¹ A remark made to the author, 1984. Beyer, who died at the age of 98 in 1990, inspired this paper and is fondly acknowledged. This is a revision of my paper “Watch What We Do: Women Administrators and the Implementation of Minimum Wage Policy,” presented at the Eighth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Douglass College, June 1990. I am particularly grateful to the panel: Eileen Boris, Catherine East, Phyllis Palmer.

² Weber, Max, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, translated and ed. Gerth, H. H. and Mills, C. Wright (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), 196–244.Google Scholar

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⁵ There are a few exceptions. See, for example, Aron, Cindy Sondik, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Civil Service (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987)Google Scholar; Ware, Susan, Beyond Suffrage: Women in the New Deal (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981).Google Scholar

⁶ For example: Dye, Nancy Schrom, As Equals and As Sisters: Feminism, Unionism, and the Trade Union League of New York (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Goldin, Claudia, “Maximum Hours Legislation and Female Employment: A Reassessment,” Journal of Political Economy, 96 (1988), 189–205CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kessler-Harris, Alice, “The Debate Over Equality for Women in the Workplace,” in Women and Work: An Annual Review, Volume 1, ed. Larwood, Laurie, Stromberg, Ann H. and Gutek, Barbara A. (Newbury Park: Sage, 1985), 141–61Google Scholar; Landes, Elizabeth M., “The Effect of State Maximum Hours Laws on the Employment of Women in 1920,” journal of Political Economy, 88 (1980), 476–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lehrer, Susan, Origins of Protective Labor Legislation for Women, 1905–1925 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987)Google Scholar; Milkman, Ruth, Women, Work and Protest: A Century of U.S. Women's Labor History (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985)Google Scholar; Steinberg, Ronnie, Wages and Hours: Labor and Reform in Twentieth Century America (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1982).Google Scholar

⁷ As campaigners, we now know that women have been effective political participants since at least the mid-nineteenth century. For example, Baker, Paula, “The Domestication of Politics: Women and American Political Society, 1780–1920,” American Historical Review, 89 (1984), 620–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ryan, Mary P., Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots, 1825–1880 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990)Google Scholar. The scholarly tendency to treat women as passive recipients and the victims of policies has been corrected by reports of initiatives which clients in the most disadvantaged situations have taken. For example, Gordon, Linda, Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence (New York: Viking, 1988)Google Scholar, and the memories of Mamie Garvin Fields, of claiming access to National Youth Administration benefits in the 1930s (“Yes sir, I let her know that I wouldn't stand up in there another minute. And after that, they certainly did fly right …”), Mamie Garvin Fields with Fields, Karen, Lemon Swamp and Other Places: A Carolina Memoir (New York: Free Press, 1983), 239.Google Scholar

⁸ See Lowi, Theodore, The End of Liberalism: Ideology, Policy and the Crisis of Public Authority (New York: Norton, 1969)Google Scholar. Lowi criticizes delegation and defines “juridical democracy” in which legislation contains not only a precise and specific statement of purpose but also clear and formal rules for administration. The constitutional doctrine of procedural due process makes similar requirements.

⁹ For example, the implementation of comparable worth laws, described by Evans, Sara and Nelson, Barbara, raises identical questions of the “simultaneous necessity and difficulty of using technocratic means to achieve a just and democratic social transformation.” Wage justice: Comparable Worth and the Paradox of Technocratic Reform (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), esp. 164.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Lewis, Eugene, American Politics in a Bureaucratic Age: Citizens, Constituents, Clients, and Victims (Cambridge, Mass.: Winthrop, 1977), 172.Google Scholar See also Heclo, Hugh, A Government of Strangers: Executive Politics in Washington (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1977), ch. 1.Google Scholar

¹¹ Women's interest in bureaucracies seems also to grow with the development of agencies, offices and policies specifically concerned with women's issues. Thus there is little written on the subject in Britain; some in the United States, for example, Martin, Patricia Yancey, “Rethinking Feminist Organizations,” Gender and Society, 4 (1990), 182–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The most substantial literature is Australian: see Watson, Sophie, “The State of Play: An Introduction,” in Playing the State: Australian Feminist Interventions, ed. Watson, Sophie (London: Verso, 1990)Google Scholar; Franzway, Suzanne, Court, Dianne and Connell, R. W., Staking a Claim: Feminism, Bureaucracy and the State (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Eisenstein, Hester, “The Gender of Bureaucracy: Reflections on Feminism and the State,” in Women, Social Science and Public Policy, ed. Goodnow, Jacqueline and Pateman, Carole (Sydney: George Allen and Unwin, 1985), 104–15.Google Scholar

¹² Ferguson, , The Feminist Case, 17, 203.Google Scholar

¹³ Ferguson, , The Feminist Case, 25, 122.Google Scholar

¹⁴ See Bringing the State Back In, ed. Evans, Peter B., Rueschemeyer, D. and Skocpol, T. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Skowronek, Stephen, Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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¹⁶ See, for example, MacKinnon, Catherine A., Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), esp. ch. 2, “Difference and Dominance: On Sex Discrimination.”Google Scholar

