Lest modern feminists believe that the idea of bringing children to work or creating a child care center in the office is recent, the following news article should convince us otherwise.

21 May 1905 — Pittsburgh Daily Post

“Woman Lawyer Takes Her Children Along with Her When She Works”
+++++“Husband is Her Partner”
++++++++++“Believes Youngsters Should Be Taught Practical Business Methods”

+++++“‘Nothing on earth would induce me to wear a shirt front. I hate anything approaching the masculine in woman’s dress,’ remarked, with emphasis, Mrs. William G. Mulligan of the Bronx, lawyer and real estate dealer.
+++++Mrs. Mulligan, who is almost frail in appearance, wore a fashionably cut dark blue taffeta silk gown, a white lace stock collar fastened with a diamond ornament and a dark blue straw that turned up in the back and down in the front after the prevailing mode. Her appearance, taken in connection with the anti-shirt front remark, might lead one to the conclusion that she is by no means entitled to a front seat among the new woman fraternity. Which only goes to prove that it is never safe to size up a woman by her clothes or by the remarks she may make on the clothes question.
+++++For in spite of her disdain of the masculine shirt front, Mrs. Mulligan entertains and puts into practice views on home life and the bringing up of children which would make the average woman, new or old, open her eyes, and which are not at all suggestive of the butterfly type of woman. For instance, Mrs. Mulligan turns a cold shoulder to afternoon teas and fashionable society functions of any sort, although before her marriage, arrayed in $200 gowns, she did duty at many.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++Prefers to Work
+++++She gets no pleasure out of them, she says. They bore her. That she is sincere in the matter is proved by the fact that although her husband is abundantly able to support her luxury, she elects to trudge to a law office every day with him and work there from morning till night.
+++++It is her views on the bringing up of children that stamp her as a woman of originality.
+++++‘Since the news got out that we enlarged our offices so that our children could spend most of the day here instead of at the house,’ she said to a reporter, ‘we have been overrun with visitors who seem to think it the most remarkable thing in the world that a mother and father should plan not to be separated from their children all day long.’
+++++As she spoke she removed her modish hat and seated herself in a rocker in a small sitting room at the rear of her law offices. This room opens into a long yard laid out with flower beds. At the end of the yard is a building designated as a gymnasium. Before next winter it will be properly equipped. Just now the apparatus consists of only a punching bag and plenty of space to romp in.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++School at the Office
+++++Upstairs at what used to be the rear law office, is a modern school outfit — low tables, chairs and desks, a blackboard, and a schoolmaster who from 10 to 12 and from 1 to half past 2 o’clock, five days in the week, teaches the three ‘R’s’ and some other things to his three small nieces.
+++++The fourth little Mulligan girl, aged 3 who is the baby of the family, is not yet enrolled in the school. Nevertheless, she, like her sisters, spends most of her day at the law offices, thus leaving the big roomy home of Mr. and Mrs. Mulligan, less than a quarter of a mile away, in able possession of two servants and the children’s grandmother.
+++++At noon the children, in care of a nurse, go home for a hot dinner and get back again in time for afternoon school.
+++++‘When we occupied only one floor of this building for our offices,’ continued Mrs. Mulligan, ‘there was no room for the children, but by taking in the basement floor and controlling the yard privileges we can now have them with us without being crowded.’
+++++‘And you do not think it somewhat unusual that two busy lawyers and real estate dealers should care to combine a nursery and schoolroom with their regular business?’ Mrs. Mulligan was asked.
+++++‘Perhaps it is unusual, but I don’t see why it should be. I am never happier than when with my children, never quite satisfied when away from them.’
+++++++++++++++++++++++++The Old-Fashioned Idea
+++++‘Some persons might suggest that it is your duty to stay at home with your children and let Mr. Mulligan manage alone the business end of the partnership,’ was suggested.
+++++‘I know that is the old-fashioned idea, and it goes along with another once popular belief that necessarily there is something unfeminine about a married woman who chooses to follow a business or professional career when her husband is abundantly able to provide for her, especially a woman who has children.
+++++‘When we were married my intention was to stay at home like the ordinary housewife and to that end Mr. Mulligan took over the business, which has since been entirely in his name. But I was well known in this section and many of the old clients kept asking for me.
+++++‘I have had five children, but their coming did not interfere with my office work. And let me say right here that although I handle perhaps as much business as does my husband, I have never had the least desire to wear the breeches or carry the pocket book. I have no separate bank account, and whenever I need a dollar or a thousand dollars I must ask my husband for it. Were it not for his forethought probably all the real estate we own would be in his name, but he always insists in having every deed made out in our joint names.’
+++++++++++++++++++++++++Good for the Children
+++++‘Do you think it good for the children to be brought up in a business atmosphere?’
+++++‘That’s a big question, and one I have pondered a good deal, coming to this conclusion: Under such circumstances children may be robbed in a measure, so to speak, of their baby days and baby pleasures; but, on the other hand, they are going through an experience and trials they are bound to meet a little later on.
+++++‘A girl who is carefully shielded from every trouble, who is brought up in a rose colored nursery and never allowed to take part in anything more serious than a doll’s tea party; who is kept away from the dinner table and out of the company of adults except on rare occasions; whose adult relatives think of nothing but how to bring pleasure and amusement into her life, has a very poor chance, I think, of developing into a young woman able and willing to cope with problems which are not always rose colored.'”

In 1888, in a letter to her female colleagues in the Equity Club, Lelia Josephine Robinson commented,  “One problem is not yet settled entirely to my satisfaction, and that is:  
Shall the woman attorney wear her hat when arguing a case or making a motion in court, or shall she remove it?”

