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Edith Nourse Rogers (March 19, 1881 – September 10, 1960) was an American social welfare volunteer and politician who was one of the first women to serve in the United States Congress. She was the first woman elected to Congress from Massachusetts. Until 2012, she was the longest serving Congresswoman, now having been surpassed by Barbara Mikulski, and in her 35 years in the House of Representatives she was a powerful voice for veterans and sponsored seminal legislation, including the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 (commonly known as the G.I. Bill), which provided educational and financial benefits for soldiers returning home from World War II, the 1942 bill that created the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), and the 1943 bill that created the Women's Army Corps (WAC). She was also instrumental in bringing federal appropriations to her constituency, Massachusetts's 5th congressional district. ==Early life== Edith Nourse was born on March 19, 1881 in Saco, Maine to Franklin T. Nourse, the manager of a textile mill, and Edith France Riversmith, who volunteered with the Christian church and social causes. Both parents were from old New England families, and were able to have their daughter privately tutored until she was fourteen. Edith Nourse then attended and graduated from Rogers Hall School, a private boarding school for girls in Lowell, Massachusetts, and then Madame Julien's School, a finishing school at Neuilly in Paris, France. Like her mother, she volunteered with the church and other charities. In 1907, she married John Jacob Rogers, newly graduated from Harvard Law School, who passed the bar and began practicing in Lowell in the same year. In 1911, he started his career in politics, becoming involved in the city government, and the next year he became the school commissioner. In 1912 he was elected as a Republican to the 63rd United States Congress as the Representative from the 5th District of Massachusetts, and began service in Washington, D.C. on March 13, 1913. World War I soon broke out. In 1917, John Rogers, as a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, traveled to the United Kingdom and France to observe the conditions of the war firsthand. He remained a Congressman during his brief enlistment as a private in an artillery training battalion, the 29th Training Battery, 10th Training Battalion, Field Artillery, Fourth Central Officers' Training School from September 2, 1918 until his honorable discharge on November 29, 1918. During this period, Edith Rogers volunteered with the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) in London for a short time, then from 1917 to 1922 as a "Gray Lady" with the American Red Cross in France and with the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. This was the start of what became a lifelong commitment to veterans. She also witnessed the conditions faced by women employees and volunteers working with the United States armed forces; with the exception of a few nurses, they were civilians, and received no benefits including no housing, no food, no insurance, no medical care, no legal protection, no pensions, and no compensation for their families in cases of death. In contrast, the women in the British Army loaned to the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) in France were military, with the attendant benefits and responsibilities. At the end of the war, her husband joined the American Legion veteran's organization, and she joined the auxiliary. Her experience with veteran's issues led President Warren G. Harding to appoint her as the inspector of new veterans' hospitals from 1922 to 1923, for $1 USD a year. She reported on conditions and her appointment was renewed by both the Coolidge and Hoover administrations. Her first experience in politics was serving as an elector in the U.S. Electoral College during Calvin Coolidge's 1924 presidential campaign. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Edith Nourse Rogers」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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