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This is no disparagement of the worthy quality of Oklahoma's men and women for some of the noblest lives never reach recognition beyond the small circle in which they live and with all his scientific attainments man has not yet devised a method for measuring the light that gleams out from an individual character beyond a comparatively short radius. Without invidious discrimination it is possible to say that Oklahoma has produced one great woman. In fact, Kate Barnard is now one of America's great women. She has earned her niche of fame as a practical sociologist and philanthropist. The adversities and hardships of early Oklahoma, reacting upon the heroic blood of seven generations of Irish ancestors, molded her character into a soul of adamant determination and invincible courage to fight the battle for social justice and economic liberty, and whether the history of Oklahoma is written now or two centuries hence, her work, if not her name, must be marked in its pages. Without trying to measure absolutely the results of her life, it is only a matter of justice that the following paragraphs should be written now to indicate what service she rendered during the formative period of the state, the manner in which she accomplished her work, and some of those environments and influences which directed her own early growth and development. Perhaps the best idea of the breadth and depth of her social experience is contained in the preface to the book which Miss Barnard is now writing on "Woman and Destiny." In this she says, " I know life from the homes of Fifth avenue millionaires to the hovels of American slums, from receptions at the White House to gutter gatherings of homeless vagabonds and penniless tramps. Today, I hold membership in ditch diggers unions; and am an honorary member of the American Academy of Social and Political Science. I have studied men until I know from the shape of their hands and head, the gait of their walk, and the contour of their faces, much of their mode of life and the character of their thought. Men call me a good 'politician' but back of this is a large knowledge of human life on every round of the social ladder, a consuming sympathy for human sorrows a strong determination to rectify the wrongs in American workshops and force a just relationship among men." " For seven years," the preface continues, " I led the state democratic ticket in Oklahoma, but I continued to go down with the 'people' and sit at crowded lunch counters and eat fifteen cent meals. I dressed plain, stayed out of 'society,' continued my membership in labor unions, and thus preserved my comradeship and fellowship with the masses.... I have shared my time and life with the intellect of Boston, the romance and idealism of Richmond, the hospitality of New Orleans, and the humanity of the Great West. I have been entertained in the homes of America's most brilliant statesmen, shared the hospitality of her most profound philosophers, the music and harmony of her great poets and dreamers, and came home to enjoy the intimate comradeship of Oklahoma's homeless vagabonds and tramps. I am at home from the palace to the gutter, from the hovel to the White House-and this is life." Kate Barnard was born at Geneva, Nebraska, about 1878, daughter of John P. and Rachel (SHIELL) Barnard. She is thus a young woman, one who has dedicated her life to the great and noble cause. Though she has fought an almost ceaseless battle with poverty first and with the sordid conditions of American social and industrial systems later, she is an optimist, and if anyone expects to find her face in the lines set by acrid experience he would be disappointed. Few women have played the master hand in politics which she did in Oklahoma during that historic period when the territory was granted statehood. This was the most dramatic cycle of Oklahoma's history; and she was one of the strong characters who dominated public opinion and dictated policies of state at that time. A serious woman with tremendous fortitude, self reliance and deep sympathy, with a keen brain and great executive ability, she joined her efforts to the democratic party just then coming into power. She took the stump and helped shape and mould that public opinion which crystallized into provisions in Oklahoma's constitution that will protect the working masses after her time and generation are forgotten dust. It was in 1906 that Congress handed down the enabling act which permitted Oklahoma to write her Constitution, and Kate Barnard upon her own initiative undertook to secure ample provision for the care and protection of the children of the poor. She secured a letter from Frank FRANTZ, then Governor of Oklahoma, asking that courtesies be extended her from public officials of other states. Armed with the governor's letter she toured the slums, factories and work shops of the East, she consulted members of the National Child Labor Committee and leading sociologists and political economists, to learn what other commonwealths had done to protect child life. She inquired what legislation they had passed to decrease poverty, disease and crime, and she examined the laws they had enacted for the protection of labor. Through the influence of the governors letter she was deputized as a regular factory inspector in Missouri and other states. This enabled her to see the actual conditions under which men, women and children work for their