Disloyal Mothers and Scurrilous Citizens

Kathleen Kennedy

Description

Examines women's citizenship and its relationship to the early 20th-century state

Kennedy's unique study explores the arrests, trials, and defenses of women charged under the Wartime Emergency Laws passed soon after the U.S. entered WWI. These trials became important arenas in which women's relationships and obligations to national security were contested and defined.

Introduction

Chapter One: Loyal Mothers and Virtuous Citizens: Woman's Citizenship on the Eve of the Armageddon

Chapter Two: Motherhood and Subversion: The Case of Kate Richards O'Hare

Chapter Three: Liberty with Strings: The Case of Emma Goldman

Chapter Four: The Venom of a Bolshevik Woman: The Case of Rose Pastor Stokes

Chapter Five: Disorderly Conduct: Subversion and the Political Woman

Chapter Six: "Conduct Unbecoming": Subversion and the Professional Woman

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Sujets

• Women's Studies
• HISTORY
• Histoire
• General officer
• History of the United States
• Gender
• Politics
• History of the Americas
• General
• United States
• American History

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 22 septembre 1999
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253028495
• Langue: English

Extrait

DISLOYAL MOTHERS AND SCURRILOUS CITIZENS
Disloyal Mothers and Scurrilous Citizens
WOMEN AND SUBVERSION DURING WORLD WAR I
Kathleen Kennedy
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS Bloomington and Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, IN 47404-3797 USA
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© 1999 by Kathleen Kennedy
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in anyform or by any means, electronic or mechanical, includingphotocopying and recording, or by any information storage andretrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.The Association of American University Presses' Resolution onPermissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimumrequirements of American National Standard for InformationSciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kennedy, Kathleen, date Disloyal mothers and scurrilous citizens: women and subversion during World War I / Kathleen Kennedy. p.   cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-253-33565-5 (cl. : alk. paper) 1. World War, 1914-1918—Women—United States. 2. Subversive activities— United States. 3. World War, 1914-1918—Protest movements—United States. 4. Political persecution—United States—History—20th century. I. Title. D639.W7T69    1999 940.3'082—dc21    98-55989
1 2 3 4 5 04 03 02 01 00 99
For Lori and Denise with love
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
1. Loyal Mothers and Virtuous Citizens: Women’s Citizenship on the Eve of the Armageddon
2. Motherhood and Subversion: The Case of Kate Richards O’Hare
3. Liberty with Strings: The Case of Emma Goldman
4. The Venom of a Bolshevik Woman: The Case of Rose Pastor Stokes
5. Disorderly Conduct: Subversion and the Political Woman
6. “Conduct Unbecoming”: Subversion and the Professional Woman
CONCLUSION
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Throughout my life, I have been blessed with wonderful teachers. AtAusable Valley Central High, I learned the art of historical research fromMiss Mary Haney and from my father, John Kennedy. At the StateUniversity of New York, Plattsburgh, I developed a passion for historyand women’s studies in classes taught by Anita Rapine, Carol Leonard,and Harriette Walker. At the University of California, Irvine, I learnedhow to think more creatively and critically. I am grateful to my dissertationadvisor, Jon Wiener, and to Amy Stanley, Leslie Rapine, JamesGiven, and Spencer Olin for their criticisms and encouragement. AtIrvine I also found the support of friends and colleagues who made mygraduate career a true pleasure. In particular I would like to thank EllenBroody, Joan Aries, Robert Sieber, Bill Billingsly, Anne Marie Scholtz,Linda Peterson, Scott Howlett, Kyle Cuordileone, Jennifer Reed, AnneWalthall, Sharon Ullman, and Robert Moeller.
As they always do with such studies, research librarians played acentral role in this project. In particular, I would like to thank theresearch staffs at the University of California, Irvine, the SwarthmoreCollege Peace Collection, the Tamiment Institute of Labor History, theNational Archives, the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, the Universityof Texas at Dallas and Western Washington University. The Universityof Texas at Dallas and Western Washington University provided financialassistance during this project.
Frances Early has been a constant source of support throughout mycareer and has on many occasions shared her research. She is a model ofa feminist scholar and was especially generous to a new colleague. I alsowant to thank Ruth Alexander and Sally Miller for reading parts of thismanuscript. This work has also benefited from many anonymous readerswho have offered their criticism through the years. I would also liketo thank Michael Wilson, Julie Reuben, and Linda Williamson for theirsupport.
