National Nurses United

CE_Sept 10/5/10 2:57 PM Page 19 women in this era, who often expressed intimate and personal feelings in their correspondence. This mutually nurturing support system was an essential element in uniting Wald's circle into a dedicated group prepared to do battle for her social causes. The significance of their successes emerged when they attempted to break the pattern of class-consciousness that often led "professionals" to separate themselves from other working-class women. Wald and her settlement house colleagues felt obligated to help women organize themselves, because they believed women of all classes were a disadvantaged social group. Lillian Wald believed that working women needed the vote to gain protective laws, and she defended foreign-born women who, she said, knew from bitter experience about unsafe working conditions. Wald and her nurses worked to educate women in the mechanics of government in order to make their city safer and better for all. She claimed she was a suffragist because she especially wanted to dignify mothers in the home; mothers would vote, to preserve that which was "valuable and important to them." Most notably, they worked for passage of laws to end child labor; and, Wald conceived the idea and was the driving force for the establishment of the United States Children's Bureau by Congress in 1912. Wald coined the phrase "public health nursing." She was instrumental in transforming the work of visiting nurses into the community health movements that expanded the domain of modern nursing practice. At the time, she created a system whereby patients had direct access to nurses and nurses had direct access to patients. She insisted that nurses should be at the call of those who needed them, without the intervention of a "medical man." When warranted, patients were referred to a physician at one of the free dispensaries, but no distinction was made between those who could pay and those who could not. Healthcare services were available to all who sought them without regard to race or creed or ethnic origin. In 1899 she assisted with the development of lectures on public health nursing at Columbia University, and in 1902 she initiated public school nursing in America. By 1913, Wald and Mary Adelaide Nutting had established an educational program in public health nursing, in which nurses could receive theoretical coursework at Teachers' College and practice experience at the Henry Street Settlement. Throughout her lifetime she opposed political and social corruption, and she supported measures that improved the health, safey, and well-being of humanity. She became a model of what women could do in public life. In her book, The House on Henry Street, Wald stated, "I cannot say that even today the ardent advocates of woman suffrage come in great numbers from among the male members of the settlement clubs, but, on the whole, the tendency is to accept women in politics as a necessary phase of this transitional period and the readjustment of the old relations. When the suffrage parade marched down Fifth Avenue in 1913, back of the settlement banner, with its symbol of universal brotherhood, there walked a goodly company carrying flags with the suffrage demand in ten languages." Lavinia L. Dock (1858-1956) "...the nurse should be more than a nurse. The nursing organization should see beyond the interests and needs of its own group. With a wider vision of both national and international citizenship, organized nurses will make their influence count increasingly in all forms SEPTEMBER 2010 of constructive health and social service and in the broader field of international relations." Lavinia Dock's strong sense of social responsibility for the holistic welfare of others and her experiences as a settlement worker led her to the conviction that social reforms would occur only when women gained access to suffrage. Dock believed that charitable activities patronize the poor and only mask the crude reality of poverty and misery and she argued that charity provided no equitable, comprehensive, and long-lasting solutions to social problems. Dock was ahead of her time when she urged nurses to be involved in women's issues and social issues and it's said that she deplored the conservatism of some nurses. In an article published in the 1907 edition of the American Journal of Nursing, she affirmed that the political enfranchisement of women had a direct bearing on the profession of nursing and on the lives of nurses as women. She wrote, "I am ardently convinced that our national association will fail of its highest opportunities and fall short of its best mission if it restricts itself to the narrow path of purely professional questions and withholds its interest and sympathy and its moral support from the great, urgent, throbbing, pressing social claims of our day and generation." Dock walked the picket lines during the 1909 strike against the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory as a member of the New York Women's Trade Union League and she urged nurses to boycott the products being manufactured in sweatshops. She educated her fellow nurses about the unconscionable reality of sweatshops and the health hazards they created for workers and the public because of the unsanitary conditions under which the garments were manufactured. Lavinia Dock's social activism on behalf of women's suffrage was compelling; she was willing to go to jail for the cause! She was first arrested for engaging in an act of civil disobedience, when she attempted to vote in the 1896 New York City elections. Although Dock refused to pay the fines that were levied, the police commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt, refused to jail her and she was released. She was one of five women who made a 13-day suffrage hike from New York City to Albany in 1912. For the suffrage parade of 1913 she organized the Henry Street Settlement (HSS) house and other Lower East Side residents into a contingent that carried banners in 10 languages. Dock's activities shifted to Washington, "to work for a great cause and in a manner deemed wholly proper," when Alice Paul's militant campaigns for a federal suffrage amendment began. She was a tireless worker for the National Women's Party (NWP) and she became a member of Paul's advisory council. Dock was one of the few elders in this group of mostly younger women. She led the first group of women who marched from the NWP headquarters to picket the White House, where she was arrested and jailed. Between 1917 and 1918 she was arrested three times and served two jail terms. The police's treatment of suffragists (and pacifists) had become increasingly harsh during the movement. At age 59, Dock suffered a severe leg injury during a confrontation with guards, and her final incarceration came in 1918 after her 60th birthday. As feisty as ever, she used her fame as one of the nation's most celebrated nurses to speak out for the movement. In all, she served 43 days in prison for participating in pro-women's suffrage demonstrations outside the White House. Imprisonment and police brutality against the demonstrators served to energize their sense of social activism and defiance. Dock's W W W. N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G N AT I O N A L N U R S E 19

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