Chase Going Woodhouse, A Twentieth-Century Woman

In an oral history recorded in the late 1970s when she was eighty-six years old, Chase Going Woodhouse patted herself on the back, remarking that she had “always been able to change over from one thing to another.”1 And this Chase Woodhouse did with unfailing determination. Corning of age early in the 20th century, she pursued a high level of education in a subject, economics, normally limited to men. She was among the first group of women who put their education and research skills to work in government. She broke new ground in teaching at women's colleges, developing courses examining current economic issues and labor practices. As more women transitioned from the domestic sphere to work outside the home, she recognized the need to support them with vocational information and direction. And, when the 19th Amendment was finally ratified in 1920, 30-year-old Woodhouse aligned herself with the National League of Women Voters along with other women's organizations, becoming drawn to public service and eventually politics.2One of Woodhouse’ s colleagues claimed she looked like a Dresden china shepherdess, another said she was no glamour girl, and a reporter described her as a “fabulous character straight from legend, as skilled with a saw and hammer in carpentry as she is with her tongue and agile mind in debate.”3 Her multi-faceted career spanned seventy years, and along the way Woodhouse made choices, one being to promote women's opportunities without being what she termed in her oral history a “scrappy” feminist. She wanted to be known as a person, an individual, not just a woman. This stance essentially set Woodhouse and her colleagues apart from the National Woman's Party, which maintained that women, as a class, must demand equal rights. Despite her attempts to be accepted as an individual, Woodhouse often found herself boxed into predominantly female communities. And for this strategy, she received few accolades from either side of the feminist question. The apparent paradox that shadowed women like Woodhouse has been one part of an extended argument centered on women's rights—individualism rather than equal rights. Looking at Chase Going Woodhouse's long career, interwoven through the events of the 20th century, can provide added dimension to that argument.Woodhouse did not arrive in Connecticut until she was forty-four years old and well-established as an educator and writer. She was born Margaret Chase Going in 1890 in Victoria, British Columbia. Her father was an American, and her Canadian mother was the granddaughter of a Hudson's Bay Company chief agent. After attending several schools in the United States, she graduated near the top of her class from Montreal's McGill University in 1912, where, as she noted in her oral history, “co-education” meant 75 women and 3,000 men. The following year she became the first woman to receive an M.A. with Honors in Economics from McGill. Her advisor, Stephen Leacock, urged her to continue studying for a doctorate at the University of Berlin. Accompanied by her mother, she began work there, but the venture had to be cut short in 1914 when war broke out. After a short period of working at a settlement house in Montreal, Chase again followed Leacock's advice to study at the University of Chicago, working toward a Ph.D. in economics and political science. She became a Fellow in Political Economy in 1917. Later that year, she married Edward J. Woodhouse, another Chicago graduate who was teaching government at Yale. With recommendations from the Chicago School of Social Service, Chase managed to secure a position as Assistant Professor of Economics at Smith College in the fall of 1917, and by 1919 her husband had joined the Smith faculty as well.4Unquestionably, Chase Going Woodhouse was influenced by the ground-breaking work in the social sciences coming out of the University of Chicago. She studied under social analyst Sophonisba Breckinridge, whose course, “The Legal and Economic Position of Women,” focused on women's work in the family as well as in industry and the professions. At Smith, Woodhouse's charge was to relate economics to real life for privileged young college women. In addition to Elementary Economics, she taught Modern Economic Theory, Standards of Living, and The Economic Status of Women. She also took credit for developing an Economics of Consumption class directly aimed at women as important consumers in the new advertising-driven economy of the 1920s. This course registered 157 students, making it the biggest class at Smith to date.5In the fall of 1925, Woodhouse went to Washington, DC for a sabbatical year, leaving her husband in Northampton and their four-year-old son Noel and new baby Margaret in the care of her mother in Montreal. Her course on the Economics of Consumption had been innovative enough to earn her an invitation to the Bureau of Human Nutrition and Home Economics at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She stayed on at the Bureau as Senior Economist, directing two extensive studies, one on women and another on family expenditures. She also taught summer courses at Vassar's new School of Euthenics, which applied scientific management to the home and child rearing, and at Columbia Teachers College. Woodhouse put her time in Washington to good use, expanding her circle of colleagues and developing relationships with women's organizations. In 1926, she was appointed chairman of the Section on the Economic and Social Problems of the Home for the American Home Economics Association and was named chairman of the American Association of University Women (AAUW) Committee on the Economic and Legal Status of Women.During this period, Woodhouse published several articles that defined her position on college education for homemakers and pointed the way toward a more professional role. For a special “Woman's Place” issue of Survey magazine, she sought to elevate the homemaker who, “standing for training and scientific procedure, can insist that here is a profession into which people are graduated through hard work and not merely through the accident of being born a woman.”6 In The Journal of the American Association of University Women, she wrote, “May it not be possible that with the right help, and a bit of direction, the present college woman with her wide interests, her ambition to continue her professional work, her refusal to be tied to a home, will be the one to reform the home, and make it a more desirable and efficient place in which to develop the corning generation.”7This transformation of the domestic into the professional accompanied the rising trend of wives and mothers working outside the home.8 Woodhouse's studies of married college women in business and the professions illustrated the fact that these women were working primarily out of economic necessity. She