Feminist Politics in the 1920s: The National Woman's Party

Abstract

ly and legalistically; her interest in international organization was spurred by Belmont's grandiose visions of an International Parliament of Women. Belmont lived in France from 1920 until her death in 1933, and Paul constantly curried her favor to keep financial support flowing. Although extent of Belmont's power over NWP decisions is not clear-some members regarded her as an old crank-she held office of president for years and unquestionably had her greatest influence in fostering party's international efforts. Here she not only goaded Paul but also kept Doris Stevens, a shrewd and effective activist, at her beck and call. At Sixth Pan American Conference in Havana, Cuba, in January 1928, Stevens injected NWP point of view into discussions of Inter-American Commission on Women and continued to serve vociferously on commission for more than ten years.42 -Hooker's dispute with Jane Norman Smith in 1933-1934 and an intraparty schism that shortly resulted manifested a crisis that had been building since 1928 because of such factors as action at top, disregard for inviting or involving membership participation, and more distant and more legalistic application of concept of equal rights. Those practices dimmed beacon of NWP's feminist ideas, beset anyway by depression economy. Hooker noted early in 1934 that treasury for previous year showed five or six hundred paid members. But Hooker's attempts at that point to build up state organizations and to collaborate with other women's groups on aims they shared were flattened by the most spectacular exhibition of autocracy, Hooker herself said. The steam roller plied back and forth. Another member who saw galvanizing more women as a priority also had practically no hope that it will be given any serious thought by any considerable group of leaders; for these leaders are too largely made up of pioneers who are gripped by conservatism. They will not face facts.... One's having been 'jailed for CAUSE' seems to make one an oracle. In forming a vanguard party, Paul seems 42 For NWP's international work, see Becker, Origins of Equal Rights Amendment, 161-86. For NWP's difficulties under Franklin D. Roosevelt's administrations, see Jane Norman Smith to Paul, Feb. 26, 1933, folder 115, Jane Norman Smith Collection. For Council's positive and ingratiating response to Alva Belmont's query whether she was head of international as well as domestic work of NWP, see Council, Woman's Party, minutes, Oct. 9, 1928, Jan. 15, 1929, reel 114, part C, series 2, National Woman's Party