Are Women People At Happy Knoll?

A letter to Mr. William Jonas, chairman of the Board of Governors of the Happy Knoll Country Club, from Mrs. I. J. Felton, wife of Mr. I. J. Felton, a member of the Happy Knoll Country Club.

My dear Mr. Jonas:
Although I do not know you personally, I am sending you this letter because I believe you to be chairman of the Board of Governors of the Happy Knoll Country Club. At least, when my husband pointed you out to me, he told me that you were, but then, Ingram is apt to be very inaccurate, on Saturday afternoons. However, you were on the 18th green, which is not far from the terrace where women are allowed to buy drinks and, judging from your restrained dress and manner, you may very well be what Ingram said you are. Also I feel impelled to write to someone in authority instead of entrusting my complaints to Ingram, who is never accurate when carrying messages even to a drugstore.

Briefly, I am writing to complain regarding the general situation existing in the ladies' locker room at the Happy Knoll Country Club—a region with which I cannot believe you are in the least familiar, and there are unfortunately no women as yet on any Happy Knoll governing board. Happy Knoll is, as Ingram reiterates, whenever I criticize the place, a Man's World, and for once I believe he is right, which leads me to ask a question before I lodge my series of just complaints.

Are women people?

Although Ingram tells me before you retired that you were a leading lawyer in New York City who has served on civic committees with women prominent in society and professional life, I fear I can foretell your answer. This makes no difference, since I know the correct one, from my experience as president of the Parent-Teacher Association, of the local League of Women Voters, and as a former president of the State Association of Garden Clubs. My answer is that in all the wide workaday world of give and take, including the United Nations and Bryn Mawr College, my alma mater, women are people—but not at the Happy Knoll Country Club. I know the reason for this as well as you, Mr. Jonas. Men, I have observed, are afraid of women who have ideas which are even remotely abstract. Society, as it was founded in my youth, and even more so in yours, Mr. Jonas, judging from my glimpse of you, was founded on that fear. Men retreated then to such places as the Happy Knoll Country Club and, I regret, continue this outmoded practice, except for a growing number of enlightened young couples who share the burdens of marriage equally, including dishwashing and the care and entertainment of infants. I am happy to perceive that a hint of this spirit is now infiltrating Happy Knoll by way of the younger set, but admittedly it is still far from prevalent. Yet women do have rights, Mr. Jonas, even at your so-called country club, in spite of their lacking democratic representation save on the garden and decorating committees. And what, briefly, would you do without us? Have you ever pondered that question, Mr. Jonas?

STILL SECOND-CLASS CITIZENS

By statistics, more women than men use your tennis courts. Half the greens fees on the golf course are paid by women. Women pay more than half of the teaching fees collected by your professional, Mr. Muldoon; especially, if I may say so, Mrs. Meadows of the younger golfing set, who whenever I seek an hour's instruction is taking a playing lesson with Mr. Muldoon at some distant part of the course. This, you may say, is neither here nor there, but such facts reinforce my point that women more than share the financial burdens of Happy Knoll. The restaurant would perish without the patronage of Happy Knoll wives and their guests, and at long last you have displayed, though reluctantly, the acumen to admit women to the new bar. But in spite of the desegregation triumphs in the South we are still second-class citizens in your organization.

What is the reason for this, Mr. Jonas? Is it because my sex is socially unattractive as a group? Is it because women are not supposed to compete with men in outdoor sports? Physiologists are now proving that women are more robust than men, outdoors and indoors, Mr. Jonas. They have greater qualities of character and endurance, can bear pain with a stoicism of which a male is incapable—and what man has ever borne a baby? Besides, the statisticians have now proved that a woman's life span is years longer, on the average, than that of the comparable male—and this is itself a factor in women's rights at Happy Knoll that has been overlooked by your governing board. Actually, the sums expended by Happy Knoll widows do more toward supporting the club than the low scale of dues extended your younger male members, though admittedly these individuals eventually may marry and thus finally contribute to the widow backlog. I therefore ask you again: Are women people? Are they or are they not useful to you at Happy Knoll? Or should they be confined in their suburban homes with their knitting, where a great many men, including yourself, I am afraid, Mr. Jonas, appear to desire them?

SUSPICIOUS CONCESSIONS

I shall grant, as you will doubtless state in rebuttal, that you have made concessions to women and their wants at Happy Knoll. You have instituted the Saturday night dances, though more for your amusement, I fear, than ours, judging from the frequent rumors of near seductions which are said to take place in parked cars and in the improperly lighted shrubbery behind the tennis courts. It is true, also, that you have enlarged the restaurant and, because of pressure brought to bear by wives of bankers and others in higher financial brackets than those enjoyed by Mr. Felton and myself, have finally discharged your wretched cook, who was able only to prepare fried chicken and fattening French-fried potatoes. Nevertheless, the dining room and indeed the lounge, though recently redecorated in a vulgar manner under the auspices of a member (who I have heard pocketed her 33?% commission without a by your leave), still reeks of deep fat. It is true also that you have opened what you call, un-originally, the mixed card room, as well as the mixed bar, where a woman may be seen without her husband with only a modicum of comment as long as she is not seen with someone else's, however platonic their relationship.