A lodge of this kind under the leadership of progressive women of the older immigration has become a center in which are discussed many of the questions the women have to face for the first time. The plan in the Polish National Alliance is to have lodges so organized that women from Russian Poland may be in one, those from Galicia in another, or to organize lodges on the basis of the neighborhood association in the United States.
It is hoped that by such a plan as this the more backward women may be drawn into some of the social activities of the Polish community. Although English has not been the language of the meetings, women have been encouraged to learn English as soon as possible after their arrival. The older women urge the younger women to acquire the language. They have learned the importance of a knowledge of the language to the mother of boys and girls who are growing up in surroundings of which the mother knows little, and where custom and convention are so different from those to which she was accustomed.
With the multiplication of women's lodges came the demand on the part of the women for representation in the national organization. As a result, the Women's Auxiliary has been given an official place, and women have been elected to the national board of directors.
Polish women have felt that the welfare of the group as a whole is largely dependent upon the fitness of the women to meet the new situation. They have recognized the fact that, because of the national attitude toward women, Polish women of the class represented by the bulk of the immigration are very backward. They have therefore sought to inaugurate a campaign for the education of women on a national scale.
Another interesting development has been the growth of national organizations for women alone. One of the earliest and best known of these is the Polish Women's Alliance, an example of organized effort of women to deal with their own problems on a national scale. The leaders in this enterprise were women who, through their own experiences as immigrants, and through contact with those who came later, had come to realize both the nature of the problems women were called upon to meet and the different position of women in America.
One of the women who had been active in inaugurating the movement spoke of the extreme difficulty of such work in the Polish community because of the prejudice against women's taking part in anything outside of their homes. Some of the more advanced women thought that the welfare of the whole Polish community was retarded by the ignorance and indifference and prejudices of the women which kept them clinging to Old-World methods and customs entirely unsuited to the new conditions. They hoped that by building a clubhouse for women, with library and reading rooms, a large hall for assemblies, and small rooms for clubs and classes, they might gradually interest the women in something outside their homes.
No one thought it possible, however, for women to organize in this way, much less to carry on a national movement and to build a clubhouse, as they have succeeded in doing. Some leading women felt that education must come, if at all, through the women's own efforts, and that the education involved in work for the organization more nearly than any other experience touched the needs of these women, in that it drew them out of their older habits and encouraged them to take the initiative and so to gain the self-confidence they lacked.
The organization was at first possible only because of the benefit features through which the support could be gained of men and women who had no interest or confidence in such educational projects as attempt to interest the women in clean streets, satisfactory disposal of garbage, and improved housing conditions.
This movement does not represent hostility to the great joint organization. Most of the women interested in developing the movement have been members of the Polish National Alliance; but they have thought that to give the women a sense of confidence it was necessary to have a women's organization, quite independent of the men's. And there have developed then the three relationships between men and women: (1) the Women's Department as one of the divisions of work in the Alliance; (2) the Women's Auxiliary to the men's society, and (3) the National Women's Organization, in which men are not members.
LITHUANIAN WOMAN'S ALLIANCE