An earlier version of this paper was presented at the session on “Finding the Origins of Welfare States” at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington D.C., September 1, 1988 and at the Social Science History Association Meeting, Washington D.C., November 1989. For suggestions and criticisms that helped us make revisions for publication, we thank fellow members of that panel, as well as Christopher Howard, Susan Pedersen, Sylvia Walby, Michele Naples, Linda Gordon, and an anonymous reviewer for this journal.

1. Berkowitz, Edward and McQuaid, Kim, Creating the Welfare State: The Political Economy of Twentieth-Century Reform (New York: Praeger, 1980), p. 36Google Scholar.

2. Hay, Roy “Employers and Social Policy in Britain: The Evolution of Welfare Legislation, 1905–14,” Social History 4 (1977), pp. 449–50Google Scholar.

3. On British social policies, see: Ogus, A.I., “Great Britain,” The Evolution of Social Insurance, 1881–1981, edited by Kohler, Peter A. and Zacher, Hans F. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1982) pp. 150–64Google Scholar; Gilbert, Bentley B., The Evolution of National Insurance in Great Britain: The Origins of the Welfare State (London: Michael Joseph, 1966)Google Scholar; and Thane, Pat, The Foundations of the Welfare State (London and New York: Longman's, 1982)Google Scholar.

4. Thane, Foundations, p. 85.

5. I'edersen, Susan, “The Failure of Feminism in the Making of the British Welfare State,” Radical History Review 43 (1989): 86–110CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6. For discussion and references, see Orloff, Ann Shola and Skocpol, Theda, “Why Not Equal Protection? Explaining the Politics of Public Social Spending in Britain, 1900–1911, and the United States, 1880s–1920,” American Sociological Review 49 (12 1984), pp. 737–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7. Quadagno, Jill, The Transformation of Old Age Security: Class and Politics in the American Welfare State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), pp. 64–72Google Scholar.

8. Pierce, Lloyd F., “The Activities of the American Association for Labor Legislation in Behalf of Social Security and Protective Labor Legislation” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1953)Google Scholar.

9. Nelson, Daniel, Unemployment Insurance: The American Experience, 1915–1935 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), pp. 17–18Google Scholar.

10. Numbers, Ronald, Almost Persuaded: American Physicians and Compulsory Health Insurance, 1912–1920 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978)Google ScholarPubMed.

11. Thompson, Laura A., Laws Relating to ‘Mothers' Pensions’ in the United States, Canada, Denmark, and New Zealand, Children's Bureau, U.S. Department of Labor, Legal Series No.4, Bureau Publication No.63 (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1919)Google Scholar.

12. Bureau, Children's, United States Department of Labor, Mother's Aid, 1921, Bureau Publication no.220 (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1933)Google Scholar.

13. Sklar, Kathryn Kish, “ ‘The Greater Part of the Petitioners are Female’: The Reduction of Women's Working Hours in the Paid Labor Force, 1840–1917,” Worktime and Industrialization: An International History, edited by Cross, Gary (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988). pp. 103–33Google Scholar

14. Harris, Jose, Unemployment and Politics: A Study in British Social Policy, 1886–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), pp. 64–73Google Scholar.

15. See Sells, Dorothy “The Acts of 1909 and 1918” The British Trade Boards System (London: P.S. King and Son, Ltd., 1923), pp. 1–6Google Scholar.

16. Ibid, pp. 178–83.

17. Brandeis, Elizabeth, Labor Legislation, edited by Commons, John R. et al. , History of Labor in the United States, 1896–1932 (New York: Macmillan, 1935)Google Scholar, volume 4, chapter 3.

18. Ibid, chapter 5.

19. Ibid, chapter 4.

20. For examples, see: Cutright, Phillips, “Political Structure, Economic Development and National Social Security Programs,” American Journal of Sociology 70 (1965): 537–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jackman, Robert, Politics and Social Equality: Comparative Analysis (New York: Wiley, 1975)Google Scholar; Kerr, Clark et al. , Industrialism and Industrial Man (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964)Google Scholar; Wilensky, Harold and Lebeaux, Charles, Industrial Society and Social Welfare (New York: Free Press, 1965)Google Scholar; and Wilensky, Harold, The Welfare State and Equality: Structural and Ideological Roots of Public Expenditures (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975)Google Scholar.

21. See Flora, Peter and Alber, Jens, “Modernization, Democratization and the Development of Welfare States in Western Europe,” in The Development of Welfare States in Europe and America, edited by Flora, Peter and Heidenheimer, Arnold (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1981) pp. 37–80Google Scholar; and Collier, David and Messick, Richard. “Prerequisites versus Diffusion: Testing Alternative Explanations of Social Security Adoption,” American Political Science Review 69 (1975): 1299–1315CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22. This argument is further specified in Orloff and Skocpol, “Why Not Equal Protection?”

23. See, for example, the discussions in: Amenta, Edwin et al. , “The Political Origins of Unemployment Insurance in Five American States,” Studies in American Political Development 2 (1987): 137–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bryant, Keith L. Jr, “Kate Bernard, Organized Labor, and Social Justice in Oklahoma During the Progressive Era,” Journal of Southern History 35 (1969): 145–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Morlan, Robert L., Political Prairie Fire: The Nonpartisan League, 1915–1922 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1955)Google Scholar; Tripp, Joseph Frederick, “Progressive Labor Laws in Washington State (1900–1925)” (Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 1973)Google Scholar; and Vallely, Richard M., Radicalism in the States: The Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party and the American Political Economy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

24. Hartz, Louis, The Liberal Tradition in America (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1955)Google Scholar.