+++++How frivolous the “bonnet question” seems, especially considering the fortitude of women who entered the legal profession in the late nineteenth century.  It raised, however, a weightier concern — “how to be at once a lady and a lawyer.”  Social convention dictated that ladies wear hats in public; professional convention dictated that lawyers remove their hats when entering the courtroom:  What was the woman lawyer to do?
+++++From 1895 through the 1960s (!!!), newspapers covered “the bonnet question,” reporting on how judges responded to (i.e., ignored, allowed, forbade) women’s “headgear” in the courtroom. Below is a news article, written by a fashion editor, about a confrontation between a woman lawyer and a male judge in 1963.

Des Moines, Register — 23 Nov. 1963
+++++“Considering the often depressing qualities of courtrooms, no woman would suppose there lived a judge who wouldn’t welcome a brightening touch amidst the gloom.
+++++But Judge Irving H. Saypol of New York State’s Supreme Court not only held attractive brunette lawyer Enid K. Gerling in contempt of court, he went on to give a written opinion unfavorable to her hats.
+++++Referring to a hearing more than a year ago, he cited ‘a large picture hat, more appropriate for an afternoon tea, or a lawn party, or some such social.‘
+++++Then he added, concerning the recent case in which he cited Miss Gerling for contempt:
+++++‘This time we have another grotesque hat situation, some kind of flamboyant turban with the many colors of Joseph’s coat, misplaced in any courtroom . . . There has been, and I can conceive, no other woman lawyer so encountered.
+++++‘However, conduct in the pattern of hats, bizarre and tending to courtroom disruption and perversion, is something no self-respecting judge can tolerate.‘
+++++Alas, Judge Saypol was no legal eagle when it came to describing hats. Miss Gerling, a well-dressed but conservatively attired lady, brought forth the offending hats for my inspection and the judge lost his case.
+++++The so-called picture hat was a Breton, which as any woman knows is a tailored hat with upturned brim, certainly nothing like a picture hat. The turban, actually a toque, was in several shades of one color, pink, not many colors, and hardly flamboyant.
+++++‘I’m too small for exaggerated hats,’ said Miss Gerling, who was wearing a brown tweed suit and a gold velvet snap-brim hat with a crush crown and a small stitched brim that allowed her short, curly hair to show.
+++++‘A professional woman should wear hats,’ she said firmly. ‘They lend an air of status. I have about 40, and I buy a new one every time I get mad at a judge.‘
+++++She paused, reflected and said impishly, ‘If I get really mad, I buy six at once. Certainly none of the men lawyers mind my hats, nor the judges. Of course, I don’t wear one during jury trial. I want the jury to see my fact.’
+++++Miss Gerling is a remarkable woman on several counts. In college she paid her way with a mail order business. Then she was an air traffic controller, one of those brains who talk planes down onto the field.
+++++After getting her law degree she wanted to go into international air law but wound up in criminal law, which she has practiced for 11 years.
+++++Judge Saypol declared that she was ‘baiting’ the court with her hats, but Miss Gerling has personal attributes that don’t need the help of hats. Her eyes, complexion and personality could do all the baiting she wanted to exercise.
+++++‘The day I went to pay the fine for contempt I knew all the newspapers would be there, so I deliberately didn’t wear a hat,’ she said.
+++++‘I love clothes, but I wouldn’t think of dressing for court in anything more startling than a suit or jacket costume. I do wear what I call sentence hats. They’re the ones a judge has complimented previously. When I have to come to court to hear a sentence given, I wear that one again.’
+++++Judge Saypol’s hat judgment opens fascinating possibilities.
+++++Will he take it on himself to say what hats Miss Gerling may not wear in his court? Does he just plain not like girl lawyers? Perhaps this courtroom drama has only seen its first chapter.
+++++++++Florence de Santis, Editor of the Fashion League”

For much more on “the bonnet question,” see Virginia G. Drachman, Women Lawyers and the Origins of Professional Identity in America 23, 30, 127, 177-78, 260-261 (1993).

Laura Lykins, Laura M. Cornelius, Lyda Burton Conley, and Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin — These were early Native American women lawyers (or students of law). Historical newspapers identify these women and offer culturally revealing descriptions of them.

21 August 1898 — Cincinnati Enquirer

“Miss Laura Lykins — The Only Indian Woman Practicing Law in the United States”
+++++There is only one Indian woman who is a practicing lawyer in the United States. She is Miss Laura Lykins, a pretty half-blood Shawnee Indian woman. She graduated from the Law Department of the Carlisle (Penn.) Indian School in June last, and then went to Oklahoma City, where she has been admitted to the bar and is very popular. She is 28 years old. She was born on the Shawnee Reservation in Kansas. Her father was a brother of Bluejacket, the famous old Indian Chief, who died last winter. Her mother was a white woman, and her maiden name was Lykins.”