stated, “The indications are that the day of the old style feminist is passing and that that of the trained woman who works as a matter of course is arriving,” and added that women “need the satisfactions which come only from activity which is felt to be worthwhile.”9 This viewpoint has been termed “marriage and career feminism,” and no one exemplifies it better than Chase Going Woodhouse. These feminists, who came on the scene only after suffrage, validated women's unique roles in the home and, at the same time, endorsed their equal participation with men in the world of paid employment. They sought to erase the tradition of relegating women exclusively to the domestic “sphere” and championed women as individuals, rather than members of sex class. While it can be said that Woodhouse was also a “social feminist,” it is as a marriage and career advocate that she is most widely recognized.10In 1928, the Woodhouse family was reunited in Greensboro, North Carolina, where Edward was a professor of political science at the university, and Chase was hired as Vocational Director at North Carolina College for Women. As part of her “package” with the college, she set up research headquarters for a new organization, the Institute of Women's Professional Relations, that she had helped found while still living in Washington. Her co-founder was Catherine Filene, daughter of Boston department store magnate Lincoln Filene.11 The two women had established a close friendship during Woodhouse's time in Washington and were linked by their mutual interest in women's education and occupations. Catherine Filene, a 1918 Wheaton graduate, had published the book, Careers for Women, in 1920 and was conducting research at the Department of Labor. The concept for the Institute had sprung from an AAUW study of opportunities for college-educated women in business and the professions. Most of the financial support had come from Lincoln Filene. Catherine chaired an impressive board of twelve directors, primarily educators, and Chase Woodhouse was appointed Managing Director.Beginning work in 1929, the Institute of Women's Professional Relations acted as a “clearing house” to collect studies and research, co-ordinate groups, and disseminate information. Support came from colleges, vocational counselors, and businesses in the form of memberships. The Institute's concern, one that is often raised today, was “how far are college women, as a whole, supported by the educational structure in their participation in the business and professional life created by industrial and scientific achievement?”12 Woodhouse recognized the need to change preconceived notions on all sides. Colleges needed to raise their awareness of the business world and the fact that increasing numbers of their graduates were entering occupations other than teaching and nursing. Businesses had no expectations that female graduates would stay or that they could hold more than entry-level positions. Women, on the other hand, needed “a fuller understanding of what is expected of them” and a solution to the “not always satisfactory . . . adjustments between home life and professional interests.”13The Institute of Women's Professional Relations satisfied a critical demand for information, especially during the Depression. Woodhouse along with two assistants began publishing a quarterly newsletter, Women's Work and Education, and they published annual bulletins, which analyzed occupational data and contained extensive bibliographies. During the 1933–34 academic year, over 2,000 letters had to be answered. Woodhouse fulfilled requests to speak at eastern colleges as well as at many throughout the South, Midwest, and Texas. When the Economy Bill was passed in 1932, she came to the defense of married women workers increasingly discriminated against during the Depression. The bill's “married persons” clause limited a family to only one paycheck for married persons working for the federal government, resulting in many wives losing their jobs. The situation gave Woodhouse the opportunity to champion her point of view, that women not be considered a separate group but be treated individually. “Are married women a class or a collection of individuals differing one from another as markedly as do married men?” she asked. “Why should one group of women be singled out to give this temporary relief to others?”14 The Institute received letters of appreciation from college deans attesting to the “long felt need” for the organization's studies and occupational surveys. The director of Vassar's Vocational Bureau echoed many others when she wrote, “we do not know where we could turn for such comprehensive information.”15A convenient coincidence of factors brought Chase Woodhouse to Connecticut. In 1934, Catherine Filene recognized that the Institute of Women's Profession Relations needed more representation, sponsorship, and funding in the New York area. At a meeting with Katharine Blunt, president of Connecticut College in New London, Filene discussed this need and learned that Blunt happened to be looking for a new economics professor. After months of negotiations, the Institute was pried away from North Carolina. Chase Woodhouse, eager to return to teaching, moved to Connecticut College, bringing the research headquarters of the Institute with her. The arrangement allowed Woodhouse to teach two or three economics courses while also tending to her duties as Institute's managing director, including speaking engagements at other colleges. The college covered the expenses of the Institute's office in a small house on campus which Woodhouse rented. Her mother and daughter joined her, but Edward Woodhouse continued to teach in the South. It appears that the Woodhouses began to grow apart from this point, and they were finally divorced in 1948.Connecticut College garnered prestige from the Institute connection, and Woodhouse was able to resume teaching her signature course, The Economics of Consumption. A reference letter from Helen Atwater, editor of the Journal of Home Economics, to Katherine Blunt, a former president of the American Home Economics Association, provides a picture of Chase Woodhouse as her colleagues knew her at that time.The move to Connecticut provided Woodhouse with new energy and an array of new projects. Over the course of the next ten years the Institute put on annual career conferences, most of which were held at the Biltmore Hotel in New York. Subjects ranged from public affairs to photography to fashion design. During World War II, three conferences on war-time employment were held in Washington. Prominent experts in each field spoke, and attendance was strong, numbering in the hundreds. For instance, at the 1935 and gave In between 1935 and the Institute with an innovative of summer for female college in New York financial Woodhouse herself continued articles and also published two