The Legacy of Radcliffe Alumna Clara Schiffer:Inspiring Stories about WorkingWomen

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This 1938 photograph, by an unknown photographer, is from a Rockport Lodge album called “Cruises.”The records of Rockport Lodge were recently processed with a bequest from Clara Schiffer.

When Clara Goldberg Schiffer was diagnosed with heart diseasein her 70s, she immediately joined a gym and changed her diet,determined to remain active and healthy because she had a greatdeal more to do. She was still exercising regularly and remainedcommitted to social justice at the time of her death, in May 2009 atage 97. Although she supported many organizations with both timeand money, the Schlesinger Library embodies all that she held dear.

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Letter from the DirectorThis year’s crop of applications for the Schlesinger Library’ssmall grants have recently arrived, delightfully reminding me ofthe wide variety of subjects for which we have unique re-sources. Researchers want to come to the library to investigatealmost every topic imaginable, from recreation to war, fromhealth care to immigration, from journalism to midwifery, fromhigher education to the Cold War, from marriage counseling toscientific careers, from literacy to prostitution, from interna-tional agreements to religion, poetry, television, and dance. Theculinary collection increasingly draws academic scholars as wellas chefs. The periodicals collection is perennially attractive, andwe have been adding ’zines, other contemporary “niche” maga-zines, and on-line magazines to keep up with serials today. Ourholdings of papers of African American women—especially PauliMurray, June Jordan, Florynce Kennedy, Dorothy West, andShirley Graham DuBois—have seen especially frequent uselately.Harvard undergraduates consult the holdings of the

Schlesinger to write about all sorts of topics. This spring, MiaWalker ’10 was inspired to write a play based on the diaries of aRadcliffe student of the 1950s. Katherine Walecka ’11 revised herinterpretation of June Jordan’s political impact because the li-brary’s holdings enabled her to view videotapes of Jordan’sspeeches at certain political rallies. The mysterious writings onslates received during seances by Spiritualist women in the 19thcentury, female entrepreneurs making headway during theGreat Depression, the International Women’s Year conference in1977 in Houston, and the paradoxical life and career of thefounder of Parentsmagazine are some other recent undergradu-ate topics I recall. Current PhD candidates writing dissertationshave mined the library’s collections to write about subjects in-cluding the beginnings of international human rights activismmore than a century ago, the views of the National Organizationfor Women on the working mother, and the role that defense ofbirth control played in the start of the American Civil LibertiesUnion. The questions being pursued by the researchers sittingin our reading room are not predictable!The more various the topics, the better, it seems to me. We

want to send the news far and wide that whatever you are inter-ested in, chances are the Schlesinger Library has somethingvaluable to offer.

—Nancy F. CottCarl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation DirectorJonathan Trumbull Professor of American History

The Schlesinger Looks Back andPlans AheadA survey of Harvard University Library manuscripts recently con-firmed what many of us have thought for some time: that evenwithin the University, the Schlesinger Library is extraordinary inthe extent, number, and diversity of its manuscript collections.Among the 50-plus repositories, the Schlesinger ranks third inlinear feet, behind only the Harvard University Archives and theHistorical Collections at Baker Library. And for breadth of subjectmatter, the Schlesinger cannot be beat: politics, travel and inter-nationalism, family history, science and health, professions, andwork all fall within its scope.As we celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Radcliffe Institute

for Advanced Study, it’s worth reflecting on the work of the li-brary—both what we have accomplished and what’s on the hori-zon. Central to the Institute’s mission is a continuing commitmentto the study of women, gender, and society, and the Schlesingerhas advanced that mission in multiple ways during the past 10years. Since the turn of the century, the library has added approxi-mately 2,500 collections in about 4,500 linear feet, untold num-bers of photographs, and thousands of audiovisual materials.Among these remarkable collections are the papers of Anna Chen-nault, June Jordan, and Catharine MacKinnon, leaders in femi-nism, literature, business diplomacy, and law in the 20th century.The greatest challenge that lies ahead is to ensure that these

