The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn The Life and Death Of Bertha Mailly Mrs. Bertha H. Mailly passed away at Laguna Beach, California, on August 14 at the age of 91. Almost all of her active life...
...Mailly's death in 1911...
...But in time it lost its function: The Socialist party disappeared...
...She was graduated from Cornell College, spent a year in Italy, and then taught school in Milwaukee and Boston...
...Almost all of her active life had been spent in New York in activities connected with socialism, women's suffrage and the labor movement...
...Under the impulse of this movement the International Ladies Garment Workers Union set a standard by purchasing an abandoned hotel on a lovely lake in Pennsylvania's Poconos and soon transformed it into an enchanting vacation home...
...Buying this site, building this camp and developing the recreation services in connection with it required both skill and industry...
...in every party convention and in the party press they made desperate efforts to get control of the Socialist movement...
...But by this time Mrs...
...Mailly provided both as the camp director, until 1947, when she retired...
...Later she became a librarian in the New York Public Library system...
...But Mailly and his young wife stood strongly among those who opposed them and fought for genuine American and democratic socialism...
...And it will long remain as the chief memorial of this lively and lovely woman...
...How Camp Tamiment grew out of the mind and heart of Bertha Mailly is such a complicated piece of history that it can never be completely told...
...She was born at LaGrange, Illinois, in 1869...
...Her family then moved to Chicago and Bertha grew up there, a bright, normal and intelligent Midwestern girl...
...She was an active and successful administrator in each field, but among her countless friends she was valued chiefly for her kindness, gentleness and genuine love of people...
...The lake was found and, together with a generous strip of real estate, it was purchased—and so Camp Tamiment was born...
...came on the market and under Mrs...
...The camp has now become a distinguished center of art and recreation...
...Unions began to buy beauty spots in the country and to erect lodges and cottages...
...William Mailly was a man of great energy and good sense...
...In the midst of these activities, she found time to meet and marry William H. Mailly...
...In thinking of her they will picture a charming and thoughtful friend rather than a successful promoter of good causes...
...Mailly would talk of those old ideological struggles...
...The building was purchased in 1917 and to this day remains the home of The New Leader and of the Tamiment Institute...
...but his influence and importance in her life was by no means ended with his death...
...It developed into a center for the arts, for the study of current events, history, philosophy and a wide range of other subjects...
...Mailly's first and longest-lasting outside interest was the Rand School of Social Science...
...and the public school system took over teaching the immigrants...
...Mailly was deep in a related project...
...the trade unions started their own educational projects...
...The Rand School became much more than a school for teaching Socialists...
...It was this brilliant experiment which gave Mrs...
...A fine old Richardsonesque building on E. 15th St...
...So many students flocked to its classrooms in a converted private house on E. 19th Street in New York City that larger quarters soon became necessary...
...Started in 1907, the school belonged to the period when it was taken for granted that the Socialist party had a period of boundless success before it...
...The school was founded to teach socialism and trade unionism, and to help the foreign-born master American speech and the elements of American life...
...Mountains and lakes were no longer exclusively for the well-to-do...
...Morris Berman, she set out from the ILGWU camp to find a lovely lake of which she had heard...
...In the 1920s the members of some trade unions were getting the idea that they had a right to vacations as well as other people...
...Unfortunately, her married life was cut short by Mr...
...When he was Executive Secretary of the Socialist party the so-called radical or left-wing Socialists were preparing the wav for Communism...
...The financial burdens connected with operating the Rand School imposed a heavy responsibility on Mrs...
...Its original purpose was simple...
...Many fine teachers and brilliant lecturers contributed their ability and reputation to the school, but through the years Mrs...
...Though her husband passed away 49 years before her death, in a very real sense he remained with her to the end...
...Mailly her fruitful idea...
...Mailly and her colleagues, but she was amazingly ingenious in devising financial strate-gems...
...Often, during her last years, Mrs...
...Mailly kept her hand on the tiller...
...In the beginning the organization which turned out to be her most brilliant success was not intended to be a money-raiser...
...With an old friend...
...Mailly's leadership the friends of the Rand School pulled in their belts and did what was necessary to raise the money to buy it...
Vol. 43 • September 1960 • No. 34
