Table Of ContentGender, Class, Race,
and Reform in the
Progressive Era
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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
