Gender, Class, Race, and Reform in the Progressive Era PDF
Preview Gender, Class, Race, and Reform in the Progressive Era
Gender, Class, Race, and Reform in the Progressive Era This page intentionally left blank Gender, Class, Race, and Reform in the Progressive Era NORALEE FRANKEL NANCY S. DYE Editors THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY Copyright © 1991 by Th e University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, Th e Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. All rights reserved. Editorial and Sales Offi ces: Th e University Press of Kentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008 www.kentuckypress.com Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress ISBN: 978-0-8131-0841-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) Th is book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials. Manufactured in the United States of America. Member of the Association of American University Presses Contents Preface vi 1. Introduction Nancy S. Dye 1 2. Atlanta's African-American Women's Attack on Segregation, 1900-1920 Jacqueline A Rouse 10 3. Politicizing Domesticity: Anglo, Black, and Latin Women in Tampa's Progressive Movements Nancy A Hewitt 24 4. When Your Work Is Not Who You Are: The Development of a Working-Class Consciousness among Afro-American Women Sharon Harley 42 5. Landscapes of Subterfuge: Working-Class Neighborhoods and Immigrant Women Ardis Cameron 56 6. Reconstructing the "Family": Women, Progressive Reform, and the Problem of Social Control Eileen Boris 73 7. Law and a Living: The Gendered Content of "Free Labor" Alice Kessler-Harris 87 8. Hull House Goes to Washington: Women and the Children's Bureau Molly Ladd-Taylor 110 9. Working It Out: Gender, Profession, and Reform in the Career of Alice Hamilton Barbara Sicherman 12 7 10. African-American Women's Networks in the Anti-Lynching Crusade Rosalyn Terborg-Penn 148 11. Harriot Stanton Blatch and the Transformation of Class Relations among Woman Suffragists Ellen Carol DuBois 162 12. Paradigms Gained: Further Readings in the History of Women in the Progressive Era Susan Tank Lesser 180 Contributors 194 Index 196 Preface The essays in this volume were originally delivered as papers at the Conference on Women in the Progressive Era held March 10-12, 1988, at the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. This conference was sponsored by the American Historical Associa tion and the National Museum of American History, with financial assistance from the Division of Research Programs of the National Endow ment for the Humanities, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Quaker Hill Foundation, and the Smithsonian Institution's Office of Fellowships and Grants. William Chafe, Nancy S. Dye, Noralee Frankel, Alice Kessler-Harris, Susan Tank Lesser, Edith P. Mayo, Karen Offen, and Rosalyn Terborg Penn served as members of the conference's program committee. Roger Kennedy, director, and the staff of the National Museum of American History generously shared the museum's facilities. Edith P. Mayo and Mary Grassick capably coordinated the conference arrangements at the Museum of American History. Rosemary Wozniak and Debbie Wozniak provided invaluable assistance in preparing this manuscript, and Maureen Vincent Morgan edited the manuscript. 1 Introduction NANCYS. DYE The movement called progressivism flourished in the years between the depression of 1893 and the United States' entry into World War I, as Americans struggled to come to terms with the profound dislocations wrought by massive industrialization, the rise of the corporation, and rapid urban growth. A complex, sometimes contradictory amalgam of social ctiticism, popular protest, political restructuring, economic regulation, and social welfare legislation, progressive reform embodied a vast array of responses to the changes taking place in American society at the tum of the twentieth century. Women filled the progressive landscape. Throughout the 1890s, when progressivism consisted in good measure of widespread popular outcry against new corporate order, many women joined in boycotts against local traction company and utilities magnates and in protesting corporate ar rogance and political corruption. In towns and cities throughout the nation, women formed their own civic clubs and municipal improvement associations. Pointing to their communities' needs for "municipal house keeping" and invoking their maternal duties to protect children and care for the poor, women organized around local issues: the improvement of working conditions, especially for women and child wage earners; mater nal and child welfare; clean water; pure food and milk; adequate sanitation; the creation of playgrounds, recreation centers, and parks; and improved housing and schools. 