Miss Macphail Tells of Lecture Tour in The United States

Miss Macphail Tells of Lecture Tour in The United States
Somehow the South has always been associated with leisure, beauty and romance, a sort of fairyland where the whites, at any rate, did in the old plantation days, but for the tenant farmer in North Carolina life lacks beauty. Most if the farms are worked by tenants. The land is reddish in color and in the district around Greensboro, cotton and tobacco are the principal crops. The Lucky Strike cigarettes are made in that vicinity. The crops were quite poor, being out of the drought area. The farmhouses are ground by pillars, mostly made of brick, giving the whole countryside a non-finished appearance. I was on the campus of the North Carolina Women's College for two days. One of the lecturers told me she had never heard Canada mentioned on the campus before. The two days made up for it. I had five lectures on Canadian-American relations and the League of Nations, as well as dinner and tea at which I met the students and part of the faculty. The 1,800 soft-voiced southern girls did much to revive my belief in the beauty and romance of the South. They live leisurely and are exceedingly courteous and kind. One-third of the population of Greensboro are colored. They have their own educational institutions.

In Washington I attended a Peace Conference, and there heard and met such recognized leaders in the peace movement as James McDonald, the head of the Foreign Policy Association of New York, and Frederick Libby the executive secretary of the Nationa1 Council for the Prevention of War. Both had but recently returned from Europe, and gloomy indeed was the picture they painted. Mr, McDonald said the gloom pervading th League of Nations Assembly the day of the German elections was so intense that one would have thought the delegates had lost a close friend. He believes the reactionary forces are winning in most of the European countries. In conversation with five Prime Ministers he asked what the United States could do within a short time that would in a measure restore European confidence, and they all answered: "Join the world court." This would show that the United States was beginning to realize her responsibility in the world community.

The Canadian Club at Washington asked me to be their guest at lunch given in honor of the boys of many countries who had come to take part in the International Oratorical contest. The Canadian representative was Mr. Paul Leduc of Quebec. He spoke English with difficulty. I sat next to him and by each of us talking slowly, we managed to under-stand each other. Ireland, Germany, France, Mexico, and Chile were rep-resented. We were treated to a marvellously fine speech by Dr. Marvin, president of the George Washington University. I addressed the American Association of University Women and two days I spent in the beautiful capitol city. I was their guest. Being a member of the Zonta Club in Ottawa has been of inestimable value to me on this trip. In almost every city I meet members of the Zonta organization and they take the greatest trouble to make my stay happy. A number of Zontonians entertained a member from New Zea-land and myself to dinner in the Dodge Hotel, Washington, which is one of the few large hotels with a woman manager. She also, Mary Lindsay by name, is a member of Zonta. The Dodge Hotel originally was a hotel for women only, but now is one of the exclusive hotels for men and women, and it has gained present high standing under the management of Mary Lindsay.

My journeyings in the Northern States brought me to Vassar College for a week end, and there I heard Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, wife of the Governor of New York Stale. She a remarkable woman. Besides performing her duties as hostess, she teaches in a college two days a week and is in partnership with another woman manufacturing rare bits of furniture. Her subject dealt with education. She has several children: two girls in college. She pointed out the great difficulty young people found in deciding what their life work was to be since they go on to school without any practical experience in work of any kind. She is a great believer in work and apparently does not lose caste as a Governor's wife because of it. Her personality is pleasing.

At Scranton, Pa., I, for the first time addressed a State Federation of Women's Clubs, I found them a splendid group, many of whom are earnestly studying International affair. Scranton is in the heart of the anthracite region. I spent the week end with one of the women am-ong the coal hills. This woman, Mrs. Maude Richards, farms. She has a large acreage, but it is hilly. Her husband is a coal mine owner, and he takes no part in the farming operations. With them I visited the largest coal breaker owned and operated by the Reading Iron & Coal Company. The breaker is a vast machine for breaking the coal into commercial sizes, purifying, grading and washing it. It is a huge, noisy place, and does as much work with 135 men as formerly was done by 650 men. One is, by such experiences, convinced that we have reached the age of labor displacement to some extent at least.

An interesting experience was an afternoon in Cleveland which took the nature of a symposium on "Whither Womanhood." Mrs. Alice Foote MacDougall, who has made such an outstanding success of business in New York. spoke on "Women in Industry." Mrs. Felix Levy of Chic-ago spoke on "Women and the Home," and I on "Women in Public Life." The audience of 1,200 was composed wholly of women.

I met the Rotary in Syracuse, N. Y., and greatly enjoyed them. Their lusty and melodious singing is a thing to be long remembered. I met mixed groups of men and women at several points.

My visit to the fine old city of Boston terminates tonight. Speaking of Boston makes one think of the famous "Boston Tea Party." I think it has recently become a "Boston Coffee Party," where a group of women vote discussing the making of coffee one woman said she did not believe in making it too strong. She only put in one dessertspoonful of coffee for each person, and one for the pot. and when I gasped she said some people put in a tablespoonful for each person. I cannot see how people who drink coffee like that need worry over prohibition.

There seems to be a pretty general reaction against the Hawley-Smoot tariff. Many of the people feel that they have made a mess of things, and they link up their present economic depression with the recent high tariff. The policy of isolation still seems to be popular and the average American feels no responsibility for world affairs, though everywhere the thinking people greatly regret this attitude. And more anon.
AGNES C. MACPHAIL.