A ROOM OF OUR OWN
Follette, Isabel Bacon La
"A Room of Our Own" Directed by Isabel Baron l,a Follette GREETINGS TO OUR READERS: You will rejoice with me that The PROGRESSIVE is to have a column edited by Isabel Bacon LaFollet/r. You will...
...naturally this is so...
...But something In me said 'Brace up, old girl, you must make good...
...I am netting letters, telephone culls, visits, and telegrams about my radio speech—a telegram even from West Virginia...
...Lately my diet has become a trifle monotonous, history ls too much about wars...
...What benefits have organized labor reaped from such actions...
...From "Some Folks Won't Work," by Clinch Calkins...
...La Toilette—do you think they would care to come...
...This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women...
...You will remember that for two years she was associate editor of LAFOLLETTE'S MAGAZINE and that her contributions relating to books, travel, education and the home were -very much- worth while reading...
...We all want to feci the way Rose Meyer did on the day after the Primary...
...And whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say...
...This personal experience of hers regarding the rights, or rather lack of rights, of free speech during war time, made Rose Meyer realize as never before how directly government and the officials of government affect each of us Individually...
...he could not maintain separate lodgings...
...To write a work of genius Is almost always a feat of prodigious difficulty, "But for women, I thought, looking at the empty shelves, these difficulties were infinitely more formidable...
...In the winter of 1928-1929 the company motorized the trucks, and he was out of a driving Job...
...Rang up Withrow, then went to Zanlow's...
...Morrow lias become a cleaning-woman...
...WE think that It would be interesting to have little sketches from time to time of various members of our group who stand out as leaders in their chosen field...
...Congratulations all around.—Jake and Rose...
...And people go hungrv because we have too much of ah kinds of foodstuffs...
...in real life she could hardly read, could scarcely spell, and was the property of her husband...
...Harcourt, Brace & Co...
...Cutting ceased...
...Five hundred a year stands for the power to contemplate, the lock on the door means the power to think for oneself...
...The Senator ;wid the Governor's wife had confidence In you -in don't disappoint them, as there are more common people voting than the other kind anyway.' It was the hardest thing 1 ever tackled, but I won a few votes I'm sure mo it was worth it...
...And fiction is like a spider's web, attached so lightly perhaps, but still attached to like at all four coiners...
...practically she is completely insignificant...
...Let's discuss them with each other in this "Room of Our Own...
...N. Y. 1930...
...Some of the most inspired words, some of the most profound thoughts in literature fall from her Hps...
...And let me wind up by saying just, one thing aboui our present depression...
...she is all but absent from history...
...Happy—that is not strong enough—neither is congratulations...
...lust think—we got Withrow (for Congress), Zantow (for the State Senate) and Keller (for the Assembly)—it's too good to believe...
...goes our home market...
...This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war...
...Each of us has her special interests...
...Also a piece about my broadcast...
...men go barefooted because we have too many shoes...
...Two thousand words to do what we like with...
...A scene on the battle field is more important than a scene in a shop—everywhere and more subtly the difference prevails...
...Ever since LAFOLLETTE'S MAGAZINE was combined with The PROGRESSIVE, I have been urging that a corner be allotted to these and like subjects of human interest...
...For those of you who have not seen (he little volume, may I try to give you a glimpse of it, borrowing from her words and using some of my own...
...Dear Friends: Just how to try to express myself I do not know...
...Incredible though It may sound, the Morrows, of whom in the course of time there had come to be nine, saved money...
...The way you all went on the honeymoon trip together was too cute for words...
...Use every effort to get out the vote in your locality, and we will succeed...
...Studied Archives Mis» Woolf went to the great British Museum to find what record women had left in its archives...
...No wonder the miners of Illinois think ii is high time to get a new president of the U. M. W. of A. There ls only one remedy for the present situation, and that, is for organized labor to break away from the "non-partisan" stuff and come out In the open and declare themselves for a party owned and controlled by the entire nation's tolling masses...
...I am happy that my daughter-in-law, with her many obligations, pow gladly undertakes this responsibility...
...Phil LaFolle/te...
...Not A Half Hour Women never have half an hour that they can call their own, complained Florence Nightingale...
...Even the baby's morning balh was set up with regard lo the best tradition...
...Hob-bins, Kiee...
...She dominates the lives of kings and conquerors...
...what's the good of your writing...
...Ought not education to bring out and fortify the differences rather than the similarities...
...many expressed the desire that we keep in touch with one another...
...If you ever get near Sauk City, be sure to stop and see Rose and Jake Meyer...
...But this creative power differs greatly from the creative power of men...
...Am sending you the Sauk paper which I think looks good...
