GIRLS /ook/fig for
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NICE work for a girl if she can
get it —being a U. S. Senator or
Representative.
Where is the ambitious young
woman who wouldn’t be tempted were
some modern Satanic Majesty to take
her up into the hills and show her this
kingdom?
Come, ladies, all six of you who are
working in these important offices on
Capitol Hill today. (Yes, we know
there are seven of you now, but Sena
tor Dixie Bibb Graves hasn’t had a
chance to go to work yet.) Out with
those secrets lying close to your hearts!
What’s it really like?
A letter from a constituent? Splendid.
Read it aloud, please.
“Dear Mrs. X: I hope you won’t
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Among the many duties of a con
gresswoman is the entertainment of
I Washington visitors. Here are Repre
sentative Edith Nourse Rogers (left),
Senator Hattie Caraway (center) and
Representative Caroline O'Day (sec
ond from right) welcoming two visit
ing Girl Scouts.
take it amiss if 1 suggest that it might
create just a little better impression
if you wore darker hosiery, not quite
so sheer. I want people to see that
you are as nice outside as you are
inside.”
No, we won’t tell which gentlewoman
from what state received this admoni
tion, but Mrs. Edith Nourse Rogers of
Massachusetts is laughing and Mrs.
Caroline O'Day and Mrs. Nan Wood
Honeyman both look a trifle like the
innocent cat which has just consumed
the canary.
What about constituents? Do they
look upon a woman representative more
as a personal possession than they re
gard a man in the same position? Are
they more critical of women? More
bossy toward them? More vindictive
when displeased?
Take that one item of clothes and
personal appearance, for example.
Would constituents tell a male legislator
how to part his hair, what color neck
ties to wear, or suggest that he ought
to reduce?
Occasionally they might, but usually
they wouldn’t. (History does record
that Abraham Lincoln first grew a
beard at the suggestion of a young cor
respondent. But there you are. When
such a thing happens to a man, it’s
news.)
Congresswomen’s clothes, while
watched very carefully, usually have
escaped adverse comment, because the
women M. C.’s have for the most part
dressed quietly, conservatively, often
exclusively in black. Once upon a time
a photograph of a lady much in the
public eye was snapped in a garden on
one of Washington’s broiling midsum
mer days. Eventually it reached the
newspapers, causing one horrified club
By Flora G. Orr
woman to reach for her pen and sta
tionery.
“Oh, my dear,’’ she admonished the
U. S. representative, “you must never
wear a dress without sleeves.”
“I’m so glad,” said the woman criti
cized, “that the picture did not show
that at that moment I was wearing no
stockings either ”
Last March, the Women's National
Press Club produced an eccentric,
surrealist sketch, taking off several
One letter to a congresswoman
read, in part, “It might create just
a little better impression if you
wore darker hosiery, not quite so
sheer. I want people to see that
you are as nice outside as you
are inside.”
women in public life in exaggerated
style. Mrs. Caroline O'Day, who has
been active in peace movements for
many years, was portrayed by a young
woman wearing a huge peace sash, and
a hat on which battleships, airplanes
and so on were mounted precariously
An opposition paper in Mrs. O’Day’s
state played up the picture with the
caption, “This, ladies and gentlemen, is v
the way our congresswoman goes about
Washington.”
lIfRS. O’DAY let it pass. She could
do so, since she has been called
the best-dressed woman in the capital.
Unquestionably, the women members
say, constituents are more possessive
toward them than toward their male
contemporaries. “Because you’re a
woman, you will understand—” run
hundreds of letters which come to them.
A man once wrote Mrs. O’Day asking
for a canary for his old mother. The
canary was dispatched. In a few months
the man wrote that the canary was
dead. In the meantime, he said, his
old mother had also died. However,
he went on, he would now like a canary
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to remind him of his mother. Mrs.
O’Day was beginning to wonder just
what this was anyhow, but she put in
the order for canary number two.
Constituents are likely to get very
chummy and chatty with their women
representatives, after a few letters have
passed back and forth. If they are in
trouble, they literally write a heart
throb manuscript and send it to a cer
tain office on Capitol Hill. All this is
very nice, but it means that the sta
tionery allowance can’t be strefched to
cover all the necessary correspondence.
Additional clerical work in the office
has to be paid by the representative.
One or two of the women maintain
that ail critical letters they get are
meant to be helpful and are written in
a nice spirit. Inside spy work in the
offices, however, would reveal that some
of the most vitriolic and vindictive let
ters ever seen on Capitol Hill come to
the women members of Congress. Some
are so strong and so bitter that secre
taries say they try to keep them hidden
from their employers’ eyes. The mo
ment that a woman in public life takes
a definite pdsition on some controversial
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subject, the abuse begins. Os course,
the same mail will bring letters of
praise as well.
It is almost as bad, however, when the
woman representative refuses to take
a definite stand on a piece of legisla
tion until she knows in what form it is
to appear on the House floor.
Not one of the six women who have
just finished a strenuous session on
Capitol Hill—Mrs. Mary Norton, Mrs.
Edith Nourse Rogers, Mrs. Virginia
Jenckes, Mrs. Nan Wood Honeyman,
3NAP JOBS
CONGRESS
Representatives Virginia E. Jenckes, Mary L. Norton and Nan Wood Honey
man, three women who will tell you that a feminine member of Congress
is kept very busy indeed.
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Inside spy work reveals
that some of the most
vitriolic and vindictive
letters ever seen on
Capitol Hill come to the
women members of
Congress.
Mrs. Caroline O’Day, Senator Hattie
Caraway—sees a day pass that she is
not working on claims bills and vet
erans’ needs. Mrs. Rogers has made
something of a specialty of helping ex
soldiers, but she had to draw the line
one day when an ex-fighting man asked
her to introduce a bill to make the
U. S. government finance divorces and
pay alimony for veterans.
YJLrHAT about unfair tactics in a cam
™ paign? Do the women find men
berating them because they are wom
en, “and woman’s place is in the
home”?
Yes, this happens. Virginia Jenckes
had a man campaigning against her in
last year, using as a slogan,
“What this district needs is a congress
man/” But since Virginia Jenckes was
re-elected, it would seem that the elec
torate had its own ideas.
The women M. C.’s probably find it
fully as difficult as the men to save
any money from their SIO,OOO a year
salaries. Most of them travel about
their districts when Congress is not in
session and work directly with their
people on the varying needs in the
communities. This means office rent,
clerical hire, hotel expenses, all in line
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of duty, but which must be paid out
of pocket. Often they have quite siz
able little private payrolls to meet. In
Washington rents are high and a repre
sentative must have a good, though not
a swanky, address. No woman M. C.
has ever attempted, as did a one-time
senator from Florida (a man), to sleep
and dress in her office.
Entertaining tourists from the home
district is an astonishingly high item,
particularly if one’s state is fairly close
to Washington.