for "medical and cosmetic reasons". On January 22, 1916, Keller and Sullivan traveled to the small town of
Menomonie in western
Wisconsin to deliver a lecture at the
Mabel Tainter Memorial Building. Details of her talk were provided in the weekly
Dunn County News on January 22, 1916: Keller became a world-famous speaker and author. She was an
advocate for people with disabilities, amid numerous other causes. She traveled to twenty-five different countries giving motivational speeches about deaf people's conditions. She was a
suffragist,
pacifist,
Christian socialist,
birth control supporter, and opponent of
Woodrow Wilson. In 1915, she and George A. Kessler founded the
Helen Keller International (HKI) organization. This organization is devoted to research in vision, health, and nutrition. In 1916, she sent money to the
NAACP, as she was ashamed of the Southern un-Christian treatment of "
colored people". In 1909, Keller became a member of the
Socialist Party of America (SPA); she actively campaigned and wrote in support of the working class from 1909 to 1921. Many of her speeches and writings were about women's right to vote and the effects of war; in addition, she supported causes that opposed
military intervention. She had speech therapy to have her voice understood better by the public. When the Rockefeller-owned press refused to print her articles, she protested until her work was finally published. Keller supported the SPA candidate
Eugene V. Debs in each of his campaigns for the presidency. Before reading
Progress and Poverty by
Henry George, she was already a
socialist who believed that
Georgism was a good step in the right direction. She later wrote of finding "in Henry George's philosophy a rare beauty and power of inspiration, and a splendid faith in the essential nobility of human nature". Keller stated that newspaper columnists who had praised her courage and intelligence before she expressed her socialist views now called attention to her disabilities. The editor of the
Brooklyn Eagle wrote that her "mistakes sprung out of the manifest limitations of her development". Keller responded to that editor, referring to having met him before he knew of her political views: In 1912, Keller joined the
Industrial Workers of the World (the IWW, known as the Wobblies), saying that
parliamentary socialism was "sinking in the political bog". She wrote for the IWW between 1916 and 1918. In
Why I Became an IWW, Keller explained that her motivation for activism came in part from her concern about blindness and other disabilities: The last sentence refers to prostitution and
syphilis, the former a "life of shame" that women used to support themselves, which contributed to their contracting syphilis. Untreated, it was a leading cause of blindness. In the same interview, Keller also cited the
1912 strike of textile workers in
Lawrence, Massachusetts, for instigating her support of socialism. the FBI wrote on July 1, 1953, that although they have not "conducted an investigation with regard to Helen Adams Keller", their files of Keller "reflect the following pertinent information concerning this individual". Keller supported
eugenics, which had become popular with both new understandings and misapprehensions of principles of biological inheritance. In 1915, she wrote in favor of refusing life-saving medical procedures to infants with severe mental impairments or physical deformities, saying that their lives were not worthwhile and they would likely become criminals. From 1946 to 1957, Keller visited 35 countries. In 1948, she went to New Zealand and visited deaf schools in
Christchurch and
Auckland. She met Deaf Society of Canterbury Life Member Patty Still in Christchurch. == Works ==