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 Alice Winsor Hunt (1872-1968)
'A thrilling life' devoted to reform

  By MARTHA SMITH
Journal-Bulletin Staff Writer

She was a scholar, an athlete, an educator, a pacifist and a social reformer. And she was a terrier when it came to fighting for what she believed was right.

When she died in 1968, at the age of 96, Alice Winsor Hunt left a stunning legacy of reform. She had brought child labor laws to Rhode Island and had pushed to establish the state juvenile court. She had campaigned to abolish the sweatshop and to regulate working hours and wages for women and children.

"I have an inability to stop talking about the things I want done," she once said. "I can't bear to see injustice and the stupidity of exploitation."

Born Feb. 16, 1872, in Providence, she was the daughter of Daniel and Annie Evans Hunt and was a direct descendant of Roger Williams, although she played down the connection. "I have no time for the past," she said. "I'm too busy trying to improve the present."

She graduated from Classical High School and Wellesley College and taught for 10 years. And then Alice Hunt did something that would change her life: She spent a winter in Chicago, assisting nationally known social worker Florence Kelly in a mission for prisoners.

Miss Hunt returned to Rhode Island in 1908 with fire in her eye; committed to social reform and justice - and armed with an iron will and the money and status to support her endeavors.

She led the Consumers League of Rhode Island for 43 years, founded the Wellesley Institute for Social Progress, and organized the League of Women Voters in Rhode Island. She traveled the country, speaking out for U.S. membership in the League of Nations. She served on the state's Milk Control Board and was appointed to a committee studying the problems of black workers.

Always, her pet project was the welfare of children. She crusaded to protect them from dangerous jobs and to limit their work week to 40 hours. She fought to upgrade working conditions, eventually abolishing the common cup and towel, and spoke eloquently for creation of a juvenile justice system whose purpose would be "to take measures to correct the bad influence instead of meting out immediate punishment."

She campaigned tirelessly for 20 years before the state passed a minimum- wage law for women and children but, when the victory was won, all she said was: "The only thing I should get credit for is that I never give in."

An attempt to draft her to run for secretary of state failed when Miss Hunt declared: "I have worked so long as a private citizen to make Rhode Island less backward that I want to go on in the same way."

She is remembered fondly by her great-nephew, Timothy Philbrick of Wakefield, whose daughter is named Alice in Miss Hunt's honor.

"When I was growing up, she lived in Wayland Manor in a two-bedroom apartment," he recalls. "My three brothers and I would go over and she would play hide-and-seek with us in this little apartment. She was in her 80s.

"The word 'feisty' is what comes to mind when I think of her. There is a family story about the day that Aunt Alice was walking on Benefit Street and some would-be purse-snatcher tried to grab her bag. She was 5 feet tall and she turned around and laced the guy right in the chin."

At age 85 Miss Hunt gave up her legislative lobbying activities, declaring, "I've had a thrilling life. I accomplished everything I set out to do - or almost everything." The best year, she said, was 1936, when the sweatshop was abolished and child labor laws passed. "Before the legislation, children five, six and seven came into the mills at 5 o'clock in the morning and worked until sunset."

When she died, the headline on Alice Hunt's obituary read: "She Lived for Others."

Source: Files of the Providence Journal.

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