Banding
together
By igniting the maternal
sentiment of respectable clubwomen, female voluntary groups spearheaded
a number of successful reform campaigns in the name of “social
housekeeping.” Club leaders recruited volunteers to collect
information on target issues (which occasionally required members
to visit the workfloors of factories or conduct door-to-door surveys
in impoverished neighborhoods). Calls to action were disseminated
through a vast network of state and local affiliates, and club members
advanced campaigns at the regional level by coordinating public
lectures, letter writing campaigns, and petition drives. Maternal
activists also harnessed the power of the press by submitting letters
and essays decrying the reprehensible conditions afflicting American
mothers and children to newspapers and magazines.
By the turn of the 20th
century, women had organized to promote the abolition of prostitution;
women’s suffrage (achieved in 1920); temperance and prohibition
(national prohibition was enacted in 1919, and later repealed);
dress reform; juvenile justice and prison reform; equal wages, shorter
work hours and occupational safety for working women (the U.S. Department
of Labor Women’s Bureau was formed in 1920); pensions for
widowed and destitute mothers (passed into law in 40 states between
1911 and 1920); a centralized program to improve maternal and infant
health (resulting in the creation of the U.S. Children’s Bureau
in 1912 and the Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921); the Pure Food and
Drug Act (1911); child labor reform; compulsory school attendance;
civil service reform; public kindergartens, urban playgrounds; and
free public libraries.
The ranks of woman who
rallied behind the maternalist agenda originated from two distinct
sectors. Middle- and upper-class married women were frequently mobilized
through membership in national women’s associations. Organizations
such as the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, The Women’s
Christian Temperance Union, the National Congress of Mothers (which
became the Parent-Teacher Association in 1908), and the National
Consumer’s League were at the forefront of Progressive era
reform movements. Women of color formed the National Colored Women’s
Association in 1896 to support reform related to race issues. By
1900, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union was represented
in every state, with more than 168,000 dues-paying members and over
7,000 local associations; in 1911, the General Federation of Women’s
Clubs had over one million members.
A second group of reformers
consisted of unmarried professional women with connections to the
settlement
house movement. Settlement houses were residential centers established
and staffed by educated, middle-class men and women to provide outreach
and social services to the urban poor. Hull House in Chicago (founded
1889) was one of the largest and most successful settlement projects
in the U.S., and many women who trained at there—including Jane
Addams, Florence
Kelly and Grace
Abbott—were prominent in the maternalist reform and suffrage
movements.
Although
clubwomen and social work professionals led dramatically different
lives, they shared a core belief that women were naturally endowed
with a special aptitude for attending to the welfare of others. While
married women applied this ideology to their private obligations,
settlement women used it to justify a dedication to public service.
The two groups ultimately formed a powerful coalition committed
to resolving some of the most pressing social problems of the time.
The strength of this
relationship is evident in the interaction between the U.S. Children’s
Bureau and the General Federation of Women’s Clubs in the
early decades of the twentieth century. When Julia
Lathrop (who began her career in public service at Hull House
in the early 1890s) was appointed to head the newly formed U.S.
Children’s Bureau in 1912, her primary mission was to
track and reduce infant mortality. Since municipal records were
known to be woefully inaccurate in reporting either live births
or infant deaths, Lathrop launched a nation-wide birth registration
campaign. One of her first official acts was to enlist members of
GFWC in the task of recording every birth in their home communities
and reconciling the findings with local officials. Clubwomen were
also charged with organizing public events in honor of the Children
Bureau’s National Baby Week. Due to their zeal for protecting
the health and welfare of children, maternalist reformers were referred
to (and sometimes ridiculed) as “baby savers” by the
popular press. |
