Woodhouse, Chase Going, 1890-1984

<p>Chase Going Woodhouse (March 3, 1890 – December 12, 1984) was a prominent feminist leader, suffragist, and educator. She served as a member of the United States House of Representatives representing the Second Congressional District of Connecticut, becoming the second Congresswoman from Connecticut, the first elected as a Democrat, and the first woman born outside the United States in either chamber of the U.S. Congress.</p>

<p>Woodhouse was born to American parents in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. She attended Science Hill School, Shelbyville, Kentucky and finished in 1908. She went to study at McGill University, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors in 1912 and a Masters of Arts degree with Honors in 1914, both in Economics. She then studied at the University of Berlin and the University of Chicago. After graduating from McGill University, she began her career as a college professor and spent part of it as a well-known political figure in the women's suffrage movement and later in the Democratic Party of the State of Connecticut. While serving as a fellow in political economics at the University of Chicago, Chase Going met and eventually married a professor of government there, Edward Woodhouse. They had two children, Noel and Margaret.</p>

<p>In her early professional career, she was a senior economist at the Bureau of Home Economics, United States Department of Agriculture, from 1926 to 1928. Shortly after moving to New London, Connecticut in 1934, Woodhouse registered to vote as a Democrat. In 1940, she was the first Democratic woman to be elected as Secretary of State for Connecticut, serving one term. She also served as chair of the New London, Democratic Town Committee in 1942 and 1943. During World War II Woodhouse was a consultant for the National Roster of Scientific and Specialized Personnel, War Manpower Commission, from 1942 to 1944. As a feminist leader, she became president of the Connecticut Federation of Democratic Women's Clubs, which is the oldest federation of Democratic Women's Clubs in the nation, from 1943 to 1948.</p>

<p>Chase Going Woodhouse, an economics professor-turned-politician, served for two nonconsecutive terms, representing a competitive district spanning eastern Connecticut. In recognition of her longtime advocacy for women in the workplace, the Democratic leadership awarded Woodhouse a prominent post on the Banking and Commerce Committee. Linking American domestic prosperity to postwar international economic cooperation, she put forward a powerful argument on behalf of U.S. participation in such organizations as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. “Only the fighting is over,” Woodhouse said in November 1945. “We still have got to win the war. And winning the war means working out a system of economic cooperation between nations.”</p>

<p>Chase Going was born on March 3, 1890, in Victoria, British Columbia, the only child of American parents Seymour Going, a railroad developer and an Alaska mining pioneer, and Harriet Jackson Going, a teacher. Chase’s maternal grandmother particularly influenced her political development, taking her young granddaughter to polling places each election day to protest her inability to vote. In 1908 Chase Going graduated from Science Hill High School in Shelbyville, Kentucky. She studied economics at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and graduated in 1912. A year later she earned her MA in economics from McGill. Chase Going pursued advanced studies in political economy at the University of Berlin and, after the outbreak of the World War I, at the University of Chicago. In 1917 she married Yale political scientist Edward James Woodhouse. The couple raised two children, Noel and Margaret, and pursued their academic careers simultaneously, obtaining faculty positions at Smith College and then at the University of North Carolina. At Chapel Hill, Woodhouse founded the Institute of Women’s Professional Relations (IWPR) to study the status of working women and trends in employment. For several years, she was employed as an economist for the Bureau of Home Economics at the U.S. Agriculture Department. In 1934 she became a professor of economics at Connecticut College and initiated a series of IWPR conferences in Washington, DC.</p>

<p>Woodhouse channeled her concern with the ongoing Depression into running for political office. In 1940 the Connecticut Democratic Party convinced an initially reluctant Woodhouse to join the ticket. By a larger margin than any other elected official in the state, she won a two-year term as secretary of state. From 1943 to 1948, Woodhouse presided over the Connecticut Federation of Democratic Women’s Clubs. She served on key wartime labor boards in Connecticut, the Minimum Wage Board and the War Labor Board, chairing the latter. From 1942 to 1943, she also chaired the New London Democratic town committee.</p>