---

25 February 1906 — Minneapolis Journal

“Indian Girl to Study Law at Barnard:  Miss Cornelius, of the Wisconsin Oneida Tribe, Wouldn’t Be Anything Else than an Indian, and She Wants to Prevent a Great Tragedy — Wrong Ideas of White People.”
+++++“Miss Laura M. Cornelius, a full-blooded Indian of the Wisconsin Oneida tribe, has taught in the government Indian schools, and now an intense desire to help her people, whom she loves, admires, believes in, has brought her to New York to study law at Barnard college, where she enrolled Feb. 1.
+++++Miss Cornelius is unmistakably Indian in features and build, and ‘I am glad of it,’ she says.
+++++She is tall, lithe, wiry of frame. Her complexion is olive without color; her abundant hair, worn parted and drawn loosely back from her face in a heavy coil behind, is glossy and black; her eyes, very dark brown, are soft and kindly, rather beadlike and glittering, after the popular notion of what Indian eyes should be like.
+++++As with most persons who believe they have a mission to perform, Miss Cornelius’ personality suggests indomitable courage and sincerity. Her dress is disappointing; the picturesque touches one expects having been sacrificed to conventional fashion rules. But in most other respects she is faithful to Indian traditions and characteristics.
+++++Not Weaned from Her People
+++++‘I would not be anything but an Indian,’ she declares proudly. ‘I am not weaned from my people and never will be.
+++++‘More schooling than usually falls to the lot of an Indian woman and more contact with the Caucasian artificiality and insincerity have graduated me into what might be called a polite Indian, and the process, I sometimes think, has taken a lot out of me.
+++++‘The sincerity and simplicity of the Indian nature are crushed back as soon as he or she must do as the rest of the world does. The Indian living in a reservation can’t be anything but a reservation Indian — he can’t be himself.’
+++++‘Well, naturally, under such conditions he hasn’t much chance to swing a tomahawk,’ it was suggested.
+++++‘It is always like that,’ returned Miss Cornelius wearily. ‘Those who know little or nothing about the Indian remember only his deeds of violence while on the warpath and forget his magnanimity, his high sense of justice, his sincerity. They think of all Indians as a nomadic people. They do not understand that we have strong home ties and are a loving people.
+++++‘And they forget, too, that the tomahawk was the Indian’s one weapon of warfare, just as guns are the approved and much more deadly weapon of other peoples, and that the tomahawk was used in the way most suited to the weapon.’
+++++Praises Her Father.
+++++In answer to a question, Miss Cornelius continued:
+++++‘I owe much to my father’s ambitions. He, too, was ambitious to help his people; he himself struggled for an education and couldn’t get it.
+++++‘He went out and worked at manual labor with the whites in order to get money to educate himself and then after all sent the money to help those at home. With his own earnings he bought a small farm in Wisconsin near Green Bay, within the reservation, of course, and there I was born, my father later moving to the very borders of the reservation that I might attend a white school.
+++++‘From the cradle up I was impressed with one fact — I must get an education. And that I did get it was not at all surprising. Most Indian women, if they had the same opportunities, would do exactly as I have done.
+++++‘At the country school for white children I won a scholarship which gave me a course in an Episcopalian seminary at Fond du Lac, and afterward I studied a short time at Stanford university. I have taught in the government Indian schools and traveled more than once across the country in the interests of my people.
+++++‘No, I am not an Episcopalian.  I do not pin my allegiance to any particular denomination or creed.  My religion is this:  I believe in God, my minding my own business and in hustling for what one wants.’
+++++‘What things do you want for your people, and how do you expect to turn your legal knowledge when acquired, to their assistance?’ Miss Cornelius was asked.
+++++‘I dread answering those questions,’ was the hesitating reply. ‘I can say this much, however, that the cause which makes me willing and happy to undergo anything, if only it can be advanced, is in itself so grand that it pushes personal considerations to one side. But unfortunately most people have so little understanding of the Indian situation that it is very difficult to give in a few minutes talk a correct impression of how I, an Indian, stand toward it, and how I mean to work to assist it, how I live for almost no other purpose.’
+++++America’s Greatest Tragedy.
+++++‘To my mind the Indians are heroes who are living today the greatest tragedy ever know, and the transition of the Indian marks the grandest tragedy America will ever know.
+++++‘We are a passing people.  Never again will the Indian be reinstated as himself. What is more, the people who have brought about these conditions are unintelligent so far as knowledge of the Indian temperament and character go.  They don’t know us; they don’t know what it means to be killed alive.
+++++‘I am sick to death of the idea that because you feed the Indian and put him in clothes and send him to school the Indian problem is solved, when the fact remains that thus far it is the Indian alone of all the American people who portrays a forecast of extinction.
+++++‘The point is this:  We have parted with — been obliged to part with — certain things, many things.  Will the higher civilization, so-called, to which the Indian has been introduced, compensate for these things — that it has compensated?’
+++++Civilization Detrimental
+++++‘As practiced in behalf of the Indian, the higher civilization has been detrimental to his well being, you think?’
+++++‘I certainly do. In traveling across the continent I have had this end constantly in view; to become thoroly [sic] acquainted with every class of people who make up America, to study how you solve your industrial and social problems and learn the fundamental principles by which the country is governed.
+++++‘With the knowledge thus gained, combined with the legal knowledge I am here to get, I want to frame and to have put into actual practice a medium of statehood between the present Indian reservation conditions and American citizenship.  This medium must, of course, be established on an economic basis, and I believe firmly it can be done.  The only way to resuscitate a dying people is to bring life, industrial life, into their homes.’
+++++‘And so far you think they have not experienced this industrial life?’
+++++‘No. Between the rational system and American citizenship is a big gulf which the Indian does not know how to bridge.  The hotbeds of educational institutions alone cannot prepare the Indian for this change, nor teach him how to take so long a step.
+++++‘And I don’t mean to say that unaided I can do this work, but I certainly intend when my law course is finished to make other persons do it or help me to do it, whether they are Indians or whites. I have attempted nothing yet.
+++++‘I Want to Do.’
+++++‘At one time I had a marvelous ambition to write; but the more I live the more I know that words, words, words are futile. I want to do, not to preach.
+++++‘There are about 270,000 Indians in the west, and I can’t bear to have them little by little swallowed up by the scum of the American population.  If the Indian is to continue to amalgamate with the whites, let it be at least with his equals in sterling traits of character and intelligence.’
+++++Asked what, in her opinion, was the greatest lack in reservation life, Miss Cornelius answered:
+++++‘Industry. There is not motive, no incentive, no reward in the nature of the reservation for the man who will work.’
+++++‘And you thing this condition may be changed?’
+++++‘It must be changed or we will die.’
+++++When speaking of her prospective course at Barnard college and her stay in New York, Miss Cornelius admitted that she expected to enjoy both.
+++++‘I have made brief visits to New York twice before and I have several friends here to save me from homesickness. I love study, and in addition to law I may take up some other branches of study; for one of my ambitions is before long to have a big school of my own in the west for my own people.
+++++‘As to the desirability of New York as a place of residence I have made one discovery already: The life here tends to crush out individuality.'”

