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Men Are from the Gilded Age, Women Are from the Progressive Era

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2010

Elisabeth Israels Perry
Elisabeth Israels Perry
Affiliation:
St. Louis University
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Abstract

This is an expanded version of the presidential address I gave to the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (SHGAPE) at their meeting in 2000. In Part I, I use the catchphrase “Men are from the Gilded Age, Women are from the Progressive Era” as a way of making a critique of Progressive-era historiography from the perspective of women's history. In Part II, I suggest four specific ways in which Progressive-era historians might respond to that critique.

Type
Essays
Information
The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , January 2002 , pp. 25 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2002

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References

1 Davis, Allen F., Spearheads for Reform: The Social Settlements and the Progressive Movement, 1890–1914 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1984), xxiii.Google Scholar

2 This catchphrase is, of course, borrowed from the pop “gender-difference” language of Gray, John. His Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus: A Practical Guide for Improving Communication and Getting What You Want in Your Relationships (New York, 1992)Google Scholar, sets up a binary relationship between male and female behaviors and expectations in the hope of improving communication between the sexes. The best part of the book is the title. The rest is a catalogue of differences based so heavily on stereotypes that they border on caricature.

3 Boyer, Paul, Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820–1920 (Cambridge, MA, 1978), 220.Google Scholar Boyer's role as assistant editor of the biographical encyclopedia Notable American Women, 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary (Cambridge, MA, 1971) might have led one to assume that he would feature women in his book, but he focused almost exclusively on men (Josephine Shaw Lowell and Jane Addams were exceptions). He rarely names women in moral-reform movements, instead referring to them only as “friendly visitors” or as “the wives” of clerics and merchants. When he describes Stead's, WilliamIf Christ Came to Chicago (Chicago, 1894)Google Scholar he jokes about Stead's vision of Mrs. Potter Palmerbecoming the city's mayor (184–87) but neither identifies Palmer (a prominent Chicago clubwoman in charge of the woman's building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition) nor explains why Stead could have had this vision. Of the book's reviewers, only Bertram Wyatt-Brown criticized him for his lack of focus on women. See Reviews in American History 7 (December 1979): 528.

4 I remember feeling excited when I found McCormick's, Richard L.From Realignment to Reform: Political Change in New York State, 1893–1910 (Ithaca, 1981)Google Scholar, only to discover that he never mentioned any women, nor the idea of women as a political force, in his book.

5 Lemons, J. Stanley, The Woman Citizen: Social Feminism in the 1920s (Urbana, 1973).Google Scholar

6 Berman, Hyman, “Era of the Protocol: A Chapter in the History of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, 1910–1916” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1956).Google Scholar

7 Eldot, Paula, Governor Alfred E. Smith: The Politician As Reformer (New York, 1983)Google Scholar; Caro, Robert, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (New York, 1974).Google Scholar I have written about these early research experiences in “Critical Journey: From Belle Moskowitz to Women's History,” in The Challenge of Feminist Biography: Writing the Lives of Modern American Women, eds., Sara Alpern, Joyce Antler, Elisabeth Israels Perry, and Ingrid Scobie (Urbana, 1992): 79–96.

8 Rodgers, Daniel, “In Search of Progressivism,” Reviews in American History 10 (December 1982): 113–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Referring to the idea of progressivism as shuffling “through the 1970s as a corpse that would not lie down” (113), Rodgers assesses the decade's various attempts to make progressive-era studies more coherent. He shows first that the “bifurcation” — the setting up of dualities of progressives (social reformers vs. structural reformers, western Bryanites vs. eastern Rooseveltians, new-stock vs. old-stock, etc.) — failed to bring much clarity. He looks then at the historical context of progressivism's emergence — the decline of political parties, the rise of extra-party interest groups, and the increasing importance of issue-focused politics. Unwilling to give up on the idea of a shared ground for progressives, Rodgers identifies three: antimonopolism, a belief in (or longing for) social cohesion, and a quest for social efficiency.