25. Rimlinger, Gaston, Welfare Policy and Industrialization in Europe, America, and Russia (New York: Wiley, 1971)Google Scholar.

26. Lubove, Roy, The Struggle for Social Security, 1900–1935 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968)Google Scholar.

27. Freeden, Michael, The New Liberalism: An Ideology of Social Reform (London: Macmillan, 1973)Google Scholar.

28. Morgan, Kenneth O., “The Future at Work: Anglo–American Progressivism, 1870–1917,” Contrast and Connection: Bicentennial Essays in Anglo-American History, edited by Allen, H.C. and Thompson, Roger (Columbus: Ohio University Press, 1976) pp. 245–71Google Scholar; and Mowat, Charles L., “Social Legislation in Britain and the United States in the Early Twentieth Century: A Problem in the History of Ideas,” Historical Studies: Papers Read Before the Irish Conference of Historians, Volume 7, edited by Beckett, J.C. (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1969) pp. 81–96Google Scholar.

29. For example, in the United States during the late nineteenth century, there were two competing visions of organized labor's relationship to the state, one of which, producerism, envisaged a larger scope for state action to help labor. That the other tradition, pure and simple trade unionism, predominated by the turn of the century was due in large measure to the obstacles American labor groups (and intellectuals who wanted to cooperate with them) faced in achieving stable redistributive or regulatory gains through the U.S. govern-mental system. “Liberal values” in the abstract did not determine the outcome. Rather, distributively oriented political parties discouraged programmatic political alliances, and the courts were prone to reverse statutes favorable to organized labor. See Shefter, Martin, “Trade Unions and Political Machines: The Organization and Disorganization of the American Working Class in the Late Nineteenth Century,” in Working Class Formation: Nineteenth Century Patterns in Europe and the United States, edited by Katznelson, Ira and Zolberg, Aristide (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986) pp. 197–276Google Scholar; and Hattam, Victoria, “Economic Visions and Political Strategies: American Labor and the State, 1865–1896,” Studies in American Political Development 4 (1990):82–129CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30. For surveys of this extensive literature, see Shalev, Michael, “The Social Democratic Model and Beyond: Two Generations of Comparative Research on the Welfare State,” Comparative Social Research 6 (1983): 315–51Google Scholar; and Skocpol, Theda and Amenta, Edwin, “States and Social Policies,” Annual Review of Sociology 12 (1986): 139–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31. See Skocpol and Amenta, “States and Social Policies.”

32. An analysis of Civil War benefits appears in chapter 3, Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Politics of Social Provision in the United States, 1870s–1920s. Harvard University Press, forthcoming.

33. Webb, R.K., Modern England: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1970), pp. 53–57Google Scholar.

34. Smellie, K.B., A Hundred Years of English Government (London: Duckworth, 1950), p. 69Google Scholar.

35. Ibid, pp. 69–70.

36. Cohen, Emmeline, The Growth of the British Civil Service, 1790–1939 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1941)Google Scholar, Chapter 7; and Finer, Herman, The British Civil Service (London: Allen and Unwin, 1937), pp. 45–49Google Scholar.

37. Cohen, Growth of Civil Service, pp. 81–83; Greaves, H.R., The Civil Service in the Changing State (London: George C. Harrap, 1947), pp. 21–32Google Scholar; and Shefter, Martin, “Party and Patronage: Germany, England and Italy,” Politics and Society 7 (1977): 434–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38. Davidson, Roger and Lowe, R., “Bureaucracy and Innovation in British Welfare Policy, 1870–1945,” The Emergence of the Welfare State in Britain and Germany, 1850–1950, edited by Mommsen, W.J. (London: Croom Helm, 1981), pp. 268–69Google Scholar.

39. Davidson, Roger, “Llewellyn Smith and the Labour Department,” in Studies in the Growth of Nineteenth Century Government, edited by Sutherland, Gillian (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972) pp. 227–62Google Scholar.

40. Douglas, Roy, The History of the Liberal Party, 1895–1970 (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1971), pp. 1–17Google Scholar; Hanham, H.J., Elections and Party Management: Politics in the Time of Disraeli and Gladstone (London: Longmans Green, 1959)Google Scholar; McGill, Barry “Francis Schnadhorst and the Liberal Party Organization,” Journal of Modern History 34 (1962): 19–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Shefter, “Party and Patronage,” pp. 438–41.

41. Collins, D., “The Introduction of Old Age Pensions in Great Britain,” Historical Journal 8 (1965): 246–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Harris, Unemployment and Politics.

42. Gilbert, Evolution of National Insurance, pp. 179–88, 196.

43. Emy, H.V., “The Impact of Financial Policy on English Party Politics before 1914,” Historical Journal 15 (1972): 103–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44. Skowronek, Stephen, Building a New American State: The Expanson of National Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chapter 2.

