An Online Edition

            edited and annotated, with an introduction by Dr. Luke A. Powers

INTRODUCTION

C. The Society Page

    The new and expanded society page gave Miles the freedom to pursue the type of writing she preferred. Milton allotted "Looked at From the Feminine Viewpoint" two full pages (usually numbers 6 and 7) in the middle of the paper. To fill this space on a daily basis with a staff of four, the News mixed elements of the "new" society page with that of the "old." If the new was typified by innovative columns such as the Fountain Square Conversations and the unsigned editorials, the old was typified by the "Social News of the Day," the traditional social calendar. Much of the "old" society page came ready-made in the form of social announcements from the readership, wire stories, syndicated columns and paid advertisements (often printed to look like legitimate articles, addressing such feminine concerns as "That Awful Itchy Feeling"). The genuine articles written by the News' staff included the occasional feature story, but more commonly took the form of local news items on women's sporting events, children's pageants, lectures, concerts, films and, on occasion, suffrage activity.

    "Social News of the Day" contained brief items under the following subheadings: Social Events; Weddings; Club Circles; Church Societies; Society Personals. These categories set the parameters of the fashionable woman's existence. Typical items in the "Social Events" group portray an enviable class of women devoted to social decorum and the pursuit of its own leisure. Take the following item of May 1, 1914:

              Miss Colyar Hostess To Miss Mary Baldwin

Miss Josephine Colyar entertained today with an informal bridge party this afternoon at "Colyarton," on Mission ridge, complimentary to Mrs. John Boyle's guest, Miss Mary Baldwin, of New Orleans. Roses and midsummer flowers from Colyarton gardens were used in all the lower-floor rooms. Miss Colyar had two tables of bridge, the guests being chosen among the debutante set.

Following the game an ice and salad course was served from the daintily appointed tables. (6)

This item is a rather patent advertisement of social position; the "debutante set" playing cards today will no doubt soon graduate to the "Wedding" category of the "Social News." Yet it also provides bourgeois and working class women with an introduction to what might be called the "grammar" of elite existence. The item reads like a "how-to" manual for carrying off a successful bridge luncheon--from the salad course to the suitable effeminacy of the "daintily appointed table." Even beyond such practical considerations, it illustrates the type of class voyeurism now so effectively stimulated by television shows such as Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Anyone who can afford the two cents for a paper can enter the rarified precincts of "Colyarton," then one of Chattanooga's finest mansions.

    The society page also included brief wire-articles deemed suitable for women and often relating to some aspect of domestic reform. For instance, an article titled "Human laboratory for sorry husbands" (4/9/14:6) reports on a Chicago experiment for reforming wayward mates. When not improving their husbands, women were expected to be improving themselves. Many of the articles have a didactic flavor, such as informing the reader that "Ragtime is Fun, Not Real Music" (5/8/14:6). Such articles tend to focus on the cultivation of the fine arts and social graces needed to become a proper "lady." Yet, as might be expected of a progressivist paper, tales of self-improvement and uplift were also a common feature. Miles herself wrote an article titled "Happy home for girls who work" (5/13/14:6) which praised Kosmos, a local women's club which had established rent-controlled cottages for female mill-workers. Indeed, she seems to have specialized in these "uplift" pieces designed to show what women could do for women and society as a whole. She wrote sympathetic articles on the Crittenden Home, a half-way house for troubled girls, and the newly established Vine Street orphanage (4/10/14:6 and 4/16/14:6, respectively). The society page also allowed Miles to graft her gift for "local color" to a prohibitionist message in signed articles such as "The wildcat still" (4/14/14:6).

    While the society page sought to "improve" women of all classes as part of a larger effort to reform society as a whole, it sometimes sensationalized the very activities it was trying to eradicate. Despite its progressivist stance on a variety of social issues, it was not averse to lurid tales--especially those of crime and passion. For instance, the society page carried juicy tid-bits on an old-fashioned feud in rural Lawrence County (4/27/14:7) and the bloody ending of "noted outlaw" Buster Duggan (4/2/14:9). A similar ambiguity pervades the News' presentation of "vice," a popular target of the progressivist agenda. A review of a contemporary play manages both to condemn and titillate:

Those who have read the play "Damaged Goods," by Eugene Brieux, will remember the vivid and wonderfully drawn portrait of 'The Girl.' The character, being that of a moral degenerate is, of course, repulsive, but it gives strength to the entire play and drives home the lesson Brieux teaches so forcefully . . . . It is said that on the stage, made up for the painted woman of the streets, Miss Stempel gives a remarkable performance. (4/12/14:9)

Some articles have a distinctly tabloid feel and are built around elaborate photo-montages. These record fashionable events ranging from the wedding of President Wilson's daughter (5/8/14:6) to the flight of Princess Ludwig Lowenstein-Wertheimer, the first "aero-taxi" passenger in Paris (5/27/14:6). Occasionally, however, these photo-stories deviate from accepted female roles and laud innovative women such as "Woman Trust Buster" Kate Holmes (4/10/14:14) or National American Woman Suffrage Association president Carrie Chapman Catt (5/13/14:6).

    If these photo-montages suggest a schizophrenic philosophy at work in the society page, the regular columns reinforce that  division. In short, the Fountain Square Conversations have awfully strange bedfellows. For the traditional housewife, there is Efficient Housekeeping, a bi-weekly by "Domestic Science Lecturer" Henrietta Grauel. Similarly, Madame Ise'bell's Beauty Lessonsoffers tips for skin-care and treatment for "fleshy nose." For the "new woman," however, there is Activities In Behalf of the Women's Suffrage Movement. In accordance with its somewhat colorless title, this bi-weekly column offers no-nonsense reports about the movement on the local, state and national levels. "Prepared" by Katherine J. Wester, secretary of the Chattanooga Equal Suffrage Association, it approaches its subject pragmatically, emphasizing the political process necessary to win suffrage and seeking common ground between conservative and "militant" suffragists.

