In 1870 Mother's Day was instituted by Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation. Ward called for
all women who have hearts
to join with the voice of a devastated earth
and say: Disarm! Disarm!
Let women then solemnly take counsel with each other
as to the means whereby
the great human family can live in peace.
These all occasion cards make great Mother's Day Cards OR
a pack of 6 makes an awesome Mother's Day GIFT!
Multifaith Voices for Peace and Justice commissioned the cards. They are being sold in many local congregations, or can be ordered online from our website (click "read more" below). Art by Design Action, printed on recycled paper with soy inks by Inkworks Press, a worker-owned cooperative union shop, and distributed by Reach And Teach, a local peace and social justice learning company, the cards can be used to carry their profound message all year long. (To sell them in your own community, email craig@reachandteach.com.)
Why not buy a few extra and send them as Mother's Day greetings to women such as our First Lady, Secretary of State, Senators, or local Congresswomen?
Arise All Women Cards
The front of this card reads: Arise all women who have hearts!
Inside the card reads: Women need no longer be made a party to proceedings which fill the globe with grief and horror.
Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day proclamation, 1870.
Single card price is just $2.50 with packages of six available for $12.00. If you are part of an organization or business that would like to place a bulk order for cards, please call us at 888-PEACE-40 and we will be thrilled to help you.
Click here to order this card.
Too Tender Cards
The front of this card reads: We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our children to be trained to injure theirs.
Inside the card reads:
Let women then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace.
Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day proclamation, 1870.
Single card price is just $2.50 with packages of six available for $12.00. If you are part of an organization or business that would like to place a bulk order for cards, please call us at 888-PEACE-40 and we will be thrilled to help you.
Click here to order this card.
APPEAL TO WOMANHOOD THROUGHOUT THE WORLD
Again, in the sight of the Christian world, have the skill and power of two great nations exhausted themselves in mutual murder. Again have the sacred questions of international justice been committed to the fatal mediation of military weapons. In this day of progress, in this century of light, the ambition of rulers has been allowed to barter the dear interests of domestic life for the bloody exchanges of the battle-field. Thus men have done. Thus men will do. But women need no longer be made a party to proceedings which fill the globe with grief and horror. Despite the assumptions of physical force, the mother has a sacred and commanding word to say to the sons who owe their life to her suffering. That word should now be heard, and answered to as never before.
Arise, then, Christian women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or of tears! Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country, to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs." From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: "Disarm, disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice." Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, man as the brother of man, each bearing after his own kind the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.
In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women, without limit of nationality, may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient, and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.
-- Julia Ward Howe in Boston, September 1870
ref: Julia Ward Howe 1819-1910 Vol I by Laura E. Richards and Maud Howe Elliott (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1915)
You may learn more about Julia Ward Howe at:
Brief biography and reflection on Mother's Day
http://womenshistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa013100d.htm
(Photo source: Library of Congress)