O'Day, Caroline (1869–1943)

American congressional representative (January 3, 1935–January 3, 1943). Born Caroline Love Goodwin on June 22, 1869, in Perry, Georgia; died on January 4, 1943, in Rye, New York; daughter of Sidney Prior Goodwin (a Confederate veteran and businessman) and Elia (Warren) Goodwin; graduated from Lucy Cobb Institute, Athens, Georgia, in 1886; married Daniel O'Day (an oil contractor), on April 30, 1901 (died 1916); children: Elia Warren (b. 1904); Daniel (b. 1906); Charles (b. 1908).

Member of the New York State Board of Charities, later the State Board of Social Welfare (1923–35); chair of the women's division of the New York Democratic State Committee (1923–26); first vice-chair of the New York Democratic State Committee (1926–34); congressional representative at large for New York State (January 3, 1935–January 3, 1943).

Caroline O'Day, a four-term congressional representative from New York State and a champion for women's rights and human rights in the Democratic Party, was born on a Georgia plantation in 1869. The third of four daughters of a Confederate veteran, and the great-niece of a member of the Congress which rejected the socalled Crittenden compromise, a last-ditch effort to restrict slavery to a certain portion of the South and thus stave off the Civil War, she grew up in an area of Georgia that still bore the scars of Sherman's devastating "march to the sea" from Atlanta to Savannah, and biographers have speculated that this background was the source of her strongly held belief in pacifism. O'Day attended the Lucy Cobb Institute in Athens, Georgia, where she studied art and music and decided to pursue a career as an artist. After graduating, she studied art briefly in New York City before moving to Europe, where she supported herself by working as a magazine illustrator. In Paris, she studied with James McNeill Whistler, and exhibited work at the Paris Salons of 1899 and 1900. She also painted and studied in the Netherlands and in Munich.

Having apparently stopped painting, O'Day returned to New York City in 1901 and married Daniel O'Day, whom she had met in Paris. The son of an associate of oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, Daniel served for a time as a vice-president of the Standard Oil Company, and later became an independent oil operator. With three young children by 1908, O'Day concerned herself mostly with her family during this time, although there were hints of the activism that would be a hallmark of her later life. She was active in the struggle for women's suffrage, a cause likewise backed by her husband, and supported American neutrality in World War I, holding peace meetings in her home prior to the country's entry into the war. Her strong stand on the issue of peace later prompted her to join the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, an offshoot of the National Women's Party. O'Day became more deeply involved in New York politics and social welfare issues after the death of her husband in 1916. She volunteered at Agnes E. Meyer 's Maternity Center in New York City, and became active in the New York Consumers' League, the Women's Trade Union League, and Lillian Wald 's Henry Street Settlement on the Lower East Side, for which she served on the board of directors.

O'Day joined the Democratic Party after women gained the right to vote in 1920, and in 1923 she was appointed by Governor Alfred E. Smith to the State Board of Charities (later the State Board of Social Welfare), a position she would hold until 1935. That year, she was also chosen to succeed Harriett May Mills as chair of the women's division of the Democratic State Committee. To organize women in New York, O'Day, her friend Eleanor Roosevelt, Nancy Cook (1884–1962), and Marion Dickerman (1890–1983) between them (they traveled in pairs) visited each county in the state once a year. They also led groups of women to the legislature in Albany to show, and urge, support for Smith's progressive programs. O'Day was one of the main backers of the push to dissolve the women's division and include its functions within the main organization; after this merger, she served as first vice-chair of the Democratic State Committee. She worked for Smith's unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1928, and for Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidential campaign in 1932. She was later appointed state director of the National Recovery Administration by the newly elected Roosevelt.

O'Day was nominated for New York's atlarge seat in the House of Representatives at the 1934 state Democratic Convention. According to The New York Times, her platform, in its entirety, was as follows: "higher standards for wage earners, adequate relief at lowest cost to the taxpayer, a power program of benefit to the consumer, a sound fiscal policy, friendly foreign relations and wider opportunity for women in government." First lady Eleanor Roosevelt received some criticism for stumping for her friend, but O'Day nonetheless beat 11 other candidates to win the 1934 election. The wide margin of her victory would be repeated in her reelections in 1936, 1938, and 1940.

While serving in Congress, O'Day helped attach child labor amendments to the 1936 Walsh-Healy Act, which set employment standards for government contractors, and to the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, which fixed minimum ages for employment. She served on the Committee on Insular Affairs and the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, and from 1937 to 1943 was chair of the Committee

on Election of President, Vice President, and Representatives in Congress. She also chaired the committee that sponsored Marian Anderson 's historic concert at the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday, 1939, attended by some 75,000 people and arranged by Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes after Anderson had been barred from performing at segregated Constitution Hall. O'Day supported all the major New Deal measures but, as a pacifist, voted against the repeal of the arms embargo portion of the 1939 Neutrality Act, which authorized arms sales to nations at war with Nazi Germany. Similar concerns led her to vote against the Selective Training and Service bill in 1940.

A popular representative who earned support with persuasive arguments and careful preparation of facts, and whose genuine concern for people of all stripes was repaid with loyalty and respect, O'Day declined to seek a fifth term due to health problems. She retired from Congress on January 3, 1943, and died of a cerebral hemorrhage the following day.

sources:

James, Edward T., ed. Notable American Women, 1607–1950. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971.

The New York Times. November 7, 1934.

Office of the Historian. Women in Congress, 1917–1990. Commission on the Bicentenary of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1991.

Jacqueline Mitchell , freelance writer, Detroit, Michigan