Saturday, May 7, 2011

1870 Mother's Day Proclamation, 1908 Founding, Funny Thoughts

-----Original Message-----

From: Ed Pearl

Sent: Sunday, May 11, 2008 7:38 AM

 

1870 Mother's Day Proclamation, 1908 Founding, Funny Thoughts

 

Mother's Day began with Julia Ward Howe (Battle Hymn of the Republic), who

nursed the wounded during the American Civil War. In 1870 she started a

crusade to institute a Mother's Day as a Day for Peace. Here is her Mothers

Day proclamation.

 

Mother's Day Proclamation - 1870

 

by Julia Ward Howe

 

Arise then...women of this day!

Arise, all women who have hearts!

Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!

 

Say firmly:

"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,

Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,

For caresses and applause.

Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn

All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.

We, the women of one country,

Will be too tender of those of another country

To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

 

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with

Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!

The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."

Blood does not wipe our dishonor,

Nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil

At the summons of war,

Let women now leave all that may be left of home

For a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means

Whereby the great human family can live in peace...

Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,

But of God -

 

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask

That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,

May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient

And the earliest period consistent with its objects,

To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,

The amicable settlement of international questions,

The great and general interests of peace.

 

***

 

http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/84985/?page=1

 

Was It Easier Being a Mother in 1908?

 

By Marilyn Gardner,

Christian Science Monitor:  May 10, 2008.

 

On the first Mother's Day 100 years ago, moms had a tough -- but

rewarding -- job, just as they do today.

Motherhood ranks as one of the hardest jobs to do, yet one of the easiest to

romanticize.

 

This Sunday, May 11, as families shower mothers with cards, gifts, and

superlatives, they will be part of an observance that had its humble

beginnings 100 years ago. On Sunday, May 10, 1908, simple church services in

Grafton, W.Va., and Philadelphia honored the nation's mothers. A bill

introduced in the US Senate that year failed to establish an official

Mother's Day, but it set the stage for a successful measure in 1914.

 

With their tightly laced corsets, long skirts, heavy shoes, and upswept

hair, the mothers of 1908 bear little physical resemblance to their

counterparts in 2008, dressed in shorts, Spandex, and sneakers. But as

today's busy mothers savor their holiday, some might think longingly of

simpler times, before women spoke of "juggling" or "balancing" work and

family. They might even be tempted to idealize mothers of a century ago,

whose serene images grace family photo albums.

 

But wait. "It's not a time to be romanticized," says Stephanie Coontz, a

historian and author of "Marriage: A History." "Mothers in 1908 spent less

time mothering than they do today. Even in the middle classes, they spent

much less time with their kids than we would have imagined."

 

One reason for this time deficit involves work. "Most families needed

several wage earners," Ms. Coontz says. "Women took in boarders, did sewing

at home, cleaning, and all sorts of jobs that weren't counted as jobs on the

Census but were time-consuming."

 

A photo from that era shows a mother balancing a baby on her lap while she

assembles cigarettes at her kitchen table. Two other children stand nearby.

 

Even mothers without paid employment labored endlessly doing housework. In

1908, a New York settlement worker estimated that the average woman, even in

middle-class families, spent 40 hours a week just cleaning and shopping.

Laundry was an arduous, two-day task, washing one day and ironing the next.

Wood and coal stoves required tending and cleaning.

 

In 1908, Hoover introduced the electric suction sweeper, revolutionizing

housecleaning. "It'll sell itself if we can get the ladies to try it," Mr.

Hoover said. Assuming, of course, that the ladies had electricity. A

majority of women still lived on farms. Until the New Deal Rural

Electrification program was implemented in the 1930s, electricity was

unavailable to huge sections of the country.

 

Although the birthrate was falling in the early 1900s, women still bore an

average of 3.5 children. Farm women averaged closer to five.

 

The mothers of 1908, like their counterparts today, received advice from

pediatricians. Emmett Holt, author of "The Care and Feeding of Children,"

was the Dr. Spock of his era, Coontz says. His advice to women: Don't pick

babies up when they cry, and do not breast-feed. And a noted psychologist,

Dr. J.B. Watson, cautioned against using pacifiers or indulging in displays

of affection. He wrote, "When you are tempted to pet your child, remember

that mother love is a dangerous instrument."

 

Historians warn against romanticizing marriages of the early 20th century,

when women still had to wed out of economic dependence. Husbands had the

final say about domestic decisions and controlled family income. A mother

could not be the natural guardian of her children unless they were

illegitimate.

 

In the early 1900s, about 10 percent of families were single-parent

households, partly because of death and partly because of a high rate of

abandonment. "A lot of women were living apart from their husbands," says

Steven Mintz, a historian at Columbia University.

 

Despite the challenges, Coontz does not suggest that there were no happy

families. "If you had a husband who was a good person as well as a good

provider, you were fortunate," she says. "If you were a wealthier mother in

the city, you probably had a nanny and a housekeeper. And if you were in a

small town, we might be envious of the neighborly interactions. It was a

time when people still sat on front porches and did a lot of visiting."

 

Even so, Professor Mintz says, "Life was tough in ways we don't appreciate."

Life expectancy was 51. Infant mortality was high. Most women could not

vote.

 

In 1907, Laura Clarke Rockwood wrote poignantly in The Craftsman magazine

about the need to simplify housekeeping: "This mother of to-day hurries from

kitchen to nursery and over the other parts of the house, performing as best

she can the many home duties of our times. But she is so overwearied in the

doing of it all that the deep well of mother love which should overflow,

flooding the world with happiness and cheer, runs well nigh dry at times."

 

As one solution, Mrs. Rockwood proposed moving meal preparation out of the

home: "There should be food kitchens easily accessible to every home where

cooked foods can be bought cheaply because of consolidation, and delivered

hot to our homes with promptness and regularity in pneumatic tubes perhaps,

or by whatever means the master mind shall decide is the cheapest and the

best."

 

Her pneumatic tubes remain a dream. But cooks of 2008 have an alternative.

It's called "takeout" and "home delivery."

 

Two months before the first Mother's Day observances, President Theodore

Roosevelt addressed 200 delegates who gathered at the White House for the

first International Congress on the Welfare of the Child, organized by the

National Mothers' Congress.

 

Speaking of "the supreme dignity, the supreme usefulness of motherhood," he

said, "The successful mother, the mother who does her part in rearing and

training aright the boys and girls who are to be the men and women of the

next generation, is of greater use to the community, and occupies, if she

only would realize it, a more honorable, as well as a more important,

position than any successful man in it."

 

A century later, his lofty idealism might serve as a fitting tribute to

mothers everywhere this Sunday as they celebrate -- simply or lavishly -- a

day that is theirs alone.

 

***

 

From: isra791@aol.com

Sent: Friday, May 09, 2008 5:32 PM

 

Funny Thoughts #177

 

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"I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great

ordeal of meeting me is another matter."-- Sir Winston Churchill

          ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"The key to being a good manager is keeping the people who hate me away

from those who are still undecided."-- Casey Stengel

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Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.-- Mark

Twain

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"The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you've got it

made."

-- Jean Giraudoux

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"Remember: You don't stop laughing because you grow old, You grow old

because you stop laughing."

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"A good wife always forgives her husband when she's wrong."  ---Milton Berle

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"Those who say that money doesn't buy happiness, just don't know where to

shop!"

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"It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech."

-- Mark Twain

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"My wife thinks I'm too nosy. At least that's what she keeps scribbling in

her diary." -Drake Sather

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