Credit

Everybody works but Mother is a satirical song-hit yet to be written. But a panoramic catalog of material for the lyric has now been supplied by the prominent women of Chicago under the leadership of two McCormicks and Mrs. Joseph T. Bowen.

At the White House, Mrs. Coolidge pressed a button. On Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, flags unfurled, doors opened upon the Women's World Fair (TIME, Jan. 26).

Attention was first called to the radio voice of Calvin Coolidge, then to the visible evidence of women's work. It was proved that women engage in painting, architecture, poetry, law, medicine, banking, manufacturing, commerce, that they compete with men in at least 70 trades. Evidence was also presented of a woman deep-sea diver, a woman plumber, a woman steer-thrower, a woman ceramist, a woman weight-reducer, a woman pajama-maker, a woman oil-producer, a woman chain cigar-store proprietress. It was proved by her bodily presence that the Governor of Wyoming (TIME, Jan. 19) is a woman, that other women are famous.

Executive head of the fair was Mrs. Medill McCormick, wife of the late Senator from Illinois. She exhibited a prize cow of her own raising, milked it.

Mrs. Bowen was President and presided.

Credit for origination of the fair was variously assigned. Overtopping all others was the name of a curiously engrossing personality--Edith Rockefeller McCormick, sister of John D. Rockefeller Jr., onetime (1895-1921) wife of Harold F. McCormick. Sapient in the acroarna of psychoanalysis, lavish in support of opera, eccentric in her choice of good works which include a zoo, Mrs. Rockefeller McCormick adheres to no party, cult or faction but her own. She has, of late, taken up women. And whether or not she originated womens' first all-woman fair, it is certain that she was its preeminent prophetess. She wrote: "The Women's World's Fair marks the passing of the drooping, useless hot-house lily of Queen Victoria's reign and glorifies that nonetheless beautiful flower, the red rose of modern woman, eager, joyous, purposeful."