The Pcsw: An Alternative to the ERA
Peterson, in the meantime, found herself in a good position to make Miller miserable. In April, with eighty-two House resolutions on the ERA in the hopper, she told a Washington Post reporter that rather than having the ERA she would like to see a committee of the "best brains in the country" assay the status of women and recommend ways to improve it. She expressed her confidence that if all the women's organizations, pro and con, would discuss the conflict over women's legal place, a solution would appear. "If we sit down and talk this over," she said, "I feel sure we can work out a way to achieve our goals."[31]
While the commission was being planned, Peterson cautioned presidential aide Myer Feldman to have his letter writers stick to the platform and omit any mention of the "nuisance" amendment in responding to letters from ERA supporters. She realized, she said, that the issue amounted to "peanuts," but the "pile of peanuts" was growing pretty big and the proponents were intensifying their efforts. Indeed, Miller, who scoffed at Peterson's offer of compromise, told her co-workers at the NWP to barrage Secretary of Labor Arthur Goldberg with letters in order to "counteract" Peterson's influence, a campaign doomed to fail. Miller regarded Goldberg as "very broadminded"—but Peterson authorized the secretary's answers to letters from ERA supporters, and she used the exact language of the original Kennedy campaign letter, endorsing the Democratic platform and full equality for women but not the Equal Rights Amendment.[32]
In the meantime, the ERA languished in Congress. Although 135 members of the House had introduced ERA resolutions by the fall of 1961, they did so with the knowledge that House Judiciary chair Emanuel Celler would not permit the bill to be reported. The seventeen Senate sponsors knew likewise that the upper chamber would agree to the amendment only with Carl Hayden's rider preserving "benefits" for women. Still, Miller viewed Peterson as the ERA's greatest threat.[33] "We must find some way to shut her up, at least from opposing what our platform and President have endorsed," she told a friend.[34]
Peterson did not shut up; instead, she and her colleagues used the presidential commission on women to stop the ERA dead in its legislative tracks. Peterson reasoned that Congress would not be likely to act on the amendment while the matter was under consideration by a presidential panel. In addition, she presumed that eventually the commission would offer substitute recommendations that would further stymie the amendment's progress.
But obstructing the ERA was not the commission's chief objective; the Hayden rider had already taken care of that. The creators of the commission intended it primarily to devise an alternative program to improve women's status. Unfortunately, as they saw it, the ERA dispute had always made such a goal impossible.
From the very first discussions about the commission early in 1961, its creators worried about protecting the commission from being "diverted" from its task by the argument over constitutional equality. Throughout the spring, the Women's Bureau staff, Peterson, and Katherine Ellickson of the Social Security Department of the AFL-CIO refined arguments in favor of a commission, hoping to devise a plan that women's organizations would deem acceptable, regardless of their position on the ERA.[35] One staffer observed that "there is a good bit of evidence to suggest that the objectives of most women's groups with respect to women's status are the same, despite differences expressed by those who favor or oppose the Equal Rights Amendment."[36]
When Peterson presented the plan to the White House, she began by arguing that "the appointment by the President of a
Commission on women in our American democracy would substitute constructive recommendations for the present troublesome and futile agitation about the 'equal rights' Amendment." But more than that, she asserted, the commission would "help the nation to set forth before the world the story of women's progress in a free, democratic society, and to move further towards full partnership, creative use of skills and genuine equality of opportunity." Peterson told White House aide Myer Feldman that trade union women, professional women, and congressional staff had all greeted the idea with enthusiasm. But the commission could succeed only if the ERA dispute did not undermine it.[37]
Therefore, Peterson decided, the PCSW would, in contrast to past commission proposals, begin without taking an overt stand on the issue. In her remarks at the announcement ceremony, Peterson paid tribute to Emanuel Celler, who had first introduced a bill proposing a national commission on women in 1947—but the Celler bill had included a policy statement endorsing statutes that distinguished women from men if the laws were "reasonably based on differences in physical structure, biological, or social function." This statement established before the fact that such a national commission would necessarily oppose the ERA, which was designed to strike down laws based on just such characteristics. The executive order creating the President's Commission on the Status of Women contained no such phrase indicating a preconceived position.[38]
Peterson's plan paid off. The president's commission won enthusiastic support from the influential BPW, as well as from many pro-ERA organizations. Congress members and women's organizations joined the BPW in expressing widespread interest in the commission, and women in the federal government felt encouraged by the new policy the president had enunciated. Caroline Davis, director of the Women's Division of the United Automobile Workers, wrote to Peterson: "Congratulations[;] you did it. This is a victory that we have long waited for."[39] In an editorial, the Washington Post praised Kennedy for creating the "blue ribbon panel," declaring that the country could not afford to waste the trained talent of women.[40] The Christian Science Monitor , observing that Kennedy had been criti-