materials become available to researchers within a reasonabletime frame. Once the collections are processed, researchers willcontinue to create and rewrite history, as so many have alreadydone. From the library’s collections emerged distinguished titlessuch as Alice Kessler-Harris’s In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men,and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th-Century America,Eileen McDonough’s Playing with the Boys: Why Separate Is NotEqual in Sports, Patricia Sullivan’s edited FreedomWriter: VirginiaFoster Durr, Letters from the Civil Rights Years, and many more.As we enter the second decade of the century and the second

decade of the Institute, the library must expand its capacity to ac-quire and describe unique digital material. Electronic mail; digitalpublication of monographs and journal articles; digital audio,video, and photography; and Web publications of all types willshortly outpace paper-based collections. The Schlesinger Library,acting within the wider Harvard University Library environment, iswell poised for this transition—even though the issue of scale re-mains daunting. As we anticipate users’ expectations, other com-plicated questions arise. For instance, how much of our analogmaterial must be digitally reformatted to match the evolving toolsof research in this century?

—Marilyn DunnExecutive Director

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spring 2010

“One Good Cow”:Indenture Documents at theSchlesinger Library

Although laboring men, women, and children don’t oftenleave written documents that shed light on the texture andconditions of their everyday lives, we can catch glimpses oftheir life challenges in formal records such as indentures orapprenticeship bonds. The library has recently acquired asmall collection of these documents; in the earliest, excerptedabove, we see Rebeckah Shelden of Swansea, Massachusetts,trying to cope in her husband’s absence during the French andIndian Wars.Most of the indentures in this collection typically end at

age 18 and require the master to provide some schooling inaddition to teaching a trade and supplying meat, drink, lodg-ing, and clothing. Many of them bind over children under thesignatures (or, in some cases, marks) of almshouse managersor overseers of the poor. One from 1834 in Union County,Indiana, binds out:“Sarah Randels, a poor girl aged nine years three months

and twenty-eight days, daughter of Phebe Randels of Saidtownship who is unable to support her said child as the saidSamuel Randels the father . . . has absented himself fromthese parts without leaving anything to support the SaidChild.”It also spells out the master’s obligation to teach Sarah the

“mystery of sewing and spinning and housekeeping” and re-quires him, at the end of the apprenticeship, to provide “agood bed and Beding and one flax spinning wheel and onegood cow.”Twelve dollars, however, was the only reward at the end of

an entire childhood of service for Lucy and Edey RandolphValentine, aged four and one respectively, “two femail chil-dren of coular born of Sally Valentine,” who were bound out in1823 by overseers of the poor to learn “the art of farming.”The man to whom the girls were apprenticed, Samuel Hub-bard, was illiterate and signed with his mark.For more information about these tantalizing pieces of

young people’s lives, see http://discovery.lib.harvard.edu//?itemid=%7clibrary%2fm%2faleph%7c012190052 or come tothe library and consult the collection itself.

—Anne EnglehartHead of Collection Services

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Whereas my Husband Ephraim Shelden has Enterred himself Into his MajestiesService and has Left me with three Children and nothing to Support us with . . . Itherefore Desire you to bind out one of my Children Namely Godfrey Shelden. . . till 21 Years old to learn him the Trade of a weaver and to teach him to Readwrite and Cypher . . .

—Rebeckah Shelden, Swansea, Massachusetts, 1746

This indenture document from 1820 binds over Abigail Edwards,resident of the Almshouse and House of Employment in Philadelphia,to learn the “art and mystery of housewifery” until the age of 18.

Born in Brockton, Massachusetts, to Jewish immigrants, Schif-fer was following a clerical track in high school when an obser-vant teacher urged her to consider college. She was accepted toRadcliffe and graduated cum laude in 1932. A loyal alum, shelast visited Cambridge for her 75th class reunion, in 2007. Thejobs Schiffer held to pay her way through Radcliffe shaped herlifelong commitment to bettering the lives of working women.When she graduated, Schiffer went to Washington, where theNew Deal was opening professional opportunities for women,and took the first of many positions in the federal governmentfocused on women, children, work, and health.