45. Keller, Morton, Affairs of State: Public Life in Nineteenth Century America (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1977), chapters 7, 8, 14CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also the relevant chronological portions of Shefter, Martin. “Party, Bureaucracy, and Political Change in the United States,” Political Parties: Development and Decay, edited by Maisel, Louis and Cooper, Joseph (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1978) pp. 211–65Google Scholar, and McCormick, Richard, “Political Parties in American History,” The Party Period and Public Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986) chapter 4Google Scholar.

46. McCormick, Richard, “The Party Period and Public Policy: An Exploratory Hypothesis,” Journal of American History 66 (1979): 279–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47. Keller, Affairs of State, pp. 311–12; McMurry, Donald M., “The Political Significance of the Pension Question, 1885–1897,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 9 (1922): 19–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Sanders, Heywood, “ ‘Paying for the Bloody Shirt’: The Politics of Civil War Pensions,” Political Benefits, edited by Rundquist, Barry (Lexington: D.C. Heath, 1980) pp. 137–60Google Scholar.

48. Brown, Josephine, Public Relief, 1929–1939 (New York: Henry Holt, 1940)Google Scholar, chapter 1.

49. Ibid, pp. 22–23.

50. Skowronek, Building a New American State, part II.

51. Schiesl, Martin, The Politics of Efficiency: Municipal Administration and Reform in America, 1880–1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977)Google Scholar.

52. Buenker, John D., Urban Liberalism and Progressive Reform (New York: W.W. Norton, 1970)Google Scholar; and Wiebe, Robert, The Search for Order, 1877–1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967)Google Scholar, chapter 6.

53. Burnham, Walter Dean, Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics (New York: W.W. Norton, 1970)Google Scholar; and Shefter “Party, Bureaucracy, and Political Change.”

54. Hays, Samuel P., “The Politics of Reform in Municipal Government in the Progressive Era,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 55 (10 1964): 157–69Google Scholar.

55. Quoted in Report of the Commission on Old Age Pensions, Annuities, and Insurance, Massachussetts House Document Number 1400 (Boston, MA: Wright and Potter, State Printers, 1910), p. 238.

56. Ibid; and Linford, Alton A., Old Age Assistance in Massachusetts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949)Google Scholar.

57. Brandeis, Labor Legislation, edited by John R. Commons et.al., History of Labor in the United States, 1896–1932, chapters 6 and 8; Berkowitz and McQuaid, Creating the Welfare State, pp. 37–40; and Friedman, Lawrence M. and Ladinsky, Jack, “Social Change and the Law of Industrial Accidents,” American Law and the Constitutional Order: Historical Perspectives, edited by Friedman, Lawrence M. and Scheiber, Harry N. (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1978), pp. 269–82Google Scholar.

58. Pierce, “Activities of the American Association for Labor Legislation,” especially chapter 4; and Athey, Louis L., “The Consumers' Leagues and Social Reform, 1890–1923” (Ph.D. diss., University of Delaware, 1965)Google Scholar, especially chapters 6–8.

59. On the aspirations of American labor law reformers, see ibid, along with Kelley, Florence, “Minimum-Wage Laws,” Journal of Political Economy 20(10) (12 1912): 999–1010CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Seager, Henry Rogers, “Minimum Wage as Part of a Program for Social Reform,” Annals of the American Academy 48 (07 1913): 3–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Seager, , “Theory of the Minimum Wage,” American Labor Legislation Review 3 (02 1913): 81–91Google Scholar. On the British Trade Boards laws, see Sells, British Trade Boards Systems, pp. 93–94 and Thane, Foundations of the Welfare State, pp. 148–50. On the fascination of American reformers with New Zealand's even more comprehensive regulatory system for working conditions and labor disputes arbitration, see Coleman, Peter J., Progresswism and the World of Reform: New Zealand and the Origins of the American Welfare State (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1987)Google Scholar.

60. For an overview, see Brandeis, Labor Legislation.

61. Ibid, chapter 9.

62. Ibid, chapter 5.

63. Quoted in ibid, pp. 670–71.

64. Ibid, p. 671.

65. Ibid, p. 681.

66. Ibid, pp. 556–57.

67. Justice Gray's opinion in Commonwealth v. Beatty 15 Pa. Super.5, 8, 16(1900) is quoted in Urofsky, Melvin I., “State Courts and Protective Legislation during the Progressive Era: A Reevaluation,” The Journal of American History 72(1) (06 1985): 74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

68. From the Supreme Court's opinion in Muller v. Oregon, 208 U.S. 412(1908), re-printed in Louis D. Brandeis and Josephine Goldmark, Women in Industry, introduced by Leon Stein and Philip Taft (New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1969), pp. 6–7.

69. As quoted in Athey dissertation “Consumers' Leagues and Social Reform,” p. 226.

70. Adkins v. Children's Hospital, 261 U.S. 525(1923).

71. On the reformers' hopes between 1898 and 1905, see Goldmark, Josephine, Impatient Crusader: Florence Kelley's Life Story (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1953), pp. 144–49Google Scholar; and Seager, Henry Rogers, “The Attitude of American Courts Toward Restrictive Labor Laws,” Labor and Other Economic Essays, edited by Gulick, Charles A. Jr, (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1931) pp. 52–78Google Scholar.

