Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T13:59:42.788Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“This Social Mother in Whose Household We All Live”: Berkeley Mayor J. Stitt Wilson's Early Twentieth-Century Socialist Feminism1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2014

Stephen E. Barton
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

J. Stitt Wilson, mayor of Berkeley from 1911 to 1913, supported women's suffrage because he believed it would lead to a revaluation of the feminine and maternal values of cooperation and care and, along with the labor movement, provide the basis for creation of a socialist society that would embody the true values of Christianity. A rare example of a male activist and intellectual for whom women's equality was fundamental to his beliefs rather than auxiliary to them, Wilson drew his views from a mixture of Social Gospel; the labor movement; feminism; and socialism, particularly the maternalist socialism developed in parts of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and the settlement house movement. Perhaps his most intellectually creative moment came when he applied Henry George's analysis of urban land values to a socialist and feminist vision of the city as a “social mother.” His election and work as mayor illustrate the overlap between the urban socialist and progressive social reform programs, while his failure to win any further elections reflects the divisions between them over the nature of capitalism.

Type
Essays
Information
The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , Volume 13 , Issue 4 , October 2014 , pp. 532 - 563
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

This paper began as one of the Berkeley Historical Society presentations commemorating the hundredth anniversary of women's suffrage in California. I am grateful to Sherry Jeanne Katz, Douglas Firth Anderson, and two anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments and suggestions.

References

2 Anderson, Douglas Firth, “‘An Active and Unceasing Campaign of Social Education’: J. Stitt Wilson and Herronite Socialist Christianity” in Socialism and Christianity in Early Twentieth-Century America, ed. Dorn, Jacob H. (Westport, CT, 1998), 41–64Google Scholar; Anderson, “The Reverend J. Stitt Wilson and Christian Socialism in California” in Religion and Society in the American West, ed. Guarneri, Carl and Alvarez, David (Lanham, MD, 1987), 375–400Google Scholar. See also McKanan, Dan, “The Implicit Religion of Radicalism: Socialist Party Theology, 1900–1934,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 78 (Sept. 2010): 750–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Anderson, “The Reverend J. Stitt Wilson,” 376–77.

4 J. Stitt Wilson, “Jesus in the Labor Movement,” Intercollegian, Nov. 1922.

5 New York Call, Oct. 31, 1915.

6 Michael Hanika, “J. Stitt Wilson: California Socialist” (MA thesis, California State University Hayward, 1972), 62–63.

7 Geoghegan, Vincent, “Socialism and Christianity in Edwardian Britain,” Utopian Studies 10.2 (1999): 55Google Scholar; Jones, Peter d'A., The Christian Socialist Revival, 1877–1914: Religion, Class and Social Consciousness in Late–Victorian England (Princeton, 1968), 426–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Anderson, “An Active and Unceasing Campaign,” 47. Wilson, J. Stitt, How I Became a Socialist and Other Papers (Berkeley, 1912)Google Scholar, collects many of the speeches he gave in England and Wales. New York Times, Sept. 21, 1908; New York Sun, Sept. 21, 1908.

8 Oakland Tribune, Mar. 31, 1911.

9 Ibid.

10 Berkeley Daily Gazette, Feb. 9, 18, 28, 1911; Herny, Ed, Rideout, Shelley, and Wadell, Katie, Berkeley Bohemia: Artists and Visionaries of the Early Twentieth Century (Salt Lake City, 2008), 140–41Google Scholar.

11 Hendrickson, Kenneth E. Jr., “Tribune of the People: George R. Lunn and the Rise and Fall of Christian Socialism in Schenectady” in Socialism and the Cities, ed. Stave, Bruce M. (Port Washington NY, 1975), 72–98Google Scholar; Judd, Richard W., Socialist Cities: Municipal Politics and the Grass Roots of American Socialism (Albany, NY, 1989)Google Scholar.

12 San Francisco Call, Apr. 3, 1911; Oakland Tribune, Apr. 22, 1911.

13 J. Stitt Wilson, “The Story of a Socialist Mayor,” Western Comrade, Sept. 1913; see also Berkeley Daily Gazette, Jan. 6, 8, 11, 22, 23, 27, 1912.

14 Berkeley Daily Gazette, Jan. 11, 1913.

15 Commonwealth, July 3, 1913; New York Call, Sept. 12, 1911.

16 J. Stitt Wilson to Caroline Severance, Aug. 26, 1911, folder 48, box 57, Caroline Maria Seymour Severance Papers, Huntington Library.