...Women, says Miss Woolf, have sat indoors all these millions of years, so that by this time the very walls are permeated by their creative force, which has, indeed, so overcharged the capacity of bricks and mortar that it needs must harness itself to pens and brushes and business and politics...
...And most of all, a president of one of the biggest labor organizations In the United States, John L. Lewis, president of the United Mine Workers of America, rame out publirly, and in Ihe entire national public press, and stated that he would support Hoover, and if necessary he could awing the entire miners' vote for Hoover...
...Hope you had a nice rest and are feeling good...
...An Important Book It is obvious that the values of women differ very often from the values that, have been made by the other sex...
...The two youngest children are sick most of the time, and the older children stay home from school to care for them...
...such a column serve our purpose admirably...
...But, still we go to the polls and vote to rob "Paul to fix Peter...
...We were so happy on Wednesday we Just could not work so we made Ui« rounds to congratulate our men...
...Men go sore-footed all because we have too many automobiles, box cars and passenger cars...
...Faithful service and a change of times increased his wages to $25...
...Ever since she has been a leader in her community, and many of you in other parts of the state know her for her earnest enthusiasm and splendid capabilities...
...What do you think of Miss Woolf's Ideas...
...At the time Mrs, Morrow told her story, she was cleaning five days a week from eight ttinLil twelve and was expecting to be confined in April for her eighth child...
...Answer...
...She found various and sundry volumes about women but comparatively few by women...
...Hasn't that cut deep into our foreign markets, if not paralyzed them completely...
...Many of our friends have promised to cooperate...
...History shows that woman is imaginatively of the highest importance...
...She pervades poetry from cover to cover...
...Think of it...
...BELLE CASE LAFOL-LETTE...
...the father and his children pick it up...
...We want our entire Progressive slate to come through with a splendid majority...
...They moved into smaller quarters and gave up hot water and a bath...
...They buy no fuel...
...Roberts, Haas, Miss Johnson, Miss Young...
...If it is to be a Joint undertaking, we must depend upon each of you to make H a success...
...Do you agree with her...
...It would be a thousand pities if women wrote like men, or lived like men, or looked like men, for if two sexes are quite inadequate, how should we manage with one only...
...A fine example to set, eh...
...Think of it...
...WHEN it was suggested that we have a women's column in The Progressive, I leaped at the opportunity...
...In it she traces and discusses delightfully the history of women as writers —Margaret Cavendish, Aphra Behn, Jane Austen...
...Her real participation began, she says, when she was arrested and fined during the war because she expressed sympathy for a boy who dreaded facing the machine guns in France...
...So I hope you ran see why "A Room of Our Own" appealed so to me for The Progressive—a definite space that, belongs lo us, which will express our different points of view, which we may all use in common...
...It has, we believe, a great future...
...NEED PEOPLES' PARTY [Richmond, Ind., Oct...
...But let's have it more than a "woman's column," I said to myself...
...1 know, dear readers, you will appreciate the value and importance of this new stimulating feature, edited by Mrs...
...Let us hear from you + + + LITTLE STORIES OK UNEMPLOYMENT HENRY Morrow worked for the Boston Ice Company for twenty-eight years...
...For the remaining eight months of the year he delivered ice, earning $16 a week...
...25)—After reading the news article in The Progressive on page one as of Oct...
...Some will write about our home interests, some about our children, wine our political, educational artistic, social interests...
...1842...
...biography loo much about great men.....So long as you write what-you wish to write, that is all that matters...
...You know, friends, this same thing has happened time and time again away back in, oh, let's say...
...With enough room, so that they could put their children to bed away from the presumable din of hilarity and their phonograph, they entertained friends and strangers from the vicinity of their early home in Canada...
...Meyer's parents, and are the finest hosts you can Imagine...
...In the winter for four months he cut ice, earning thereby $12 a week...
...Are Fine Hosts Here is Rose Lltscher Meyer whom many of you know...
...Now then, all other foreign countries have got...
...I was told by several that's what made them go and vote so I feel happy, but it was hard to go lo Milwaukee In Bob's place...
...It ls not the novelty of her discoveries in the realm of "Woman" that impress us, but her stimulating analyses and fascinating insight and humor...
...They live in a beautiful old stone farmhouse which was built by Mr...
...It ls this broadcast she refers to in her letter...
...W. Stout...
...What, can the unemployed buy...
...Now Morrow has a temporary job driving a wagon for a box factory and Mrs...
...Isn't that a beautiful picture for our present administration to gaze upon...
...She Ls known for miles around for her active part in the fight for good government...
...Re-adjustment as Cnl calls it...
...One child sleeps on two'chalrs, three children sleep in one bed, two in another and the baby in a clothes-basket...
...She was born in 1884 in Sauk City, and from girlhood has been a farmer...
