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Creating a Maternalist Welfare State

Industrialization, Progressivism, and Suffrage

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The Gilded Age• Mark Twain, 1873 novel

– definition of gilded - “to give an attractive but often deceptive appearance”

• The Second Industrial Revolution– U.S. 1st in productivity

• 1865 - $2 billion; 1900 - $13 billion• manufacturing 1/3 of world's goods

• Technology– Coal vs. water power– Age of electricity

• Lightbulb 1879

– Telephone (1876)

• Scale of business– From family-owned, independent businesses

and farms to large-scale corporations– National markets

• Transcontinental Railroad 1869

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nation of wage workers

• in 1870, 5 million out of 13 million wage workers

• by 1900, 2/3 of all Americans worked for wages

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Taylorism: Scientific

Management

• deskill labor - take all important decisions out of the hands of workers

• standardize routines -assembly line

• Change nature of work

“Anyone with a weak head and a strong back can load machine coal….But a man has to think and study every day like you was studying a book if he is going to get the best of the coal when he uses only a pick.” Kentucky miner

“A man never learns the machinist’s trade now….The trade is so subdivided that a man is not considered a machinist at all. One man may make just a particular part of a machine and may not know anything whatever about another part of the same machine.” A machinist, 1883

Such a worker “can not be master of a craft, but only master of a fragment.”

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Change in workforce

• Women workers– 8.6 million worked outside of

home - 3x the number in 1870– 25% of workforce by 1900

• Single women– 40% native-born white– 60% nonwhite– 70% immigrant

• Married women– 3% of whites (1900) – 26% among African Americans– Unseen work

• Labor market segmentation– Sex-typing (“living wage vs.

secondary worker)– domestic service (29% in 1900)– factory work – 10% clerical positions and sales– 10% professionals by 1920

• 77% teachers in 1910

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child labor

• 1/5 nationally (under 16)– ¼ million younger than 10

• family as economic unit• Regional difference

– 1/4 North Carolina cotton mill workers compared to 1/20 Massachusetts operatives

– 40% of labor costs compared to New England

– Deemphasis on public education in the South

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Internal migration:

Rural-Urban• manufacturing in countryside

before Civil War– by 1890, 90% of manufacturing in

cities

• becoming an urban nation– by 1890, 1/3 of all Americans in

cities

• Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA, 1867)

• African Americans – 7,000/year from 1870-1910– Great Migration 1915-1920,

500,000

“My dear Sister: I am well and thankful to say I am doing “My dear Sister: I am well and thankful to say I am doing well….I got here in time to attend one of the greatest well….I got here in time to attend one of the greatest revivals in the history of my life revivals in the history of my life -- over 500 people joined the over 500 people joined the church….The people are rushing here by the thousands church….The people are rushing here by the thousands and I know if you come and rent a big house you can get all and I know if you come and rent a big house you can get all the roomers you want….I work in Swifts packing Co. in the the roomers you want….I work in Swifts packing Co. in the sausage department. My daughter and I work for the same sausage department. My daughter and I work for the same company company -- We get $1.50 a day and we pack so many We get $1.50 a day and we pack so many sausages we don’t have much time to play but it is a matter sausages we don’t have much time to play but it is a matter of a dollar with me….Tell your husband work is plentiful of a dollar with me….Tell your husband work is plentiful here.”here.”

Chicago, IllinoisChicago, Illinois

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New vs. Old Immigrants

• 24 mill. From 1860-1920• Old Immigrants

– pre-1880, 85% from Western and Northern Europe• New Immigrants

– post-1880 80% from Eastern and Southern Europe• More New Immigrants

– approx. 1 million immigrants from Asia 1850-1934– approx. 1 million from Latin America, mostly after 1910

• 1910- 53% of all wage workers were foreign-born with 2/3 from Southern and Eastern Europe

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The Working Class• 5.5 million

families earned less than $500 annually

• bottom 44% held 1.5% of the nation’s wealth

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Tenement housing

• home as second workplace

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streets as second home

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Knights of Labor (1869-)• 750,000 in 1886, largest in 19th

century– 10% women and 20,000-30,000

African American members in separate assemblies

• Emancipation from wage slavery -worker control of their own labor– worker cooperatives

• child labor reform• Eight-Hour League• Anti-immigration• Haymarket Square (1886)

Terence Powderly

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American Federation of Labor (1886-

• The “Aristocracy of Labor” - exclude unskilled labor

• “bread and butter” unionism (wages, hours, working conditions)

• 10% of workers by 1900

Samuel Gompers

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Progressive Reformers

• Idealism– Religion

• Federal Council of Churches (1908) aimed at “promoting the application of the law of Christ in every relation to human life.” (Social Gospel)

– Channeled towards secular reform– Reject Social Darwinism

• Faith in scientific investigation and management– Wisconsin Idea and Robert M.. La Follette

• “The close intimacy of the university with public affairs explains the democracy, the thoroughness, and the scientific accuracy of the state in its legislation.”