1 "Since men are more or less closely absorbed in business," one clubwoman declared, "it has come to pass that the initiative in civic matters has developed largely upon women. It is more than a coincidence that the civic awakening that is stirring in our cities . . . has come with the civic activities of women's clubs. I have yet to hear of a town that is experiencing a civic awakening that has not had an active women's club." 2 Through their clubs and civic organizations, middle-class women explored local social and economic conditions and compiled extensive 2 Nancy S. Dye documentation of the dimensions of poverty in the United States and the specific impact of industralization on American communities. Women also entered politics. Although largely disfranchised except in school elections, women played active and highly visible roles in munici pal and state politics. They claimed credit for a variety of progressive victories: electing women to local school boards; winning appointments for women as sanitation, health, and factory inspectors; marshalling votes for new city charters and for bond issues to fund municipal improvements; helping to oust corrupt officials; and organizing to win the passage of housing, labor, corrections, and health legislation. That settlement houses flourished in American cities in the decades around the tum of the century was also the result of women's initiative and organization. In these women's communities, residents explored new alternatives for meaningful work and social service and pioneered new approaches to understanding the causes and ameliorating the conditions of poverty. Women's grass-roots activisim and their vision of a new civic consciousness lay at the heart of early progressive reform. By the twentieth century's second decade, the initial local emphasis of progressivism had given way to a national focus. Women's clubs, settle ment leaders, and women's organizations such as the Consumer's League and Women's Trade Union League forged a national political network and a coherent legislative agenda. After 1910, women turned increasingly to the government, especially at the federal level, to implement their re forms. In doing so, women envisioned a new, humane state, identified with the values of the home rather than those of the marketplace, with expanded powers to protect its powerless and dependent constituencies. This national women's network was instrumental in creating and support ing the federal Children's Bureau in the United States' Department of Labor and in enacting an array of social legislation. Most of the laws that comprised women's legislative agenda were measures intended to improve the lives of women and children: minimum wage and maximum hours statutes, mother's pensions, juvenile justice codes, the prohibition of child labor and industrial homework, and compulsory school attendance. The body of state and federal legislation for which women progressive reformers worked provided much of the foundation for American welfare legislation for the remainder of the twentieth century. What prompted American middle-class women to become such active proponents of social reform? In good measure, protests over such issues as clean food and pure milk, maternal and infant welfare, industrial pollu tion, inadequate and highly politicized school systems, and the like were Introduction 3 rooted in the realities of middle-class domesticity and motherhood. Never the haven of tranquillity depicted in nineteenth-century domestic liter ature, the American middle-class household by the latter decades of the century was often the seat of anxiety and uncertainty. Central to the anxiety that women experienced were the contradictions inherent in the ideology of separate spheres that was so pervasive in American culture: women were enjoined to protect their households and their children, but in the new industrial order, the well-being of households and the safety of children seemed increasingly out of individual women's control. Danger seemed everywhere at hand in the modem industrial city: in the streets, where trolley cars often ran over children; in the markets, where foodstuffs were often adulterated; in the dairies, where milk was liable to be con taminated with the bacillus of tuberculosis or diphtheria. Even the most affluent and knowledgeable of mothers often felt inadequate in confront ing the difficulties of modem urban life and powerless to influence the distant, faceless "interests" that had become so powerful. Early in the Progressive Era, women's domestic experience served as one justification for their entry into politics and social reform. Increas ingly, middle-class women came to the realization that in modem indus trial society, the doctrine of separate spheres no longer held: the home and the community were inextricably bound together, and those concerns once defined as the private responsibility of individual housewives and mothers were in actuality public and political. Women argued that their domestic duties compelled their interest in municipal politics. "It is an eminently proper thing for women to interest themselves in the care and destination of garbage, the cleanliness of the streets, the proper killing and handling of meats, the hygienic and sanitary condition of the public schools, the suppression of stable nuisances, the abolishing of the vile practice of expectorating in public conveyances and buildings, the care of milk and Croton water, the public exposure of foods, and in fact everything which constitutes the city's housekeeping," the New York Ladies' Health Protective Association declared in its first annual report. "It is the right of women to undertake these matters as they are brought into constant contact with the results of this housekeeping and will therefore be able to judge how it should properly be carried out." 3 Over the course of the Progressive Era, women reformers constructed a historical interpretation of domestic life that stressed the erosion of female control over the middle-class household. In the not-too-distant past, this interpretation ran, the home had been the hub of economic production. With industrialization, however, women exchanged the role of producer
The list of books you might like
