Founding mother.

Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman's Crusade, by Donald T. Critchlow (Princeton, 438 pp., $29.95)

DURING a 1973 debate with Phyllis Schlafly, Betty Friedan fumed, "I'd like to burn you at the stake." But Friedan's conservative witch was inflammable, and unflappable. By the time the veteran conservative organizer was leading the successful battle to kill the Equal Rights Amendment, she was immune to the rantings of an angry feminist. For over 20 years, Phyllis Schlafly had been patronized, purged, and pilloried for the causes she championed. The praise she deserves has finally arrived, in this overdue tribute to her half-century of grassroots activism.

Had Schlafly been a figure of the Left, this book extolling her remarkable achievements would join a bookcase of similar flattering portraits acknowledging her as one of the most influential Americans in the second half of the 20th century. But because her influence prevented a destructive feminist agenda from being enshrined in the Constitution, she has had to wait 50 years for this book--the work of a respectful academic who has delved into the archives to tell an important untold story.

Donald T. Critchlow, a history professor at St. Louis University, examines in the book the largely ignored role of activists in the rise of the Right. He notes that the intellectual seeds sown by conservative theorists would have perished on barren soil but for the organizers who popularized and propagated their views. "How," he asks, "had a small movement, consisting of a few conservative intellectuals and grassroots anti-Communist activists in the 1950s, become so powerful as to radically change American politics in ways arguably comparable to Jacksonian democracy in the 1830s or the Republican party in the 1860s?" He analyzes this transformative upheaval in American politics through the political career of a young housewife from Alton, Illinois.

Long before the modern women's movement, Phyllis Stewart was making her own way. She was born in St. Louis in 1924. Her mother, who had graduated from college in 1920 and went to work to help support the family during the Depression, was ambitious for her two daughters. After graduating as valedictorian from a Catholic girls' high school, Phyllis finished Washington University in three years, graduating Phi Beta Kappa while working the night shift at an ordnance plant. She earned an M.A. in political science from Radcliffe in 1945.

Back home in St. Louis--after a brief stint in Washington, D.C., as a researcher for the American Enterprise Association (now Institute)--she worked for a local bank writing speeches for its executives and making a few of her own to women (on investment and estate planning). An early press notice described the "blonde banking expert" as a "forceful speaker." In 1949, this independent young career woman met a Harvard lawyer 15 years her senior and what she described as a "happy intellectual partnership" was born. Fred and Phyllis Schlafly took an extra suitcase of books on their Mexican honeymoon before settling in Illinois.

Local Republican officials urged Fred to run for Congress in 1952. When he demurred, "I am not your guy," one of them asked, "What about Phyllis?" They had found their girl. Critchlow writes that the 28-year-old candidate brought to that race the "moral sensibility, [the] righteousness that did not allow easy compromise over principle, and [the] inner tenacity beneath [her] well-spoken words" that would characterize all of her political crusades. She ran as an "average housewife" and a dedicated anti- Communist in favor of increased defense spending and lower taxes. Although she and Eisenhower both lost in the Democratic district, Phyllis would remain the more public partner in the Schlaflys' collaboration--one that would produce six children and many thousands of grassroots activists.

Within a few years, Phyllis Schlafly was embarked upon her signature effort to transform the Republican party. She provided the rank and file with an alternative to the views of the East Coast GOP establishment. She put together A Reading List for Americans, which sold tens of thousands of copies; her recommended reading included Whittaker Chambers's Witness and James Burnham's The Web of Subversion. She also produced her own articles for newsletters and magazines about the threat of Communism and the dangers of collectivist ideology.

Critchlow hails Schlafly's "ability to translate conservative ideas to grassroots activists and motivate them to achieve political goals." Indeed, Schlafly tapped into women power long before the modern women's movement got around to it. In her activities with the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Illinois Federation of Republican Women, she made special appeals to women to be involved in the Cold War struggle. She would declare that Communism would be thwarted "if we can find ten patriotic women in each community." And she targeted people of faith as well: The Schlaflys organized the Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation to educate Catholics about the Communist threat. As the designated researcher for the influential group, Phyllis urged ordinary citizens to become "Freedom Fighters in your own sphere of influence."

Her 1964 book, A Choice Not An Echo, took on the liberal wing of the Republican party, rallied support to Barry Goldwater, that election year. In the 1960s, she published three books on national security--which sold over 2.5 million copies. She testified before Congress as a critic of arms-control treaties.

In 1971, Schlafly was prepared to talk about defense policy before a conservative group in Connecticut, but was told that the audience wanted to hear about the Equal Rights Amendment then pending before Congress. She read up on the proposed amendment and decided she opposed it. The STOP ERA movement was born.

Schlafly persuasively argued that women already enjoyed every constitutional right that men had, and portrayed the deceptively simple ERA as a dangerous transfer of legal authority from the states to a distant federal government that would strip women of their legal protections. The ERA had sailed through Congress in 1972 and was enthusiastically ratified by 30 states, only eight shy of the required three-quarters, within a year. It looked as though Schlafly had taken on a losing battle against the Nixon, Ford, and Carter White Houses, a galaxy of Hollywood stars, and the women's magazines. Critchlow recounts the ugly attacks she endured--"Hey, Phyllis, your sheet is showing," announced a Doonesbury cartoon character--and her unshakeable good humor. With a deliberately provocative desire to drive the "libbers" nuts, Mrs. Schlafly would begin her speeches on the Equal Rights Amendment by thanking her husband for allowing her to appear.

With her well-reasoned arguments and tireless advocacy, she recruited thousands of women to her cause. They would stop the ERA, evolve into the powerful pro-family movement, and go on to transform the GOP and American politics. ("I am afraid the anti-ERAers will defeat me," said a prescient President Carter during a White House election-strategy meeting.)

The author concludes that "conservatives have arguably brought down 'this thing called liberalism'--as William Buckley demanded in the first issue of NATIONAL REVIEW." Critchlow's detailed history of the forces Phyllis Schlafly was leading--armed with the ammunition Bill Buckley, his editors, and others provided--is a marvelous companion volume to the history of this magazine.