72. The National Consumers' League, especially, sponsored research on the special physical vulnerabilities of women workers and became the nationally visible champion of maximum-hour and minimum-wage hours particularly applicable to females. The League's leaders did not entirely give up broader hopes for protective laws for all workers; and they even acted on these aspirations when they could. But its eyes were riveted above all on what the state courts and the U.S. Supreme Court would support in review. Until the bitter comeuppance of the 1923 Adkins decision, the League's leaders along with other American reformers presumed that the U.S. courts definitely would accept ever-stronger state interventions on behalf of women workers, while they would not accept hours limits or minimum-wage regulations encompassing adult males. Even after the 1917 Bunting decision, it was not clear that the American courts would permit gender-neutral labor regulations with any teeth. Many reformers hoped that regulations for women would eventually prove to be an “entering wedge” for legal hours restrictions and minimum wages for all workers. On these matters, see the Athey dissertation, “Consumers' Leagues and Social Reform,” especially chapter 8 on “Legal Defense of Labor Legislation.”

73. Marwick, Arthur, “The Labour Party and the Welfare State in Britain, 1900–1948,” American Historical Review 73 (1967): 380–403CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

74. Gompers, remarks appear in Commission to Study Social Insurance and Unemployment, Hearings Before the Committee on Labor on H.J. Res. 159, House of Representatives, Sixty-Fourth Congress, First Session, April 6 and 11, 1916 (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1916)Google Scholar. On the AFL and hours legislation, see Brandeis, Labor Legislation, pp. 554–57.

75. Cole, G.D.H., A Short History of the British Working-Class Movement, 1789–1947, revised edition (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1948)Google Scholar, part II.

76. Taft, Philip, The A.F. of L. in the Time of Gompers (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1957), p. 23Google Scholar, and chapter 2 generally.

77. Wolman, Leo, “The Extent of Labor Organization in the United States in 1910,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 30 (1916): 506CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

78. Thomson, Andrew William John, “The Reaction of the American Federation of Labor and the Trades Union Congress to Labor Law 1900–1935” (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1968), p. 75Google Scholar.

79. This argument is featured in Quadagno, Transformation of Old Age Security, pp. 10–12, and chapter 3. For a classic formulation, see Rogin, Michael, “Voluntarism: The Political Functions of an Antipolitical Doctrine,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 15(4) (07 1962): 521–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

80. Quadagno, Transformation of Old Age Security, pp. 64–72.

81. Green, William, “Trade Union Sick Funds and Compulsory Health Insurance,” American Labor Legislation Review 7(1) (03 1917): 91–95Google Scholar; and Nelson, Unemployment Insurance, p. 71.

82. See Reports of Proceedings for Annual Conventions of the American Federation of Labor.

83. Between 1910 and 1919, 31 percent of the U.S. labor force and 12 percent of the British labor force was employed in agriculture. For a series of tables comparing the socioeconomic characteristics and union densities of Britain, the United States, and the state of Massachusetts, see Orloff and Skocpol, “Why Not Equal Protection?,” pp. 733, 736.

84. Hays, Samuel P., The Response to Industrialism, 1885–1914 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), p. 95Google Scholar.

85. This point is developed in Mink, Gwendolyn, Old Labor and New Immigrants in American Political Development (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986)Google Scholar. This book does not, however, accurately present the full range of things the AFL unions were doing in politics.

86. Thomson dissertation, “Reaction to Labor Law,” pp. 672–73.

87. Kornbluh, Mark Lawrence, “From Participatory to Administrative Politics: A Social History of American Political Behavior, 1880–1918,” (Ph.D. diss., Thejohns Hopkins University, 1987), pp. 254–57Google Scholar, and chapter 5 generally.

88. For excellent histories and analyses, see: Thomson dissertation, “Reaction to Labor Law,” part 2; Victoria C. Hattam, “Producers Into Workers: Changing Conceptions of Class and American Political Development, 1806–1896” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, forthcoming).; Forbath, William E., “The Shaping of the American Labor Movement,” Harvard Law Review 102(6) (04 1989): 1111–1256CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Forbath, William E., “Law and the Shaping of Labor Politics in the United States and England” (Unpublished paper, UCLA Law School, 1990)Google Scholar.

89. Cole, History of British Working Class, pp. 291–96; and Thomson dissertation, “Reaction to Labor Law,” pp. 209–13.

90. Thomson dissertation, “Reaction to Labor Law,” pp. 43–56. The following several paragraphs also draw upon this comparative discussion of the structure and operations of the British and U.S. polities.

91. This label is used by both Hattam and Forbath. See note 88.

92. Freeden, New Liberalism.

93. See Burnham, Walter Dean, “The Appearance and Disappearance of the American Voter,” Current Crisis in American Politics, edited by Burnham, Walter Dean (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982)Google Scholar; and Burnham, , Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics (New York: W.W. Norton, 1970)Google Scholar, chapter 4.

94. Thomson dissertation, “Reaction to Labor Law,” pp. 689–708. See also the excellent discussion in Oestreicher, Richard, “Urban Working–Class Political Behavior and Theories of American Electoral Politics, 1870–1940,” Journal of American History 74(4) (03 1988): 1257–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

95. Bendix, Reinhard, Nation Building and Citizenship (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1964)Google Scholar; and Katznelson, Ira, “Working-Class Formation and the State: Nineteenth-century England in American Perspective,” Bringing the Slate Back In, edited by Evans, Peter B., Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, and Skocpol, Theda (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 757–84Google Scholar.