The editorial staff at Indiana University Press, in particular, Joan Catapano,Jane Lyle, and Michael Lundell, guided this manuscript throughthe various publication processes with care and diligence. Kathy Babbittsaved me from many embarrassing sins against the English languageand offered insightful comments about the manuscript’s content andargument. I appreciate the care and interest that my manuscript receivedwhile in their hands.
I am fortunate to come from a family that values education and that encouraged me from a young age to seek knowledge. My father, JohnKennedy, and my aunt, Mary Patricia Kennedy, both extraordinary teachers,have been models of professionalism throughout my career. Mymother, Mary Kennedy, has kindly tolerated her daughter’s decision tostudy and live thousands of miles from home. I know how difficult ithas been for her to let me go, and I am grateful for the fact that she stillprovides me with a home. My sisters, Colleen Kennedy and MaureenKennedy Badger, have been constant boosters and have even agreed tobuy this book.
Finally, I want to thank my family and friends here in Bellingham. Mycolleagues and students at Western Washington have provided me witha place at which I love to teach. I am especially grateful to Nancy vanDeaden, Danish, Alan Galley, Midori Takagi, and Chris Fridayfor their advice on this project. My immediate family has, of course,meant everything to me—Eliot for demanding that I take him to thebeach every morning rain or shine and Rigel for leaving his special markon this project.
This work is dedicated to two women who have changed my life andwho, for different reasons, I love very much. Lori has been a friendand colleague for almost two decades. In that time we have argued aboutfeminist theory, taken motorcycle tours of NYC, and have just hung inthere. Denise Seibert simply continues to take my breath away andprovides the most important reason for getting up every morning.
INTRODUCTION
On the eve of American participation in World War I, Anna Strunsky and William English Walling exchanged a series of angry letters. Walling, a socialist who supported Wilson’s war plans, denounced Strunsky’s antiwar position as Quakerism, warning her that her stance constituted treason:
Of course I think your proposal to attack in the back those who are giving up their lives for democracy, peace, and anti-militarism is criminal to the last degree. But the world is moving in spite of all you do to help the militarists and reactionaries. You are their accomplice and neither I nor mankind, nor the genuine idealists and revolutionists of the world will ever forget or forgive what your kind has said and done in this great hour. If I fight it will be against the traitors to internationalism—I trust you will not be among them. 1
Strunsky’s tone was mild in comparison. She admonished Walling for trivializing her position. “A statement does not offer a condition,” she noted, “you cannot turn me into a [Quaker] by saying so.” Her anti-war stance, she argued, no more constituted Quakerism than his pro-war position made him “cruel and bloodthirsty.” Rather, she based her opposition to the war on the same principles that in 1905 had led her into the streets of Petrograd to support Russian workers who were protesting the tsar. The present crisis, she reminded Walling, had led many rational individuals to hyperbole and to politically dubious positions. She hoped that he would not be among them. Once the present crisis was over Strunsky anticipated a reconciliation, telling Walling that he would “understand me as well as I understand you and then we will laugh together.” 2
In themselves Walling’s recriminations against Strunsky were unremarkable. Many pro-war socialists bitterly denounced their former colleagues, who often responded in kind. 3 But Walling and Strunsky were married. Their letters provide a personal glimpse into the effects of wartime political culture and at the same time reveal the social and political factors that fueled their argument. Strunsky and Walling were from two different worlds that were separated by gender, ethnicity, and class. Their marriage, like that of their friends Rose Pastor Stokes and Graham Stokes, symbolized the partnership between upper-class altruistic reform and working-class politics that characterized the socialism of American intellectuals. Yet, when the war came, both marriages fractured along class, ethnic, and gender lines. 4
Gender and ethnicity separated Strunsky and Walling; so too did each one’s conception of citizenship. Walling argued that Strunsky had forfeited her citizenship by opposing the war. Defining her as a traitor both to her adopted nation and to socialism, Walling warned Strunsky that she would never be forgiven by the “true revolutionists of the world.” Like other pro-war socialists, Walling believed that Wilson’s war programs would promote industrial democracy and further the programs of constructive and loyal socialists like himself. 5 Yet, the ferocity and character of Waiting’s attack suggests that he also accepted an important tenet of wartime political culture—that opposition to the war was not only un-American but also “criminal to the last degree.”
In contrast to WallingR