May 18, 1927.
Dear Miss Addams,
In response to your letter of May 4th we have gone over the back Minutes and gathered the material necessary to establish that Madame Ramondt-Hirschmann is, and has been for some time, our financial secretary. As you know the first financial secretary was Emily Balch. Then at the Executive Committee meeting at The Hague, December 5-11, 1922, in the Minutes is the following statement made by you:
"Miss Addams suggests to appoint a treasurer instead of being the double charge on the secretary, Miss Balch having found this very heavy. Decided to ask Mrs. Palthe to function as international treasurer."
According to the Minutes Mrs. Palthe was then appointed international treasurer but it seems that during her term of office she found the work more than she wished to undertake and was assisted by Madame Ramondt-Hirschmann. At the Executive meeting of the Washington Congress in April 1924 the following statement occurs in the Minutes:
"Madame Palthe as treasurer has had the money under her care but when she accepted to act as treasurer in December 1922 at The Hague she did it under condition that it would only mean that she took upon herself each month to send a certain amount (2500 Swiss francs) to Headquarters. Madame Ramondt was therefore appointed financial secretary."
This appointment of Madame Ramondt at Washington is again affirmed in the Minutes where it says:
"Officers of the League. Those appointed besides the President, Miss Jane Addams, were Madame [Duchêne] and [page 2] Miss Marshall as Vice-Presidents, Miss Glücklich as secretary, Madame Ramondt as financial secretary and Frl. Heymann as honorary Vice-President."
As you will see if you read over the Minutes the terms international treasurer and financial secretary are interchangeable in our organization and mean one and the same thing. Since the Washington Congress in 1924 Madame Ramondt has continued to act as our treasurer. You will see in the Congress Report of Dublin under the appointment of officers that she was continued as financial secretary or international treasurer. Also in that same report she signed the preliminary financial statement with you and also the financial statement in regard to the Summer School and the Congress Fund. The large report covering three years she did not deem it necessary to sign as it was certified and verified by a regular public accountant. There is no difficulty in establishing the fact that Madame Ramondt has acted as our international treasurer. The correspondence from this office shows that before every officers' meeting a financial statement was prepared which Madame Ramondt presented to the meeting. For instance before our last Executive meeting in Liège in a letter I wrote to Madame Ramondt dated February 24, 1927 is the following quotation:
"I am asking Madame Huber to make up a [specified] account since August 1st for your report at Liège. I hope she will be able to finish it before I leave but if not I will have it sent as soon as possible."
To this Madame Ramondt replied in German which briefly translated into English expressed her appreciation for the work done and her satisfaction that the accounts had been so clearly and well presented.
Of course you know the financial arrangement under which we work in this office. A monthly allowance is sent to us and then I draw on the monthly allowance signing the current checks that must be sent out and reporting to Madame Ramondt, the treasurer, exactly what has occurred. We have had to make this arrangement because of distances. It would be quite impossible to get our work done if the checks covering all the small current expenses each month had to be sent to Madame Ramondt. As you are aware, however, the Reserve Fund is in Madame Ramondt's name and I am herewith enclosing a copy of a letter which Madame Ramondt has recently signed enabling us to get 1000 francs from the Reserve Fund. This I think makes it perfectly plain that Madame Ramondt is serving as our international treasurer.
Trusting this is the needed information which you have asked for,
Very sincerely yours,
International Secretary.
Comments