Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission Part 74

A copy of this resolution, under date of May 2, was sent to the secretary of the local company, and the following reply received:

ST. LOUIS, _May 26, 1903_.

MADAM PRESIDENT: I am directed by President Francis to inform you that the resolutions adopted by the board at a called meeting on May 2, 1903, with reference to partic.i.p.ation in the award system, has been reported upon by the director of exhibits, Mr. Skiff, who states that his division has taken notice of the resolution, and will, in due time, prepare a list of those exhibits which are in whole or in part the labor of women.

Respectfully, W.B. STEVENS, _Secretary_.

At a meeting of the board, held in the Administration Building March 1, 1904, in response to a call by the president for a report from the committee on awards, Mrs. Hanger, chairman of the committee, said:

This committee was named by Mrs. Manning after our last meeting, as follows: Mrs. Hanger, Mrs. Knott, Miss Egan, Mrs. Porter, and Mrs. Hunsicker. I happened to be here in January, and asked Miss Egan to go with me to see Mr. Skiff. We waited two or three hours and saw Mr. Skiff about fifteen minutes. It had been said there were 200 jurors to be appointed, and we would only have the appointing of 35 or 40 of them. He a.s.sured us that the lists could not be made out as the exhibits were not installed. He gave us some instructions in regard to the selection of jurors, saying that they must stand for intellectual ability; it did not matter how many people applied for appointment, we must be governed by that.

I had a letter from Mrs. Manning suggesting that I try again. I wrote to Mr. Stevens and he communicated with Mr. Skiff, and later repeated to me the same thing. We have had quite a number of names suggested, and I have written to the other members of the committee asking them to come here as soon as the exhibits are in place. I hope we can hold that meeting very early, but until after that meeting I do not feel that we have anything to report.

In response to questions from members of the board as to whether Mr.

Skiff was to be understood to mean that there were but 35 or 40 things to be exhibited at the exposition which were made in whole or in part by women, Mrs. Hanger said that Mr. Skiff said the board "would only have the appointing of 35 or 40 women--that it was a matter of expense and that they must a.s.sist in keeping it down."

This decision was a source of great disappointment to the board, as it has been shown most conclusively that scarcely anything is manufactured that women do not at least share in the production or process of its manufacture. The act of Congress stated that there should be appointed by this board a member of every jury judging "any work that may have been produced in whole or in part by female labor," and the members were averse to an abridgment of the authority vested in them by the wording of the act.

Expositions are a natural and useful factor to women in that by their means new avenues of employment that are constantly being opened to them may be collectively demonstrated, and it can be shown in which of these they may share and excel or be most successful, and statistics may be compiled showing the proportion of wages that women receive for their share of labor performed equivalent to that of men, and other helpful information and facts procured which are not easily ascertained by other means.

The Departments of Machinery, Electricity, Transportation Exhibits, Forestry, Mines and Metallurgy, Fish and Game, and Physical Culture were not given representation by the Exposition Company on the group juries appointed by the board of lady managers, and while it is undoubtedly true that all of these fields have been invaded by women as a.s.sistant workers, yet evolution and progress in these lines are necessarily slow where their opportunities have not been commensurate with those of men and more congenial employment is undoubtedly afforded in education, art, liberal arts, manufactures, agriculture, horticulture, anthropology, and social economy.

The "Special Rules and Regulations providing for an International Jury and Governing the System of Making Awards," as applicable to the board of lady managers, read as follows:

The total number of jurors in the international jury of awards shall be approximately 2 per cent of the total number of exhibitors, but not in excess of that number, and each nation having fifty exhibitors or more shall be ent.i.tled to representation on the jury. The number of jurors for each art or industry, and for each nationality represented, shall, as far as practicable, be proportional to the number of exhibitors and the importance of the exhibits.

Of this selected body of international jurors, three graded juries will be const.i.tuted: One, the general organization of group juries; two, department juries; three, a superior jury.

Each group jury shall be composed of jurors and alternates.

The Louisiana Purchase Exposition Company shall certify to the board of lady managers the numbers of groups in which the exhibits have been produced in whole, or in part, by female labor; to each of the groups so certified the board of lady managers may appoint one juror and one alternate to that juror; such appointees, when confirmed, shall have the privileges and be amenable to the regulations for other jurors and alternates.

Nominations made by chiefs of departments, and by the board of lady managers, shall be submitted to the director of exhibits, and when approved he shall submit them to the president of the Exposition Company.

The nomination of group jurors and alternates, when approved by the president of the exposition, shall be transmitted to the president of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission for the approval of that body.

The work of the group juries shall begin September 1, 1904, and shall be completed not later than twenty days thereafter.

Examinations or other work not completed in the time specified herein will be transferred to the department jury.