wages, the hours of their toll; and studied the effect of modern factory life in promoting race efficiency (or race degeneracy) among the masses and the relationship of such facts to national welfare. Of this experience she writes: "No man can deal intelligently with life until he first understands how all classes of men live and under what conditions they make their daily bread. Books are tools with which to work out human intelligence. How to apply intelligence can only be learned through knowledge of life itself. To get this knowledge I spent months touring factories and workshops. I have breathed coal dust with children in American coal breakers; I have turned sick with the pale young girls who are slowly poisoning as they bottle arsenic in American drug houses; and I have breathed the glass dust which was killing the child laborers at my side." With this first hand information she returned to Oklahoma and entered upon a systematic campaign to create a demand for a child labor plank; a compulsory education plank; and a department of charities plank in the Oklahoma constitution. Ambassador Bryce of England said of Oklahoma's constitution that it is " the finest document of human liberty written since the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution of Switzerland" and no little credit for making it such is due to the activities of a single woman - Kate Barnard. The hardest fight of her life grew out of her efforts to properly protect the children of the poor in the constitution, a fight which lasted three years, during which she made 127 speeches, opened and carried on a press campaign, interviewed leading politicians, secured endorsements of big political organizations, and fought and defeated a speaker of the House of Representatives. In her press campaign she printed manuscript articles which she had solicited from Luther BURBANK, Edward MARKHAM, Jacob RIIS, John SPARGO, Mrs. Phillip N. MOORE, and scores of others of national note who plead that Oklahoma should protect her children in the constitution of the state. As evidence of the spirit of generosity which permeates the American democracy, these great men and women contributed this service without recompense; in the interest of human progress in Oklahoma. At this time the farmers and laborers held a state convention at Shawnee, Oklahoma, to consider means for protecting their own interests in Oklahoma's organic law. This body represents 65,000 votes. Kate Barnard attended this convention and pledged to support their child labor, a compulsory education and a department of charities plank in the constitution. She stayed at this convention for two days and before she came away she had entered an agreement and thus secured the aid of this most powerful political organization. She then conferred with the chairman of the State Democratic Campaign Committee, Hon. Jesse DUNN and he agreed to include these demands in the Democratic platform. Thus they became a part of the democratic party of the state. This being done she took the stump for democratic success and helped elect a large majority of democrats in the convention which wrote the constitution. She was invited to appear before the Constitutional Convention. She accepted the invitation and made a plea for three planks, with the result that her model " Proposition No. 888," and bears the inscription " Introduced by Delegate W.C. HUGHES at the request of Kate Barnard." Her proposition for the department of charities and corrections and the compulsory education proposition introduced by Delegate Mitch, also passed. Then came the task of rounding upon these "planks" suitable laws. This was comparatively easy with regard to the compulsory education and department of charities laws, but Kate Barnard campaigned for three years and went before two legislatures and engaged in a desperate political battle with a house speaker before the passing of the child labor bill. The article in the constitution providing for a department of charities contained reference to "his" or "her" office, and it was but a logical outcome of her thorough knowledge of social conditions and her profound interest in the welfare of the people at large that she was nominated for the office of commissioner of charities. As a democrat candidate she had the distinction of leading her ticket by 6,000 votes. "Of course," said A. J. MCKELWAY of the National Child Labor Committee," there were other reasons for the victory of the democrats, but Kate Barnard was several reasons herself." She was thoroughly trusted by the two largest classes of voters, the farmers and the labor union men, and she was the favorite speaker on the democratic side. Slender, graceful, petite, with dark hair and skin and flashing eyes, with a rapid-fire articulation which was the despair of reporters, she painted pictures of the wrongs of childhood, of the suffering of minors without the protection of law, of the needs of the orphans , of cruelties practiced upon the insane and the necessity of scientific hospital care; of sweatshops and overwork and under-pay, thrilling her vast audience with her earnest eloquence. It is indicative of her character that upon taking office she insisted upon a reduction of her salary - originally at $2,500 - to $1500 a year. After four years of her service the Legislature again raised it to $2,500. During a year of drought she handed back the money to her poor renter, saying she " could not live on the money that would rob little