October 6, 1917.
Dear Miss Addams:
I would not trouble you about the following, but I do not know if Mrs. Karsten is back, and how the office may be "womaned."
If it has been decided not to hold the meeting at Mrs. Wilmarth's on the 19th, when you receive this, unless a letter is already on the way telling me so, will you not kindly ask some one to telegraph me at my expense. I have to be in New York on the 14th, and will go from there to Chicago on the 15th if the meeting is to be held as proposed, and I have to make reservations, and so on.
An additional reason has come why we need to talk things over. I have today received a letter from Mrs. Allender from Greenville, S.C., saying that she is down there arranging meetings for the Woman's Party for [Maud] Younger, and that as soon as she had decided that it was the thing for her to do she wrote to Mrs. Slayden resigning from the Legislative Committee; that she knew she was not absolutely correct in resigning to Mrs. Slayden, "as the Committee members were appointed by the National Peace Party, but that seemed the first step." She also said that she would write you later. In this connection we have to remember that Mrs. Burch, Mrs. Odell and Mrs. Gardner, all prominent members with us, are in active sympathy with the militant suffragists also. I do not see how we can reconstruct the Washington Branch, of which they are the most prominent members, and I do not see how we can organize a Legislative Committee outside of their group. Fortunately Congress is just adjourning, not to meet until the regular session beginning the first Monday in December; so we have time to think it over.
In a letter received lately from Mrs. Celia Parker Woolley she says: "At the National Unitarian Conference ... at Montreal last month John [Haynes] Holmes spoke as you can imagine on the present situation, after which Mr. Taft, President, yielded the chair and spoke his mind, ending with a resolution supporting the government. This was carried by a vote of nearly 200 to 6, one of the 6 being our Anna," — by whom of course she means Mrs. Spencer. You probably knew most of this if not all.
I will send carbons of this letter to Mrs. Mead and Mrs. Spencer.
Faithfully yours,
Alice Thacher Post [signed]
Comments