Research Twice, Write Once

As a researcher, I like rabbit holes; to be entirely fair, I think that’s something of a prerequisite for the calling.

I’m also a devotee of lost causes; short of medical conditions, taxes, and the weather, I don’t accept problems I “can’t” solve — especially when it comes to research.

Tracking down almost any private institution’s records is a challenge, especially when that institution has been effectively defunct since the late 1930s and its parent organization has changed hands and names and, to some extent, purpose.

Add on top of that the woeful under-documentation of women’s educational organizations and, well, you begin to see where this is going.

In attempting to track down anything that may remain of the student registry for the Woman’s Institute, I’ve taken to casting a broader net. When the Lackawanna Historical Society (responsible for this excellent talk on the Institute’s centennial) was unable to assist, I took the next step up: the Pennsylvania State Museum’s archives.

I am, in truth, a fan of museums. I have a tremendous respect for the work of conservators, curators, docents, and volunteers.  Their staffs are underpaid, underfunded, and working in an environment that is increasingly hostile to factual truth and efforts to educate the public. Museum labor is one of love and intentional care, overlooked and too often unappreciated.

Which is what I’m trying to keep in mind.

The Pennsylvania State Museum doesn’t have any student records for the Woman’s Institute. It does, however, have a number of the paperback instructional books … with some interesting attempts at documentation.

Let’s take a look.

If the bare minimum for a museum label is the correct spelling of the object’s name or title, we’ve already missed the mark. While the Women’s Institute is a remarkable organization, it most certainly was not headquartered in Scranton, Pennsylvania and it most certainly does exist today.

So, we have a misspelled name. But that “c. 1915” has to be accurate, right? Well, let’s check the description.

1915? 1916? Who knows! Apparently not the State Museum of Pennsylvania.

(The answer is 1916, for anyone playing along at home — though key players like Mary Brooks Picken and Ora Cne (Cee-nee) were approached in 1915.)

However, the cover itself tells us that neither year is correct for this particular book. While the Institute may be a ghost of Pennsylvania’s past, its building still stands today as the home of Scranton Preparatory School. The building was designed and appeared in promotional material in 1919, in response to the explosive growth of the Institute’s student body, and its cornerstone was laid on June 3, 1920.

Of course, it’s not like the Times-Tribune has an easily-referenced, if brief, article on the occasion.

And certainly, no record is accessible from Google Books with any kind of documentation of the building’s dedication.

Then, there’s the small matter of Ms. Picken’s role in the school’s origins. While an accomplished author, sewist, and teacher, she was by no means the founder — though she did write many of the Institute’s foundational sewing, dressmaking, and tailoring texts. She had no hand in its millinery or cookery programs, both of which not only existed but were well-attended with even members of the United State Marine Corps signing up to sharpen their culinary acumen.

Alright, surely, the description must improve, right?

That depends on your idea of improvement. Scranton was indeed home to the International Correspondence School (ICS), which was not a “model,” but rather the Woman’s Institute’s parent organization. When the Institute was absorbed back into ICS in the 1930s, the Institute’s headquarters then became home to ICS.

To split hairs, the ICS itself was founded in response Pennsylvania’s Mine Safety Act of 1885 which created a mine safety exam that many miners, deprived of access to a quality education, were ill-suited to pass — but we’ll give that to them.

Here’s where it really goes south.

Draping, drafting, and sewing are nuanced technical skills and the instruction booklets reflect that complexity. While the Institute’s advertising may have insisted that by simply studying the illustrations, even a child could successfully complete the course, that did not reflect the reality of the material. Though thoughtfully written and carefully scaffolded to ensure skills successfully built on one another, these lessons were anything but “simple.”

There’s also the matter of “afford[ing] young women an economic advantage in setting up their own home sewing business.” The Woman’s Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences, through its booklets, written exams, required samples, and personalized feedback, set out to equip its students with a robust skill set, one that would allow women to “win independence, liberal incomes, [and] even fame in a pleasant, dignified vocation.” While the Institute’s stated goal was to meet the educational needs of women and girls without regard to geographic barriers, in practice, it sought to train a generation of professional dressmakers and tailors, prepared to open independent shops or partner with existing businesses outside of the home.

The Institute’s alumnae were no more handed an “economic advantage” than today’s college graduate; rather, they honed their knowledge and skill through a prescribed course of study — and at no small cost.

What the writer chooses to omit in a description is often just as important, if not more so, than what they choose to include. Here, the writer has included “maternity wear, millinery, and how to craft a business card.” While millinery was a separate course written, instead, by Ora Cne, it was indeed a course the Institute offered; likewise, the dressmaking and tailoring course did address maternity wear and “how to craft a business card.”

By flattening students’ education to these two topics, the author refuses to acknowledge the degree of technical knowledge and skill pupils were expected to acquire and demonstrate. In an era before women’s suffrage, the Woman’s Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences sought to educate them on how to pursue a line of credit, how to manage their own accounts, and how to successfully choose a location for their business. It taught women to look at a garment and puzzle out how to recreate it. Its drafts demanded accuracy and precision — just like any other technical rendering.

To reduce that education to motherhood and the most superficial aspect of running a business is to, at best, infantilize and, at worst, erase the experience of thousands.

The Institute wasn’t perfect. Its models, illustrations, and texts all assume a default of whiteness; its 1919 registration form, however, does not. Nowhere are students asked to indicate race or even gender. In theory, a black student could expect to receive the same quality of instruction and attention —at least by correspondence— as their white counterpart. So long as you could read, write, and (admittedly) pay, the Institute had a place for you.

The ways we describe the past are as instructive and as instrumental to our understanding as the description itself. Lazy and inaccurate label writing reflects a lack of care; it suggests that the object is not worthy of time or consideration, that it offers us nothing in our understanding of the places we live or the world in which we operate. It flattens our perception and reduces the past to the tired ground we think we know, instead of the far more interesting and often challenging possibility which we can never fully grasp.

So, let’s try that again:

The Woman’s Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences was headquartered in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Affiliated with the International Correspondence School, it was founded in 1916 and offered correspondence courses in millinery, dressmaking, and tailoring, instructing students in technical skills, such as sewing and drafting, as well as principles of design and the fundamentals of business. Students received instructional booklets, such as the one shown here, and completed a written exam and samples to return for feedback. Mary Brooks Picken, renowned teacher and prolific author, was instrumental in the Institute’s success, crafting many of its sewing, dressmaking, and tailoring course books. The Institute’s headquarters, located at 1000 Wyoming Avenue, was dedicated in September 1921 with Governor Sproul as well as the Deputy United States Commissioner of Education and Anna Steese Richardson of the Woman’s Home Companion in attendance.