Miss Cornelius did not become a lawyer; she remained an activist throughout her life. For a summary of her life, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Cornelius_Kellogg

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23 September 1906 — Des Moines Register

“Will Fight For Ancestors’ Graves: Indian Maid, a Lawyer, to give Battle in Courts.
Resists Government Order; Says Bones of Her Ancestors Shall Not Be Disturbed.”
+++++“‘One hundred thousand dollars would be no inducement whatever in buying my consent to the desecration of the graves of my parents.’
+++++So spoke Miss Lyda Conley of Kansas City, Kas., following the passage of the Indian appropriation bill, in which was included an order for the sale of Huron cemetery, an old Indian burial ground, for park purposes in Kansas City, Kas.
+++++Miss Conley’s ancestors were of the once famous Wyandotte Indian tribe.  She recently graduated from a law school, and is probably the only Indian maiden in the practice of law in the United States.
+++++Kansas City, Kas., from the viewpoint of sentiment, is one of the most historic and interesting towns in Kansas, with the possible exception of Lawrence.
+++++The parent town was the Indian village Wyandotte. The tribe of that name came to Kansas in 1843 from Ohio and Michigan. They bought the land, comprising 23,000 acres, from the Delawares who had preceded them. There were but few fullblood Indians among them. They were an industrious and religious people, and led in the civilization of the new country. In 1856 the Wyandotte gave up their tribal relations and became citizens of the United States. In the same year the town of Wyandotte, with the spelling changed to the French form, was formally organized. It lay entirely north of the Kaw.
+++++In 1868, Kansas City, Kas., was laid off south of the Kaw, on land then heavily timbered. Now it is the site of the packing houses and other industries and is known as West Bottoms. Armourdale, to the south and west of this district, and containing all of the large packing houses on in another district, was incorporated in 1882.
+++++Interesting Huron Cemetery
+++++In the heart of Kansas City, Kas., now embracing Wyandotte and Amourdale, on the principal business street, broad, level, straight Minnesota avenue, lies a block known as Huron place, named for the one-time powerful ancestors of the Wyandottes. This block is unoccupied save for the Carnegie library, standing to the east of the center of its east half, a few business houses on its northeast and northwest corners, a church on its southwest corner, and the foundations of a new hotel going up on its southeast corner.
+++++This east half block has been graded down many feet, but the western half is left in its original height, and is the site of the old Huron cemetery, the burial place of the founders and early settlers of the town. Most of the monuments bear date of the decade following 1844. In these ten years there were 400 burials. Under the monuments, undisturbed by the traffic noises, sleep the city’s fathers, Chief Tauromee, Chief Splitlog, the Armstrongs, the Northrups, the Walkers and the Clarks. All of these are further commemorated by streets and avenues bearing their names.
+++++The larges and handsomest of the monuments was erected to the memory of a daughter of Silas Armstrong, the great quarter-blood chief of the Wyandottes, who was also president of the original Wyandotte Township company. The inscription on the granite shaft tells its own pathetic story.
+++++ANTOINETTE
+++++Daughter of
+++++SILAS AND ZELINDA ARMSTRONG
+++++and Wife of
+++++T. B. BARNES
+++++DIED OCT., 1882
+++++Aged 24 years and 7 months
+++++And Her Infant Daughter.
+++++Under this a stanza so dimmed by time as to be nearly illegible is followed by the quaint couplet:
+++++Thou wast too good to live on earth with me.
+++++And I was not good enough to die with thee.
+++++In the next enclosure, under a granite shaft, lie the young wife’s parents, their inscriptions bearing a later date.  Silas Armstrong’s epitaph recites, among other virtues, that he was ‘a devout Christian and a good Mason.’
+++++Other handsome monuments are those of the Northrups, Andrus B. and Hiram M., shafts of red granite, and are a considerable distance apart. These are a few of the monuments now standing.
+++++Many of the small headstones lie prostrate, mostly broken.  Some of the graves are only to be detected by depressions of the ground, many of these so grass-grown that they are not seen till the foot sinks into them.  A path leads right over one grave — that of a young woman.
+++++An aged custodian wanders about or sits in the shade of the walnuts and oaks. It was found necessary to have a caretaker to keep out the rowdies, who might carouse, or the ball playing street urchins. A few cows peacefully browse over the grass so far as the radius of their tether permits.
Rise in Value Ominous
+++++And it is on this resting place of the Indian dead, because of its great rise in value, that the white man has cast covetous eyes.
+++++During the last congress a proposition to transfer Huron cemetery to Kansas City, Kas., for a city park was incorporated in the Indian appropriation bill.  This was done primarily, it is said, at the request of the council of a portion of the Wyandottes, who, in 1868, moved to Indian territory.  Some of these had resumed their tribal relations, and time and space having weakened the hold of the cemetery on their affections, they allowed their council to take this action.  The bill authorizing the sale passed.
+++++The land was placed under the care of the secretary of the interior to be sold ‘under such rules as he may prescribe.’  The bill provides that the remains shall be removed to Quindaro cemetery, which, however, is not an Indian burial ground, but belongs by treaty to the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.
+++++In case of a sale, some of the Indian survivors had planned to buy some two acres about twelve miles from the city and remove their dead to it, building a large vault for the unknown dead, and putting up appropriate monuments to their own.  They further intend to invest a sufficient sum that the income may keep up the cemetery after they, too, are gathered to their fathers.
+++++But others of the Indian citizens of Kansas City, Kas., say they will not sign away their right. The treaty of 1856 secured Huron cemetery ‘to them and their heirs forever,’ and they argue that though the Indian territory people, having resumed their tribal relations, are bound by the action of their council, they themselves not being so bound, will have to sign as individuals, and this, for one, Miss Conley declines to do.
Ancestor Captured by Indians
+++++Many years ago, when Ohio was a hunting ground, Miss Conley’s great-great-grandfather, whose name was Zane, was captured by the Wyandottes. Though he was only 18 years old, preparations were being made to burn him at the stake, when the chief’s young daughter made a plea that he be saved for her husband.
+++++This condition was accepted, and the youth was allowed to go to his home to say goodbye to his people. His family tried to persuade him not to return to the dusky maiden, but his word, and possibly his heart, was given, and he went back to the tribe.
+++++Mrs. Conley’s grandmother was a beautiful white woman, and she herself is only one-thirty-second Indian.  In 1902 she graduated with honor from the Kansas City School of Law, and is prepared to fight her case.”