Clara Schiffer’s decades-long support for the library centeredon these issues. From her suggestions (backed by researchmaking her case) of women and organizations whose papersshe felt should be housed here to her support for the library’sfilm series (she even made themed snacks, such as peanutsand Cracker Jack for A League of Their Own, possible), sheworked behind the scenes to strengthen the library. More visi-ble is her gift of several hundred 19th-century prints depictingwomen at work. Images such as “Strawberry Culture, New Jer-sey—Pickers in the Field,” from Harper’s Weekly in 1869, offercompelling visual documentation of women’s labor history.A recent generous bequest from Schiffer’s estate will fund

important work that we feel certain would please her: the pro-cessing of four collections that highlight the lives of workingwomen. Together the records of Fernside (see Fall 2006newsletter); Rockport Lodge; 9to5, National Association ofWorking Women; and the Harvard Union of Clerical and Techni-cal Workers will document a century of American labor history.Fernside, a rambling boardinghouse on Mount Wachusett in

Massachusetts, became in 1890 the Girls’ Vacation House Asso-ciation, under the auspices of the Women’s Educational and In-dustrial Union of Boston, whose records are also at the library.Established for “the benefit of women wage-earners,” Fernsidefor more than 80 years beckoned Boston’s shopgirls and secre-taries to enjoy a week or two of fun and camaraderie in themountain air. The Fernside records include a wealth of informa-tion documenting weeks full of poetry, plays, songfests, andberry picking, all for $4 a week in 1900 and $65 a week in the1970s.

In 1906, a similar vacation house, a Fernside-with-salt-water,opened by the sea. The Massachusetts Association of WomenWorkers established Rockport Lodge for working women of lowand moderate income. A theater, tennis courts, and a “smokehouse” (where the women went to smoke) added to the appealof the lodge, where guests all pitched in to do chores. Lodgerule books, administrative records, scrapbooks, and photo-graph albums describe summers at this respite from city lifethat operated until 2002. Many researchers, including authorAnita Diamant, whose next novel will include Rockport Lodge,are eager to dive in.

The records of 9to5 move the storyof working women ahead severaldecades. Founded in Boston in 1972,9to5 (it’s ok to sing the Dolly Partonsong now) drew women togetheragainst sexual harassment and payinequality, issues that hadn’t yet beennamed. Although the organizationhas grown and modified its name sev-eral times, its commitment to improv-ing the lives of women wageearners—much like those who en-joyed Fernside and Rockport Lodge—has never changed. The records of9to5, the first of which wereprocessed with a gift from Schiffer in1992 (many cartons have been added

since then), document how the organization has worked to im-prove conditions for women in the workplace through affirma-tive-action, age-discrimination, and equal-pay campaigns; joband wage surveys; and publicity.The records of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical

Workers (HUCTW) bring the story of women and work evencloser to home. They document the 15-year struggle by a smallgroup of women and a few men to form a union representing alargely female staff of 3,500 secretaries, library workers, labo-ratory assistants, medical workers, and other employees atHarvard. Their success in 1988 marked the beginning of adecade of organizing in higher education. Growing out of thewomen’s movement of the early 1970s, the HUCTW developedinnovative methods of organizing and representing workersbased on the values and priorities of working women, with thegoal of creating a community built on respect and compassion.All four collections are rich in important materials about

women’s lives and women’s work. Processing them will enableresearchers in a variety of fields to enhance our understandingof a broad range of issues affecting women across the 20thcentury. We look forward to hosting a conference, after pro-cessing is complete, that will focus on these collections andissues, which we hope will stimulate research on the topicsabout which Clara Schiffer cared so deeply. That would be amost fitting tribute to this remarkable woman who was com-mitted to bettering the lives of all women.