¹⁷ See Hewitt, Nancy A., “Beyond the Search for Sisterhood: American Women's History in the 1980s,” Social History, 10 (1985), 299–321CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kerber, Linda K., “Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Woman's Place: The Rhetoric of Women's History,” Journal of American History, 75 (1988), 9–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and in the study of women's work the destruction of the same dichotomy in the form of distinctions between home and factory, domestic and industrial spheres, for example, in Kessler-Harris, Alice, A Woman's Wage: Historical Meanings and Social Consequences (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1990), esp. ch. 3Google Scholar; Turbin, Carole, “Beyond Dichotomies: Interdependence in Mid-Nineteenth Century Working Class Families in the United States,” Gender and History, I (1989), 293–308.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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¹⁹ See Bartlett, Katherine T., “Feminist Legal Methods,” Harvard Law Review, 103 (1990), 829–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the extensive literature she cites; Olsen, Frances E., “The Family and the Market: A Study of Ideology and Legal Reform,” Harvard Law Review, 96 (1983), 1497–578.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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²¹ Cott, Nancy F., The Grounding of Modern Feminism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 4–5.Google Scholar

²² The images of crusaders and servants come from two studies of women in the bureaucracy in Britain, published fifty years apart and almost alone in their field: McFeely, Mary Drake, Lady Inspectors: The Campaign for a Better Workplace 1893–1921 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988)Google Scholar; Martindale, Hilda, Women Servants of the State, 1870–1938 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1938).Google Scholar

²³ See Brandeis, Elizabeth, “Labor Legislation,” in History of Labor in the United States, 1896–1932, ed. Commons, John R. (New York: Macmillan, 1935), vol. 3.Google Scholar

²⁴ Statutes at Large, 40, pt. 1, ch. 174, 960–64 (1918).Google Scholar

²⁵ Graebner, William, “Federalism in the Progressive Era: A Structural Interpretation of Reform,” Journal of American History, 64 (1977), 331–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harrison, Robert, “The Ideal of a ‘Model City:’ Federal Social Policy for the District of Columbia, 1905–1909,” journal of Urban History, 15 (1989), 435–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁶ Adkins v. Children's Hospital of Washington, D.C., 261 U.S. 525 (1923).

²⁷ Gordon, Mildred, The Development of Minimum-Wage Lams in the United States, 1012 to 1927, Bulletin of the Women's Bureau no. 61 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1928), 326.Google Scholar

²⁸ U.S. Congress. House of Representatives, 65th Cong., 2nd sess. Congressional Record (8 07 1918), 56, pt. 9, 8872.Google Scholar

²⁹ The Annual Reports are cited below; Clara Mortenson Beyer Papers and Elizabeth Brandeis Raushenbush Papers, both in Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College; “Conversation Between Clara Mortenson Beyer and Vivien Hart, Washington, D.C., November 14, 1983,” (mimeo, Beyer Papers, Schlesinger Library); Murray, Meg McGavran, “The Work Got Done: An Interview with Clara Mortenson Beyer,” in Face to Face: Father, Mothers, Masters, Monsters, ed. Murray, Meg McGavran (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1983), 203–32Google Scholar; Mortenson, Clara E., “The Minimum Wage at Work in the District of Columbia,” Proceedings of the National Conference of Social Work, New Orleans, Louisiana, April 14–21, 1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press [1920]), 298–304Google Scholar; “Facts So Far Obtained on Workings of Eight Hour and Minimum Wage Laws in the District of Columbia (; Aug. 1922),” National Woman's Party Papers, 1913–1974 (Sanford, N.C.: Microfilming Corporation of America, 1979), reel 16.Google Scholar

³⁰ Beyer's, memories confirm this, “Conversation Between Beyer and Hart,” 10–11Google Scholar. The D.C. budget was held at $5,000 annually, regardless of rising costs from inflation and of widening coverage. In states where some serious attempt at implementation was made, only California and Massachusetts received regular increases. See Gordon, , The Development, 327.Google Scholar

³¹ Beyer became a key figure in the Labor Department during the formative years of the federal minimum wage and was still advocating and defending minimum wage policy in her nineties. She also served in the Children's Bureau, 1928–34, as Associate Director of the Bureau of Labor Standards, Department of Labor, 1934–1958, and in the International Cooperation Administration until her retirement in 1972.

³² “Conversation Between Beyer and Hart,” 6.Google Scholar Clara Mortenson married Otto Beyer in 1920, remaining at the Minimum Wage Board until 21 September 1921 when she moved to New York. I refer to her as Beyer throughout.

