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.”1
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.2 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.3
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.4 By a larger margin
than any other elected official in the state, she won a
two-year term as secretary of state.5 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.6 From 1942
to 1943, she also chaired the New London Democratic
town committee.
Woodhouse later recalled that her desire for social change
and economic justice for women convinced her to run for
a seat in the U.S. Congress in 1944. Though she first was
interested in a U.S. Senate seat, the Connecticut Democratic
Party instead nominated her as a Representative.7 At the
state convention, Woodhouse defeated William Michael
Citron, a former Congressman At-Large, by a vote of 127
to 113 among party officials.8 She earned a reputation as
an indefatigable campaigner and talented public speaker,
supported by an active network of labor and women’s
organizations. In the general election Woodhouse faced
one-term GOP incumbent John Dacher McWilliams, a
Norwich builder and town selectman. She described the
central campaign issue as the development of a postwar
United Nations and international redevelopment system
“that will make permanent peace possible.” Woodhouse
also advocated tax reform, a plan for full peacetime
employment, and more federal money for education and
rural electrification programs.9 In the 1944 elections, voter
turnout was high and President Franklin D. Roosevelt
carried the state by a slim margin of 52 percent. Woodhouse
ran even with the President, edging out McWilliams by
3,000 votes.
Her male House counterparts, Woodhouse recalled
years later, made her feel more a colleague than part of a
distinct minority. Speaker Sam Rayburn of Texas steered
Woodhouse onto the Committee on Banking and Currency,
an influential assignment for a freshman Member and one
he thought would best put her talents to use. Woodhouse’s
daughter, Margaret, then in her early 20s, worked in the
Washington office as executive secretary.10 Woodhouse
also was innovative in that her chief political adviser, John
Dempsey, was based in the district rather than in Washington,
DC. He eventually became a powerful Connecticut governor
and one of the state’s longest serving chief executives.
In her first term, Woodhouse fought for the maintenance
of wartime price controls as a protection against inflation for
consumers and for more affordable housing for returning
veterans. “I have no illusions of what a new Member of
Congress can do the first year,” she told reporters. “I’m
going to evaluate every piece of legislation in terms of how
many jobs there will be after the war. Feed them first and
reform them later!” The Harry S. Truman administration
failed to heed her warnings on the issue and rolled back
price controls.
The bulk of Woodhouse’s work in the 79th Congress
(1945–1947) centered on issues before the Banking and
Currency Committee. The committee played a large role
in House approval of the $3.75 billion loan to the British
government in 1946, the Bretton Woods Conference
agreements, and the creation of the World Bank and the
IMF. Woodhouse supported the controversial British
loan, as she would the Marshall Plan later in her career,
by dismissing the opposition as largely “emotional” and
“psychological.” Woodhouse told colleagues in a floor
speech that, “We do not, as yet, always think of ourselves
in terms of the responsibilities of the greatest and richest
country in the world, the country which alone has the
power to determine whether or not the democratic, free
enterprise system will expand or decline.”11 She was an
ardent supporter of the implementation of the accords
for the IMF and the World Bank, arguing that these were
indispensable tools for postwar redevelopment. Even while
fighting still raged in the Pacific theater, Woodhouse argued
for acceptance of Bretton Woods as an important “first
step” toward economic integration. “This war is being won
not only by military and political cooperation, but also by
economic cooperation,” Woodhouse said.12
Standing for re-election to the 80th Congress (1947–1949) in 1946, Woodhouse and other Democrats faced
serious challenges at the polls. Unemployment problems
created by rapid demobilization, as well as soaring
prices for groceries and other staples, roiled voters. Her
opponent in the general election was Horace Seely-Brown
Jr., a World War II Navy veteran who married into a
family that operated a lucrative apple orchard in eastern
Connecticut.13 Disaffected Democratic voters did not
turn against so much as they simply stayed at home in
large droves. Seely-Brown captured about 60,000 votes,
roughly the same number as McWilliams had in 1944. But
Woodhouse polled nearly 15,000 fewer votes than in the
prior election, as her opponent won with a comfortable
55 to 45 percent margin. Backlash against Democrats was
further aided by the presence of voting machines, which
allowed for voting a straight party ticket with the push of a
single button. Republicans swept all five Connecticut House
seats, turning three Democratic incumbents out of office.