9 Crunden's, RobertMinisters of Reform: The Progressives' Achievement in American Civilization, 1889–1920 (New York, 1982)Google Scholar creates a collective portrait of 100 progressives, of whom a dozen are women, but he gives close attention only to Jane Addams. Colburn, David R. and Pozzetta, George E., eds., Reform and Reformers in the Progressive Era (Westport, CT, 1983),Google Scholar refers only to Addams (in Blaine Brownell's introductory historiographical essay, 12) and to Frances Perkins, Belle Israels, Pauline Goldmark, Josephine Goldmark, and Florence Kelley only once each and in the context of the investigation after the Triangle Factory fire (in Colbum's essay, 30). Link, Arthur S. and McCormick, Richard L., Progressivism (Arlington Heights, IL, 1983)Google Scholar, an historiographical survey, refers more generously to women but primarily as “social progressives” concerned with issues important to the “women's sphere” (74).

10 Baker, Paula, “The Domestication of Politics: Women and American Political Society, 1780–1920,” American Historical Review 89 (June 1984): 620–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The image of women as municipal housekeepers has had considerable staying power. See, for example, Connolly, James J., The Triumph of Ethnic Progressivism: Urban Political Culture in Boston, 1900–1925 (Cambridge, MA, 1998).Google Scholar Connolly says that women activists, “capitalizing on the traditional separate-spheres ideology…sought to increase their political power by extending their responsibilities as wives and mothers into public life” (10). “Their efforts [to be “municipal housekeepers”] helped push new ideas onto the political agenda while giving women the opportunity to assume broader public roles. They began speaking and acting on behalf of their communities on issues considered to be within the purview of women, further expanding the possible variations on the Progressive formula in the process.” Later, however, he describes Boston women trying to penetrate the world of male politics in ways inconsistent with the housekeeping paradigm. Appearing briefly are Julia Duff, a Catholic leader who ran for an at-large seat on the Boston City Council as a trustbuster, and the League of Catholic Women, launched in 1910 to coordinate the work of Catholic women's clubs (72–73). Connolly never follows up on their stories.

11 See Fink, Leon, Workingmen's Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics (Urbana, 1983), 32.Google Scholar

12 Bordin's, RuthWoman and Temperance: The Quest for Power and Liberty, 1873–1900 (Philadelphia)Google Scholar had originally come out in 1981 but was reissued in 1990. Cott's, NancyThe Grounding of Modern Feminism (New Haven)Google Scholar came out in 1987 and helped clarify the relationship of women's voluntary groups to political parties in the 1920s; but it focused so heavily on the national rather than local picture that it overstated the limits of women's political choices after suffrage. Especially helpful were Koven, Seth and Michel, Sonya, eds., Mothers of a New World: Matemalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States (New York, 1993)Google Scholar; Pascoe, Peggy, Relations of Rescue: The Search for Female Moral Authority in the American West, 1874–1939 (New York, 1990)Google Scholar; Muncy, Robyn, Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890–1935 (New York, 1991)Google Scholar; Scott, Anne Firor, Natural Allies: Women's Associations in American History (Urbana, 1991)Google Scholar; Skocpol, Theda, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, MA, 1992)Google Scholar; and Sklar, Kathryn Kish, Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work: The Rise of Women's Political Culture (New Haven, 1995).Google Scholar Studies of local women's politics that came out in the 1990s include many on southern women: Wedell, Marsha, Elite Women and the Reform Impulse in Memphis, 1875–1915 (Knoxville, TN, 1991)Google Scholar; Schackel, Sandra, Social Housekeepers: Women Shaping Public Policy in New Mexico, 1920–1940 (Albuquerque, NM, 1992)Google Scholar; Tyler, Pamela, Silk Stockings & Ballot Boxes: Women & Politics in New Orleans, 1920–1963 (Athens, GA, 1996)Google Scholar; Turner, Elizabeth Hayes, Women, Culture, and Community: Religion and Reform in Galveston, 1880–1920 (New York, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sims, Anastatia, The Power of Femininity in the New South: Women's Organizations and Politics in North Carolina, 1880–1930 (Columbia, SC, 1997)Google Scholar; Enstam, Elizabeth York, Women and the Creation of Urban Life: Dallas, Texas, 1843–1920 (College Station, TX, 1998)Google Scholar; and McArthur, Judith N., Creating the New Woman: The Rise of Southern Women's Progressive Culture in Texas, 1893–1918 (Urbana, 1998).Google Scholar

