CATT, Carrie LANE CHAPMAN
LANE, CHAPMAN, CATT
Posted By: Sharon R Becker (email)
Date: 5/7/2014 at 04:36:49
The Globe Gazette
Mason City, Cerro Gordo County, Iowa
Saturday, April 27, 1940, Page 18THEY STARTED HERE
No. 6 in a Mason City Series of Success Stories
CARRIE LANE CHAPMAN CATT
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When Mrs. Carrie Lane Chapman Catt steps forward on the evening of May 7 to receive the gold medal award of the National Institute of Social Services for "distinguished services to humanity," it will be an honor most richly deserved for few, if any, women in the span of her life have accomplished as much real service to her fellow men than has Mrs. Catt.
Mrs. Mrs. Catt's more than 81 years have largely been given over to working and often struggling for the interests of men and women, especially women, everywhere.
North Iowans, especially those living in Mason City and Charles City, can be proud when Mrs. Catt is honored at New York City on May 7, for receiving the awards with her will be two other of the country's outstanding public servants, Wendell Willkie, and Dr. James E. West.
But Mr. Willkie, president of the Commonwealth and Southern corporation and one of the nation's outstanding business men and leaders, and Dr. West, head of the Boy Scouts of America and a worker in that movement for more than 25 years, will both be outshone by the 81 year old suffragist and peace leader.
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Mrs. Catt was born at Ripon, Wis., Jan 9, 1859, the daughter of Lucian and Marie Clinton Lane. The family moved to a spot south of Charles City about the time the Civil war drew to a close and just at the age when Carrie Lane was first beginning to have some understanding of what the word about her was like.
It was here that she grew to young womanhood, going to rural school and to Charles City by horseback until she had finished high school.
At that time most young ladies who had finished high school then retired from the learning process and began to think of "settling down." But then, as now, Carrie Lane was no ordinary woman, and she knew that she wanted more education.
Nor was she afraid to work for it. She taught a country school for a time and also worked in the library at Iowa State college [present day Iowa State University] at Ames, finally being graduated from Iowa State.
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During this period she studied in a law office for a time before accepting her first big job in public life. She came to Mason City, first as principal of the high school and then was superintendent of the schools for a time. It was while she was here that she met and married Leo Chapman, a Mason City newspaperman.
That was in 1884 and the following year saw the Chapmans in San Francisco, where death brought an abrupt halt to their marriage and left a young widow in a world where women were not recognized in business or the professions. They weren't even allowed to vote.
Difficult times followed, times that might well have broken the spirit of a less forceful and courageous woman than was then Mrs. Chapman. But this adversity steeled her determination and brought back to her mind a talk she had heard as a girl in the old Baptist church at Charles City. The speaker was Susan B. Anthony, world famed suffragist.
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With her thoughts turned to the problem of women in a man's world, the young widow decided to do something about it, and she did with the vigor and determination which has been the basis of much of her success. Perceiving that the right to vote was the keystone to equal rights for women, she promptly became a suffragist - whole-heartedly.
Soon she was association with other famous names in the suffragist movement Julia Ward Howe, Lucy Stone, Amelia Bloomer and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. And her own name was becoming well known so much so that when she was married again, this time to George W. Catt, a former Iowan and fellow student at Iowa State college, there was an agreement that she would continue to use her previous name because a change might prove to be confusing. But before long she began to use the name Carrie Chapman Catt.
She was married to Mr. Catt in 1890 and their marriage was a happy one. Both of them outstanding in their fields, Mr. Catt was a leading civil engineer - the Catts continued with their careers, until Mr. Catt's death in 1905.
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It was in the same year that she married for the second time that Mrs. Catt made what is said to be the first outdoor speech ever made by a woman for suffrage.
Traveling with a fellow worker, Mrs. Catt reached a remote North Dakota town to make a talk on suffrage. However, on her arrival, it was found that no one had arranged for a place for her to speak. Undaunted, the two suffragists drove in their old democrat wagon to one of the principal corners in the town, rang an old-fashioned dinner bell to attract a crowd, and held their suffrage meeting.
In the years that intervened, the movement grew steadily and rapidly, Mrs. Catt appeared on many platforms, not only in this country but in other nations throughout the world. She was the successor to Susan B. Anthony when she passed from the scene, and was the foremost leader in the passage of the 19th amendment removed suffrage from the realm of fancy to that of fact.
But the achievement of the goal for which she had striven for many years did not mean that her work was at an end, for Carrie Lane Chapman Catt was not that kind of person. She knew there was much still to be done in the world, and she set about doing it.
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She organized the League of Women Voters, was its first president and is still honorary head of the organization. Since that time her attentions and energies have been turned to world peace and she has characteristically been active at the annual conferences for the Cause and Cure of Wars and in the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.
Not content with the rest she so richly deserves, Mrs. Catt is still active in the cause of peace. She recently was the main speaker on a program before the national conference for the Cause and Cure of War, saying to the women assembled there, "Go home. Sit down in a quiet corner and try to think of an idea that will stab at the heart of war." Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt was also on the program, but Mrs. Catt's remarks received most of the attention of the audience there and of the press the next day.
At 81, Mrs. Catt is drawing near the end of the road. But she can look back on a long line of achievements. The whole world recognizes that she has fought the good fight and has won, and loves her for it. And Mrs. Catt in turn can be assured that the banner of humanity which she has carried so long will not fall but will be carried forward to that far distant triumph which no man living today may ever see.
NOTE: Carrie died March 9, 1947, New Rochelle, New York, of a heart attack. She was interred at Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, New York.
Photograph courtesy of Globe-Gazette
Transcription and note by Sharon R. Becker, May of 2014
Cerro Gordo Biographies maintained by Lynn Diemer-Mathews.
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