Peoples Mandate Committee (U.S.)

Records, 1935-1972 (bulk 1935-1956)

Document Group: DG 109

Provenance: Donated by WILPF, U.S. Section; Mabel Vernon; Consuelo Reyes-Calderon

Size: 17.5 linear feet

Restrictions: None

Microfilm: None

Finding Aids: Checklist revised by Alexander Addison (student assistant), July 1998; edited by Anne Yoder, March 2005

This checklist is the property of the Swarthmore College Peace Collection

Historical Introduction
People's Mandate to Governments to End War was an international campaign begun on Sept. 6, 1935, by the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom to express such overwhelming opposition to war that governments would not dare resort to it as a means of solving disputes between nations. The project's goal was to secure fifty million signatures from the citizens of fifty countries. By 1937 the signatures from Europe alone numbered over 14 million.

In 1936 the U.S. section of the Peoples Mandate separated from the WILPF and became a distinct organization under the name of the Peoples Mandate to Governments to End War, Committee for the Western Hemisphere. The executive board included many well-known reformers and pacifists, such as Carrie Chapman Catt (honorary chairman), Mary E. Woolley (chairman), Grace Abbott, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Lillian Wald, and Mabel Vernon (director).

Vernon, an energetic worker for the Mandate Committee and a member of the WILPF, was director from the organization's inception in 1935. Her first goal was to organize a "Peace Caravan" of women to drive across the United States, gathering signatures and support. Pleased with the success of this project, Vernon organized a "Flying Caravan" to establish contacts with feminists, pacifists, and other women in Latin America, the following year. By the end of the decade WILPF International had abandoned the Mandate as a strategy for peace. The American Committee was renamed the Peoples Mandate for Inter-American Peace and Cooperation. As the new name suggests, the goals of the organization emphasized an improvement of relations between inhabitants of the Americas. This was to be accomplished by further work through women's groups on both continents. Between Sept. 1948 and Sept. 1949 the group's name changed to the Peoples Mandate Committee (U.S.).

Scope and Content
The organizational records in the Swarthmore College Peace Collection consist mainly of material for the U.S. section of the Peoples Mandate. Other material includes correspondence, reports, press releases, scrapbooks, telegrams, biographies, newspaper clippings, photographs, and Mandate literature. A large section of the correspondence in this collection came from Latin American women and contains information concerning the status of women and the work of women's organizations.

This collection also contains some of the personal correspondence of Mabel Vernon. She was a feminist who had been a member of the National Woman's Party. A part of Vernon's personal correspondence reflects the ties she had with some NWP members. It also records some of the tensions between factions within the NWP leadership in the 1940s.Another section of Vernon's personal correspondence concerns women's relationships with women companions. Vernon's own friendship with her companion Consuelo Reyes, correspondence from Jeannette Marks about her friendship with Mary Woolley, correspondence with Margaret Hamilton and Vita Milholland regarding their life together; letters from other friends are included. Correspondents (and other names found in the collection) include Jane Addams, Josefa T. de Aguerri, Katherine Anthony, Gertrude Baer, Emily Greene Balch, Mary Ritter Beard, Katherine Devereux Blake, Florence Brewer Boeckel, Heloise Brainerd, Sophonisba P. Breckinridge, Ana del Pulgar de Burke, Angela Acuña de Chacón, Hannah Clothier Hull, Alma Lutz, and Delia Rojas de White.

Contents of the Collection

Series A: [Unnamed]
Box 1
Committee lists; policies and history, 1935-1947
Correspondence (general), 1935-1948
Correspondence with WILPF (Hannah Clothier Hull, Mabel Vernon, Emily G. Balch, etc.), 1935-1937
Reports (of campaign progress, plans), 1935-1937
Correspondence and reports re: campaign work with labor groups, 1932-1936
Press releases and form letters, 1935-1936
Press releases from labor groups, 1935-1936
Press releases (general), 1945-1950
Press and radio publicity, 1935-1950

Box 1a (1/2 box) [formerly in box 1]
Literature, 1935-194_
Current material
Loose material [found unfiled in box 1]

Box 2
Form letters etc., 1938-1946

Latin American - U.S. relationship