Women Were a Force Behind New York Progressive Reform
By Bruce W. Dearstyne
Historians of the Progressive Era (ca. 1900-1920) have focused most of their attention on Progressivism at the national level and — aside from the suffrage fight — on men’s leadership in the movement.
But in teaching about the Progressive Era in college history courses over the years, and again in researching for my most recent books — The Crucible of Public Policy: New York Courts in the Progressive Era (2022); and Progressive New York: Change and Reform in the Empire State, 1900-1920 – A Reader (2024) — I was struck by how important the states and women were in the movement.
Change and Reform in the Empire State, 1900-1920: A Reader
by Bruce W. Dearstyne
SUNY Press
April 2024, 372 pp.
It was the states that first dealt with many of the complex issues of the era, including immigration, urbanization, industrialization, and the need to make government more responsive to the popular will. New York was a leader in regulating business, dealing with urban issues, and enacting labor reform. Other states used it as a model. New York saw significant reforms enacted long before they were adopted by the federal government.
While men were the most prominent leaders of the era, activist women quite often took the lead. Sometimes they were out front, but more often they were behind the scenes. Women led reform groups, gave speeches, wrote articles and books, carried out studies, and lobbied for change.
The Crucible of Public Policy: New York Courts in the Progressive Era
by Bruce W. Dearstyne
SUNY Press
May 2022, 314 pp.
Several of the women progressive leaders in New York City knew and collaborated with each other and worked on more than one reform. New York City had a community of women leaders and many of the ideas that came to fruition in New York in the Progressive Era, and at the national level, originated there. Some women honed their leadership skills in New York before later using them on a national level.
Of course, the campaign for the right to vote was a key one that engaged many women progressive leaders; that goal was achieved in New York in 1917. The leaders of the suffragist movement have been extensively studied and are quite well known.
But others, including some involved in the suffrage movement, were also active on other important fronts.
Some of the women were activists and also visionaries. Crystal Eastman’s 1910 study of industrial accidents, Work Accidents and The Law, and her work as an investigator for a legislative committee studying the issue were the basis for New York’s first workers’ compensation law. She was also a lawyer (at a time when women were a distinct minority in the profession), women’s rights champion, anti-war activist, social reformer, and later, a socialist. One of her most impressive written pieces was a 1920 essay entitled "Now We Can Begin" in The Liberator, a journal she had established with her brother Max Eastman in 1918. Women had just gained the right to vote but, Eastman argued, that was just the beginning. Now, she asserted, the struggle should move on to equality of education, wider career opportunities and other issues.
Florence Kelley is an example of a woman who was active in New York and also at the national level. She campaigned against sweatshops, was a leader in abolishing child labor in New York (and later in the campaign at the national level), fought for better working conditions for women, advocated a minimum wage, and was one of the founders of the NAACP. She was the long-time general secretary of the National Consumers League (NCL), which started in New York and was headquartered there. The league encouraged consumers to only buy products from companies that met the NCL’s standards of minimum wage and working conditions.
A number of the women focused primarily on labor issues, particularly wages and working conditions for women in factories. Mary Van Kleeck’s carefully researched 1913 study of women workers in the book and periodical printing industry, Women in the Bookbinding Trade, described the hard, fast-paced work that thousands of women did in the publishing industry. Van Kleeck demonstrated that, contrary to popular belief, the work was tedious and demanding. Her book was a major factor in the passage of a state law regulating women’s working hours and conditions. She was also a women’s rights and labor reform activist.
Josephine Goldmark, tireless labor reformer, helped shape legislation to protect women workers and defend its constitutionality in court. She was the legislative manager for the National Consumers’ League which lobbied for better factory working conditions. Her 1912 book Fatigue and Efficiency: A Study in Industry documented the harmful effects of long working hours on factory workers, particularly women. Goldman help shape legislation to restrict women’s working hours. She collaborated with her brother-in-law, activist labor lawyer (and later Supreme Court justice) Louis Brandeis on legal briefs that led to major victories for labor legislation at the Supreme Court (Muller v. Oregon,1908) in New York (People v. Charles Schweinler Press, 1915).