96. Cole, Short History, pp. 200–205; and Thomson dissertation, “Reaction to Labour Law,” pp. 502–505.

97. The following account is based upon ibid, pp. 505–33; and Cole, Short History, pp. 286–316.

98. Thomson dissertation, “Reaction to Labor Law,” pp. 675–77.

99. Pedersen, Susan, “The Failure of Feminism in the Making of the British Welfare State,” Radical History Review 43 (1989): 86–110CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

100. Thomson dissertation, “Reaction to Labor Law,” pp. 262–63.

101. Ibid, pp. 266–67.

102. Ibid, p. 276.

103. Ibid, p. 296.

104. Ibid, p. 287; and Taft, AFL in Time of Gompers, pp. 403–11.

105. Montgomery, David, The Fall of the House of Labor (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 452–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

106. See Reports of Proceedings for Annual Conventions of the American Federation of Labor from 1908 through 1914. The story of the national AFL's support for noncontributory old-age pensions is analyzed in Theda Skocpol, “Trade Unions and Social Legislation,” chapter 5, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers, forthcoming.

107. On the state federations and social legislation, see Anglim, Christopher and Gratton, Brian, “Organized Labor and Old Age Pensions,” International Journal of Aging and Human Development 25(2) (1987): 91–107CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Fink, Gary M., “Toward a New View of Labor and Politics,” Labor Search for Political Order: The Political Behavior of the Missouri Labor Movement, 1890–1940 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1973)Google Scholar; and Taft, Philip, Labor Politics American Style: The California Slate Federation of Labor (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), IntroductionCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

108. Thomson dissertation, “Reaction to Labor Law,” pp. 678–79.

109. Brandeis, Labor Legislation, p. 557.

110. Ibid, chapters 3 and 4; and Theda Skocpol, “Safeguarding the ‘Mothers of the Race’: Protective Legislation for Women Workers,” chapter 8 of Protecting Soldiers and Mothers, forthcoming.

111. Nelson, Unemployment Insurance, pp. 18, 70–71; Numbers, Almost Persuaded, p. 79; Starr, Paul, The Social Transformation of American Medicine (New York: Basic Books, 1982), p. 250Google Scholar; Tishler, Horace C., Self-Reliance and Social Security, 1870–1917 (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1971)Google Scholar; and “Labor Getting Behind Health Insurance,” The Survey 39 (1918): 708–709.

112. Nelson, Unemployment Insurance, chapter 6.

113. Sanders, Elizabeth, “Farmers and the State in the Progressive Era” (Department of Political Science, New School for Social Research, Spring 1989)Google Scholar; and Morlan, Political Prairie Fire, pp. 65–66.

114. Quadagno, Transformation of Old Age Security, chapter 3.

115. For some examples, see: Pegram, Thomas Ray, “Progressivism and Partisanship: Reformers, Politicians, and Public Policy in Illinois, 1870–1922” (Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, 1988), p. 123Google Scholar; Stuckey, Lorin, The Iowa State Federation of Labor, Bulletin of the State University of Iowa, Studies in the Social Sciences, Volume 4(3) (08 1916), p. 17Google Scholar; and Yellowitz, Irwin, Labor and the Progressive Movement in New York State, 1897–1916 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1965), p. 24Google Scholar, and chapter 2 generally.

116. Welter, Barbara, “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820–1860,” The American Family in Social-Historical Perspective, edited by Gordon, Michael (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1973), p. 225Google Scholar; Epstein, Barabara Leslie, The Politics of Domesticity (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1981), p. 81Google Scholar; and Cott, Nancy F., The Bonds of Womanhood: ‘Woman's Sphere’ in Xew England, 1780–1835 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977)Google Scholar, especially chapter 2 on “Domesticity.”

117. McGerr, Michael E., The Decline of Popular Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986)Google Scholar, chapters 1 and 2; and Baker, Paula, “The Domestication of Politics: Women and American Political Society, 1780–1920,” American Historical Review 85(3) (06 1984): 627–29Google Scholar. The label “party period,” referring to roughly 1830–1900, comes from McCor-mick, Richard L., “The Party Period and Public Policy: An Exploratory Hypothesis.” foumal of American History 66 (09 1979): 279–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

118. Baker, “Domestication of Politics,” p. 629.

119. Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985)Google Scholar, part 2; O'Neill, William, The Woman Movement: Feminism in the United Staies and England (London: Allen and Unwin, 1969), p. 20Google Scholar; and Alexander, Ruth M., “‘We Are Engaged as a Band of Sisters’: Class and Domesticity in the Washingtonian Temperance Movement, 1840–1850,” Journal of American History 75(3) (12 1988): 763–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Ryan, Mary P., Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790–1865 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981)Google Scholar, chapters 2 and 3; and Hewitt, Nancy A., Women's Activism and Social Change: Rochester, New York, 1822–1872 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984)Google Scholar. Ryan's and Hewett's analyses differ from Smith-Rosenberg's, but they too emphasize women's activism in a variety of reform associations. Hewett offers intriguing insights into the possibly different class bases of different types of female-based associations.