    If placement is any indication of ideological affinity, the Fountain Square Conversations are more often printed on the same page as Activities on Behalf of Women's Suffrage than on that with Efficient Housekeeping or Madame Ise'bell's Beauty Lessons. However, one cannot place too much emphasis on placement--especially given the sense of ambiguity that riddles the entire society page. While on one hand Milton desired to promote the progressive ideal of "new woman," worthy of suffrage, the society page remained rooted in a paternalistic traditionalism most evident in the column bearing the grandiose title "'backward, turn backward, o time.'" Similar to a feature in the Chattanooga Daily Times, this column recreates a social history of the city:

                                     THIRTY YEARS AGO

                                                _______

Creed F. Bates leaves for Cincinnati.

Mrs. Walter McFadden leaves for Murfreesboro. . . .

                                                 _______

                               TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO

                                                  _______

Miss Carrie Stepp is visiting friends in Lexington, Ky.

Miss Julia Cuthbert, of Nashville, is visiting Miss Anna McMillan on Oak street. . . .

                                                   _______

                                   FIFTEEN YEARS AGO

                                                    _______

Walter Nelles returned from Kenyon Military academy, near Columbus, O., and will   spend his vacation with his parents in the city. . . .

Chief F. W. Hill, of the police department, and family, return from Cumberland island.  (6/15/14:6)                                                                                                          

These items have been drawn from the personals section of past "Social News" for that particular date. Such a feature does more than simply flatter the Chattanooga elite by remembering their past comings and goings. It establishes a sense of cultural continuity for Chattanooga and creates a tangible past upon which the "New South" will build. Like the "Social News of the Day," this column provides a blueprint for those who would aspire to a genteel life comprised of visits and summer vacations; more importantly it perpetuates the existence of a cultural hierarchy which transcends the reform movement. It turns a blind eye to segments of the society necessary to sustain that hierarchy--working women, the rural poor, African Americans, etc.--and instead promotes a vision of Chattanooga's elite society as a sort of platonic ideal. In this static, perfected, timeless realm, the vagaries of individual lives are less important than the family names that survive and flourish. Despite the politics of the moment (such the suffrage movement) the "sacred" role of woman is not only to nourish the family but also to maintain the communal ideal. (This paternalistic vision, which looked to women as the guardian of tradition, no doubt attracted Milton to Emma Bell Miles in the first place; he seemed willing to trade her lack of journalistic experience for her considerable sense of local tradition and the women who upheld it--as depicted in The Spirit of the Mountains and her magazine work).

    William A. Link has termed this type of paternalism the "paradox" of southern progressivism, which "embraced uplift and progress, yet believed in a hierarchy of race and culture" (xii). Perhaps the most glaring example of such "paradox" in the society page is the daily cartoon entitled "'The Young Lady Across the Way'". The paper that was willing to publish Activities on Behalf of Women's Suffrage had no qualms about perpetuating the dumb blonde stereotype. Asked about some current news story, the Young Lady responds with a malapropism--apparently poetic justice for her attempt to be conversant with the news beyond the society page. For instance, while she and her young man tango, the caption explains:

The young lady across the way says she saw in the paper that coal miners might decide to walk out this summer, and you'd think they'd get enough exercise in their regular business. (5/28/14:6)

She fares no better with foreign policy. While she tries on a hat, the caption reads:

We asked the young lady across the way if she thought we had a mission to interfere in Mexico and she said she didn't suppose the missionaries to do much of the fighting. (5/7/14:6)

Though the cartoons make light of miners and Mexicans, they reserve their real sarcasm for women's suffrage. What mischief would ensue, the cartoon insinuates, if the Young Lady actually had the chance to vote?

    Clearly Miles was not amused with the cartoon. When the "young lady" appeared wearing a gargantuan aigrette (5/28/14:6), Miles made a special plea in the Fountain Square Conversationof May 30 for women to abandon the practice. Despite George Fort Milton's best intentions, Miles had to stake a claim in somewhat hostile territory in writing for the News. Given the deeply embedded paternalism of even the "new" society page, the Fountain Square Conversations amounted almost to a subversive act. With this column, as with her other newswriting, Miles hoped to redefine the "society" page according to a scientific definition of the term. For her, its highest function was not simply to provide "news for women" or hector for the suffrage, but rather to uplift both men and women into a new social order, built on the past but untainted by its paternalism.

    It must be noted, however, that Miles herself was not completely free of the paternalism she critiqued. While she heartily advocated women's suffrage as the first step in restoring her society to the proper path of social evolution, she--like many other southern white suffragists--would deny the vote to African Americans, whose participation in the political process was deemed irrelevant to evolutionary change. Miles' stereotypical portraits of African Americans (particularly in the Fountain Square Conversations of April 30 and June 2, 1914) show her to be a thorough-going racist. Far-seeing in other respects, she was very much a reflection of her society in her belief in the biological and cultural inferiority of "the Negro." Indeed, her native prejudices seem only to have been amplified by her blind adherence to Spencerian theory which branded African Americans, in the words of one of her contemporaries, "a child-race, left behind in the struggle for existence because of original unfavorable . . . conditions" (qtd. in Degler 16). Miles' racial prejudice seems especially narrow-minded given her empathy for the poor whites of the Southern Appalachians, another group then considered "child-like." Even more significantly, it reveals the ugly side of her commitment to Spencerian theory, which despite its universal optimism provided a scientific rationale for white-supremacism.

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