This 1938 photograph, by an unknown photographer, is from a Rockport Lodge album called “Cruises.” The records of Rockport Lodge were recently processed with a bequest from Clara Schiffer.
When Clara Goldberg Schiffer was diagnosed with heart disease in her 70s, she immediately joined a gym and changed her diet, determined to remain active and healthy because she had a great deal more to do. She was still exercising regularly and remained committed to social justice at the time of her death, in May 2009 at age 97. Although she supported many organizations with both time and money, the Schlesinger Library embodies all that she held dear.
Born in Brockton, Massachusetts, to Jewish immigrants, Schiffer was following a clerical track in high school when an observant teacher urged her to consider college. She was accepted to Radcliffe and graduated cum laude in 1932. A loyal alum, she last visited Cambridge for her 75th class reunion, in 2007. The jobs Schiffer held to pay her way through Radcliffe shaped her lifelong commitment to bettering the lives of working women. When she graduated, Schiffer went to Washington, where the New Deal was opening professional opportunities for women, and took the first of many positions in the federal government focused on women, children, work, and health.
Clara Schiffer’s decades-long support for the library centered on these issues. From her suggestions (backed by research making her case) of women and organizations whose papers she felt should be housed here to her support for the library’s film series (she even made themed snacks, such as peanuts and Cracker Jack for A League of Their Own, possible), she worked behind the scenes to strengthen the library. More visible is her gift of several hundred 19th-century prints depicting women at work. Images such as “Strawberry Culture, New Jersey—Pickers in the Field,” from Harper’s Weekly in 1869, offer compelling visual documentation of women’s labor history.
A recent generous bequest from Schiffer’s estate will fund important work that we feel certain would please her: the processing of four collections that highlight the lives of working women. Together the records of Fernside (see Fall 2006 newsletter); Rockport Lodge; 9to5, National Association of Working Women; and the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers will document a century of American labor history.
Fernside, a rambling boardinghouse on Mount Wachusett in Massachusetts, became in 1890 the Girls’ Vacation House Association, under the auspices of the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union of Boston, whose records are also at the library. Established for “the benefit of women wage-earners,” Fernside for more than 80 years beckoned Boston’s shopgirls and secretaries to enjoy a week or two of fun and camaraderie in the mountain air. The Fernside records include a wealth of information documenting weeks full of poetry, plays, songfests, and berry picking, all for $4 a week in 1900 and $65 a week in the 1970s.
In 1906, a similar vacation house, a Fernside-with-salt-water, opened by the sea. The Massachusetts Association of Women Workers established Rockport Lodge for working women of low and moderate income. A theater, tennis courts, and a “smoke house” (where the women went to smoke) added to the appeal of the lodge, where guests all pitched in to do chores. Lodge rule books, administrative records, scrapbooks, and photograph albums describe summers at this respite from city life that operated until 2002. Many researchers, including author Anita Diamant, whose next novel will include Rockport Lodge, are eager to dive in.
The records of 9to5 move the story of working women ahead several decades. Founded in Boston in 1972, 9to5 (it’s ok to sing the Dolly Parton song now) drew women together against sexual harassment and pay inequality, issues that hadn’t yet been named. Although the organization has grown and modified its name several times, its commitment to improving the lives of women wage earners—much like those who enjoyed Fernside and Rockport Lodge—has never changed. The records of 9to5, the first of which were processed with a gift from Schiffer in 1992 (many cartons have been added since then), document how the organization has worked to improve conditions for women in the workplace through affirmative-action, age-discrimination, and equal-pay campaigns; job and wage surveys; and publicity.
The records of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW) bring the story of women and work even closer to home. They document the 15-year struggle by a small group of women and a few men to form a union representing a largely female staff of 3,500 secretaries, library workers, laboratory assistants, medical workers, and other employees at Harvard. Their success in 1988 marked the beginning of a decade of organizing in higher education. Growing out of the women’s movement of the early 1970s, the HUCTW developed innovative methods of organizing and representing workers based on the values and priorities of working women, with the goal of creating a community built on respect and compassion.
All four collections are rich in important materials about women’s lives and women’s work. Processing them will enable researchers in a variety of fields to enhance our understanding of a broad range of issues affecting women across the 20th century. We look forward to hosting a conference, after processing is complete, that will focus on these collections and issues, which we hope will stimulate research on the topics about which Clara Schiffer cared so deeply. That would be a most fitting tribute to this remarkable woman who was committed to bettering the lives of all women.
—Kathryn Allamong Jacob
Johanna-Maria Fraenkel Curator of Manuscripts
Photo from the Rockport Lodge Records at the Schlesinger Library
