The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace was one of a group of conservative peace organizations that lobbied the government to abide by international law and build collective security as a way to keep peace and world order. Considered “political internationalists,” conservative peace groups included bankers, lawyers, politicians, and academics as their members. The Carnegie Endowment was the largest of these peace organizations. The president of Columbia University, Nicholas Murray Butler, headed the organization, and James T. Shotwell, a Columbia University professor, served as director of the Endowment’s Division of Economics and History. Because the Carnegie Endowment included many important leaders in government, business, and higher education, it had a significant influence on disarmament policies in the United States and Europe.
One example of the close links the endowment had to elites in government was when a former law partner of Secretary of State Kellogg left the endowment to serve as assistant secretary of state. In addition, the Carnegie Endowment funded other internationalist organizations such as the League of Nations Non-Partisan Association (LNNPA) and the Foreign Policy Association (FPA). In addition, conservative peace groups with close ties to elites such as the Carnegie Endowment, the League of Nations Non-Partisan Association, and the National Committee on the Cause and Cure of War (NCCCW), worked for American participation in the World Court.
Overall, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace preferred the indirect lobbying of political leaders and other elites to the direct pressure tactics used by more radical peace groups. In 1927, to use one important example, Shotwell visited the French foreign minister Aristide Briand to lobby for the United States and France to formally outlaw war. In the end, Briand utilized many of Shotwell’s suggestions when he sent a draft of a treaty to Washington on June 20, 1927. When Secretary of State Frank Kellogg hesitated in responding to the Briand proposal, peace groups pressured him to accept the French pact.
Liberal peace organizations such as the National Council for the Prevention of War (NCPW) and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) agreed with more conservative groups about the need for a World Court and for the United States to join the League of Nations. They disagreed politically, however, about militarism and disarmament. Liberal peace groups pushed more actively for disarmament and encouraged reductions in naval appropriations. Meanwhile, the conservative groups such as the Carnegie Endowment advocated U. S. participation in the World Court, but they were less strident about naval disarmament.
The debate over the proposals of Kellogg and Briand illustrated the influence that the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace had on the foreign policies of the United States and the European countries. In the end, many liberal and conservative peace leaders cooperated to promote Briand’s draft treaty in Washington. But when Secretary Kellogg proposed an alternative multilateral treaty in the place of Briand’s bilateral treaty, the Carnegie Endowment eventually supported it, although reluctantly. The Kellogg-Briand Treaty, which formally outlawed war, was signed by 62 nations in 1928.
Further reading: Richard W. Fanning, Peace and Disarmament: Naval Rivalry and Arms Control, 1922-1933 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1995).
—Glen Bessemer
Catt, Carrie Lane Chapman (1859-1947) suffragist, feminist, peace activist
Carrie Lane Chapman Catt, a noted woman suffragist, was born in Wisconsin in 1859. After working her way through school and teaching school, she became superintendent of schools in Mason City, Iowa. After the death of her first husband, Leo Chapman, she joined the Iowa Woman Suffrage Association, eventually becoming the organization’s state organizer. In 1890, Carrie Chapman married George Catt, who encouraged her to pursue her suffrage activism.
In 1900, Catt assumed the leadership of the National American Woman Sueerage Association (NAWSA). Under her first tenure, which lasted until 1904, she strengthened the national structure, the treasury, and the administration of the organization. In 1904, with her husband dying, she resigned to care for him. After his death, Catt worked on the suffrage campaign in New York State. Catt’s suffrage activism was not only a reflection of her ideological commitment to the cause, but also the result of her relationships with progressive men, one of whom, George, willed her enough money to live on while she continued to work on the suffrage issue.
In 1915, NAWSA was in organizational shambles under Anna Howard Shaw’s direction. Armed with money that a woman had willed to the cause, Catt returned to lead NAWSA with her own staff. She demanded that the organization become more centralized and hierarchical under her command. Charismatic and well-organized, Catt gained the loyalty of suffrage activists from around the country. As head of NAWSA, Catt proposed her “Winning Plan,” which proposed to gain passage of a federal woman SUEERAGE amendment within six years in conjunction with state campaigns. The plan called for state suffrage associations to lobby their federal representatives to pass and their state legislators to ratify the amendment. It also used the national office to pressure the Democratic and Republican parties to include a suffrage statement in their platforms and keep the suffrage issue alive through publicity campaigns. Even though publicity was the cornerstone of NAWSA’s methods, anti-suffragists regularly derided the activists. NAWSA represented the more moderate wing of the suffrage movement, a fact that contributed to its success. In stark contrast to the more radical National Woman’s Party, NAWSA appeared genteel and more acceptable to the men in power, a key constituency that NAWSA was trying to reach.
The breakthrough for Catt and NAWSA came in New York in 1917, when women won the right to vote at the state level. The victory in the East reenergized the struggle at the national level. The House passed the federal suffrage amendment in 1918, but the Senate voted it down, causing Catt to mobilize again. The Senate finally passed the woman suffrage amendment in 1919. In August 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment giving women the right to vote was ratified by 36 states.
Although suffrage certainly preoccupied Catt, she participated in other reform efforts during the suffrage fight. She was active in the Woman’s Peace Party, which attempted to pressure the belligerent countries to come to the negotiating table during World War I. Somewhat ironically, Catt also served on the Women’s Committee of National Defense, a government agency that coordinated women’s voluntary work.
After the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, Catt founded the League of Women Voters and served as its honorary president through the rest of her life. She remained active in peace activism as well. Catt died in 1947 in New Rochelle, New York. Undeniably, Catt’s political skills and tenacity, along with the efforts of the foot soldiers of NAWSA and other groups, contributed to the success of the suffrage campaigns at the federal and state levels.
Further reading: Robert Booth Fowler, Carrie Catt: Feminist Politician (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1986).
—Natalie Atkin
Chicago race riot See race and racial conelict.
World History
