by Lois nner
On July 19,1848, in the village of Seneca Falls, New York, some 300 people crowded into a small Methodist chapel, drawn by an announcement in the daily Seneca County Courier. The notice pro- claimed something unheard of-a two-day "Woman's Rights Conven- tion." Despite a request that men stay away until the second day, about 40 curious males showed up at the start.
The organizers of the convention-Lucretia Mott, a 55-year-old Quaker activist from Philadelphia, and Elizabeth...
ot;Don't forget to be a good boy," wrote a mother in rural Ten- nessee to her 24-year-old son Harry Bum, the youngest represen- tative in the Tennessee legislature, "and help Mrs. Catt put 'Rat' in Ratification."
Bum's vote meant everything, because the legislature was oth- erwise evenly divided. If he voted in favor of the Nineteenth Amend- ment, Tennessee would become the final state needed for ratification. If he voted against it, the amendment would probably fail, for the remaining...
the afternoon of March 22, 1972, a packed gallery in the United States Senate erupted in applause, cheers, and cowboy yells as the roll call vote revealed that, 49 years after it had first been proposed, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) had been approved by a lopsided margin of 84 to 8. Within a half-hour, Hawaii's state legislature became the first in the Union to ratify the amendment.
'There seems little question now," the Washington Evening Star observed after the Senate vote, "that...
America's social and sexual rearrangements is like eating a bowl of overcooked spaghetti with chopsticks.
a com- mon perspective but a highly divisive question: What does it mean to be fe- male-historically, biologically, and cul- turally? Add feminist goals and stir: It is no wonder that meetings of the National Women's Studies Association often take on the tenor of a United Nations emer- gency session.
Much of the controversy in and around women's studies harkens back to the early feminists' naturelnurture quan- dary-are women by nature the same as men (only nurtured to be different) or are they...
Seymour Martin Lipset, in PS
- (Spring 1986), American Political Science Asso-ciation, 1527 New Hampshire Ave. N.W., Wash- ington, D.C. 20036.
Ronald Reagan's popularity remains high. Early in 1986, surveys showed roughly two-thirds of the electorate supporting the president-the highest rating so far accorded to any 20th-century U.S. chief executive during the first quarter of his second term.
Such poll data seem to suggest that most Americans agree with the president's conservative agenda.
But...
S. William Green, in The Journal of the Institute for Socioeconomic Studies (Summer 19861, Air-port Road, White Plains, N.Y. 10604.
"Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." So goes the official motto of the U.S. Postal Service (USPS).
Like many Americans, Representative Green (D.-N.Y.) frets that the USPS is not as "swift" as it ought to be, despite the efficiencies that followed the Postal...
123 per- cent, compared with 70 percent for other government employees at the same level; a 1982 General-Accounting Office study found that even USPS custodians earned more than double the hourly wages of their private enterprise counterparts. Only in recent months has the Postal Service begun to turn a profit, after record losses of $251 million in 1985; pros- pects for improved service do not seem bright.
Privatization is Green's solution-specifically, allowing private firms to compete in those...
Tom Clark, one of his Democratic appointees. Clark sided with a 1952 majority ruling that Truman's nationalization of steel mills to head off a strike during the Ko- rean War was unconstitutional.
"Packing the Supreme Court simply can't be done," Truman lamented. "I've tried and it won't work."
That 1787 The Electoral College at Philadelphia: The Evolution of an Ad Hoc Congress for the Selec-
Anachronism tion of a President" Shlomo Slonim, in The Journal of American...
granting to them electoral votes equivalent in number to their congressional delega- tions. And, in the event that no presidential candidate won a majority outright, -the decision would fall to the House, where the advantage would go to the most populous states.
Though it was a "Rube Goldberg" device, Slonim says, the college did succeed in reconciling the nationalists and the federalists among the con- vention delegates. Doubts about the result would emerge later, as when Benjamin Harrison...