17 Berkeley Independent, Oct. 6, 1911.

18 Berkeley Independent, Sept. 29, 1911.

19 Judd, Socialist Cities, 13–14, 32–35, 63. Kipnis, Ira, The American Socialist Movement, 1897–1912 (New York, 1952), 112–20Google Scholar.

20 Oakland Tribune, Apr. 2, 1911; Holli, Melvin G., Reform in Detroit: Hazen S. Pingree and Urban Politics (New York, 1969)Google Scholar.

21 Jones, Samuel M., Letters of Love and Labor (Toledo, OH, 1900), 83Google Scholar; Toledo Bee, Mar. 4, 1901; Anderson, “An Active and Unceasing Campaign of Social Education,” 46.

22 Judd, Socialist Cities, 16.

23 The City for the People, Apr. 3, 1913. (This was Wilson's campaign newsletter.)

24 “W. Berkeley Socialists Renew Wilson Attack,” Oakland Tribune, Mar. 18, 1912.

25 J. Stitt Wilson to Caroline Severance, Aug. 26, 1911, folder 48, box 57, Severance Papers.

26 “West End Local Attacks Mayor,” Berkeley Gazette, Feb. 29, 1912; “Making Young Scabs in Berkeley,” Revolt, Aug. 26, 1911.

27 Flanagan, Maureen A., Seeing With Their Hearts: Chicago Women and the Vision of the Good City, 1871–1933 (Princeton, 2002)Google Scholar; Flanagan, Maureen A., America Reformed: Progressives and Progressivisms, 1890s–1920s (New York, 2007)Google Scholar.

28 Howe, Frederic C., The City: The Hope of Democracy (New York, 1906)Google Scholar, 175.

29 Eugene V. Debs, “Enfranchisement of Women,” Progressive Woman, Mar. 1909, 5; Debs, “Woman—Comrade and Equal,” Progressive Woman, Nov. 1909, 2.

30 Buhle, Mari Jo, Women and American Socialism: 1870–1920 (Urbana, 1983)Google Scholar; Sherry J. Katz, “Dual Commitments: Feminism, Socialism and Women's Political Activism in California, 1890–1920” (PhD diss., UCLA, 1991), 100–52.

31 Gullett, Gayle, Becoming Citizens: The Emergence and Development of the California Women's Movement, 1880–1911 (Urbana, 2000), 111Google Scholar.

32 Katz, “Dual Commitments,” 62, 65–66, 319.

33 Henderson, Sandra L., “The Civitas of Women's Political Culture: The Twentieth Century Club of Berkeley, 1904–1929” in California Women and Politics: From the Gold Rush to the Great Depression, ed. Cherny, Robert W., Irwin, Mary Ann, and Wilson, Ann Marie (Lincoln, NE, 2011)Google Scholar, 177, 191.

34 Katz, “Dual Commitments,” 163, 209. Los Angeles Herald, Feb. 14, 1902. “Will Honor Memory of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, San Francisco Women Suffrage Association Arranges to Hold a Grand Meeting,” San Francisco Call, Nov. 23, 1902.

35 “Socialists Plan to Boost Wilson,” Los Angeles Herald, July 16, 1910.

36 Gullett, Becoming Citizens, 173–75; Mead, Rebecca J., How the Vote Was Won: Woman Suffrage in the Western United States, 1868–1914 (New York, 2004)Google Scholar, 129.

37 See also Katz, “Dual Commitments,” 341.

38 Berkeley Gazette, Aug. 14, 1912.

39 J. Stitt Wilson to Hester Harland, Aug. 16, 1911. Hester Harland Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

40 Katz, Sherry J., “A Politics of Coalition: Socialist Women and the California Women Suffrage Movement, 1900–1911” in One Woman, One Vote: Rediscovering the Woman Suffrage Movement, ed. Wheeler, Marjorie Spruill (Troutdale, OR, 1995), 245–62Google Scholar; Katz, “Redefining ‘The Political’: Socialist Women and Party Politics in California, 1900–1920” in We Have Come to Stay: American Women and Political Parties: 1880–1960, ed. Gustafson, Melanie, Miller, Kristie, and Perry, Elisabeth (Albuquerque, 1999), 23–32Google Scholar.

41 Englander, Susan, “We Want the Ballot for Very Different Reasons: Club Women, Union Women and the Internal Politics of the Suffrage Movement, 1896–1911” in California Women and Politics, ed. Cherny et al. , 209–35Google Scholar.

