In small communities where the opportunities are infrequent for theater, for social diversion of various kinds, the woman’s club is of the greatest help. It serves at once to focus and distribute all the better social and intellectual interests of the neighborhood. It may be a means of lifting a whole community to a livelier and more interesting social and intellectual level.
HELPING IN LEGISLATION
Many women’s clubs become important factors in municipal legislation along the lines most amenable to feminine influence. Through such clubs women have helped to solve educational questions, have influenced public sentiment in the direction of cleaning and beautifying the streets, and in many other ways have helped to promote law and order. The literary club is, however, the form most often taken by feminine organizations.
The formation of a literary club is not a difficult matter, though the amount of red tape with which it is sometimes covered up makes the project seem formidable. The woman most interested in the organization of such a club should call a meeting at her house of those she thinks most likely to enter into the scheme with energy and profit. A perusal of Robert’s Rules of Order or of any other good manual of parliamentary law, will show how such a meeting should be conducted, how officers should be elected and a constitution adopted. It may be said in this connection that there are few matters harder for a woman to digest gracefully than a knowledge of parliamentary usages. Such knowledge is for use only, not for display. To make a show of it is like using a kitchen utensil for a drawing-room ornament. Many women seem to regard the rules governing societies as important in themselves. They are only important as the knowledge and use of them quickens the business proceedings leading up to the real purpose of the organization. Business in a woman’s club, founded for study and improvement, is only a means to an end. It is disastrous to consider it otherwise.
MAKING OUT THE PROGRAM
The membership having been decided upon, the officers selected and constitution adopted, the next and most important thing in a literary club is to make out the program. For this purpose an executive committee of three or more is appointed by the president or elected by the club. Sometimes this committee makes out the entire program, merely notifying each member of the part she is expected to take in its performance. Sometimes the members are consulted as to what subjects they prefer. The more arbitrary method is often necessary in order to procure unity of design in the program. If, for instance, the program for the day includes two papers and a discussion following, the subjects considered should be related, so as to make some sort of harmony. If each member is allowed to choose her subject, regardless of anything but her own desire, small pleasure or profit follows. In some clubs the executive committee sends out cards to the members, asking for suggestions, accepts the best of these, and, when possible, assigns the topics preferred.
ASSIGNING THE TOPICS
If the first mentioned and more arbitrary method is followed, the committee should be careful to select subjects according to the persons for whom they are designed. Mrs. Brown, who loves poetry, but knows nothing of science, should not be asked to handle the wonders of electricity in the twentieth century; and Mrs. White, who has a delicious touch in narrating personal experiences, but knows little of continental fiction, would better be asked to write a paper on her summer vacation than one on the great Russian novelists, Turgenieff and Tolstoi. Of course, the practise for Mrs. Brown and Mrs. White, in considering subjects opposed to their knowledge and taste, might be salutary for them, but it might also send the other members of the club to sleep. And the ambition of the executive committee should be to avoid as much dulness as possible in the atmosphere it partly creates.
Whether the program shall be miscellaneous in character, or shall be devoted to progressive study in one direction, is a question to be considered by the committee. If the club is small, compact in spirit, and on improvement bent, the study of some one period, author or movement is often most advantageous. If the club is large, and entertainment is largely the motive for meeting, a program that varies to meet the various demands of the membership is better.
THE CLUB SESSION