Once Upon a Time and Today.
Inscribed
Nathan, Maud. Once Upon a Time and Today. With 28 illustrations. (With a foreword by Carrie Chapman Catt.) New York/London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1933.
8vo.; purple cloth, stamped in gilt; light spotting; dust-jacket; faint dampstaining.
First edition of Nathan’s memoir, dedicated to the memories of Nathan’s late husband, “The Fairy Prince of this tale, and to the memory of my little daughter, whose brief life taught me the measure of human joy and human sorrow.” A presentation copy, inscribed on the half-title: Inscribed for / Lucie Rosen / whom the author met / “Once Upon a Time – and Today” is her dear friend / Maud Nathan / March 3, 1944. With an introduction by Carrie Chapman Catt who, after succinctly stating that the Woman Movement “did not come into being, as many think, for the purpose of securing the vote,” but for widening all civil rights of women worldwide, chronicles Nathan’s achievements as a Jewish female activist for woman’s rights; in part,
The Jewish women of our country were slow in awakening. When the women of her own synagogue formed a sisterhood or auxiliary, it was Mrs. Nathan who became its first president. It was not long before a National Council of Jewish Women was organized (now a powerful body of splendidly self-reliant and intelligent women) and after the first president resigned, Mrs. Nathan was asked to be the candidate for that office, but she declined. Always true to her faith and loyal to the particular work of Jewish women, one of the first jewesses to preach in a synagogue, the broader interests of all human society made a stronger appeal to her.
Maud Nathan (1862-1946), suffragist and social welfare leader, was born into one of New York’s oldest Sephardic Jewish families. After her marriage at age 17 to her first cousin Frederick Nathan, a prosperous broker in his mid-thirties, Maud Nathan assumed the charitable responsibilities her family’s position occasioned. She was named a director of the nursing school at Mount Sinai Hospital – which her husband’s father had helped found. Her charitable work included the Hebrew Free School Association, the New York Exchange for Women’s Work and the Women’s Auxiliary of the Civil Service Reform Association. Her great efforts were on behalf of the shop girls in New York. She, with Josephine Shaw Lowell, established the Consumers’ League of New York, an organization she championed for the next 35 years, serving as president from 1897 for the next 20 years. When the National Consumers’ League grew from it in 1899, she served as a member of the executive committee and later a vice president. Using a new strategy, the League published lists of those stores whose employee policies were “approved” by the League (rather than listing those who abused their employees). When ladylike persuasion failed, they lobbied effectively for state legislation and fought for its protection in the courts. She was a tireless speaker and relentless lobbyist, as well as vice president of the Woman’s Municipal League and chairman of the industrial committee of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs.
After spending so much time in Albany, it became clear to Mrs. Nathan that no matter how worthy the cause, the lawmakers paid little heed to voteless women. Without slighting her league work, she began to devote more time fighting for woman suffrage through the Equal Suffrage League of New York. She served this group as the first vice president. Her family was not altogether in agreement with her. Her sister, Annie Nathan Meyer, a founder of Barnard College, and her cousin, Benjamin Nathan Cardozo, the later Supreme Court Justice, were publicly and quite vocally opposed to woman suffrage. Her husband, however, supported her and even joined the protest meetings at which she spoke. She served as the woman suffrage chief in Theodore Roosevelt’s Bull Moose campaign.
In this memoir, she candidly discusses her family, and their reactions to her suf
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