Each group shall carefully examine all exhibits pertaining to the group to which it has been a.s.signed. It shall also consider and pa.s.s upon the merits of the collaborators whose work may be conspicuous in the design, development, or construction of the exhibits.

The jury shall prepare separate lists, presenting the names of such exhibitors as are out of compet.i.tion; awards recommended to exhibitors in order of merit; awards recommended to collaborators in order of merit; a report giving an account of the most important objects exhibited, and a general account of the group as a whole.

Each department jury shall be composed of the chairmen and vice-chairmen of the group juries of the respective departments, with one member of the directory of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Company, to be named by the president of the company, and one person appointed by the board of lady managers.

Each department jury shall complete its organization and begin its work on September 20, 1904.

The duties of these juries shall be to consider carefully and review the reports of the group juries; to harmonize any differences that may exist between the recommendations of the several group juries as to awards, and to adjust all awards recommended so that they will be consistent with the rules and regulations.

No more than ten days may be devoted to this work, and when the awards recommended by the group juries have been adjusted the department juries shall, through the chiefs of their respective departments, submit their findings to the director of exhibits, who shall, within five days after the receipt thereof, certify the same to the superior jury, including such work as may have been left incomplete by the department jury.

The officers and members of the superior jury shall be as follows: President, the president of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Company; first vice-president, the director of exhibits; second vice-president, a citizen of the United States to be named by the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission. The members of the jury shall further consist of the commissioners-general of the nine foreign countries occupying with exhibits the largest amount of s.p.a.ce in the exhibit palaces, the chairmen and first vice-chairmen of the department juries, the chiefs of the exhibit departments, and one person appointed by the board of lady managers.

The superior jury shall determine finally and fully the awards to be made to exhibitors and collaborators in all cases that are formally presented for its consideration.

For the purpose of installation and review of exhibits and the conduct of the system of awards a cla.s.sification was adopted which was divided into fifteen departments, which were divided into 144 groups, which in turn were subdivided into 807 cla.s.ses. They will show that while many of the groups and cla.s.ses are not suited to the requirements of woman's work, yet all products of female labor can be properly cla.s.sed in these departments, and that there are extremely few occupations in which man is engaged in which woman can not and does not also work.

The list of appointments of group and department jurors appointed by the board of lady managers is given in the final report of the chairman of the committee on awards.

At a meeting held on May 9, 1904, the committee to present nominations for superior jury announced the names of Mrs. Eliza Eads How, Mrs.

Philip N. Moore, Mrs. Thomas N. Neidringhaus, and Miss Mary E. Perry. On ballot the result was the election of Mrs. Philip N. Moore, of St.

Louis, with Mrs. Eliza Eads How, of the same city, as alternate.

In order to arrive at some conclusion in regard to the representation of women at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, and to gain some knowledge of the extent of her partic.i.p.ation in exhibits, the following questions were addressed to the jurors appointed by the board of lady managers.

They were not designed to be more than suggestive, as, of course, in some instances hardly more than one or two would apply to a given department. They were based on the rules and regulations, however, by which awards were issued.

The Department of ---- at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, in which you were a juror in group No. ----, contained ---- groups and ---- cla.s.ses within the groups. Can you give an approximate estimate of the proportional number of exhibits by women contained in these cla.s.ses?

Please give the nature of the exhibits by women (or articles exhibited by them) in your department, group, and cla.s.ses.

Which, in your opinion, were the most striking exhibits by women in your department?

What advancement did they show in the progress of women in any special industry, art, science, etc.?

What proportion, or, approximately, what number, of exhibits were installed by foreign women?

Was any display made that would lead you to think that women were now capable of executing unusual or more creditable work than they accomplished eleven years ago (at the time of the Chicago Exposition) or at any time in the past?

In what way did their work (or exhibits) differ from their work (or exhibits) of the past?

Would their work, as shown at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, where it was placed on equal terms of comparison with that of men, prove helpful or suggestive to those interested in the advancement and success of women's work? If so, how?

Was the work of women as well appreciated when placed by the side of that of men?

Would the results have been better if their work had been separately exhibited?

If you have attended previous expositions, please compare the exhibits of the work of women shown in them with those shown at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition.

Were any manufacturers asked (to your knowledge) to state the percentage of woman's work which entered into the manufacture of their special exhibits?

Were they shown in such manner as to indicate in any way, or to enable you to distinguish, which part had been performed by women, which by men?

In your opinion, what proportion of the work was performed by women, as compared with that performed by men, in the groups and cla.s.ses that came under your supervision?

What proportion of women received awards in your group or cla.s.ses?

Was any new or useful or distinctive invention or process shown as the work of woman, or special work of their art or handicraft exhibited in your department; if so, please specify.