42 Kazin, Michael, Barons of Labor: The San Francisco Building Trades and Union Power in the Progressive Era (Urbana, 1987)Google Scholar; San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 1, 1911.

43 San Francisco Call, Sept. 30, Oct. 1, 3, 5, 8, 1911.

44 Kraditor, Aileen, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement, 1890–1920 (New York, 1965), 43–74Google Scholar; Gullett, Becoming Citizens, 151–200.

45 Mead, How the Vote Was Won, 5, 136–37.

46 “Final Plea for Votes for Women: Record Breaking Crowd Hears Mayor Wilson, Miss McLean and Others,” Berkeley Independent, Oct. 10, 1911; “Suffragists Fill Hall at Last Rally,” The Sun and the Letter (Berkeley), Oct. 14, 1911.

47 “Suffrage Is Defended by Mayor Wilson,” Berkeley Daily Gazette, Sept. 2, 1911.

48 Mari Jo Buhle, Women and American Socialism, 49–103.

49 Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “The Equilibrium of Sex,” Commonwealth, June 24, 1897, 12; Dubois, Ellen Carol and Smith, Richard Candida, ed., Elizabeth Cady Stanton: Feminist as Thinker (New York, 2007)Google Scholar.

50 Katz, “Dual Commitments.”

51 Thomas, John L., Alternative America: Henry George, Edward Bellamy, Henry Demarest Lloyd and the Adversary Tradition (Cambridge, MA, 1983)Google Scholar.

52 George, Henry, Progress and Poverty (1879; New York, 1992)Google Scholar, 366.

53 Berkeley Independent, Oct. 20, 21, 1912.

54 J. Stitt Wilson, “Some Suggestions for Reform in Taxation” in Proceedings, Fourteenth Annual Convention, League of California Municipalities, Santa Barbara, CA, Oct. 25, 1911, 154–56.

55 Epstein, Barbara Leslie, The Politics of Domesticity: Women, Evangelism and Temperance in Nineteenth Century America (Middletown, CT, 1981)Google Scholar.

56 Frances Willard to Susan B. Anthony, Jan. 26, 1898, quoted in Kraditor, Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement, 68.

57 On the influence of Bellamy, see Epstein, The Politics of Domesticity, 142; and Buhle, Women and American Socialism, 80–81; On Herron, see Craig, Robert, Religion and Radical Politics: An Alternative Christian Tradition in the United States (Philadelphia, 1995)Google Scholar, 61.

58 Dubois, Ellen Carol, “Woman Suffrage Around the World: Three Phases of Suffragist Internationalism” in Suffrage and Beyond: International Feminist Perspectives, ed. Daley, Caroline and Nolan, Melanie (New York, 1994)Google Scholar, 259.

59 Wilson, J. Stitt, The Message of Socialism to the Church: An Address Delivered before the Bay Association of Congregational Churches and Ministers, Oakland, California, U.S.A., September 13, 1904 (Cardiff, Wales, 1909)Google Scholar; Wilson, J. Stitt, “Why Women Should Be Given the Ballot,” Railway Carmen's Journal, Apr. 1916, 214–15Google Scholar.

60 The New Hampshire (Durham, NH), Jan. 28. 1920.

61 Jane Addams, “Working Woman and the Ballot,” Women's Home Companion, Apr. 1908; Jane Addams, “Why Women Should Vote,” Ladies' Home Journal, Jan. 1910.

62 Tucker, Cynthia Grant, Healer in Harm's Way: Mary Collson, A Clergywoman in Christian Science (Knoxville, 1994), 47–49Google Scholar.

63 Anderson, “The Reverend J. Stitt Wilson,” 375, 377.

64 Douglas Firth Anderson, “In the Religious Borderlands of the Urban West: Protestant Anglophone Culture and Institutions in Metropolitan San Francisco, 1900–1920,” unpublished manuscript, Northwestern College, Orange City, IA, 361–62.

65 Roosevelt, Theodore, Theodore Roosevelt's Confession of Faith before the Progressive National Convention (New York, 1912)Google Scholar; Congdon, C. H., Progressive Battle Hymns (New York, 1912)Google Scholar.

66 San Francisco Call, Oct. 10, 1911. See also Wilson, J. Stitt, The Tragic Game of Capitalism: Being an Open Letter to the People of the United States concerning the Injustice of the Present Social Order (Berkeley, 1906)Google Scholar, 13.

67 J. Stitt Wilson, The Message of Socialism to the Church, 18.

68 “Berkeley's Mayor Sets Pace in Suffrage Campaign,” San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 6, 1911.

