Queer Places:
University of Pennsylvania (Ivy League), 3355 Woodland Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104
Bedford College, 48 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DR, United Kingdom
Mount Sinai Cemetery, 1901 Bridge St, Philadelphia, PA 19124, United States
Mary Fels (née Fels; March 10, 1863 – May 16, 1953) was a German-born American philanthropist, Georgist, Zionist, suffragist, economist, author, and
journal editor who dedicated her life, fortune, and considerable talents to movements supporting democracy, social justice, and human betterment.
Born Mollie Fels in Sembach, Bavaria, Germany, she was the youngest of several children born to Elias Fels (1824–1898), an industrious man far from rich who made his living as a purveyor of dry goods, and Fanny Rothschild Fels (1826–1888). Her siblings included Rosa (1852–1952), Bertha (1855–1898), Nathan (1858–1922), and Raphael (1861–1922). At the age of five, she developed an unaccountable aversion to the German alphabet and refused to learn it. In 1869, the family emigrated to the United States, settling near Keokuk, Iowa, where she grew up in an Orthodox Jewish home. When Fels was nine years old, a nineteen-year-old soap peddler named Joseph Fels—who later founded the Fels-Naptha soap brand—visited her family and discovered they were distant relatives. Smitten with the young Mary, Joseph declared that he would go away, make his fortune, and return to marry her. True to his word, after graduating from Keokuk High School at sixteen in 1879, she married Joseph on November 16, 1881, beginning a partnership and international lifestyle that took them across the globe.
She continued her education over the years, spending a year at St. Mary's Academy in Notre Dame, Indiana, attending the University of Pennsylvania for one year, and completing special courses at Bedford College in London. The couple maintained residences in Philadelphia and in London, where Joseph and his brothers operated an extremely successful soap manufacturing company. Their only child, Irving S. Fels, tragically died as an infant in 1883 at six months old.
Despite operating within an immensely profitable capitalist enterprise, both Joseph and Mary felt that their wealth carried a profound responsibility to reform the economic systems that made them rich. Much to the consternation of Joseph's business partners and brothers, they believed the capitalist system was flawed and unjust, and that they could justify their fortune only by using it for philanthropy and systemic reform. Fels began her public activities in earnest in 1886 when destitute and helpless Russian Jewish refugees reached the United States. She worked closely with her husband in his plans to better the lives of the poor; while Joseph campaigned for economic justice, many believed Mary was the abler financier and planner of the two, always at his side with vital advice, encouragement, and active collaboration.
Following Joseph's death in February 1914, Fels assumed the heavy responsibility of managing their shared wealth alongside her husband's theories and charities, moving to New York City to become extremely active in diverse charitable and political causes. In May 1914, she attended the National American Woman Suffrage Association's annual conference in Nashville, Tennessee. That December, speaking before the Single Tax League of St. Louis, she declared, "The single tax movement ... is like woman suffrage - it is bound to come." Condemning special privileges—including the land monopolies, tariff protections, and patent monopolies that had built the Fels fortune—she became the largest financial contributor in the world to the propagation of Henry George's economic ideology, offering matching funds for single-tax propagation efforts across the United States, England, France, Spain, Denmark, and Australia. She established and supervised the Joseph Fels International Commission, which sought to promote the single land tax as well as the revitalization of Jewish life in Palestine, before dissolving it in 1916 to handpick individuals from the United States, England, and Palestine to carry out a broader agenda. She oversaw single-tax collective agricultural settlements at Hollesley Bay and Essex in England, as well as in Mobile Bay, Alabama, and Arden, Delaware.
During World War I, Fels served as the main editor of The Public: A Journal of Democracy from 1917 to 1919. Utilizing her editorial position, she wrote impassioned editorials supporting President Woodrow Wilson, encouraging labor unions to assert themselves, bemoaning the mistreatment of "our colored sisters," chiding the "stupid" and "asinine Republicans" who sought to deny the vote to women, and advocating for civil rights and women's suffrage. After the British capture of Palestine, she also used her platform to write about the urgent need to establish a Jewish presence in the land based on "Mosaic principles"—the ethical and cultural standards of Judaism.
Beyond economic reform, Fels was a pioneer in land-colony movements and school gardens designed through the Vacant Lot Cultivation Society to combat unemployment and reconnect people with the land, and she championed prison reform by incorporating work programs into penal institutions. As an ardent and philanthropic Zionist, she promoted Jewish settlement and development in Palestine and Israel throughout her life. While Joseph had previously investigated territorial options like Mexico through the Jewish Territorial Organization, Mary was convinced by repeated visits to the Holy Land that the history of the Jews demanded a return to their ancient homeland, believing the "Jewish problem" would only be solved when Judaism's message of social justice was spread globally. In 1916, she proposed a major gift to Zionists to fund a single-tax colony in Palestine at an estimated cost of nearly one million dollars. She made numerous endowments for Palestinian institutions, visiting the region personally to supervise her philanthropic projects, and in the mid-1920s served as vice president of B'nai Benjamin, an organization of Jewish farmers in Palestine. In 1925, she incorporated the Joseph Fels Foundation, Inc. of New York to educate both Jews and Gentiles on Israel's history and mission, work towards the nonpolitical reorganization and Jewish resettlement of Palestine, advance land and general taxation reform, and promote spiritual thought and human betterment.
Fels was also a prolific writer and author. She published the biography Joseph Fels: His Life-Work (1916)—which charted her husband's life, extols his virtues, and detailed his accomplishments with an understandable bias—and a religious work titled Toward the Light (1927/1929), which reiterated her deep-seated commitment to God and justice.
Mary Fels was a member of the Heterodoxy Club. Founded in Greenwich Village in 1912 by Marie Jenney Howe, Heterodoxy was an influential luncheon and debating club for "unorthodox" women that fostered radical conceptions of feminism. Operating with strict discretion and keeping no formal meeting notes to protect its participants, the club brought together women of diverse political views, professions, and personal lifestyles—including heterosexual, bisexual, and lesbian women—who helped shape the origins of modern American feminism.
Mary Fels spent her final years in New York City and passed away at her Manhattan home on West 80th Street on May 16, 1953, at the age of ninety. She was laid to rest at Mount Sinai Cemetery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She donated millions of dollars and countless hours to support Jewish settlement and development in Palestine and Israel, leaving behind a legacy defined not merely by her large financial contributions, but by her tireless, fervent work in support of her Zionist, suffragist, and social reform principles.
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