—Kathryn Allamong Jacob,Johanna-Maria Fraenkel Curator of Manuscripts

The Legacy of Radcliffe Alumna Clara Schiffer:Inspiring Stories about WorkingWomen

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Clara Schiffer was well on in years when I first knew her, yether active, far-roving, keen intelligence impressed me atonce. Her sharp insights were combined with a deep spiri-tual sense and blended with a great deal of common sense.“Common sense is the least common of all senses,” wroteLord David Cecil; he should have known Clara.At our monthly luncheons, she roamed widely over cur-

rent events, viewing them through the lens of her manyjobs and life experiences decades before. Her acumen wasso much more extensive and sharper than mine that ourdiscussions were decidedly an unequal exchange. Sheshared her experiences generously and lovingly.From Clara, I learned the story of how she borrowed

money for a bus ride into Cambridge from her home to takethe examination for entrance into Radcliffe. Not havingstudied Latin at her public school, she worked at it all sum-mer and then passed the exam in the fall, allowing her toenter the Class of 1932. Never, ever, did Radcliffe make abetter admissions decision. Just as our meetings gave meso much more than I ever gave her, so Radcliffe received agift of solicitude and caring far beyond the four years oflearning that it provided Clara.Clara enriched my life as she did countless others’. To-

ward the end of her life, her cardiologist, realizing her greatworth, asked her to talk about graceful aging to a hospitalgroup. Her comments, aired in 2009 on NBC, were rebroad-cast on Valentine’s Day in 2010. Valentine’s Day was a finechoice. Clara’s whole life was “graceful living and giving.”Those of us who knew her well will be forever in her debt.

—Joan R. Challinor, PhDHistorian and Member of the Schlesinger Library Council

Memories of Clara

Facing page: This photograph, taken by Marilyn Humphries around1988, shows students and workers rallying in support of the Har-vard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers.

Top right: An undated, midcareer portrait of Clara GoldbergSchiffer ’32

Top left: This 1988 photograph, by Marilyn Humphries, showsan HUCTW rally at the Old Cambridge Baptist Church. Therecords of the HUCTW were recently processed with a bequestfrom Schiffer.

Bottom left: This undated folio photograph, by an unknownphotographer, shows a woman at work. The records of 9to5,National Association of Working Women were recentlyprocessed with a bequest from Schiffer.

Charlotte PerkinsGilman’s LibraryCharlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935), considered theforemost intellectual leader of the women’s movementfrom the 1890s through the 1920s, remains a compellingfigure. Her insistence that women needed economic inde-pendence and freedom from domestic burdens as well assuffrage, her utopian fiction presenting a society free ofmen, and her promotion of physical fitness and unconfin-ing dress were just a few components of her thoroughgo-ing re-envisioning of society, which continues to invitecritical appraisal and to inspire feminists.Although today Gilman is perhaps best known for “The

YellowWallpaper” (published in 1892), a short storybased on her experience of postpartum depression fol-lowing the birth of her daughter, she reached wide audi-ences in her day with her first poetry volume, In This OurWorld (1893), revised and expanded twice in subsequentyears, and her influential treatisesWomen and Econom-ics (1898), The Home: Its Work and Influence (1903),HumanWork (1904), and The Man-Made World (1911). Herfiction included the utopian novel Herland, The Crux, andWhat Diantha Did, all serialized in her self-published liter-ary magazine, The Forerunner. She spent decades travel-ing in the United States and abroad as a lecturer, andearly in her life she also designed trade cards, havingstudied art at the Rhode Island School of Design.The Schlesinger’s extensive collection of Gilman’s pa-

pers—which includes her diaries, correspondence, writ-ings, and lectures; a complete run of The Forerunner;photographs of Gilman; and examples of her artwork—has long been here and is currently being digitized. Thiseffort will soon provide unprecedented access on the In-ternet to the records of her work housed here, and theSchlesinger will celebrate the 150th anniversary of herbirth with a comprehensive exhibition in October 2010.Now, Gilman’s personal library is also coming to the