Conley took her case “all the way up to the United States Supreme Court.”

For more on Lyda Conley, see
Kim Dayton, “Trespassers Beware! Lyda Burton Conley and the Battle for Huron Place Cemetery,” 8 Yale J. Law & Feminism (1995), Available at: http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/yjlf/vol8/iss1/2; and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyda_Conley

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8 March 1929 — Courier-Journal

“Indian Girls Score in Work; Woman Who Studied Law at 49 in Charge of Bureau Transportation”
+++++“From tepee to concert stage has not been a difficult step for Indian ‘princesses’ who have flung aside war paint for rouge. The way has been a bit more difficult for daughters of Indian chieftains and others who have chosen careers in the business world.
+++++One of the most outstanding examples of an Indian girl who has achieved success is that of Mrs. Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin, who was born in a Chippewa tepee in North Dakota and now is in charge of transportation in the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Though her hair is grey, her eyes are as alive and bright as in the days when her father, who was one-quarter French, urged her to mingle with white people and learn their ways.
+++++Seated at her desk in the Department of the Interior, Mrs. Baldwin took time to tell of her career.
+++++‘I took my law course at the Washington College of Law when I was 49,’ she says, her bright eyes snapping. ‘I believe that when opportunity comes a person is never too old to take advantage of it. Anything that I have accomplished is due to the fact that I am an Indian, not in spite of it.
+++++‘My grandfather was Pierre Bottineau, a noted scout who went with the Lewis Clark expedition into the Northwest. My own father, John B. Bottineau, was one of the first justices of the peace in Minneapolis. He started the town of Red Lake Falls. He always felt that he had been handicapped when a boy by being kept on a reservation and determined that his children should have an education and mingle with people. So we were sent to school.’ . . .
+++++According to cold statistics at the bureau, the Indian ‘princess’ is only a myth and never has existed save in the sentimental imaginations of white men.”

For a very little more on Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin, see
http://www.fofweb.com/History/MainPrintPage.asp?Pin=ENAIT037&DataType=Indian&WinType=Free and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Louise_Bottineau_Baldwin

27 February 1869 — Planters’ Banner

“Female Lawyers. — The Louisville Courier-Journal says:
+++++The last phase of the woman’s rights horror is the admission of a young lady to the St. Louis Law School. Nothing would be more likely to melt a jury than the appeals of youth and beauty in behalf of the offenders against the law. Where is the judge whose opinion could not be warped and he himself twisted around the dainty little finger of a fledgling legal duck of eighteen summers?
+++++In a breach of promise case your female lawyer would be overwhelming, her capacity to point the villainy of a faithless swain being derived from a practical experience perhaps. The young lady who has just been admitted to the St. Louis school has, however, no intention of becoming an attorney, a solicitor, or a barrister at law, but a professor! She will expound Blackstone and explain Coke upon Littleton to the future chief justices and attorney generals of the country.”

18 March 1917 — New York Tribune

“Are Women People? by Alice Duer Miller”

+++++“Sometimes it is hard to tell whether men want to be looked on as strong, dominant protectors of women, or as timid, bashful creatures who must be shielded from any contact with the weaker sex.
+++++Recent arguments on the opening of the Columbia law school to women turn not on the advantages to women’s education, or the disadvantage to her modesty, but entirely on whether or not timid young men might be frightened away by the terrifying phenomenon of girls in the classroom.
+++A representative of the faculty is quoted as saying, ‘If the admission of women would tend to prevent, rightly or wrongly (the italics are ours), the enrollment of new men graduated from non-coeducational colleges who would be our best students, then it is for the best that the few women who might attend the law school if given an opportunity should not be allowed to do so. There is a trust imposed on Columbia authorities to keep the law school up to the highest possible standpoint.’
+++Or to amplify this statement a little:
+++The admission of women might tend to keep away certain men. This would not be the fault of the women, but due to timidity or prejudice on the part of the men.
+++Still the faculty sympathizes with those young men. It could not bear to see them shut out from educational opportunities even by their own prejudices.
+++Whereas, rightly or wrongly the faculty bears up pretty well under excluding young women from educational opportunities. It bears up particularly well owing to its conviction that by excluding women of unusual intellectual attainments, and catering to the more bigoted types of young men, it is keeping the law school up to the highest possible standards.
+++For a more candid statement of their position, we recommend the faculty to study the statement of the Harvard medical students who in 1850 petitioned against the admission of women on the ground that ‘whatever a woman should prove herself capable of an intellectual achievement, this latter would cease to constitute an honor for the men who had previously prized it.’

