Collection of ephemera by a World War II- and post-World War II-era anti-conscription women’s organization.
[ Philadelphia: Women’s Committee to Oppose Conscription, 1945-1947]. The documents include a mimeographed letter on Women’s Committee to Oppose Conscription letterhead calling for support for an anti-conscription constitutional amendment (dated December 3, 1945); and four letters (dated between June 1946 and April 1947) opposing the Selective Service System and proposed legislation for mandatory military training during peacetime. One of the letters addresses the censorship of anti-conscription sentiment expressed by soldiers, who were forbidden “under threat of court martial” from sending anti-conscription letters to the War Department. Five documents (8 ” x 11”) and two printed postcards (5 ” x 3 ”). The documents include four mimeographed letters to members (three one-page letters, one two-page letter, and one four-page letter) on Women’s Committee to Oppose Conscription (WCOC) letterhead and a four-page voter guide. The postcards are both addressed by hand to Mr. and Mrs. W.B. Rovner. Minor toning. In near fine condition. Item #17419
In 1942, Quaker pacifist and feminist Mildred S. Olmsted (1890 – 1990) founded the Committee to Oppose the Conscription of Women to challenge the Austin-Wadsworth Bill of 1943, which proposed the conscription of men aged 18-65 and women aged 18-50 for assignment to military industry anywhere in the country. Once the immediate threat of drafting women had passed, the organization was renamed to the Women’s Committee to Oppose Conscription and focused more broadly on anti-conscription and pacifist efforts. During World War I, Olmsted worked in Paris with the Young Women’s Christian Organization to plan recreational activities for soldiers stationed there. After the war, she joined the American Friends Service Committee in Berlin, where she worked in famine relief. She was a leader in the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, a founder of the pacifist and anti-nuclear warfare organization SANE (now Peace Action), the vice-chair of the Pennsylvania ACLU, and a member of the United Nations Council of Non-Governmental Organizations and the Main Line Birth Control League.
Price: $650.00