13 A good example is Ethington, Philip J., “Recasting Urban Political History: Gender, the Public, the Household, and Political Participation in Boston and San Francisco During the Progressive Era,” Social Science History 16 (Summer 1992): 301–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Buenker, John D. and Kantowicz, Edward R., Historical Dictionary of the Progressive Era, 1890–1920 (Westport, CT, 1988).Google Scholar

15 Cooper, John, Pivotal Decades: The United States 1900–1920 (New York, 1990)Google Scholar; Link, William, The Paradox of Southern Progressivism, 1880–1930 (Chapel Hill, 1992)Google Scholar; Chambers, John Whiteclay II, The Tyranny of Change: America in the Progressive Era, 1890–1920 (New York, 1992)Google Scholar; Diner, Steven J., A Very Different Age: Americans of the Progressive Era (New York, 1998)Google Scholar; Rodgers, Daniel, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge, MA, 1998).Google Scholar

16 He calls it the NWSA (National Woman Suffrage Association) instead of NAWSA (National American Woman Suffrage Association): 63, 125.

17 Lewis Gould's 80-page essay on Progressive-era history appeared after I delivered this address. Its presentation of women supports my argument that the field needs to do more with women's history. America in the Progressive Era, 1890–1914 (Harlow, UK, 2001) introduces women early in the narrative, referring to “men and women” who opened settlement houses and to Hull House as the “most famous.” After observing that “the role of women” was a “significant element in the gathering momentum for reform,” Gould cites their club work, roles as “municipal housekeepers,” and advocacy of environmentalism and the creation of juvenile courts (11). The woman suffrage movement appears as “part of the progressive agenda” and receives a brief paragraph here, whereas the quest of blacks for civil rights is described as a “striking example of…reform” and receives five paragraphs (13–14). Gould brings women back into the narrative with only two more paragraphs on the suffrage movement (59, 70), and while he mentions Jane Addams, Ellen Gates Starr, Alice Paul, Lucy Bums, Carrie Chapman Catt, Ida Tarbell, and Frances Willard, he says little about any of them.

18 Skocpol's Protecting Soldiers and Mothers emphasizes the importance of American women's educations to their civic and political activism at the turn of the twentieth century (52) and argues for the centrality of women's policies to the Progressive Era (354). I agree on both points, but take issue with other aspects of her book. Her insistence on a distinction between paternalist and maternalist legislation is problematic, and her idea that the matemalist kind (laws designed to protect mothers or potential mothers) arose from disillusionment with the corrupt patronage system of (paternalist) Civil War pensions is conjectural. Kessler-Harris, Alice, Journal of American History 80 (December 1993): 1035–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar, notes that much of the “matemalist” legislation that women's organizations advocated (and to some extent achieved, if only temporarily) resulted in “paternalist” consequences for women, that is, restrictions that only entrenched their socio-economic subordination. Other critics point to Skocpol's limited view of women's politics in this period and the ways in which her polity-centered approach to history ignores ethnicity, race, and generational differences, not to mention the socio-economic or cultural antecedents of policy that she rejects as explanations of historical change. See, for example, Scott, Anne Firor in Contemporary Sociology 22 (November 1993): 777–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ven, Frances Fox Pi in American Political Science Review 87 (September 1993): 790–91Google Scholar; Baker, Paula in American Historical Review 98 (April 1993): 458–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Sapiro, Virginia in Political Science Quarterly 108 (Winter 1993–1994): 738–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Inscription on the monument to the Woman's Building of the Tennessee Centennial Exposition held in Nashville, Tenn., 1897. The obelisk still stands in Nashville's Centennial Park.