cized for failing to appoint women, crediting him with launching a "distaff 'fair deal.'"[41]
Not everyone shared the enthusiasm, however. Despite Peterson's expression of esteem and a letter from Arthur Goldberg telling him that the presidential commission represented the "fruition" of his efforts, Emanuel Celler took the commission to task. He noted its appearance with interest, he said, but he wanted to "sound a warning" that he would oppose "any effort on the part of this group to revive any campaign for the adoption of the so-called Equal Rights Amendment which is an 'Unequal Rights Amendment.'" Celler, perhaps because of the absence of the biological function clause, apparently did not recognize the commission's origins in his own proposal. He went on to vilify the amendment, declaring that "mores have set off women from men and no constitutional Amendment could alter them." He expressed his hope that the commission would not be "pressurized" to raise the "specter" of the ERA.[42]
The National Woman's party also viewed the commission with suspicion, but for reasons more realistic than Celler's. Emma Guffey Miller correctly judged that the commission arose partly from Peterson's distress over Kennedy's "endorsement" of the ERA during the campaign, and Miller saw to her own dismay that Peterson was now "riding high, wide and handsome" within the administration.[43] Alice Paul presciently explained to a questioner that the commission had been set up to prevent the adoption of the amendment and that ERA opponents would urge Congress members to delay action on the amendment until the commission had issued its report.[44]
Opponents of the amendment did just that. The White House reported that the president would not comment on the amendment until the commission had concluded its work, and Arthur Goldberg asked Emanuel Celler to defer House Judiciary Committee activity on the ERA until the commission report was submitted. Celler in turn recommended to the Senate Judiciary Committee that it wait for the report, and Carl Hayden made the same request to the full Senate. Although the Senate Judiciary Committee reported the ERA favorably in August 1962, the Eighty-seventh Congress took no further action on it.[45] An NWP member reported to Miller that both adversar-
ies and advocates of the ERA in Congress with whom she had spoken "say frankly that they are not going to 'jump the gun'" on the president's commission.[46]
Of course, there was never a chance that the commission would endorse the Equal Rights Amendment, despite its claim to be approaching the study of the ERA without prejudice. By design, too many commissioners came from labor or women's groups that opposed it. Because a body with no ERA supporters would lack credibility, Marguerite Rawalt, a past president of the BPW and a member of the National Woman's party, had been appointed, but she was the only certain ERA supporter of the membership of twenty-six. In addition, Peterson, Ellickson, and the Women's Bureau staff maintained a careful watch over the commission, monitoring proposals and making the administration position clear.[47]
Although she knew Peterson would not allow many ERA supporters on the commission, Emma Guffey Miller, Democratic National Committee member and NWP chairman, did not take her exclusion philosophically. She brought her displeasure to the attention of John Bailey, chairman of the DNC, and to Governor David L. Lawrence of Pennsylvania, a state in which the Guffeys and Millers had significant political clout. Lawrence confidently wrote to the White House asking that Miller be given a seat on the commission, but to his surprise he received a letter, drafted by Peterson, regretfully denying his request but offering Miller a seat on the commission's subordinate body, the Committee on Civil and Political Rights. Even this appointment did not come to pass, because Edith Green, the committee chairman, vetoed Miller's participation. Miller continued her efforts to win a place on the commission until its conclusion, but Peterson squelched her petitions without much difficulty, explaining to the White House staff that the commission contained no political members except members of Congress and the cabinet. Furthermore, Peterson said, Marguerite Rawalt represented Miller's point of view. Miller's extended campaign to become a member of the Commission came to nothing.[48]
Understandably, tension between Peterson and the National Woman's party remained high. Miller bitterly resented Peter-
son's station within the administration. An informant had told her, to her disgust, that "no woman has an entree at the White House unless Esther Peterson . . . introduces her";[49] although this was an overstatement, the White House did customarily check such matters with her. Indeed, Peterson's instructions caused a White House aide to deny an appointment to an NWP member the president himself had promised to meet.[50] For her part, Peterson viewed the National Woman's party with increasing disdain. She told Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Lee White, a White House aide, that the NWP was a "paper organization, with no standing with substantial women's organizations." The ERA was introduced each session, she said—"tongue-in-cheek"—because male legislators hesitated to declare themselves against women, and the NWP consistently met with defeat despite the fact that "the little ladies marched the corridors from the first day of the session to its end."[51] Nevertheless, because the Commission was ostensibly neutral, the warfare was covert. Peterson promised NWP correspondents that the subject of the ERA would be approached with an open mind. "As a member," she wrote, "I want to take this opportunity to assure you that the Commission has undertaken a completely objective study of this question."[52]