There, little man, don’t cry!
+++They’re terrible girls, it’s true,
++++++And in church and school
++++++And on office stool
+++They’re doing as well as you;
But this law school never will let them try,
+++There, little man, don’t cry!”

19 July 1919 — Evening News (Harrisburg, PA)

+++++“Women Must Stand Mental Punishment to Be Success In Any Profession, Says Los Angeles Girl Lawyer”

+++++“Can a woman take punishment?
+++++That is, mental punishment — everybody knows she can stand the physical kind.
+++++If she can’t take mental punishment, she will not be a success in the legal profession.
+++++But if she can, she will, and will transform the profession to boot.
+++++That is the declaration of Caroline Kellogg, Los Angeles attorney and president of the Women Attorneys’ Club, which has fifty members.  Its purpose is to prove that women in law can be bigger than man in law, or even mother-in-law.
+++++‘There’s a great deal of mental punishment in the legal profession,’ says Miss Kellogg.  Law work is hard work. Any woman entering it as a snap had better look somewhere else.
+++++‘I have trained many young women for the law, and have found that the girl who cannot stand up well under the law course, which is difficult, is rarely able to do anything in practice afterward.
+++++But those who do well in the course, do well in practice.
+++++‘The common failing of women as attorneys, at the outset, is that they take too great a personal interest in their clients. They become emotionally worked up over the case, forgetting that as attorneys their sphere lies merely in making it easier for judge and jury to determine the facts and execute justice.
+++++‘This emotional quality makes men, both on the bench and in the jury box, inclined to laugh at women lawyers.  A little experience usually is the best and only remedy for this short-coming.  And then — look out.’
+++++Miss Kellogg believes that the invasion of the legal profession by women will result in the breaking down of the old time system known as ‘professional ethics,’ which she says has brought about many abuses in the past.
+++++‘Doctors and lawyers have been so “ethical,”‘ she says, ‘that they have kept away from the public much information which the public ought to have.
+++++‘It is part of the duty of the woman lawyer to spread her special knowledge of the problems learned from her clients, broadcast through the community.  Men attorneys are after the money, women are after principle and a better world.  So men attorneys often try to create trouble; women lawyers seek to prevent it.
+++++‘Personally, I aim to settle as many cases as possible out of court.  It results, doubtless, in smaller fees; but it saves much pain and disgrace, and often results in greater justice.
+++++‘Women in law will ultimately have a great effect upon the law itself.  Every day I encounter some angle of the law that could only have been created by the minds of men, working on masculine standards.  It is high time that women interpolated her conception of justice into the laws of the United States.
+++++‘I do not mean to say that the law should ever be entirely in the hands of women. Men cling to the practical, mundane; women to the emotional and the ideal.  Working together on equal terms, they strike the happy medium and accomplish the best results.'”

 

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10 December 1895 — Atlanta Constitution

“Entertaining History of the Marvelous Achievements of One Woman.
+++++Her Triumphs at the Bar; Acquired a Big Practice —
++++++++++Appointed Assistant Attorney General Wedded to the Attorney General”

+++++The census of the country records 110 women lawyers.  The most remarkable and successful of this number — one of the most remarkable women in the world — is . . .  Mrs. Ella Knowles Haskell, assistant attorney general of the state of Montana and the most successful lawyer in the state.
+++++Mrs. Haskell is still a young woman, but her life history has been crowded full of activity, dramatic incident, success, adventure, politics, and romance.  The story of her life reads with the fascination of a romance. . . .

