorian-draped spaces in the Woman‟s Department. The center pavilion had a pale blue ceiling, gold figured wallpaper, deep

crimson draperies, and arched doorways that formed a boudoir, studio, and museum all in one,

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Times-Democrat, April 5, 1885.

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the Picayune reported. Over time, Cole acknowledged the two thousand exhibits from women of the Pacific Slope (Alaska, Washington Territory, Oregon, Idaho, California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico). The group showed farming, gardening, and ranching work; bee culture, silk culture, and educational interests; scientific and Indian work. The California Silk Culture Association sent a fascinating display of cocoons, reeled silk, silk thread and silk stockings that excited many women as a possible way to make a living from home, especially where mulberry trees were readily accessible.41

Always of interest were the inventions women sent. Those from the Pacific states showed items strange and promising: a patented snow plow, a crumb collector, a dustpan; an adjustable button-hole invention that was “a blessing to women generally”; a unique comb to hold the “most unruly hat or bonnet”; a combination fashion item to hang from the neck that was “muff,

private purse, shopping bag, satchel, handkerchief holder, all in one”; a “long-handled hook” that was ingenious “for pulling open upper windows, transoms,” and more.42 As with many of the inventions in the Woman‟s Department, these focused on easing women‟s domestic burden or

enhancing her costumes. Journalists responsible for conveying all the worthy details of exhibits played significant roles in propagating new products and ideas.

Cole spent a column of genuine excitement on “Women as Inventors,” describing items state by state. Some women showed patented industrial items through which they had created businesses; others “confined their inventive skill to the kitchen or to housewifely pursuits.” Most

contraptions were clearly attempts to lighten the drudgery of housekeeping: ironing tables, a flat iron with adjustable handle, a bread kneader, a perforated baking pan, an egg-beater, an egg-

41

Picayune, May 23, 1885.

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stand, a self-feeding griddle greaser, a pie lifter, a washing machine. Others demonstrated solutions to other problems around the house: an adaptable window cleaner, a chimney

ventilator, a fire escape ladder, an invalid bed, a portable apparatus for vapor and hot air baths, a cistern spout trap to keep out insects. Many items improved the task of sewing, including a system for cutting garments by measure. Women seemed enamored of space-saving items or multi-use ones: a folding trunk, an extension stair rod, an improved railroad car seat, a portable nursery chair, a combination dressing case and bathtub. Most conspicuous, perhaps, were the portable wire summer house and the portable squatter‟s cottage with its own bow-window and

folding bed. To enumerate them seemed to give Cole pleasure.43

When the Times-Democrat reporter (probably Pavy) reviewed the scientific area of the Woman‟s Department, she reiterated the steps that must have led to Julia Ward Howe‟s appointment. Pavy‟s report told that in spring of 1883, members of the New England Manufacturer‟s Institute in Boston offered to include a woman‟s department there, and “a

number of intelligent and public-spirited women” had collected woman‟s work. They had agreed to establish “a high standard,” with fewer quilts and fancy work and more “work of an industrial nature having a commercial value, and work requiring more brain effort.” They had attempted

the experiment of a scientific section, more difficult to exhibit, and it was judged successful and credible. Howe had been president of that Woman‟s Department, and she had hoped to repeat in

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“World‟s Exposition: Women as Inventors,” Picayune, May 23, 1885. The complete list of inventions, state by state, is included in Howe‟s Report and Catalogue. The Colorado Lady Commissioner hurriedly added her exhibit to the department, having been “delayed until very late” trying to get an appropriation from her Legislature: paintings, a large silk crazy quilt, a braided leather hat band, “a jar of jam, made from gooseberries grown 13,000 feet above sea level,” and more, Times-Democrat, May 18, 1885. The Arkansas Commissioner arrived so late that she never unpacked her “impressive number of boxes,” Herbert S. Fairall, The World’s

Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition in New Orleans, 1884-1885 (Iowa City: Republican, 1885), 362.

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New Orleans the scientific exhibits that in Boston had included astronomy, botany, chemistry, mineralogy, geology, entomology, architecture, and ethnology. Lack of time dictated a smaller exhibit in the Crescent City, yet the displays did show that the “mysteries” of science were not beyond the “grasp of the feminine mind, and that many operations requiring nice manipulation seem particularly to call for the deftness of woman‟s hand.” Then, Pavy provided examples of those particulars from the woman‟s Science alcove.44

She reported on the cocoons, webbing worms, and silk that seemed to be everywhere. The Silk Culture Association showed silk in glass jars from seventy-eight growers. The famous Strawbridge & Clothier department stores of Philadelphia promised to award a total of $500 to the ten best examples, to encourage “silk raising in America,” as if it were a patriotic

undertaking. The Picayune reported that the association “received financial aid from the United States Government” and would begin a training school in Philadelphia to demonstrate the practical value of silk culture for women throughout the United States.” Silk-raising was also

promoted as a likely vocation for African Americans. Displays of cocoons and silk-making were part of exhibits from Pennsylvania, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, New Jersey, Florida, Tennessee, and Texas. Louisiana also had “a very large display, moths, eggs, cocoons, reeled

silk, most of it raised from the [highly prized] French worms from Vars.” The nuns of the Carmelite order in Louisiana raised silk enough for their own use, both in the city of New Orleans and in rural Thibodaux. Pavy of the Times-Democrat described the process of silk culture in great detail, claiming that this new way to earn from home seemed to fascinate all who saw the worms “in every state of their existence,” including a final tray of “great, fat, gray-green

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creatures, two inches long and one in circumference.” She declared them “well worth a visit to the Exposition to see,” especially as they would soon begin to “web up.” 45

Visitors to the Woman‟s Department could not afford to be squeamish about worms.

Pavy also took a creative approach to other displays. Instead of focusing on a single state‟s exhibits, she described “types” found in many spaces in the department. For example, she devoted a column to “Jewels and Laces” from women of Washington, Massachusetts, New

Jersey, New York, Mississippi and elsewhere, many of whom earned a living with the work. In another column, she covered “Silk and Silver,” in which she told of etchings that women applied

to cutlery and trays at the Gorham Silver Manufacturing Company.Clearly, her pieces in the

Times-Democrat were designed to pique people‟s interest in the Exposition rather than to hint at the department‟s internal squabbles. 46

Director-General E. A. Burke‟s reporters apparently followed his lead and ruffled no feathers.