The Pittsburgh Press (July 16, 1941)
PROGRAM BOOK
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
The 1941-42 program book put out by the National Federation of Business and Professional Women is one of the finest things of its kind I’ve ever seen. It is the answer to every club woman’s prayer.
Planning programs has always been a major task, and a great deal of our organized effort has been a flop because we couldn’t make that hurdle. There’s been too much past concentration upon nebulous affairs. We riveted our attention on the abstract until we sounded rather like a bunch of 19th century high school graduates talking about goals and stars and Rubicons.
For grown-up women, we spent much time on geography – and look at the world map now! – or we rehearsed the old stuff we had studied on freshman English.
Everybody knows we failed to tackle reality, and today we stand face-to-face with the results of our failure – sterility, ineptitude and inertia.
There was never a time when it seemed so necessary to give intelligent women in groups something constructive to do and to think about. I believe most of them are dead tired of the customary routines which make them feel rather like little girls playing grown up in their grandmothers’ old clothes.
For that’s what a good deal of our club world has amounted to – spoon-feeding, making-believe we’re socially minded, pretending we were occupied with large affairs when we were only employing big gestures to impress each other.
Now, at last, we know we must get down to business. We’ve dreamed about a sensible constructive program for years and here it is.
The women who worked it out deserve praise, for they have put emphasis where it should be put – upon community needs, upon self-analysis, upon group cooperation and spiritual growth and the need for us to meet with sanity the issue of democracy versus dictatorship.