120. Ginsberg, Lori D., “Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality and the Work of Politics in the Northeastern United States, 1820–1885,” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1985)Google Scholar, chapters 5 and 6.

121. Epstein, Politics of Domesticity, pp. 119–20.

122. Quotations from Rothman, Sheila, Woman's Proper Place (New York: Basic Books, 1978), p. 67Google Scholar; and Borodin, Ruth, “‘A Baptism of Power and Liberty’: The Women's Crusade of 1873–1874,” in Woman's Being, Woman's Place: Female Identity and Vocation in American History (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1979), p. 121Google Scholar.

123. Epstein, Politics of Domesticity, pp. 120–25; and Rothman, Woman's Proper Place, pp. 67–68.

124. Epstein, Politics of Domesticity, p. 146.

125. Borodin, “ ‘A Baptism of Power and Liberty’: p. 283.

126. Blair, Karen J., The Clubwoman as Feminist: True Womanhood Redefined, 1868–1914 (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1980)Google Scholar.

127. Wilson, Margaret Gibbons, The American Woman in Transition: The Urban Influence, 1870–1920 (Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1979), p. 100Google Scholar; and Mary I. Wood, The History of the General Federation of Women's Clubs for the First Twenty-Two Years of Its Organization (New York: History Department, General Federation of Women's Clubs) p. 353.

128. See MrsBowlker, T.J., “Woman's Home-Making Function Applied to the Municipality,” The American City 6(6) (06 1912): 863Google Scholar. The entire issue of the journal contains valuable information on the civic activities of various women's clubs, as does Beard's, Mary RitterWoman's Work in Municipalities (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1915)Google Scholar.

129. Dorr, Rheta Childe, What Eight Million Women Want (New York: Kraus Reprint, 1971; originally 1910), p. 327Google Scholar. See also Wortman, Marlene Stein, “Domesticating the Nineteenth-Century American City,” Prospects: An Annual of American Cultural Studies 3 (1977)Google Scholar.

130. Attributed to the GFWC Civic Section in Wood, History of the General Federation of Women's Clubs, p. 116. This statement was part of a proposal made by the Section at the Fourth Biennial Convention of the GFWC in Denver, Colorado, June 21–27, 1908.

131. This statement was for some years part of the “Aims and Purposes of the National Congress of Mothers,” as listed in a box in each issue of the organization's official journal. See, for example, the October 1912 issue of Child-Welfare Magazine, p. 61.

132. These statistics come from Golden Jubilee History, 1897–1947 (Chicago,: National Congress of Parents and Teachers, 1947), p. 199; Harry, and Overstreet, Bonaro, Where Children Come First: A Study of the P. T.A. Idea (Chicago: National Congress of Parents and Teachers, 1949) p. 196Google Scholar; and Rothman, Woman's Proper Place, p. 104.

133. Newcomer, Mabel, A Century of Higher Education for American Women (New York: Harper, 1959), p. 46, Table 2Google Scholar.

134. O'Neill, The Woman Movement, p. 44.

135. Ibid, p. 57.

136. Vicinus, Martha, Independent Women: Work and Community for Single Women, 1850–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), p. 127Google Scholar.

137. Antler, Joyce, “The Educated Woman and Professionalization: The Struggle for a New Feminine Identity, 1890–1920” (Ph.D. diss., State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1977), pp. 27, 380–82Google Scholar.

138. Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct, p. 253.

139. Antler, “Educated Woman,” p. 419.

140. See Rousmaniere, John P., “Cultural Hybrid in the Slums: The College Woman and the Settlement House, 1889–1894,” American Quarterly 22 (1970): 45–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

141. Davis, Allen F., Spearheads for Reform: The Social Settlements and the Progressive Movement, 1890–1914 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967). p. 8Google Scholar. See also Abel, Emily K., “Toynbee Hall, 1884–1914,” Social Service Review 53(4) (12 1979): 606–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Picht, Werner, Toynbee Hall and the English Settlement Movement, revised edition translated from the German by Cowell, Lillian A. (London: G. Bells and Sons, 1914)Google Scholar.

142. Vicinus, Independent Women, p. 215. We do not mean to argue that British women settlers never became prominent reformers. Some did; for example, Eleanor Rathbone, who started out at the Liverpool Women's Settlement.

143. Abel, “Toynbee Hall,” pp. 614–15.

144. Reinders, Robert C., “Toynbee Hall and the American Settlement Movement,” Social Service Review 56(1) (03 1982): 48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

145. George Lansbury, as quoted in Vicinus, Independent Women, p. 215.

146. As quoted in Abel, “Toynbee Hall,” p. 623.

147. Ibid, pp. 622–25.

148. See Meacham, Standish, Toynbee Hall and Social Reform, 1880–1914 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987)Google Scholar, especially chapter 6 on “William Beveridge: ‘Benevolent, Bourgeois Bureaucrat’ ”; and Harris, Jose, William Beveridge: A Biography (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1977)Google Scholar.

