Rhode Island Woman's Directory, 1892.
Inscribed By The Editor
[Rhode Island]. Dailey, Charlotte Field, ed. Rhode Island Woman’s Directory For The Columbian Year 1892. Providence: Rhode Island Woman’s World Fair Advisory Board, 1893.
8vo.; blue cloth; light foxing to endpapers; tips slightly rubbed.
First edition of this directory of Rhode Island women, with statistics and commentary regarding their professional, educational, and social pursuits. A presentation copy, inscribed on the front endpaper by the editor: Compliments of Charlotte F. Dailey.
The Columbian Exhibition in Chicago was a seminal event in American cultural history in several respects: Frederick Jackson Turner declared, in a famous address, the frontier of America closed; Jane Addams gave a memorable speech attacking the exploitative policies of George Pullman; many of the exhibits, especially the famous “White City,” expressed both the utopian hopes and the underlying anxieties Americans felt about the accelerating urbanization of their country. The “Board of Lady-managers” appointed by the World’s Columbian Commission had their own ambitious agenda for the fair. They wanted—according to board member and editor Dailey, in her preface—“to set before the people woman’s share in making the history of the world” and to “set forth a complete and perfect representation of the condition of women in every country at the present day and particularly of the women who are wage earners, whether their work be mental or manual; to portray the legal, political and industrial status of women.”
The result of their labor is this exhaustive and fascinating census, “arranged alphabetically by business or avocation,” and lists the names and addresses of women in all manner of occupations, from advertising agents and bookkeepers to clairvoyants and wood carvers. Dressmakers and schoolteachers comprised two of the largest categories, but the number of women in domestic service was so large that a mere estimate was recorded: “The number of women employed in domestic service in the State, in 1892, was estimated to be 21,398.”
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