Schlesinger. The first installment of 60 books, receivedfrom Gilman’s descendants in January 2010, includesworks that had a deep impact on her thinking; many areannotated, inscribed, or autographed. These includebooks on literature, politics, sociology, philosophy, anddress reform, along with books she read as a youth, andthey illuminate the breadth of her interests. Gilman’s de-cendants are committed to preserving this intellectualportrait of an early feminist and her family; they hope tosend further items from Gilman’s library to theSchlesinger in the near future.

—Marylène Altieri,Curator of Books and Printed Materials

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Below: This copy of ThePractical Phrenologist isannotated with Gilman’s

phrenological profile, takenin 1876 when she was 16,by the author, O. S. Fowler.

At right: Charlotte PerkinsGilman, ca.1909–1915.

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Charles Edward Stowe pasted a letter to Charlotte Perkins Gilman, his cousin, inside a copy of his biography ofhis mother, Harriet Beecher Stowe.

In September 1918, Mabel Esther Borden, an excited youngnurse with the US Army Nurse Corps, crossed the Atlanticto serve in World War I. She wrote her father all about herjourney, and the kinds and numbers of nurses and troopson her boat. Her father never got that information: An armycensor cut it out before sending the letter along to him. Itwas not long before Mabel realized what kinds of informa-tion she should avoid writing. On October 3, she wroteagain to her father, worrying that her earlier letter hadbeen censored in full: “Uncle Sam is taking good care of usin every way, but he does not permit us to write a very in-teresting letter.”Borden’s letters to her family—along with letters sent to

her in France detailing her brother’s bout with influenza inNovember 1918 and how her hometown of Sheffield, Penn-sylvania, was affected by the pandemic—are among recentaccessions at the library. Material documenting Americanwomen living and working throughout the world continuesto be a focus of collecting.Letters from Ruth Williams Hooper describe her experi-

ences living and teaching in the Philippines just beforeWorld War II: In 1939, she and her husband were internedat the Santo Tomas prison camp. The papers of civic ac-tivists Ernesta Drinker Ballard, Miriam Jay Wurts Andrus,and Eloise Bittel Cohen richly document women’s lives andlocal political activism in mid-20th-century Philadelphia,Baltimore, Washington, DC, and Ann Arbor, Michigan. Thepapers of feminist musicians Marcia Deihl and Rhiannonhave come recently, as have the papers of journalist EllenWillis, who wrote frequently about popular music in addi-tion to other feminist topics, and Carla DeSantis, whofounded ROCKRGRLmagazine.In addition to the papers of individual women, we con-

tinue to collect organizational records. The Silent Spring In-stitute, a Massachusetts nonprofit research organizationthat studies how environmental toxins affect women’shealth (focusing primarily on breast cancer), and the Soci-ety for Menstrual Cycle Research, which identifies research

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“Uncle Sam . . . Does Not Permit Us to Write a Very InterestingLetter.” A Young Nurse’s Letters fromWorld War I, and OtherNotable Accessions

This letter from Mabel Borden to her father details her day-to-dayexistence on a military boat during World War I.

priorities and seeks to influence public policy for the enhancement ofwomen’s health, donated their records this past year, as did the Leagueof Women Voters of Boston, Girls’ Latin School (now Boston Latin Acad-emy), and theWomen and Food Information Network.