...Our Held Is unlimited—"pens and brushes and business and politics...
...18lh, under heading of "Capital Unions Angry at Hoover" proves very satisfactorily what I have strlved to prove in my former articles...
...Although their savings went in the first winter's lay-off, they never have yet run into debt...
...One remembers that these webs are spun not by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering human beings, and are attached to grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in...
...Anci if anyhedy can tell me where there ls a bright future to coze upon by merely staying in our old foot tracks, I have merely wasted words and time in writing this article.—J5...
...Made Own lee But in 1924 the Boston Ice Company began to make its ice...
...There Ls no better way to acquaint you with her than to quote from this letter which she wrote us just after the Primary...
...And immediately my thoughts flew to Virginia Woolf's captivating little book "A Room of One's Own...
...Boh III told us Phil got the most votes so he is going to he governor...
...Then along comes our industrial master minds, cutting wages, and laying off men, all because we have an abundance of everything and cur-whack...
...Rather than run up bills they do without...
...So when I ask you to earn money and have a room of your own, I am a.sking you to live in the presence of reality, an invigorating life, it would appear, whether one can impart it or not...
...she was debarred from walking trips or little Journeys to France—such as :ame to Keats or Tennyson or Carlyslc: the world said with a guffaw, "Write...
...Our present administration has even catered to the present depression by cutting wages and laying off men, the very thing that Herbert Hoover called our great industrial leaders to the White House a year ago, and warned them not to cut wages and not to lay off men...
...then to the Governor's but his son got the congratulations there...
...Over this long period I have sensed an intimate, personal friendship with our readers...
...Her pin money depended on the good will of her father...
...I find myself saying briefly and prosaically that it is much more important to be oneself than anything else...
...For we have too much likeness as it is, and if an explorer should come back and bring word of other sexes looking through the branches of other trees at other skies, nothing would be of greater service to humanity...
...On the Monday before the primary- she spoke over the Capital Times radio station, and made such a remarkable success of it that Bob insisted that she go to Milwaukee and take the time that was allotted to him over the Milwaukee Journal station...
...I shall continue to write current notes now and then...
...Canadian girls in service in Boston brought their beau.s here on Thursday night, proud of this background, for the things were clean and neat and things went by ritual of respectability...
...Many of you have doubtless read this charming work of Miss Woolf's, which resulted from an essay she was asked to give on "women and fiction...
...and what preparation has been made by either of the two old parties to forestall the re-occurrence of the same old story...
...In the first place to have a room of her own, let alone a quiet room or a sound-proof room, was out of the question, unless her parents were exceptionally rich or very noble, evn up to the beginning of the nineteenth century...
...Men, women and children go ragged, all because we have too many clothes...
...They respected themselves immensely and well they might...
...One of our great, troubles of tooay is that too many of us rend the funnies and not enough concerning our i" it welfare...
...Would not...
...How Jane Austen accomplished what she did was surprising, writes her nephew, for she had no separate study to repair to, and most of the work must have been done in the general sitting room, subject to all kinds of casual interruptions...
...IT this suits, let me know what time and day...
...And still dividends soar sky high while men and women walk the streets...
...in fact, she was the slave of any boy whose parents forced a ring upon her finger...
...You know Calvin Coolidge calls it a "re-adjustment," This thing of having conflabs with our great industrial leaders and master minds is all the bunk...
...In the past few months many of us met and were associated in the political campaign in Wisconsin...
...Morrow was out of work from four to six months every winter, except for such substitute and casual labor as he could pick up...
...Emily Bronte...
...On the first of January 1931, it will be twenty-two years since LAFOLLETTE'S MAGAZJNE was founded...
...They bought Liberty bonds...
...I We had this parly and It was a grand success...
...Everywhere you go people are so excited and happy about the results...
...I want to have a chicken dinner for ^11 the girls who worked in the women's headquarters—Mrs...
...BE SUKE TO VOTE Don't forget Tuesday, November 4, Election Day...
...H».«n't our present, administration proved that by letting their contracts of various natures out, to contractors of non-union latxn...
...the same thing we have, unemployment, haven't, they...
...Now if you can come out I'd surely he glad to have you bill let me know a few days ahead...
...The PROGRESSIVE, which is already nearly a year old, has been wonderfully successful in achieving its purpose...
...Haven't I always stated that there ls absolutely nothing left in either of the two old major parties for the tolling ma.ws...
...And one must conclude that It would be a thousand pities if it were hindered or wasted, for it was won by centuries of the most drastic discipline, &nd there ls nothing to take its place...
...And so, requests Miss Woolf, give woman a room of her own and five hundred a year, let her speuk her mind...
Vol. 1 • November 1930 • No. 48