149. Davis, Spearheads for Reform, chapters 1 and 2; and Reinders, “Toynbee Hall and American Movement.”

150. Davis, Spearheads for Reform, p. 12.

151. Reinders, “Toynbee Hall and American Movement,” pp. 45–50.

152. See Levine, Daniel, fane Addams and the Liberal Tradition (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1971)Google Scholar.

153. Davis, Allen Freeman, “Spearheads for Reform—The Social Settlements and the Progressive Movement, 1890–1914” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1959), p. 5Google Scholar, including note 17; and Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct, p. 254, note 20, citing a conversation with Allen Davis. The Davis dissertation contains material not subsequently included in Davis' book.

154. Picht, English Settlement Movement, p. 102.

155. This argument is developed in Sklar, Kathryn Kish, “Hull House in the 1890s: A Community of Women Reformers” Signs 10(4) (Summer 1985): 658–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

156. Davis, Allen F., “The Women's Trade Union League: Origins and Organization,” Labor History 5 (1964): 3–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

157. Kirkby, Diane, “ ‘The Wage Earning Woman and the State’: The National Women's Trade Union League and Protective Labor Legislation, 1903–1923,” Labor History 28(1) (1987): 54–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Dye, Nancy Schrom, As Equals and As Sisters: Feminism, the Labor Movement, and the Women's Trade Union League of New York (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1980)Google Scholar. These two scholars disagree about when and exactly why the WTUL became committed to campaigns for protective legislation; but they agree that it was a major emphasis for the organization.

158. Jacoby, Robin Miller, “The Women's Trade Union League and American Feminism,” Feminist Studies 3 (1975): 126–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

159. Jacoby, Robin Miller, “Feminism and Class Consciousness in the British and American Women's Trade Union Leagues, 1890–1925,” Liberating Women's History: Theoretical and Critical Essays, edited by Carroll, Berenice A. (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1976) pp. 137–60Google Scholar. See also Boone, Gladys, The Women's Trade Union Leagues in Great Britain and the United States of America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942)Google Scholar.

160. According to O'Neill, William L., Everyone Was Brave (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1971), p. 95:Google Scholar “Except for the vastly larger NAWSA [National American Women's Suffrage Association] no other feminist group seems to have attracted upper-class women in such numbers.” The NCL's Annual Reports show that President John Graham Brooks was often absent from Annual Meetings.

161. Athey, Louis Lee, “The Consumers' Leagues and Social Reform, 1890–1923” (Ph.D. diss., University of Delaware, 1965)Google Scholar, chapter 2; and Nathan, Maud, The Story of An Epoch-Making Movement (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page and Company, 1926)Google Scholar.

162. Information on numbers of state and local Consumers' Leagues appears in the NCL's Annual Reports.

163. A comprehensive biography of Florence Kelley, placing her in the context of the gender politics of turn-of-the-century America, is being prepared by Kathryn Kish Sklar. Meanwhile, see Goldmark, Josephine, Impatient Crusader (Urbana: University Press of Illinois, 1953)Google Scholar, chapter 5.

164. Wolfe, Allis Rosenberg, “Women, Consumerism, and the National Consumers' League in the Progressive Era, 1900–1923,” Labor History 16 (1975): 378–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Athey, “Consumers' Leagues and Social Reform.”

165. The term “public mothers” comes from Smith-Rosenberg, who develops this argument in Disorderly Conduct, pp. 263–64.

166. Not all of the women reform leaders of the Progressive Era believed that women thought differently from men. See the discussion of the views of Lathrop, Julia in Costin, Lela B., Two Sisters for Social Justice: A Biography of Grace and Edith Abbott (Urbana and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1983), p. viiiGoogle Scholar. The fact remains, however, that even Lathrop was willing to speak to the General Federation of Women's Clubs as if she did believe that women had unique qualities.

167. Arguments along these lines appear in Lehrer, Susan, Origins of Protective Labor Legislation for Women, 1905–1925 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987)Google Scholar; and Kessler-Harris, Alice, Out to Work (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982)Google Scholar.

168. See the examples of the New York metal polishers and the New York and Massachusetts molders discussed in Beyer, Clara M., History of Labor Legislation for Women in Three States, Bulletin No.66-Part I, Women's Bureau, U.S. Department of Labor (Washington D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1929): 169–73Google Scholar.

169. See Kirkby, Diane, “ ‘The Wage-Earning Woman and the State’: The National Women's Trade Union League and Protective Labor Legislation, 1903–1923,” Labor History 28(1) (1987): 54–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

170. Supporting evidence is detailed in Theda Skocpol, “Safeguarding the ‘Mothers of the Race’: Protective Legislation for Women Workers,” chapter 8 in Protecting Soldiers and Mothers, forthcoming. See also: Athey dissertation, “Consumers' Leagues and Social Re-form”; Beyer, Clara M., Labor Legislation for Women in Three Slates; Bulletin No.66-Part I, Women's Bureau, U.S. Department of Labor (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1929)Google Scholar; and Patterson, James T., “Mary Dewson and the American Minimum Wage Movement,” Labor History 5(2) (Spring 1964): 134–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

171. Brandeis, Labor Legislation, chapter 4.

172. Beyer, Labor Legislation for Women in Three States, pp. 129–31; and Hundley, Norris C. Jr, “Katherine Philips Edson and the Fight for the California Minimum Wage, 1912–1923,” Pacific Historical Review 29 (1960): 271–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

173. The involvement of the National Congress with this issue can be traced in their official publication, Child-Welfare Magazine. See especially MrsRobertson, G.H., “The State's Duty to Fatherless Children,” Child-Welfare Magazine 6(5) (01 1912): 156–60Google Scholar; and MrsSchoff, Frederick, “The Evolution of the Mother's Pension,” Child-Welfare Magazine 8(4) (12 1914)Google Scholar.

