Women of Montana
By Sophia Holmes Adams
(Social Service Worker)
Montana is no longer "wild and woolly." In fact, she lays claim to educational and cultural advantages. Her vast plains, where a few decades ago, the Indian and buffalo roamed, now gleam golden under the great wheat harvest. More wheat is raised in Montana than in any other state in the Union. No longer is "Butte" the symbol of all the wild, reckless glitter of the "wide open" mining town with its saloons, dance halls and gambling dens that were open day and night. That day is gone forever. The greatest copper mining company in the world has its immense reduction works in Anaconda, twenty-eight miles from Butte. Montana proves her advancement best, perhaps, by the amused tolerance with which she meets the incredulous surprise of the eastern visitor. Six of the towns are "college towns" and many of the towns have a country club.
The technical education required of the men who are at the head of the various departments of the Anaconda Copper Mining Co. and the men who are the professors and instructors at the university and colleges, is the greatest original cause for this change. These men naturally married women of congenial mental attainment. Then, as the towns grew, the need of men in all the other professions increased and these men brought their wives with them. Thus Montana is blessed with a rather large proportion of educated women scattered throughout her scanty population.
For the most part, these women did not let their brains atrophy, but while their husbands were making records in their lines, the women set to work to make records along other lines. The most influential women in Montana are not the "tea and bridge" crowd, but those who have done great work in the advancement of the finer things of life. As a result of their unselfish and unceasing labors, even the smallest communities have study clubs where the world's best in literature, art and music is brought to those so far away from the source of these things. The state has a population of very little over six hundred thousand and yet, there are six thousand members of the federated women's clubs. That means, if we figure four persons to a family, that one out of every twenty-five persons in the state gains advantages gleaned from the women's clubs. There are one hundred and thirty-five clubs in the federation.
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