Women's Rights (11-30-1923)

Feminism was in the news today, when five hundred women attended a conference of the National Women's Rights Party.  They met at the Rush Street mansion of Ganna Walska.

Walska was one of those people who were famous for being famous.  Born in Poland in 1887, she was currently married to her fourth husband, Chicago industrialist Harold McCormick.  Harold's money was financing her dubious career as an opera singer--a scenario that Orson Welles admitted copying in "Citizen Kane."

At the meeting, a number of NWRP speakers outlined the discrimination that women suffered in America.  The laws of practically every state treated them as inferior to men.

Ohio was one example.  Women in that state could not become taxi drivers or railway crossing guards.  Nor could they find employment in bowling alleys, bars, or Turkish baths.  They weren't even allowed to shine shoes.

If anything, the problems became worse when a woman married.  Under the tradition of English common law, a husband and wife became one person.  That "one person" was the husband.  He then had control of his wife's earnings.  He might even compel her to work or take in boarders, then keep the money for himself.

One speaker noted that women had first gathered to demand equality at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848.  Since then, progress had been very slow.  "We have been fighting for seventy-five years for our rights," she said.  "It will probably take us another seventy-five years to get them." 

Genevieve Melody, a Chicago public school teacher, felt that the nation's fundamental law had to provide the guarantee.  "When we get a constitutional amendment providing for equal rights for men and women, that pronounced masculine squint will right itself," she said.

Ganna Walska did not speak at the meeting.  It was her first venture into public affairs.  She smiled and nodded her head during the proceedings, and shook hands with the women as they left.

Two weeks after the Rush Street meeting, an Equal Rights Amendment drafted by the NWRP was introduced in Congress.  The organization continued its lobbying efforts until 1997.  Since then, it has concentrated on history and education.

Ganna Walska became a vocal feminist, but was never a leader of the movement.  She later divorced Harold McCormick and had two more unsuccessful marriages.  She died in 1984.

UNKNOWN CHICAGO SOURCES: Chicago Tribune, December 1, 1923:8,28; Time, October 8, 1928:24.