+++++Mrs. Haskell is a modest-mannered, quiet, womanly woman of medium height.  She is not of the aggressive, assertive type that one would naturally expect to find in the successful feminine lawyer.  She is mild, gentle womanly, though full of determination, courage and energy.  Her career as a lawyer, as well as her earlier history, proves her fearlessness and determination.
+++++Less than thirty-five years old, she has won greater success at the bar than 10 percent of the lawyers of her age who have been in the practice fifteen years.  She has been engaged in practice less than six years, and she commenced and fought her way against the odds of prejudice, lack of acquaintance and lack of sympathy.  The people were not disposed to give her a sympathetic hearing, but the remarkable fact stands out that wherever she has been heard she has conquered.
+++++Mrs. Haskell is a New Hampshire girl.  She was Miss Ella Knowles and when a young girl she exhibited marked genius.  She wanted a college education, but her father opposed the idea.  She was determined however, and through her own efforts she went through Bates college at Lewiston, Me., and was graduated.  Her father greatly disapproved of her course, and she went west to teach school.  She had heard wonderful stories of the great state of Montana and went there.  She taught school very successfully for a time, but in 1890 she drifted into the practice of law.  She was admitted to the practice at Helena.  At about the time she was admitted quite a number of young men entered the practice.  Of that number only one is now resident of Montana, and he is not in the practice of law, but is a clerk in a bank.
+++++Miss Knowles was alone in the great state of Montana, but she found friends.  Her pluck and her energy won her the way to the hearts of the people by whom she was immediately surrounded.  She had a good practice almost from the start.  Her friends put their lawsuits in her hands, trusting implicitly to her ability and capacity to handle them.  She has had wonderful success in the management of cases, having won a large percentage of those she has handled. She has tried all sorts of cases, both civil and criminal, . . .
+++++Mrs. Haskell tells in the most interesting manner of her nomination and race for attorney general of the state of Montana.
+++++‘It was a total surprise to me,’ said she.  ‘I was in my office in the Masonic building in Helena one day when I received a telegram signed by three names that I had never heard before.  The telegram was dated Butte, Mont., and asked me if I would accept the nomination of the populist party for attorney general of the state.
+++++‘I read the thing over and over again in surprise and wonder.  I did not know the men whose names were signed to the telegram.  I didn’t know what a populist was. I had never heard of the populist party.  I didn’t know a thing about politics. All I knew was about the law and school teaching.  I was on very friendly terms with all the deputies around the courthouse, and it occurred to me that they were trying to play a practical joke on me.  The telegram remained around my office for several hours without being answered.  Finally, an attorney who had an office in the same building happened in and I showed him the telegram.  I told him I thought I was being joked.  “Not at all,” said he.  “That telegram is genuine.  That convention is in session.  Wire them and say yes.”
+++++‘I took his advice.  The next morning I received a telegram saying that I had been unanimously nominated.  I wired my acceptance, it taking me quite a time to frame a telegram.  I hardly knew what to say in response to a notification of a political nomination.  When I came down town next morning I was stopped at every corner by democrats and republicans who ridiculed the idea of my accepting the nomination and who tried hard to get me to withdraw.  They laughed at me.  I made up my mind to run and run to the very best of my ability.  I entered the race with all the energy of my nature.
+++++‘I made sixty speeches in the state.  I never heard a disrespectful word spoken to me during the time I was canvassing the state.  I spoke to miners as well as merchants and professional men.  I want to say that more chivalrous men do not exist than the hard working miners and ranchmen of my state. I  want to pay tribute to them.  I did my best in the campaign, and altogether it wasn’t too bad.’
+++++Miss Knowles came marvelously near being elected.  So close was the issue of the election that it required three weeks to settle the question, and at last it was announced that Mr. Haskell, the bachelor attorney general, had been re-elected by a narrow margin of votes.
+++++Miss Knowles accepted the decision of the ballots with philosophical resignation and went back to her lucrative practice all the better known for the experience which she had gained.  A few weeks later she was notified by letter that she had been appointed assistant attorney general of the state.  The appointment, coming unsolicited, was a great surprise to her.  However, she accepted and has performed the duties of her office since doing so.
+++++Her appointment had a sequel in a delightful romance, which, related in Mrs. Haskell’s naive way, is exceedingly interesting.  While performing the prosaic duties of assistant attorney general Miss Knowles was thrown in a most constant contact with Attorney General Haskell.  The two former opponents became the warmest of friends and after becoming friends, lovers.
+++++They were married last May, the event attracting the attention of the entire state. They were married in California, whither Miss Knowles had gone to recover from a very severe accident which befell her in Butte City, a little over a year ago, and which came near injuring her fatally.  She has not entirely recovered from the results of the accident — being thrown from a hack.
+++++‘We could not well have married in the state,’ said Mrs. Haskell, speaking of her marriage yesterday.  ‘We had so many friends in the state that we would not have known when to stop issuing invitations.  We were married in May, and since June I have been actively engaged at work.’
+++++Mrs. Haskell has no desire for further political promotion.  She says she can make more money in the practice of law.  In one case she received a cash fee of $10,000, and in other cases she received large mining properties, the value of which she does not know.  She has done much valuable practice in the state.  She is now the best known woman in the state.  She has the friendship of all classes, and has had important cases for some of the largest interests in the state.
+++++She tells an interesting story illustrating the manner in which she holds the friendship of the cowboys of the state.  While engaged in a big cattle case between two great ranchers she was thrown in contact with a great many of them.

+++++‘In their rough way they wanted to be nice to me,’ said she, ‘and show their appreciation, yet they didn’t know what to say.  Finally, one of them came up and said in his honest fashion, “Say, won’t you come an’ have a drink?”  Now I didn’t want to offend the honest fellows.  They didn’t know any better, and were offering me the highest form of hospitality they knew.  I thought I could compromise, and said “I don’t drink, but I’ll tell you what I’ll do.  There’s a soda fountain down there in the middle of the block and we’ll go down and have some soda.”  “Good,” shouted the crowd, and we went down and I had to drink with the lot of them.  During the trial of the case there came a sort of lull in the proceedings, and one of the cowboys leaned over and said to his companion in a loud whisper, audible all over the courtroom,  ‘Say, Bill, I’d like to lasso that gal.’ It brought down the house.””

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For more on Ella Knowles, https://mtwomenlawyers.org/1889-2/ella-knowles-haskell/

2 July 1922 — Anaconda Standard

+++++Butte’s two young women lawyers feel that there is a particular field for their talents in the practice of law.  Miss Helen Roscow, while she has no hobbies, no overpowering program of reform, feels that her special field is in probate practice. Estate cases constitute the field in which she likes best to exercise her talents.  Miss Neyman declares that the divorce courts have been grinding too long under the supervision of men and ‘they haven’t done a very good job of it.’  She thinks this must be changed. She is active in her espousal of the cause of national marriage and divorce laws.