During her hiatus from Congress, Woodhouse served as
executive director of the Women’s Division of the Democratic
National Committee (DNC), and lectured widely on the
topic of women in politics.14 Eager to escape the patronage
and politicking required at the DNC, Woodhouse sought
a position as a staff expert for the Allied Military Governor
of Germany, General Lucius Clay.15 As Clay’s economic
adviser, she toured the Allied zones of occupied western
Germany and kept closely informed about reconstruction
and rehabilitation efforts. The DNC post provided
Woodhouse public visibility, while the economic advisory
role in Germany offered her input into policymaking.16 That
combination made her a formidable comeback candidate in
1948 when she challenged Seely-Brown. She benefited from
a larger voter turnout for the presidential election, in which
she ran ahead of incumbent President Truman. Woodhouse
collected nearly 70,000 votes, outpolling Seely-Brown 52
to 48 percent. Statewide, Democrats regained a majority of
Connecticut’s House seats.17
During her second term in the House, Woodhouse
regained her seat on the Banking and Currency Committee
and received an additional assignment on the House
Administration Committee. In the spring of 1949, the
U.S. Navy invited “Congressman” Chase Woodhouse to
make an overnight visit aboard the U.S.S. Midway. Navy
rules, in fact, prohibited women from spending the night
aboard ship, but the invitations were accidentally sent to
Woodhouse and Reva Bosone of Utah. Bosone was unsure
whether to accept. Finally, Woodhouse declared, “Of course,
we ought to. After all, aren’t you a Congressman?” Bosone
replied, “You bet your life I am, and I work twice as hard as
most of the men.”18
Woodhouse remained a confirmed supporter of Truman
administration foreign policies. In 1949 she endorsed
the ratification of the North Atlantic Pact that created
America’s first permanent overseas military alliance, the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). “The Marshall
Plan has proven its value as an effective tool of economic
recovery in Europe and as a bulwark against the threatened
onrush of communism,” Woodhouse told reporters, adding
that the Atlantic Pact was the “next logical step.”19 Based on
her extensive travels in Germany, she declared that the 1948
Berlin Airlift—which supplied blockaded Soviet-occupied
East Berlin with food and supplies—was “worth every cent
of the cost,” because it proved to Moscow that the Western
Allies “mean business” in protecting open access to the
German capital.20
In 1950 Woodhouse again faced Horace Seely-Brown in
her fourth congressional campaign. Much of the midterm
election focused on the Truman administration’s foreign
policy, particularly the decision to intervene with military
force on the Korean peninsula to halt North Korea’s
invasion of South Korea. Following a trend in which the
GOP regained control of Connecticut, Woodhouse lost by
fewer than 2,300 votes out of 135,000 cast.21
After Congress, Woodhouse served as head of
congressional relations for the Office of Price Stabilization,
where she worked from 1951 until 1953. She was an
early and harsh critic of McCarthyite anticommunism,
especially when used for political gain.22 From 1953 until
she retired in 1980 at age 90, Woodhouse served as head of
the Connecticut Service Bureau for Women’s Organizations
in Hartford. Woodhouse also was the first chair of the
Connecticut Committee on the Status of Women and was
a delegate to the Connecticut constitutional convention
in 1965. She retired to a circa-1726 home on a 390-acre
farm near Baltic, Connecticut. On December 12, 1984,
Chase Woodhouse died in New Canaan, Connecticut.23
The Hartford Courant described her as “a diminutive woman
of unlimited perseverance,” who even in her 90s radiated
“prodigious energy” and “undimmed” optimism.24
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