children of the necessities of life." She secured legislation embodying the most advanced sociological thought, such as prison laws prepared by Samuel J. BARROWS, ex-president of the International Prison Congress; Juvenile court laws drafted by Judge Ben LINDSAY; child labor and compulsory education laws drafted by A.J. MCKELWAY of the National Child Labor Committee; laws for the care and treatment of the insane and of the feeble minded drafted by Alexander JOHNSON and H.H. HART of the Russell Sage Foundation. In answer to Kate Barnard's appeal these leaders of public thought throughout the nation traveled to Oklahoma at their own expense, lectured without charge to the Oklahoma Legislature, and wrote laws to insure scientific care of the insane - to lift the burden from the backs of the children of the poor and insure their education - to prevent cruelty within prison walls - to remove children from jails and place them in industrial schools - and to thoroughly introduce in Oklahoma modern care and scientific treatment for the deaf, mute and blind. This marks an epoch in statescraft as it is the first time in history that the nation's most eminent statesmen and sociologists were brought to write a whole body of laws for a state. The result of this big endeavor was to place Oklahoma in the foremost ranks of those commonwealths which stand for human progress throughout the world. Kate Barnard's activities extended throughout the nation. Her investigations in 1908 of the atrocious conditions prevailing in the Lansing (Kansas) penitentiary inspired the legal battle between Oklahoma and Kansas which resulted in the breaking of the contract which they had with Oklahoma for the care of its 600 prisoners; and the general overhauling of the Lansing penitentiary. She figured in a big and victorious prison reform fight in Arizona in the winter of 1911-12. At the request of Governor Hunt she addressed the Arizona legislature in the interests of probation and parole laws for that state, and she assisted in securing better conditions for the Arizona insane. She also went before the Texas Federation of Women's Clubs in the interest of Juvenile legislation and a department of charities to protect the prisoners, orphans and insane of Texas. She helped organize the Southern Sociological Congress for the purpose of securing a uniform child labor law for the South. In 1912 she succeeded in restoring $2,000,000 to the Indian orphans of Oklahoma and in prosecuting many of the men who were depriving them of their estates. She had to stop this prosecution when the Fourth Oklahoma Legislature cut off all appropriations for the continuation of this work. She permitted her department to be wrecked rather than allow the politicians to "dictate to her" whom she should employ as a attorneys to continue the prosecution against this thievery and graft. This battle with the Fourth Legislature brought on nervous prostration and resulted in wrecking her health. Of this bleak period of her life she has this to say: " The dust collected in layers, and the spiders came and spun their webs in my silent, vacant department in which for years Christian men and women had devoted their whole time to raising standards of life for Oklahoma's poor. But the Fourth Legislature cut off their salaries and one by one these hospital inspectors, attorneys, inspectors of poorhouses, prisons and jails departed - and left me alone. As I stood in the chill and gloom of my wrecked department I looked out of the State House window and noted that winter was dropping dead petals from the trees in the State House yard, and I thought how like these are the dead hopes and dreams which, chilled in the bitter wind of destiny, drop lifeless at our feet." But Kate Barnard did not give up when adversity swept her life. Her battle was for justice, and when the Legislature adjourned she went down into the home districts of these law makers, took the stump, defeated them, and retired them to private life. After this she went East and spoke in the biggest churches and halls of New York City, interested in New York Press, raised several thousand dollars from New York and Chicago, and continued her fight for justice for the Oklahoma Indians. She appeared before the Mohonk Conference, secured their support, returned to Oklahoma and defeated several bills in the Fifth Legislature which facilitate the separation of Indians from their lands. During this fight with the Fifth Legislature she circularized the voters of the state, organized separate fighting groups in forty- three counties of Oklahoma to help her, and when these failed she petitioned both houses of Legislature for the right to be personally heard, and she made passionate appeals from the floor of the House and the floor of the Senate for laws which would enable the department of charities to properly protect the Indians of her state. Failing in this, she gave up all hope of accomplishing results in Oklahoma and she petitioned Congress to take back its jurisdiction over the Oklahoma Indians and their estates. Warren K. Moorehead, scientific sociologist and entomologist of the University of Andover, Massachusetts, a member of the United States Board of Indian Commissioners, one of the nation's highest authorities on Indian affairs, has recently written a book called "The Indian" in which he pays Kate Barnard a high tribute for her heroic battle for justice for the 100,000 Indians in Oklahoma. Mr. Moorehead expresses the belief