Programs, Revisited
Clara Love, June 21, 2017
This past week, I spent more time with the nine years’ worth of programs I transcribed during our first week, fitting the information into a spreadsheet in the hopes of making it all more easily sortable and searchable. As I reread all of the programs, I kept our conversations from our coffeeshop meeting in mind. One part of the Club that I paid special attention to this time around was the rise and development of their meetings and committee dedicated to philanthropy. By 1900, the most recent year of programs I transcribed, the Club had a ‘Committee on Modern Philanthropy,’ led by Mrs. John M. Carter, which would lead meetings consisting of a few talks and presentations. Sometimes, these meetings would have talks dedicated to what seem to be causes these women deemed worthy of donation in the spirit of philanthropy, such as a meeting in January of 1896 that contained presentations such as “Children of the State” and “For Suffering Humanity.” However, more frequent amongst the programs than these sorts of pointed topics are far more generalized talks and mentions of philanthropy, such as “Philanthropy–Its History and Methods,” “Some Phases of Philanthropy,” “The Higher Education of Women applied to Philanthropy,” and “What is Philanthropy?” to name a few from across the span of 1890-1900. Occasionally the Club would host debates, which I mentioned in my post from last week, that sometimes had to do with one of the aforementioned ‘worthy causes,’ however, as I believe we discussed at our meeting, these debates do not seem to result in any direct action, they just look like an intellectual exercise performed on the backs of people in need. This emphasis on philanthropy as a concept instead of an action with direction and effect on the world, to me, goes hand in hand with conversations and questions raised at our meeting–what were these elite women actually doing with their platform? It seems to me, having primarily interacted with programs that provide little detail or summary of the talks and presentations, that these women are more concerned with crafting the image of the spirit of giving rather than the spirit itself. Again, the higher frequency of discussion of philanthropy in general instead of how to best allocate any real funds to those in need just seems like an intellectual exercise, or even a brag, done at the expense of others these women would deem unworthy of Club membership. I’m curious as to how much of their funds from dues, etc., were used for actual philanthropy, since they have a whole committee dedicated to it but no programs mentioning neither donation nor public activism and/or volunteer work (or anything of the sort).
This content was migrated from the The WLCB log: Documenting the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore 1890-1941