Creating a Maternalist Welfare State

Industrialization, Progressivism, and

Suffrage

The Gilded Age

• Mark Twain, 1873 novel– definition of gilded - “to give an attractivebut 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 businessesand farms to large-scale corporations– National markets• Transcontinental Railroad 1869

Nation of Wage Workers

        • in 1870, 5 million out of 13 million wage workers • by 1900, 2/3 of all Americans worked for wages

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.”

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

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 – Deemphasison public education in the South

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

Old vs. New 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

The Working Class

• 5.5 million families earned less than $500 annually • bottom 44% held 1.5% of the nation’s wealth

Tenement Housing

• home as second workplace

Streets as Second Home

 

Knights of Labor

• 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)

American Federation of Labor

• The “Aristocracy of Labor” -exclude unskilled labor • “bread and butter” unionism (wages, hours, working conditions) • 10% of workers by 1900

                                                        Samuel Gompers

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

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

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

 

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 6thlargest union in AFL

 

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)

          

Patriotism vs. Protest

         • National American Woman Suffrage Association (2 million) – Formed 1890 – Carrie Chapman Catt • National Woman’s Party – Alice Paul

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

 

Suffrage

            • Maternalism, Nativism, and Racism • 19thamendment (1920)

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  • Maternalismand Feminism –Gender difference and gender sameness