—Jenny Gotwals,Manuscript Cataloger

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Schlesinger Library Events List,Spring 2010

Wednesday, February 3, 2009Movie NightIda B. Wells: A Passion for Justice (1989), directed by WilliamGreaves, and Jeannette Rankin: The WomanWho Voted No (1982),directed by Susan Cohen RegeleA discussion with Marilyn Morgan and Emilyn Brown, manuscriptcatalogers at the Schlesinger Library, followed the films.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010Movie NightWe Dig Coal, A Portrait of Three Women (1981), directed by Geral-dine Wurzburg, andWe’re Here to Stay: Women in the Trades(1986), produced by Susan J. von SalisA discussion with Susan von Salis, associate curator of archives atHarvard University, followed the film.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010Brown Bag Lunch TalkJennifer Donnally, a Schlesinger Library Dissertation Grant recipi-ent, discussed her recent research on her dissertation topic, thepolitics of abortion and the rise of the new right.

Thursday, March 11, 2010Brown Bag Lunch TalkKirstin Downey, author of The Woman Behind the New Deal: TheLife of Frances Perkins (Nan A. Talese, 2009), discussed research-ing her book at the Schlesinger.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010Brown Bag Lunch TalkEmilyn Brown, manuscript archivist at the Schlesinger Library,spoke about the life of Ida B. Wells. A brief clip from Ida B. Wells: APassion for Justice (1989), directed by William Greaves, followedthe talk.

Thursday, March 25, 2010Brown Bag Lunch TalkMarilyn Morgan, manuscript archivist at the Schlesinger Library,spoke about the life of Jeannette Rankin. A brief clip from JeannetteRankin: The WomanWho Voted No (1982), directed by Susan CohenRegele, followed the talk.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010Movie NightThe American Look (1958), produced by Handy (Jam) Organization;Coney Island (1940s), by unknown source; and films featuring Rad-cliffe CollegeA discussion with Olga Touloumi, PhD candidate in the Harvard Uni-versity Graduate School of Design, followed the film.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010Brown Bag Lunch TalkMaura Marx, executive director of the Open Knowledge Commons,spoke about her work at the Berkman Center for Internet and Soci-ety, Harvard University.

Thursday, April 22, 2010Boston Seminar on the History of Women and Gender“Making ‘False Delicacy’ True: The Passions of Female MoralReformers, 1835–1845”April Haynes, postdoctoral fellow, Massachusetts Historical Societyand American Antiquarian Society, with commentary by HelenLefkowitz Horowitz, Smith College

Wednesday, May 5, 2010Movie NightRight Out of History: The Making of Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party(1980), directed by Johanna DemetrakasA discussion with Joanne Donovan, audiovisual and photographcataloger at the Schlesinger Library, followed the film.

March 8–October 5, 2010Schlesinger Library ExhibitionInside/Out: The Geography of Gendered SpaceIn conjunction with the conference “Inside/Out: Exploring Genderand Space in Life, Culture, and Art,” the Schlesinger Library presents this exhibition of items from the library’s collections. Theexhibit explores various types of space in relation to the domestic,urban, political, and artistic landscapes and is organized into foursections: private, public, political, and artistic.

June 6–11, 2010Seminar“Reading Historic Cookbooks: A Structured Approach,” taught byBarbara KetchamWheaton, honorary curator of the culinary collec-tion at the Schlesinger Library

—Susan LandryAdministrative Assistant

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A detail from the illustration “American Sketches: The Ladies’Window at the New York Post Office,”by Henry Linton, from the Illustrated London News, 1875

credits:The following images are from the Schlesinger Library collections: The photograph on the front page is from the RockportLodge Records. The indenture document on page 3 is from the Indentures Collection. The photograph on page 4 is from theHarvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers Records. On page 5, the photograph at top left is from the Harvard Union ofClerical and Technical Workers Records; the photograph at top right, from the Radcliffe Archives; and the photograph at bot-tom left, from the 9to5, National Association of Working Women Additional Records, 1972–1985. The photograph andscanned page on page 6 are both from the Charlotte Perkins Gilman Collection. The scanned letter on page 7 is also from theCharlotte Perkins Gilman Collection. The scanned items on page 8 are from the Mabel Esther Borden Collection. The detailon the back cover is from the Clara Goldberg Schiffer Collection, 1983–1994.