A number of women focused on abolishing child labor (a major progressive initiative in New York) and improving the condition of working people. For instance, Lillian Wald was a leader in limiting child labor and an innovator in establishing settlement houses and community health nursing care. Her 1915 book The House on Henry Street vividly described life on New York’s Lower East Side and the role of settlement houses and visiting nurses in improving people’s lives.
Frances Kellor was an advocate for women’s equality, immigrants’ rights, and labor reform. Her 1904 book Out of Work was a pioneering study of unemployment, including coverage of unemployed women and immigrants. Immigration was mostly a federal issue but with thousands of immigrants landing in New York City every year, New York progressives were also concerned. Kellor served as secretary of a State Commission of Immigration and drafted much of its 1909 Report on Immigration. The report highlighted immigration’s benefits to New York but also the challenges they faced in adjusting to their new country, finding housing, and making a living. In 1910 the legislature established a new Bureau of Industries and Immigration to assist immigrants and identify employment opportunities, with Kellor serving as chief investigator.
Some of the women progressives were important on several reform fronts and also in fighting for equality in their professional careers. One good example is Rheta Childe Dorr, a woman’s rights advocate, investigative journalist, and writer. Her 1910 book What Eight Million Women Want made the case that women were determined to have the vote but wanted much more, i.e., equality before the law and in society generally. Her 1924 autobiography, A Woman of Fifty, is a chronicle of her remarkable career. She recounts that even the progressive-minded New York Evening Post refused to pay her the same as her male colleagues and she left. Dorr had a number of adventures in her career which are chronicled in the book, including witnessing the Russian Revolution first-hand.
Many were civil rights activists, fighting racism and prejudice and championing equality. Mary White Ovington was an energetic suffragist, journalist and one of the founders of the NAACP in 1909. Her 1914 book How the National Association For the Advancement of Colored People Began is a first-hand account of the organization’s founding. She was a tireless crusader for equal rights and social justice. Her 1927 book Portraits in Color covered the historic achievements of several Blacks over the past few decades.
Elise Johnson McDougald, a pioneering teacher and the first Black principal in New York City, was a model of Black women’s potential and achievement at a time when Black men and women faced widespread discrimination. She spoke and wrote articles about the problems Black professional women faced and surmounted. Her 1925 article in the journal Survey Graphic, "The Double Task: The Struggle of Negro Women for Sex and Race Emancipation” (Note: “Negro” was a term commonly used at the time McDouglad wrote to describe Black people) described how Black women persevered in the face of gender and race discrimination.
Finally, a few of the progressive women were activist historians – they documented women’s roles in history and also wrote, and encouraged others to write, more about women in history. Mary Ritter Beard was a women’s rights advocate and a historian who wrote several books on her own and also collaborated on several books with her husband, famed historian Charles A. Beard. Her 1915 book Women's Work in Municipalities documented the role of women in improving city government and reforming politics. As she wrote in that book, women in cities across the country were pushing for urban planning (a new concept in those days), parks, playgrounds, better schools, and better municipal services, as well as for political reform. Moreover, they were “coordinating these activities in a more comprehensive way by serving on commissions and committees, by making surveys [and] by preparing lectures, articles and books.”
Beard was ahead of her time. In the course of her long career, Beard wrote a great deal about women’s roles in history. One of her themes was that women had always been influential in history, and sometimes shaped it, but their roles were under-documented and therefore under-represented in history books. Her very edifying books (after the Progressive Era) include: On Understanding Women (1931); America Through Women’s Eyes (editor) (1933); and her greatest work, Woman as Force in History: A Study in Tradition and Realities (1946).
Women were making their mark. The ramifications of their work in the Progressive Era reverberate today.
Bruce W. Dearstyne is a historian in Albany, NY. He has taught history at SUNY Albany, SUNY Potsdam, and Russell Sage College. He was a program director at the New York State Archives for several years. He was also a professor at the University of Maryland College of Information Studies. His most recent books are The Spirit of New York: Defining Events in the Empire State's History (2nd ed., 2022); The Crucible of Public Policy: New York Courts in the Progressive Era (2022); and Progressive New York: Change and Reform in the Empire State, 1900-1920 – A Reader (2024).