Woman Around the World

The event of the month in the world of the Arab woman was that the Lebanese government granted woman her political right, so that she may now elect and be elected to all the councils of the nation. The woman of Lebanon has every right to be glad and to take pride in being the first Arab woman to win this right, while her Syrian sister won only the right to elect. The Lebanese woman deserves congratulation, having won what she won after long struggle and unceasing demands; and we, for our part, have the right to ask of her that she organize her ranks from this day forward and enter the electoral battle as a bloc whose aim is reform, with an organized program before it. The Lebanese woman feels that the right she has won is incomplete, for the law stipulates that a woman who does not hold an elementary certificate may neither elect nor be elected; and she asks why the law demanded no certificate of the man, but gave the illiterate man the right to vote. In any case, woman can act on the principle that says: take what you are given and demand the rest — may God grant her success.

As for London, the papers of the month spoke of the two most powerful women members of the British Labour Party, Alice Bacon and Barbara Castle: the first stands behind Mr. Attlee, leader of the party, and the second behind Mr. Bevan, leader of the party's left wing. From the latest news it appears that the new American Congress will include eleven women representatives and one woman senator.

The women's associations and hundreds of prominent ladies signed a petition which they presented to the Iraqi government, demanding their political right.

The city of Stockton, in California, held a great celebration for Mrs. Tillie Lewis, inviting nine hundred people to luncheon; and when the guest of honor entered, the crowd rose and greeted her standing. She answered, along with her word of thanks: I have only just begun, and up the sleeve of my gown are many projects that I shall carry out. Who, then, is Tillie Lewis? None other than the biggest woman farmer in all the United States, and one of the great owners of its can factories, supplying the markets every year with two million cans of fruits and vegetables, and with seventy-seven uncanned varieties

of them that invade every market in America — a quiet, slender woman of forty-seven, of whom they say that she had the greatest hand in changing the face of California. Where the great Joaquin Valley there once held small orchards that counted for nothing beside the farmlands of America, today it furnishes sixteen percent of its agricultural production... She grew up destitute, but within her breast was the spirit of the struggling pioneers. Her father was a seller of phonograph records, her husband a grocer. And America in 1930 was no longer the land of ready opportunity. It was a can of Italian pomodoro that changed Tillie's life. Why was this excellent variety imported from Italy? Because it was better than anything America produced. Why did America not grow it? The soil and the climate were not suited to it. And Tillie ran from farm to farm and plunged into the work; she quarreled with her husband and they separated when she was twenty, after five years of marriage. She studied and strove and then worked, and when the money was found she traveled to Italy, and her feet reached the north; there she found soil and climate like California's, so she journeyed back and said: here is the promised land, here is my country, and here I shall begin. She carried the pomodoro seeds she had brought from Italy — the choice variety whose juice invades America — and offered it to the farmers, and they laughed: what does this slim city girl, with her high-heeled shoes, understand of farming? Then they agreed to try; the crop grew, and she hastened to range across America, sleeping and eating in automobiles and trains and walking miles to persuade the wholesale buyers to purchase her canned goods. The word 'no' was of no avail with this woman, and some of them took the gamble and signed contracts with her. She went on to persuade the Pacific can company to fit out a factory for making cans, since she would buy millions of cans from it — and the company did so. In 1935 a man stood holding an umbrella over her head against the rain as she struck the first pickax into the earth to build a factory of her own. In 1947 she bought the Pacific company's factory, at the age of thirty-three; then she added a third factory, and a fourth, and so on. The mayor of the city saw her, having supposed he would see a farm woman of rough appearance, and found himself instead before a lady beautifully dressed, her hair in curled locks — and they married. She was, and still is, the most merciful and gentlest of chiefs with her workers. And on the day the men were conscripted in the Second War, she herself was training the women to work: she arranged for someone to care for their children while they worked; she treated

with gentleness and generosity the men over fifty; she provided automobiles to carry those who lived far away to the place of work, and so on. And if we know that Egypt alone consumed, in 1929, half a million Lebanese lira's worth of tomato sauce; that it sent an expert to Italy who bought the machinery needed for a factory to press and pack this variety; and that it first planted the Watarbiuti variety imported from England, then saw that the Italian varieties — 30 to 49 varieties — were better, and took from them: if we know this, we understand why California today celebrates a woman who furnished the country with a fortune and changed the face of California.

New England

Bennington College for women in New England, in the northeastern United States, is preparing to celebrate its twentieth birthday. This college is unusual in its program. Its founding was conceived by school headmistresses, members of the state board of education, and the fathers of girls who had reached the age of college study and were not satisfied with the kind of education then to be found there. Committees were formed, plans and projects were drawn up, and counsel and help were asked of everyone with an interest in this field; and thus Bennington College for women was founded. At the college there are no set courses that the student must complete in order to obtain the academic degree; rather, she obtains that degree when she proves her excellence in a principal field. The girl is thus responsible for choosing the program, which she builds on the basis of her own interests and gifts and her plans for the future; and when she has drawn up her program, she goes to her own adviser at the college, who helps her carry it out. The college offers the girls the study of the natural sciences, such as physics, biology, and chemistry; or the arts, such as painting, sculpture, music, acting, and dance; or literature, history, political science, psychology, and other subjects.

Thus the college proceeds on the basis of an individual education that keeps pace with the times and rests upon the needs and interests of the students themselves; and when one of them finishes her studies, she goes out into the world

to do the work she has chosen and prepared herself for — work that suits her temperament and her gifts.

The Chilean woman took part for the first time, in actual fact, in electing the President of the Republic; and the papers say that President Ibáñez owes much to the movement of the Ibañista women — so named after him — for it organized the women's votes and carried him to victory.

Two great women are visiting the Arab East today. The first is the wife of Schacht the German, whom they call the magician, the untier of knots, and to whom they telegraph to put in order the finances of any state whose finances have become entangled; he flies off, and with him flies his wife, who never leaves his side. Asked about her feeling — is it pride and vainglory in this rare man, possessor of the greatest economic brain of this age? — she answers: no, I feel only happiness; as for pride and vainglory, they mean one thing, and its name is conceit. The second is the daughter of India's new ambassador in Egypt, Miss Radha; and though she is an Eastern woman, both of them are visiting the immortal Egyptian antiquities, captivated by their grandeur.

There a racial movement is under way, setting the white race above the black. The restaurants, hotels, cafés, and parks — none of them allow the blacks to be treated as the whites are. In the face of this movement, woman there has sprung up, and the Indian woman has joined the African, and the two have gone forth to fight this racial persecution by every peaceful means; the papers publish pictures of these noble women and tell of their humane struggle.

The conference of the International Council of Women was held at Rong University in England, and the conference of the International Women's Union was held in Naples; at both conferences Egypt was represented by its cultured and energetic women delegates.

And finally, the system of women jurors has been introduced in some American courts, whereupon a company of women there demanded that a room be set aside in the courthouse for the toilette, with a mirror, hair combs, and articles of adornment.