that the destiny of Oklahoma's Red Man is bound up in the success, or failure, of her effort to force Congress to take back its jurisdiction over these Indians and their estates. The " National Cyclopedia of American Biography" contains a ten-page sketch of Kate Barnard's life. In this we find a tribute which she pays to her father, disclosing such love and loyalty to parentage as is not only worthy of emulation by the children of her state, but explains somewhat the forces which have animated her in this hard fighting battle for social justice. " My love for my father, and a desire to help the poor, became the two great dominant factors of my life. My father was a stern man with a keen sense of justice. If I did wrong punishment came. He treated me on terms of an adult. He never threatened. He never broke a promise. He hated a lie. He never conversed on frivolous subjects. Justice was with him a passion. I have known him to prosecute a man who tried to cheat him for a small amount, and I saw him voluntarily pay more than was asked to a widow who sold us vegetables at a time when we too were very poor. He would never submit to injury, lest he teach the unscrupulous to take advantage of those too weak to protect themselves. During the panic of 1898 he fed the hungry men almost daily. "His life was full of tremendous cataclysms, but no evidence of conflict was visible except the growing stoop to his shoulders and his whitening hair. Twice only did I see tears. The first time was at my mother's grave. Her influence over him extended thirty-three years after she was dead. It was one of those old sweet romances the 'true loves of long ago.' "Once more he shed tears when he bade me good-bye and left me alone with strangers, at the time he entered the terrible 'run' for a free home in Oklahoma. I was ten years old. Continued drought brought business reverses, he refused to take advantage of the bankruptcy law (preferring honor and poverty) so he was facing life again a poor man at forty-five. "He took down my little autograph album and this is what he wrote: 'Let Faith, Hope and Charity be the theme of your whole life and when temptation lures you to forsake either of the three great Christian principles, remember our Savior Jesus Christ died on the cross to redeem sinners. Your loving father, (signed) John P. Barnard.' "It was two years before I saw him again. When I did it was difficult for me to recognize in the careworn countenance, the furrowed brow, the faded eyes and silvered hair, the altered image of my father. He had aged twenty years but he was still kind and brave. Such was the father of Kate Barnard. Let those who benefit by my work remember it is the strength of character inherited from that great pioneer which enables me to forego love, home, and other material pleasures, and become a Voice to those who suffer in the gutter of human life. If you would trace the origin of the moral strength behind every sacrifice for the principle, every struggle for liberty, every achievement recorded in the history of man, you will find that Divinity has placed it in parenthood like this." Thus does Kate Barnard pay tribute to her father. Her mother died when she was eighteen months old so that the formation of her character during the malleable and all-important years of childhood was completely in his hands. That the influence of his teaching and personality upon her life was of incalculable values she has gratefully testified. Kate Barnard's father was a lawyer and civil engineer. He was Irish, a man of unusual qualities of mind and character, and to his training is due much of the practical wisdom which so consistently transfuses his daughter's high idealism. Her father secured a homestead twenty miles east of Oklahoma City, near where Newalla now stands, and here in a lonely frame shanty of two rooms on the principal pioneer highway between Oklahoma City and Shawnee, Kate Barnard lived alone for nearly two years, while her father practiced law in Oklahoma City to make money and get bread. Those were days of desperate poverty for all the Oklahoma pioneers, and often the best her father could send her was corn meal, navy beans and fat side meat. She was determined to help her father get a new start in life, and she "held down" the homestead under circumstances that would test the staunchest heart. It was here that bleak loneliness and material hardships drove home the stern lessons which welded and moulded a character of such strength and human sympathy as enabled her to carry down to defeat the sternest opposition, when, later years, she went forth to secure laws which would decrease poverty, disease and crime. No one then dreamed that in this poverty-ridden shack on the bleak sand hills of Oklahoma was growing up a little girl whose opinions would one day mould the destiny of the state and who would be called to help in the battle for human progress from New York to San Diego; and whose work would be known around the world. A brilliant New York woman has written a book called "American Women in Civic Life." The book contains thirteen chapters, each devoted to a life sketch of one of America's most prominent women. Among these are Jane Addams, Kate Barnard, Caroline Bartlett Crane, Ella Flagg Young and nine others. Charles R. Zueblin, who for years occupied the chair of Sociology in the University of Chicago, in a recent book also pays tribute to the high sociological value of her work. Miss Barnard pays the