Report.
[Education]. (Osborne, Mrs. D.M., President). Twenty-Seventh Annual Report of the Woman’s Educational and Industrial Union. Auburn, New York, For the Year ending April 28, 1909. Auburn, N.Y.: Knapp, Peck & Thomson, 1909.
8vo.; brown wrappers printed in brown; two small ink spots on lower cover.
First edition. With a black and white photographic frontispiece depicting the Woman’s Educational and Industrial Union building in Auburn, New York. The Union was incorporated in 1886 and the building was erected in 1907. An informative volume, summarizing the Union’s activity between April 1908 and April 1909, it includes reports from the recording secretary, Mary T. Hart, as well as from the heads of the Union’s various committees: Education, Kitchen Garden, Library, Entertainment, Employment, House, Philanthropic, Lecture, Social, Reception, Membership, Press, Gymnasium and the Women’s Exchange. Also included is a membership list of over 800; the Union’s constitution and by-laws are printed in the rear. The main objective – according the Constitution – is “to increase mutual co-operation and sympathy among women, in order to promote their moral and mental improvement, industrial and social advancement.” The Union was most successful with its offering of classes for young women and girls. Its aim was to advance the girls as economical homemakers as well as indispensable citizens of the world. Students could enroll in various classes: sewing and embroidery; fine and decorative arts; language; music; secretarial arts; nursing; and the popular Kitchen Garden, which included tips on sweeping, dusting, bed-making, dish washing and table setting.
The Union experienced a membership boom and correlating financial success after the erection of its headquarters on 23 South Street, in Auburn, New York. The building, which, according to the report, occupies “a large place in public attention,” is:
a bureau of general information, a place of entertainment, a temporary asylum for the friendless and unprotected, a resting place for strangers. It is all this and more, represented in a well ordered institution employing energetic, intelligent and efficient officers carrying on a great work, with the system and precision common to business transactions and devoted entirely to the interests of women.
In her closing remarks for her annual report, Hart summarizes the benefits of both this woman’s union in Auburn as well as others around the world: “By such means the sum of human happiness is infinitely increased and it also tends to develop a broader, better womanhood.”
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