³³ “Conversation Between Beyer and Hart,” 7.Google Scholar Brandeis went to Europe for the summer of 1920, with her father, Justice Brandeis, and the Frankfurters. She wrote regularly to Beyer, forgoing her salary, querying developments, reporting on thes British minimum wage, gossiping about shipboard life and being stunned by Beyer's marriage. Her letters give detail and atmosphere of their collaboration. Brandeis, Elizabeth to Beyer, Clara Mortenson, 16 06–22 07 1920, Raushenbush Collection.Google Scholar

³⁴ McFeely, , Lady Inspectors, 42.Google Scholar

³⁵ Minimum Wage Board, Washington, D.C., First Annual Report, 1918 (Washington, D.C.: mimeo, 31 12 1918), 3.Google Scholar

³⁶ Second Annual Report of the Minimum Wage Board of the District of Columbia, for the Year Ending December 31, 1919 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1920), 6.Google Scholar See also Kessler-Harris, , A Woman's Wage, ch. 1.Google Scholar

³⁷ Second Annual Report, 6.Google Scholar

³⁸ Second Annual Report, 6.Google Scholar Only Oregon was faster in implementing an industry rate, with nine months from law to order. Action took between two and three years in California and Massachusetts and a record five years and five months in Arkansas.

³⁹ Second Annual Report, 6.Google Scholar Theoretically, the female workforce included a further 40,000 clerical workers, but most were employees of the federal government and outside this law.

⁴⁰ Mortenson, , “The Minimum Wage at Work,” 299.Google Scholar

⁴¹ “Conversation Between Beyer and Hart,” 31.Google Scholar

⁴² Mortenson, , “The Minimum Wage at Work,” 298.Google Scholar

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⁴⁴ See Harley, Sharon, “For the Good of Family and Race: Gender, Work, and Domestic Roles in the Black Community, 1880–1930,” Signs, 15 (1990), 336–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁵ Third Annual Report of the Minimum Wage Board of the District of Columbia for the Year Ending December 31, 1920 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1921), 16, 17.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ See Beyer, , “Reflections on My Personal Life,”Google Scholar typescript notes excerpted from reports submitted to the Schlesinger Library, for her involvement in racial politics in northern Virginia; Beyer could also have called on Commissioner Brownlow, who supported the black community, for example establishing a black platoon in the Fire Department and condemning the instigation of racial violence in 1919 by white agents provocateurs; see Green, Constance M., The Secret City: A History of Race Relations in the Nation's Capital (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), 187, 192.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Harley, , “For the Good of Family and Race,” 547.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Green, , Secret City, chs. 8 and 9, charts major changes for the worse in race relations in the District in the early twentieth century.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Fourth Annual Report of the Minimum Wage Board of the District of Columbia for the Year Ending December 31, 1921 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1922), 12.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Fifth Annual Report of the Minimum Wage Board of the District of Columbia for the Year Ending December 31, 1922 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1923), 12.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Fourth Annual Report, 21.Google Scholar

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⁵⁴ Fourth Annual Report, 2.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Quoted in McFeely, , Lady Inspectors, 8.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Murray, , “The Work Got Done,” 215–16.Google Scholar Beyer describes the regular sexual harassment in “Conversation Between Beyer and Hart,” 11.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Fourth Annual Report, 2.Google ScholarFifth Annual Report, 12.Google Scholar There is evidence from other states of employers using legal challenges to distract and delay enforcement rather than, as Mildred Gordon disapprovingly noted, making proper “efforts to aid in making the law work effectively by using the means provided in itself for securing redress of grievances.” Gordon, , The Development, 81, 84.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, 300 U.S. 379 (1937); Annual Report of the Minimum Wage Board of the District of Columbia for the Period June 10, 1937 to December 31, 1937 [no imprint].

⁵⁹ A much fuller discussion of this measure of the Board's success is contained in my book ms. in preparation, Bound By Our Constitution: Women, Workers and Minimum Wage Lays, ch. 6.

⁶⁰ Perry, Elisabeth I., Belle Moskowitz: Feminine Politics and the Exercise of Power in the Age of Alfred E. Smith (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), esp. xii and 150–60Google Scholar; Cott, , Grounding of Modern Feminism, ch. 7, esp. 231Google Scholar. See also Hart, Vivien, “Behind Every Successful Man?” journal of American Studies, 23 (1989), 91–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McGerr, Michael, “Political Style and Women's Power, 1830–1930,” journal of American History, 77 (1990), 864–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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⁶⁴ “Conversation Between Beyer and Hart,” 41, 44Google Scholar; Perry, , Moskovitz, 158.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ On this transitional period, see Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 245–96.Google Scholar My “conviction bureaucrats” may be contrasted with the individualistic male “heroic bureaucrats” studied in Lewis, Eugene, Public Entrepreneurship: Toward a Theory of Bureaucratic Political Power (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980).Google Scholar See esp. 228–29: “What is it about these men and these organizations which makes it possible for them to twist and turn the confines of the law, custom, role, and received value in order that their will be done?”

⁶⁶ See Cook, Blanche Wiesen, “Female Support Networks and Political Activism: Lillian Wald, Crystal Eastman, Emma Goldman,” Chrysalis (1977), 43–61Google Scholar; Freedman, Estelle, “Separatism as Strategy: Female Institution Building and American Feminism, 1870–1930,” Feminist Studies, 5 (1979), 512–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sklar, Kathryn Kish, “Hull House in the 1890s: A Community of Women Reformers,” Signs, 10 (1985), 658–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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⁷⁰ I owe the question of the automatic association of marginalization with ineffectiveness to Elisabeth Perry. See also Watson, , “The State of Play,” in Playing the State, ed. Watson, 10–11.Google Scholar