+++++Miss Jessie Roscow was admitted to the bar in 1917. She was born in Illinois and removed to Nebraska, in which state she attended the university before taking up her residence in Butte. She has had training in the law offices of Lamb and Walker and that of Maj. Jesse B. Roote.  In addition to her private practice she is employed as an assistant to Judge Sidney Sanner.
+++++‘Would I recommend the law as a profession for women?’ inquired Miss Roscow.  ‘No. I would not. Women as a sex are not fitted for it.  Law appeals to some women as it appeals to me. In such cases I seen no reason why my sex should not succeed in the profession.  For that matter there are many men who are not adapted to the law and could not be induced to take it up.’
+++++Miss Roscow has no hobbies, is not ’emancipated,’ is fond of outdoor sports and takes a keen interest in public affairs, but has no ‘mission’ or overpowering ambition, except to be a good lawyer.
+++++‘I prefer office and research work to court practice,’ she said.  ‘My sex has nothing to do with this preference.  There are many men at the bar who do not care for court work. There are others who do not care for office work at all. The question is a temperamental matter.
+++++‘I find myself peculiarly adapted to probate work — looking after estate matters. This line of practice calls for close attention to minute details, and for this reason I think women are better adapted to its demands than are men.  I hope in time to so establish myself in this line that when people think of probate matters they will at once think of Jessie Roscow — probate and Roscow would be a slogan that would please me most.’
+++++Miss Roscow was seen Saturday afternoon. She was surrounded by law books, well-thumbed volumes.  ‘I devote Saturday afternoons to study,’ she said. ‘The law is a fine profession. The prospective lawyer, however, must make up her mind to the fact that it calls for deep study, close application and the sacrifice of many enjoyments that are dear to the young.  A girl who has a liking for legal matters and who is willing to make the sacrifice, should succeed. Brains has no sex.  Women are better adapted to some branches than are men, but this is due to their training in patience and in matters of detail.’

+++++Miss Fanny Neyman, Butte’s youngest lawyer and one of two girl practitioners at the Silver Bow county bar, is an uncompromising little democrat.  She is quite content to obey any statute providing the people themselves indorse it.
+++++She is strong for personal liberty and feels ours is a government ‘of the people, for the people, and by the people,’ and that their personal liberty should not be invaded by legislative enactment, but by a direct consideration of their wishes expressed in their vote.  ‘We do not live for ourselves alone,’ she said, ‘ and the rights and interests of the community as a whole must be considered ahead of the rights and comforts of the individual.’  Questioned regarding her views, she said:
+++++‘I don’t like to see women in knickerbockers on the [illegible] . . . nor do I like idea of women [illegible] but I feel that they have a perfect right to do those things if they see fit — it is a personal matter.
+++++‘Prohibition?  Well, the people of our station and nation have voted for it individually and collectively.  It stands as an amendment to our constitution and as such, should be upheld by the people.  If the people of our state and nation feel now that they have made a mistake in prohibition, the remedy lies in their hands.  I feel, however, that the law as it stands should be respected and obeyed.
+++++‘How did I determine on the law as a profession?  A natural liking for it. When in school I enjoyed civics and later I took commercial law and found it so interesting I decided to study other branches of it.
+++++‘What branch of the law do I most favor?  Corporation and probate.  I would not care for criminal law, except where women or children are the defendants. Divorce cases? Certainly.  Men have been running the divorce courts for years and years, and they haven’t made a very good job of it.  Everything connected with divorce has been viewed from the man’s angle.  We must change that.  I am in favor or national marriage and divorce laws.
+++++‘Do I intend to get married?  I do not — that is, not yet, not for along, long time,’ she said hastily.  ‘I believe in marriage as an institution and that wifehood, motherhood, is the most exalted position in the world.  God gave it to women and the married state is a natural one for both sexes.
+++++‘In cases involving women and children, I believe the woman lawyer has a large field and one in which she can produce good results.’
+++++Miss Neyman, who is still so youthful that she dislikes to admit her age, was born in Butte and educated here.  She has had a number of cases in court since her admission in January, 1922 [sic 1921], and has been very successful.  She is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. David Neyman, both of whom are deceased.
+++++Her office is at 55 West Broadway with James E. Murray.

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For more on Jessie Roscow, see https://mtwomenlawyers.org/1910-1919/jessie-roscow-17/
For more on Fanney Neyman, see https://mtwomenlawyers.org/1920-1929/fanney-neyman-21/

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31 May 1914 — Oakland Tribune

+++++“Why Wear Slit Skirts? No Use, Says Lawyeress”

+++++“Why Wear the snugly — yes, too snugly-fitting costumes of modern fashion? Slit skirts and ungainly styles never made a good lawyer.
+++++So says Italia de Jarnette, one of the very few California girls who have taken up law as a profession.  Miss de Jarnette says that the ideal costume is the divided skirt and the ‘middy blouse.’  The youthful Portia, when she isn’t delving into the musty tomes of the law, is busy devising newer and freer dresses.  Who can tell whether the consignee has a better right than the the mortgagor, or whether the habeas corpus law is superior to that of eminent domain, or that regulation is designed to have a soporific influence on predatory corporations, when she’s too busy trying to sit up in a skirt that’s too tight?  No one, says Miss de Jarnette.
+++++The young lawyer is a graduate of the University of California and has achieved considerable fame as an athlete as well as in the fields of law.  She is a horseback rider of note in Berkeley and was a champion fencer in her sophomore year in the university.  She has written books, stumped the country for women suffrage, ‘swung’ real estate deals, and in fact, has done almost everything but wear a hat.
+++++‘Hats are nuisances,’ she declares. ‘I never wear one. What’s the use?’  When Miss de Jarnette isn’t busy with other things, she raises mocking birds, and has a large collection in her home in Berkeley. She will in August enter a large law office in San Francisco.”

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