20 Quoted in Skocpol, 357.

21 Andersen, Kristi, After Suffrage: Women in Partisan and Electoral Politics Before the New Deal (Chicago, 1996), 156.Google Scholar

22 Andersen, , After Suffrage, ch. 3Google Scholar; Perry, Elisabeth Israels, “Defying the Party Whip: Mary Garrett Hay and the Republican Party, 1917–1920,” in We Have Come to Stay: American Women and Political Parties, 1880–1960, eds., Gustafson, Melanie, Miller, Kristie, and Perry, Elisabeth Israels (Albuquerque, NM, 1999): 97–107.Google Scholar Recent work on women's quest for jury service includes Kerber, Linda, No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship (New York, 1998)Google Scholar, esp. ch. 4, “Gwendolyn Hoyt and Jury Service in the Twentieth Century”; and Perry, Elisabeth Israels, “Culture, Strategy, and Politics in the New York Campaign for Women's Jury Service, 1917–1975,” New York History 82 (Winter 2001): 53–78.Google Scholar

23 Boyer, , Urban Masses and Moral Order, 196.Google Scholar

24 Once again, William Link's The Paradox of Southern Progressivism, which connects moral reform to southern evangelicalism, is an exception.

25 The eugenics movement, which began during the Progressive Era and persisted until the 1930s and in some cases beyond, is hard to categorize as either a moral or social reform, as it had dimensions of both. The discussion thread on H-SHGAPE, March 16, 2000, on how to teach about this movement stresses the importance of distinguishing among its many different manifestations and of trying to understand the movement outside the context of the Nazis' distortion of it. See also, Ladd-Taylor, Molly, “Saving Babies and Sterilizing Mothers: Eugenics and Welfare Politics in the Internar United States,” Social Politics 4 (Spring 1997): 136–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and McDonagh, Eileen, “The ‘Welfare Rights State’ and the ‘Civil Rights State’: Policy Paradox and State Building in the Progressive Era,” Studies in American Political Development 7 (1993): 242–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 The idea of conserving human resources found expression not just in moral reform but also in educational reform. See Spring, Joel H., The American School 1642–1985: Varieties of Historical Interpretation of the Foundations and Development of American Education (New York, 1986), 209Google Scholar, on reports of the Commission on National Aid to Vocational Education, which resulted in the passage of the Smith-Hughes Act in 1917 and the major funding of vocational education in this country.

27 Andersen, , After Suffrage, makes this point (163)Google Scholar, citing Robyn Muncy, Susan Ware, and Anne Firor Scott. Again, one might analogize to the Knights of Labor. According to Leon Fink, the Knights were consciously apolitical. They hoped to rescue society from parties and supported a merit over a spoils system. “The only way the Knights could cleanse the political process,” writes, Fink, “was to remain outside it, acting from political strength rooted in a moral order of their own making.” Workingmen's Democracy, 32.Google Scholar Middle-class women who organized for political and social change held similar beliefs.

28 Gordon, Linda, “Black and White Visions of Welfare: Women's Welfare Activism, 1890–1945,” Journal of American History 78 (September 1991): 572CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Andersen, 166, who cites Daniels, Doris, “Building a Winning Coalition: The Suffrage Fight in New York State,” New York History 60 (1979): 67–68.Google Scholar

29 Board of Directors Meeting, New York City League of Women Voters, LWV-NYC Papers, Rare Books and Manuscripts, Columbia University Library, Box 12, folder October 3, 1921 to September 19, 1922.

