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