following tribute to one who constantly associated with her work in Oklahoma: " No biography would be complete without a tribute to Mr. Hobart HUSON, who was for six years associated with me as assistant commissioner of charities, and without whose wise counsel and thorough devotion to the cause of humanity I should never have accomplished my life work. He was the first to suggest to me the necessity of a State Department of Charities for Oklahoma. A nobler man than he never devoted his life to the cause of human progress. He was a world traveler who in the seasoned wisdom of the afternoon of life joined me and threw all his energies into the struggle to realize the highest degree of human progress for the masses of Oklahoma. Kate Barnard was a pioneer for ethics and ideals is a raw, new civilization. While men fought for street cars, paving and sky- scrapers, she fought for shorter hours, living wages and a more just relationship among men. The East has summoned her repeatedly to assist in the most intricate and difficult social service work. In response to this call she has lectured before the City Club of New York, Cooper Union Institute, the League of Political Education of New York, and the most exclusive girls' school and colleges of the East. In Boston she spoke in Ford Hall and Faneuil Hall, the "Cradle of American Liberty." She addressed the Governors' Congress at Richmond, Virginia, in 1913 upon the subject of "Human conservation;" and she made the closing address before the American section of the International Tuberculosis Congress at Washington, in 1908, speaking upon the subject of "Social and Industrial Causes of Tuberculosis." She has carried the message of social service into eleven American national conventions and into scores of colleges, universities and learned societies. She was voted a member of the American Academy of Social and Political Science in recognition of her contributions to constructive statecraft; and a member of the national committee to draft amendments for the Federal Constitution to be presented to Congress. She was nominated American delegate to the International Prison Congress in Rome, Italy; and as American delegate to the International Tuberculosis Congress at Copenhagen, Denmark. What she has accomplished has been so notable as to attract inquiry from Max Nordau of France, Enrico Ferri of Italy; Munsterburg of Germany, and other famous leaders of statecraft. Her work has placed Oklahoma on the map of philanthropy and sociology throughout the world. Kate Barnard is a woman who came up from the bottom and remained plain, earnest, approachable and unspoiled. Asked why she never wore jewelry she answered - "How can a woman wear diamonds in a country where children starve?" She dressed finer than the clerks in the state house. She never forgot her days of her poverty and the door of her office in the state house - like the door of her heart - was always open to the roughest laborer and the raggedest farmer and the dirtiest street child. From governor to newsboy, everybody in Oklahoma called her "Kate" and throughout the magazines and the press she came to be known as "Oklahoma Kate." For ten years she stumped the State of Oklahoma at all hours of the day and night with all classes of men, and from governor to coal digger she received universal courtesy. Men seemed never to consider her as a woman. So intimately was her life interwoven with their struggle for liberty and bread she seemed only the voice of destiny crying out in the world's bitter economic battles for food, shelter opportunity for them. Wherever she spoke the horny hands of toil gathered and they packed her speaking halls. They named two big Oklahoma schoolhouses and many of their children after her. Into the keystone over the main archway of the public schools in Tecumseh and Marlow is carved the name "Barnard." Asked what characters had most influenced her life, she answered - Abraham Lincoln, Tolstoi, Joan D'Arc, and the Life of Christ. Her favorite authors were Emerson, Ruskin, Ibsen, Socrates and Plato, and she always kept near her a copy of that little school classic, Hawthorne's "Great Stone Face." Kate Barnard has herself been a woman of the heroic type who battered down prejudice and "precedent" in an effort to decrease world sorrow. She was constructive and upon the wrecks of the past she built other standards of life and nobler ideas for the future. Her youth, her brain, and the best years of her life are woven into the fabric of Oklahoma's civilization. The laws she has written are in Oklahoma's statutes, but the things she has built belong to the sphere of the unseen. They lie buried in the souls of the youths of Oklahoma, for the things she built were visions of a loftier womanhood and a nobler manhood dedicated in high and holy service to all the human race. She fired the brain of the coming generation with ideals of brotherhood - dreams which will yet come true. She has taught that service to human progress is the noblest purpose of human life and Kate Barnard's work will live when she is dust. Her work will live because the dreams of youth are the materials of which history is made. Few women could away the mind of a whole state for ten years and history records a just tribute to the genius and service of womankind when it declares that her work is constructive statecraft and entitles her a position among the foremost statesmen of the age. Typed for OKGenWeb by Tiffany Edmond, October 12, 1998.