30 Focusing on race as well as gender, Gilmore, Glenda makes this point specifically about the progressive movement in Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896–1920 (Chapel Hill, 1996).Google Scholar She argues that her reconstruction of the political activism of African American women in North Carolina enriches “traditional political history” and helps us reclaim “progressivism,” a “confused and obfuscating” term (150).

31 Gustafson, Miller, and Perry, eds., We Have Come to Stay.

32 For a sociologist's perspective on the relationship between tum-of-the-twentieth-century women's groups and political parties, see Clemens, Elisabeth S., “Organizational Repertoires and Institutional Change: Women's Groups and the Transformation of American Politics, 1890–1920,” American Journal of Sociology 98 (January 1993): 755–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 Matthews, Glenna, “‘There Is No Sex in Citizenship’: The Career of Congress woman Florence Prag Kahn,” in We Have Come to Stay, Gustafson, Miller, and Perry, 136.Google Scholar For more examples of how women's political culture operated within party politics (how women did political business, sought support from the role models of other female achievers, and enlisted support from other women's associations, etc.), see also Flanagan, Maureen, “Anna Wilmarth Ickes: A Staunch Woman Republican,” 141–50Google Scholar, and Perry, Elisabeth Israels, “Defying the Party Whip: Mary Garrett Hay and the Republican Party, 1917–1920,” 97–107Google Scholar, in We Have Come to Stay. Miller's, Kristie biography, Ruth Hanna McCormick: A Life in Politics, 1880–1944 (Albuquerque, NM, 1992)Google Scholar, is also instructive on this point.

34 Link, Arthur, “What Happened to the Progressive Movement in the 1920s?” American Historical Review 64 (July 1959): 833–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In listing the progressive forces that survived and which, in fact, wielded some power, he includes fanners, organized labor, large Democratic organizations in the cities, a “remnant” of social workers and radicals, and those favoring public electric power and regional developments; he does not mention women. Melvin Urofsky's work on state courts represents the kind of research Link was asking for. See his “State Courts and Protective Legislation during the Progressive Era: A Reevaluation,” Journal of American History 72 (June 1985): 63–91, which shows that state courts remained generally favorable toward protective legislation throughout the 1920s.

35 Andersen, 154–55, citing Sophonisba Breckinridge's accounting. Andersen asserts that “women extended the life of Progressivism” (153). Works that focus on local women's politics after suffrage include Nichols, Carole, Votes and More for Women: Suffrage and After in Connecticut (New York, 1983)Google Scholar; Gordon, Felice D., After Winning: The Legacy of the New Jersey Suffragists, 1920–1947 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1986)Google Scholar; Perry, Elisabeth Israels, Belle Moskowitz: Feminine Politics and the Exercise of Power in the Age of Alfred E. Smith (New York, 1987; 2nd ed., Boston, 2000)Google Scholar; and the local studies cited in n. 12, above. See also Gordon, Linda, Pitied But Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare, 1890–1935 (Cambridge, MA, 1994)Google Scholar, ch. 4, which spells out the links between women progressives and New Deal welfare provisions.

36 Freedman's, Estelle article “Separatism as Strategy: Female Institution-Building and American Feminism, 1870–1930,” Feminist Studies 5 (Fall 1979): 512–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar, is still cited, even though the author revised her views. See her “Separatism Revisited: Women's Institutions, Social Reform, and the Career of Waters, Miriam Van,” in U.S. History as Women's History: New Feminist Essays, eds., Kerber, Linda K., Kessler-Harris, Alice, and Sklar, Kathryn Kish (Chapel Hill, 1995): 170–88.Google Scholar

37 See Ware, Susan, Beyond Suffrage: Women in the New Deal (Cambridge, MA, 1981)Google Scholar and Cook, Blanche Wiesen, Eleanor Roosevelt, vol. II, The Defining Years, 1933–1938 (New York, 1999).Google Scholar For other examples of the specific work of progressive women in the 1920s, see Gender, Class, Race, and Reform in the Progressive Era, eds., Noralee Frankei and Nancy Schrom Dye (Lexington, KY, 1991), esp. Sicherman, Barbara, “Working It Out: Gender, Profession, and Reform in the Career of Alice Hamilton,” 127–47Google Scholar, and Terborg-Penn, Rosalyn, “African-American Women's Networks in the Anti-Lynching Crusade,” 148–61.Google Scholar

38 Part 3 of Skocpol's Protecting Soldiers and Mothers provides a useful summary of women's work for social provision throughout the 1920s and 1930s.