• Social sciences– Scientific analysis of human activity offers solutions to waste and inefficiency

– Taylor• Role of experts

• Belief in activist government– Regulate the economy– Solve social problems

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The New Woman• Educated women

– 40% of all college students women by 1900– 4% pf all American women (18-21)– 50% never married (10% of female pop.)– “Boston marriages”

• Married women– Declining birth rate (7 in 1800 to 3.5 in 1900)– Childless women

• 50% of married African American women• 25% of white women

• Club Movement– General Federation of Women’s Clubs (1890)

• 200 clubs, 20,000 women• 1920 1 million

– National Association of Colored Women (1896)• Three dozen

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Cross-class cooperation and voluntarism to state programs

• Settlement Houses (400 by 1910)– Jane Addams and Hull House (1889)– Middle-class educated women – Living and working in immigrant and racialized

communities – “Americanization”– Inventing social work

• Public health– Educational lectures– Low-cost health services– State-provided services

• National Consumers’ League (1899)– “White List” – consumer support for improving

working conditions• Protective Legislation

– Florence Kelley – focus on women and children– Max. hours and min. wages

• Muller v. Oregon (1908) upheld 10 hour workday for women

– “The physical well-being of woman becomes an object of public interest and care.”

– Brandeis brief – sociological jurisprudence

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Women’s Trade Unions• International Ladies Garment

Workers Union (1900)– Ethnic immigrant women– 1909 Uprising of the 20,000– “I am a working girl, one of

those who are strike against intolerable working conditions. I am tired of listening to speakers who talk in general terms.”

• Clara Lemlich• Women’s Trade Union League

(1903)– “The eight hour day; a living

wage; to guard the home”• Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire

(3/25/1911)– 146 died, 47 jumped

• New York State Factory Commission– 56 laws dealing with fire

hazards, unsafe machines, homework, and wages and hours for women and children

• 1920 – female garment workers 42% of all unionized women

– ILGWU 6th largest union in AFL

“A cousin of mine worked for the Triangle Shirtwaist Company and she got me on there in October of 1901. It was probably the largest shirtwaist factory in the city of New York then…..We started work at seven-thirty in the morning, and during the busy season we worked until nine in the evening. They didin’t pay you any overtime and they didn’t give you anything for supper money….The employers didn’t recognize anyone working for them as a human being….If you went to the toilet and you were there longer than the floor lady thought you should be, you would be laid off for half a day and sent home. And, of course, that meant no pay. You were not allowed to have your lunch on the fire escape in the summertime. The door was locked to keep us in. That’s why so many people were trapped when the fire broke out….After the 1909 strike I worked with the union…so I wasn’t at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory when the fire broke out, but a lot of my friends were….It’s very difficult to describe the feeling because I knew the place and I knew so many of the girls. The thing that bothered me was the employers got a lawyer….One hundred and forty-six people were sacrificed, and the judge fined Blank and Harris seventy-five dollars!” Pauline Newman, organizer for the ILGWU.

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From Maternalism to Feminism

• Maternalist welfare – saving women and children– Children’s (1912) and

Women’s (1920) Bureaus in the Labor Department

• Feminism (1914)– “We intend simply to be

ourselves…not just our little female selves, but our whole big human selves.” Marie Jenny Howe, 1914

• “Voluntary Motherhood” to “Birth Control” (1913)

Margaret Sanger outside the first birth control clinic,

which she founded in Brooklyn, 1916.

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Patriotism vs. Protest

• National American Woman Suffrage Association (2 million)

– Formed 1890

– Carrie Chapman Catt

• National Woman’s Party

– Alice Paul

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Women and Peace

• Women’s Peace Party (1915)• “This war was an old man’s

war; that the young men who were dying, the young men who were doing the fighting, were not the men who wanted the war, and were not the men who believed in the war.”– Jane Addams, 1915

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suffrage

• Maternalism, Nativism, and Racism• 19th amendment (1920)

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The Maternalist State

• “Municipal Housekeeping” leads to new conception of state responsibilities– Public education– Social welfare– Regulations regarding work conditions

• Social Reform and Social Control– Idealism and social divisions

• Maternalism and Feminism– Gender difference and gender sameness