174. Official Report of the Eleventh Biennial Convention, General Federation of Women's Clubs, June 25-July 5, 1912, San Francisco, California, compiled and edited by MrsWelch, George O. (General Federation of Women's Clubs, 1912), p. 600Google Scholar. See also the discussion on p. 185. Documentation about the activities of State Federations appears in chapter 9 of Theda Skocpol's Protecting Soldiers and Mothers, forthcoming, which offers a full analysis of the role of women's groups in campaigns for mothers' pension legislation. Preliminary results of a quantitative study now under way indicate that State Federations of Women's Clubs had a significant effect on the priority of state enactments.

175. See Leff, Mark, “Consensus for Reform: The Mothers' Pension Movement in the Progressive Era,” Social Service Review 47 (1973): 397–417CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The Delineator's articles on mothers' pensions appeared from August 1912 through April 1913. On Hard's biography and connections to the settlement women, see Wedel, Janet Marie, “The Origins of State Patriarchy During the Progressive Era: A Sociological Study of the Mothers' Aid Movement” (Ph.D. diss., Washington University, 1975), pp. 311–312Google Scholar.

176. For a vivid example of the tactics used, see Hayhurst, Elizabeth, “How Pensions for Widows Were Won in Oregon,” Child-Welfare Magazine 7(7) (03 1913): 248–49Google Scholar.

177. Leff, “Consensus for Reform,” pp. 400–401, makes this point for mothers' pension legislation.

178. Vose, Clement E., “The National Consumers' League and the Brandeis Brief,” Midwest Journal of Political Science 1 (11 1957): 267–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Athey dissertation, “Consumers' Leagues and Social Reform,” pp. 205–13; and Goldmark, Impatient Crusader, chapter 13.

179. See the discussion in Brandeis, Labor Legislation, p. 689 of the Supreme Court's dismissal of expert evidence in the 1923 decision it rendered in Adkins v. Children's Hospital.

180. From the Supreme Court's opinion in Muller v. Oregon, 208 U.S. 412 (1908), re-printed in Louis D. Brandeis and Josephine Goldmark, Women in Industry, introduced by Leon Stein and Philip Taft (New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1969), p. 5.

181. This is a major theme of the comparisons made between Britain and the United States in Banks, Olive, Faces of Feminism: A Study of Feminism as a Social Movement (Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell, 1986)Google Scholar.

182. Ibid, pp. 79–80; and Borodin, “Women's Crusade,” p. 283.

183. Jacoby, “British and American Women's Trade Union Leagues”; and Boone, Women's Trade Union Leagues in Great Britain and the United States.

184. Banks, Faces of Feminism, parts II and III.

185. Gilbert, Evolution of National Insurance, chapter 2.

186. Thane, Foundations of the Welfare State, p. 85.

187. Banks, Faces of Feminism, pp. 165–66.

188. Susan Pedersen, “The Failure of Feminism,” p. 90.

189. See the discussions in Pedersen, Susan Gay, “Social Policy and the Reconstruction of the Family in Britain and France, 1900–1945” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1989)Google Scholar, chapter 2; and Pedersen, Susan, “Gender, Welfare and Citizenship in Britain during the Great War” (Unpublished paper, Department of History, Harvard University, 05 1989)Google Scholar.

190. Pedersen, “Failure of Feminism,” p. 91.

191. Ibid, p. 95.

192. Ibid. p. 102.

193. See Bureau, Children's, U.S. Department of Labor, Chart No.3, A Tabular Summary of Slate Laws Relation to Public Aid to Children in Their Own Homes in Effect January 1, 1929 and the Text of the Laws of Certain States, Third Edition (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1929)Google Scholar. For example, the very liberal Michigan law allowed aid to any needy mother who was widowed, deserted, divorced, or unmarried, or “whose husband is insane, feeble-minded, epileptic, paralytic, or blind and confined in State hospital or other state institution; incapable of work because of tuberculosis; or inmate of State penal institution.” (p. 12) To be sure, lack of fathers' economic support for children was the bedrock criterion here, so the “male breadwinner” norm was upheld. But as policy developments unfolded in contemporary Britain, that norm was adhered to by tying benefits to the absence of, specifically, a former wage-earning husband. Analysts of social policies for women need to investigate not only whether particular measures emphasized male breadwinning versus women's labor-force participation. Analysts should also look for alternative ways that policies may embody male-breadwinner norms. In this instance, the Michigan statute placed the emphasis on mothers' needs due to the absence of fathers for various reasons (including unwed parent-hood), not on the wage-earning status of husband-fathers.

194. Pedersen, “Failure of Feminism,” p. 105.

195. In the end, a maternalist welfare state did not fully crystallize in the United States. See chapters 10 and 11 in Theda Skocpol's Protecting Soldiers and Mothers, forthcoming.