69 San Francisco Call, Nov. 19, 1911.

70 Skocpol, Theda, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, MA, 1992)Google Scholar, 350.

71 “Triumph of Suffrage Is Celebrated,” San Francisco Call, Oct. 23, 1911.

72 J. Stitt Wilson to Caroline Severance, Nov. 5, 1911, folder 48, box 57, Severance Papers.

73 “Socialist Uses Stage to Help Him Win Congressional Race,” Tacoma Times, Sept. 24, 1912.

74 “Stitt Wilson Is Confident,” Berkeley Gazette, Oct. 28, 1912.

75 J. Stitt Wilson, “Open Letter to the Women of Alameda County, From J. Stitt Wilson, Socialist Candidate for Congress, Sixth District,” repr. in Wilson, J. Stitt, Vocational Education, Appeal to Women, Story of a Socialist Mayor, and Other Papers (Berkeley, 1913)Google Scholar, 14, 16–17.

76 “Mayor Wilson Is Not in Contest for Re-Election,” San Francisco Call, Feb. 20, 1913; J. Stitt Wilson, “Letter to Berkeley Socialists Declining the Nomination for the Mayoralty of Berkeley,” Feb. 19, 1913, repr. in Vocational Education, 32–36.

77 California Social Democrat, Feb. 8, 1913.

78 Ibid., Feb. 22, 1913.

79 Ferrier, William Warren, Berkeley, California: The Story of the Evolution of a Hamlet into a City of Culture and Commerce (Berkeley, 1933), 267–69Google Scholar; Berkeley Gazette, Dec. 27, 1912.

80 California Social Democrat, June 21, 1913.

81 J. Stitt Wilson, “After Suffrage, What?” California Social Democrat, June 13, 1914.

82 Hurley, Teresa and Harrison, Jarrod, “Awed by the Women's Clubs: Women Voters and Moral Reform, 1913–1914” in California Women and Politics, ed. Cherny et al. , 237–61Google Scholar; Mark Hopkins, “No Undue Familiarity: Gender, Vice and the Campaign to Regulate Dance Halls, 1911–1921” in California Women and Politics, 289–307.

83 Wilson, J. Stitt, The Harlots and the Pharisees: Or, The Barbary Coast in a Barbarous Land (Berkeley, 1913), 1–2Google Scholar.

84 Ibid., 12.

85 Rev. C. F. Aked, “Mr. Stitt Wilson's Sneers a Discredit,” Chicago Examiner, Oct. 7, 1913, 16.

86 J. Stitt Wilson, “Revolutionary Religion: The Call of Christ to the Christian Church, A Reply to Rv. Dr. Charles F. Aked of the First Congregational Church of San Francisco,” New York Call, Mar. 12, 1916, Sunday magazine, 3–4.

87 Berkeley Daily Gazette, Jan. 26, 1917.

88 Wilson, Vocational Education.

89 Prudence Stokes Brown, “Learn Living and Loving,” Western Comrade, Oct. 1915, 22.

90 Herny, Rideout and Wadell, Berkeley Bohemia.

91 Day Book (Chicago), May 27, 1915.

92 Day Book (Chicago), Apr. 5, 1916.

93 New York Times, Oct. 31, 1915; Des Moines Daily News, May 4, 14, 1916.

94 Berkeley Daily Gazette, Jan. 25, Feb. 8, 1915. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, The Man-Made World: Or Our Androcentric Culture (New York, 1911)Google Scholar.

95 Chicago Tribune, Feb. 22, 1915. Oakland Tribune, Nov. 26, 1916.

96 Oakland Tribune, Feb. 22, 29, 1917.

97 Berkeley Daily Gazette, Sept. 9, 10, 1917.

98 Wilson, J. Stitt, Constructive Christian Democracy: An Outline of Fundamentals in the Message and Movement of Applied Christianity (Berkeley, 1919)Google Scholar, 3.

99 Quotation from 1925 in Shedd, Clarence P., Two Centuries of Student Christian Movements (New York, 1934)Google Scholar, 394.

100 Wilson, J. Stitt, The Christ-Spirit in the Animal World (Berkeley, 1923)Google Scholar.

101 Oakland Tribune, July 9, 1929.

102 Wilson, J. Stitt, The Tragic Game of Capitalism: Being an Open Letter to the People of the United States Concerning the Injustice of the Present Social Order (Berkeley, 1906)Google Scholar, 16.