39 Muncy, , Creating a Female Dominion, 154.Google Scholar

40 See Lindenmeyer, Kriste, “A Right to Childhood”: The U.S. Children's Bureau and Child Welfare, 1912–46 (Urbana, 1997).Google Scholar The Women's Trade Union League was founded in 1903 to help organize women workers into unions. Survey Magazine was the mouthpiece of early twentieth-century social workers and supported progressive reform in general. The National Consumers' League, founded in 1899, was the spearhead for minimum wage and many other labor reforms. In the 1950s, it could survive only by changing its source of funding from a broad membership base to grants from organized labor and foundations. By the early 1960s, the organization's focus had shifted more toward consumer than worker protection. See Storrs, Landon R.Y., Civilizing Capitalism: The National Consumers' League, Women's Activism, and Labor Standards in the New Deal Era (Chapel Hill, 2000), 249, 257.Google Scholar

41 The “OAH Conference on Integration of Women into the Basic Surveys” took place at Indiana University in Bloomington, March 26–30, 1980. Gerda Lemer gave the plenary address. The conference resulted in guides made available to teachers of the U.S. and Western Civilization surveys that showed precisely how integration could be accomplished. The H-WOMEN posting that referred to the discussion at a recent OAH appeared on April 30, 1999.

42 See Koemer, Elaine, “Silent Partners,” The Environmental Forum 14 (March/April 1997): 18–23Google Scholar, which chronicles the study, research, and agitation by women's clubs across the country for pure water and sewage control. She writes, “…typical accounts of the origins of the U.S. environmental movement begin with the conservation movement. Early environmental history has become synonymous with early conservation history” (22). See also Grinder, R. Dale, “The Battle for Clean Air: The Smoke Problem in Post-Civil War America,” in Pollution and Reform in American Cities, 1870–1930, ed., Meiosi, Martin (Austin, TX, 1980): 83–103Google Scholar, which emphasizes the elite clubwomen who did groundbreaking work on smoke issues in the nation's major cities between the 1880s and World War I. Also relevant are Flanagan, Maureen, “The City Profitable, the City Livable: Environmental Policy, Gender, and Power in Chicago in the 1910s,” Journal of Urban History (January 1996): 163–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Gugliotta, Angela, “Class, Gender, and Coal Smoke: Gender Ideology and Environmental Injustice in Pittsburgh, 1868–1914,” Environmental History 5 (April 2000): 165–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43 Rodgers, , Atlantic Crossings, 5.Google Scholar

44 Bederman, Gail, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917 (Chicago, 1995), 33–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar With the exception of Rebecca Edwards's page on the 1896 election, I have seen no women listed as political leaders in the period on the H-SHGAPE website.

45 See Goodwin, Lorine Swainston, The Pure Food, Drink, and Drug Crusaders, 1879–1914 (Jefferson, NC, 1999).Google Scholar

46 Frankei, and Dye, , Gender, Class, Race, and Reform, 4.Google Scholar

47 Gilmore, , Gender and Jim Crow, xvi.Google Scholar See also, 120, where she argues: “The varieties of black response [to disfranchisement] underscore the ways in which limiting analysis to the electoral sphere impoverishes political history and creates a false dichotomy between the public and private spheres.” Philip Ethington has also contributed to new ways of envisioning the private-public junction by using household surveys to measure shifts in political attitudes. See, for example, “Recasting Urban Political History.”