for the Home New in in and The in Department Work in Woodhouse was by Connecticut College for being She college in her with a wide of had always an part in her and she would not be Most of her were in and that and of college-educated career women. They the the National Association, the American Home Economics Association, and the National of and Professional Women's She was president of the from to expanding the with the addition of in her most were in the League of Women Voters and the Women's of which she had joined in Northampton in the Going Woodhouse's career her into more through the than the Her work in Washington, her for the New her with political women, and her to herself to the on the In her husband in a for had been of She had been college-educated women toward public service for years, while herself in organizations. During the she and will be or Women the participation in public affairs or the of their economic It was time for her to the began her political career in for a on the New Despite losing that she with the Katherine a Connecticut College former Connecticut Association board and a National League of Women Voters urged her to out on the speaking and in Woodhouse became the Connecticut of and Economic She was president of the Connecticut of Women's in with the of another and a National her position in the League of Women Woodhouse for of for Connecticut in the fall of and was of In addition to being supported by she had been by New a former of Woodhouse also had the support of In with her economics and labor she had an working with and She had been appointed to the for the industry and had supported the National for a as well as the Standards the Connecticut among endorsed her She also received support to her work with of the and female relief workers at the Institute during the years of the Depression. She saw to it that workers were trained in and research, them in her to during the war years her expectations for between colleges, and government. She had chaired the Connecticut War and as a to the War but found many women She also learned that in the women would to be to the of political to up to public not always just and With that in in the summer of she accepted the for United from her home as she continued to her at Connecticut to be a often with and The Connecticut of as well as of endorsed her, and she with a of especially in New and becoming the first woman from the to be United as well as the first woman from the The brought in new to one of was were the first Woodhouse She went on to that all women were treated without as not as women. In an the New York Woodhouse for and for a among the a of from the college, Woodhouse went to Washington. Her first a against to the Committee on out to be one that her political would She was appointed to the and the only woman on the and had a in the to the and the for and She against bringing the home from the war the fact that her son had been in the for over three years, and she for for but not in Woodhouse, with the support of a to provide women equal for equal work, a to the Amendment in the and endorsed by the National Woman's labor and women were to the they that the would that provided of to working Woodhouse for to the in most of her was up with her Committee and that were to her, rather than out her As a her of was into office along with the The Party, including recognized that Chase Woodhouse was a to women by of they found a position for her as director of the Women's of the National throughout the Woodhouse was able to to that women were with their She was looking for the in women to as to the of an for Woodhouse's of the her with Connecticut College. In the new the Institute of Women's Professional to her Connecticut Woodhouse on the in that same leaving the in the of and three months in as a to the government, Woodhouse accepted the to for the she received from the labor but this time she made a the support of the Party, herself from “a that to secure a She by over her and was joined in the by of the Woodhouse was able to up where she had in her on the and Committee and working for and her women's While in Washington, Woodhouse maintained a Connecticut field office managed by a young just in for Woodhouse. Her time away from the her out of with the the fact that she was working on defense small business and for a and was New and at College after losing again to Woodhouse that should be on not on and she in government, working as special to the Director of the of for over two credit for her in teaching, research, and government, she was made of the of her first was to each of along with the the age of Chase Woodhouse in Connecticut and her toward During her teaching career at Connecticut College, she had been to president of department and the two women became many in they established a in at the college, which at and in and for the and Woodhouse the In Woodhouse helped set up the Bureau for Women's to provide information, help, and make more the work of women through The board of members of the Connecticut League of Women the and several child it would the the work of all Connecticut organizations, not just Woodhouse took over of the Her friendship with extended the of the or better stated, it the organization's to the two women's They the the for the Bureau to the for the up with her of women, Woodhouse to and the two established a Woodhouse continued to the Bureau after in until she it over to the League of Women Voters in Chase Going Woodhouse's to the of Connecticut came in the years to the years of her long The of organizations, and she on is she claimed it was hard work, she and them over to She was one of twelve women at the in She chaired the on the Status of Women in and on the from through of the work that she centered on including the National and Connecticut She on the Connecticut to a Department of Human in and published a on the of For ten years, she was a director of the Connecticut and on a to a University of Connecticut to that part of the Woodhouse was also known for her work on the and the and Committee for She also on the Connecticut and chaired the on when she was years She in at the age of is one that is to Chase Going Woodhouse, it is With her training in economics and her she herself into making women's education more to the of the working She to a career and up for others like herself when it was to do The the years in and work with women's in the her and she took on new such as and Her work in Connecticut was her the of many colleagues and the for with merely or teaching, Woodhouse her life to her the as well as the of the issues Woodhouse are still under today, especially the of a education and the of with a Woodhouse up with the and, living into the the of As she her she on her for women's rights. been a but been an she that a of had been put in she finally that the was needed to be women are equal in all