DEATH OF MRS- GORDON NORRIE

...They each believed that it was the duty of "political leaders" to inform the people as to the facts and advise them as to policies, and that in the long run popular opinion thus informed would represent the nearest practicable approach to correct judgments...

...Was Suffrage Leader WHEN the struggle for Prohibition really arose, she became an ardent Prohibitionist, speaking, organizing and working untiringly until Prohibition became an accomplished fact...

...After the Prohibition amendment and the Prohibition law were adopted, Mrs...

...It is related that such was the impression Mrs...

...Norrie almost daily-over campaign matters, and it was through the friendship thus formed that I came to realize and appreciate her wonderful qualities as an individual as well as her great ability as a political leader...

...she never played upon the prejudices of the people, racial, religious or otherwise, in order to gain their support...

...Belief in Dcmocrcy It WOULD be hard to conceive of two people starting life under more opposite conditions, or reaching maturity through more different environments than Mrs...

...A closer or more ideal relation never existed between mother and child, yet such was the great spirit of Mrs...

...Her husband, a former banker, never recovered from the shock of her death, and passed away a few days following her death...

...Norrie was much more#than a Progressive leader...

...In'the drawing room afterwards a liquer was served, and Inter, brandy and sodas for those who wanted them...

...Her methods were never spectacular...

...So keen was her intellect and so deep her sympathy with the problems of the common man and woman, that to talk with her upon these subjects was always inspiring...

...Sought Welfare of Others MRS...

...The family home in Washington Square in New York City, occupied by the< ir.r.iily for more than fifty years, was one of^ the fashionable houses where much entertaining was done during Mrs...

...Had she been spared to make these little booklets universally available to the youth, and to the women of the country, as she had hoped, she would I verily believe have worked a revolution in public opinion, anel consequently in the attitude of the Government toward all these subjects...

...But Mrs...

...Norrie's youth and young womanhood...

...Norrie belonged during her earlier life...

...Each believed fundamentally in democracy...

...Norrie as a model...

...Norie was not as widely known as some other women leaders of this generation, was due entirely to her own modesty, and her purpose to submerge her own individuality in the cause which she was promoting...

...William B. Morgan, one of New York's old and aristocratic families...

...Her own personal sorrow only inspired her to work harder for the happiness and welfare of others...

...Norrie and the late Senator La Follette...

...Norrie had made, not only upon her own boy but on his student friends as well, that the latter often asked young Norrie to write his mother for her opinion on matters in which the students were deeply interested...

...I thought nothing about it, because I was accustomed to it, not only in my own home hut in all the homes I yisited...

...and Mts...

...Norrie became in the course of a few yesrs, a recognized champion of those ideas which her "set" looked down upon with disfavor or even contempt...

...She depended upon the power of Truth...

...during dinner there was wine, two or three kinds perhaps...

...That Mrs...

...Norrie's life came to her a few years ago when her son, then a student at Princeton, met a sudden death in an automobile accident...

...In 1924 she announced herself as a supporter , of La Follette and Wheeler on the Progressive platform, «nd drew to her assistance, among others, large numbers of the women with whom she had been associated in the Woman Suffrage campaign...

...She availed herself of none of the privileges of grief...

...Educating the Voters UP TO the days cf her last sickness she was engaged, as head of the New York Federation of Progressive Women in New York City, in producing and distributing a series of pamphlets or primers, dealing by question and answer with the most pressing political and eonomic questions of our time...

...Add to this the most scrupulous integrity and diligence in the discharge of their duties on the part of all public officials, and both believed that the problems of government, in our country at least, could be satisfactorily solved...

...Norrie gives a hint of the social customs with which she was familiar from childhood: "At our dinner table, cocktails and highhalls were served...

...Norrie was quick to bring home to the members of her class the duty to support this law if they expected other laws to be enforced, the enforcement of which was necessary to their own protection...

...The great tragedy of Mrs...

...In an interview which she gave to "The Hostess" some months before her death, Mrs...

...Her -public activities were not bounded by the lines of race, party or creed...

...Her parents were Mr...

...Each believed and stood for the right of the people to shape their own government according to their own ideas...

...Reach the people with the Truth," she said, "and they can be trusted to do what is right...

...Norrie said: "Orderliness in public life goes back to orderliness in public officials...

...Here as a devoted wife and mother, and hostess to a large circle of loving friends she was at her best...

...These primers al in detail with all questions of conservation, iir foreign policy, our economic system, indus-relations, public ownership and the like...

...Yet fundamentally their conception of the functions of government was the same...

...Norrie was by birth and breeding an aristocrat, but in her manner of living and in her interest and activities, she was in the best sense of the word, a democrat...

...i have never seen a clearer exposition of thr-subjrcts she' has thus discussed by question and answer, than she condensed into these primers...

...There can be no law or order until there is an end to corruption of government in places both high and low...

...In the same interview from which I have previously quoted, Mrs...

...she made no appeal to the mob...

...So it was with Woman Suffrage...

...Norrie that her public-activities were increased, rather than lessened, by the death of her son...

...Born in 1869, she grew up during a period in the life of the Nation when the idea of Prohibition, Woman Suffrage, and such political measures as the Direct Primary, Referendum and Recall, as well as much labor legislation which is today common in nearly all the states, were the subjects for jest or ridicule, if considered at all by the "set" to whkh Mr...

...She opened the headquarters for women in the same building in which the headquarters of the La Follette and Wheeler campaign for the New England states was opened, and throughout that campaign, from early morning until late at night, except when ^he was away speaking, she was in attendance at her headquarters with a host of assistants and women workers, conducting an able and effective campaign for La Follette and Wheeler It was my privilege during those month-meet and confer with Mrs...

...Norrie threw herself wholeheartedly into that movement and was recognized throughout the eastern part of the country, at least, as one of the best known and most effective workers and organizers for equal suffrage...

...Neither had any patience with the recent r^igh-brow notion that an "honest dictator" or a "benevolent despot" could or would in the long run govern a people better than they would govern themselves...

...Gordon Norrie, which occurred in New York City a few weeks ago, the Progressive cause lost one of its great leaders...

...If I had the power to paint a composite picture of all that was best and most attractive in the characters of American women of today, I should wish to have before me the character of Mrs...

...Yet out of these surroundings, driven only by her own keen logic, quick intelligence and an all embracing sympathy, Mrs...

...NORRIE found time in the midst of her many public activities to manage a delightful home in the City of New York, as well as one in the country...

...They each believed in the right of the people to be wrong and expected them to make mistakes...