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796 The Nation. June 5, 1995them an unacceptable drolt de regard over the foreign policyof other states. But curbing NATO’s eastward thrust wouldactually weaken the hard-hers politically by validating themoderates’ argument that the West has no military designson Eastern Europe. Russian milltarists now use the specter ofNATO expansion to distract attention from the brutal war inChechnya. Some restraint on NATO’s part would benefit thebrave critics of that war: people like the human rights campaignerSergei Kovalev, the committees of soldiers’ mothersand the journalists who risk their lives to counter the government’spropaganda.To some, all this is beside the point, because they say Russiawill inevitably come to oppose the West, regardless of themoderate forces inside the country. Thls argument holds thatit makes sense to prepare for that eventuality by expandingtween states whose populations contain significant minoritiesthat constitute the majority in a neighboring state, likethe Hungarians in Romania, Slovakia or the Vojvodina regionof Serbia.Other institutions might deal with such problems more effectivelythan NATO. The promise of economic rewards associatedwith membership in the European Union, for example,has already provided leverage for moderatmg the policies ofHungary and Slovakia toward their ethnic minorities. TheO.S.C.E. provides a means that NATO lacks for resolving regionaldisputes, primarily because its membership includesall European states, large and small, plus Russia and the UnitedStates. At the May summit in Moscow, Yeltsln made itclear to President Clinton that he preferred working throughO.S.C.E. rather than an expanded NATO, doubtless becausea proven institution-NATO-to provide security for the he sees Russia as an equal partner in the former but not instates not long out of the Soviet Union’s grasp. A corollary the latter. Finally, if a genuine military alliance were requiredhere 1s that alternative security arrangements are inferior, in- to defend Central and Eastern Europe, the W.E.U. would becluding reliance on collective security, on the Organlzationfor Security and Cooperation in Europe (O.S.C.E.), on theWestern European Union (W.E.U.) or on the United Nations.Although many of the crltlclsms of these organlzations maybe valid, there is no reason to believe that NATO is necessarilybetter suited to dealing with the kinds of threats thestates of Eastern and Central Europe are llkely to encounter.In the near term at least, these countries’ problems willnot come from Russia but from economic crisis, ecologicala better choice than NATO, largely because the United Statesis not a member.A revival of East-West conflict along the lines of the coldwar is hardly inevitable. But few geopolitical decisions wouldencourage it more than expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe.If the Clinton Administration insists on enlarging NATOit runs a serious risk of rupturing relations with Moscow, abreak that could be disastrous at a time when democratic reformersin Russia already face the distinct possibility of beingdegradation, internal ethnic conflict and from disputes be- overwhelmed by the forces of the past. 0BE ALERT!Frustrated by the massive amount of mail and calls the Right is able to on muster any issue at all? Tired of readingabout one travesty of justice after another and not knowing what to do about it? Want to do something concreteto help further the progressive agenda?Now The Nation has a special service to help you get your message across. Each month, NutionAlert issues ahot-button bulletin on an issue you care about: human rights, health care reform, foreign policy, social justice, minorityrights, the environment-so you can do something about the injustices reported on in our pages.We’ll put at your disposal our insider’s Rolodex of key legislators, corporate decision-makers and progressivefriends, so you can reach them by phone, letter, e-mail or fax. Plus,NutionAIert gives you a detailed summary of the issue, a bibliographyfor further reading, and updates on the effects of grass-roots initiatives.Make your voice heard! Become part of a growing political force!Join NationAIert by sending $18 for a one-year membership (12monthly issues) to NulionAIert, c/o TheNalion, 72 Fifth Avenue, NewYork, NY 10011. Or enroll by phone with your Visa or Mastercardat (212) 242-8400 x207. Call or write now to receive our next alert!IT’S YOUR VOICE-USE IT!
iJune 5, 1995 The Nation. 797BOOKS & THE ARTS.intellectually voracious Florence JoinedA Small Circle of Friendsthe first generation of white women ad-DANA FRANKFLORENCE KELLEY AND THE NA-TION’S WORK: The Rise of Women’sPolitical Culture, 1830-1900. By KathrynKish Sklar. Yale. 437pp. $35.In 1886, havlng just completed thefirst (and classic) English translationof Friedrich Engels’s The Condltlonof the Workmg Class in England,Florence Kelley wrote Engels of thedifficulties she was encountering promotinghis book in the United States. Inthe aftermath of the Haymarket affair,revolutionary working-class propagandawas a hard sell. However, she suggested,a most receptive audience existed in theIowa Suffrage Association and in the nation’snewly proliferatmg colleges. Sixyears later she still insisted, “I find more‘root and branch Socialism’ among menand women of the prosperous class thanI do among our native American andIrish American wages earners.” Needlessto say, Engels “responded coolly.”Even at the moment of her greatestcommitment to soclallsm Kelley was neverable to view the world from outslde herown community. Yet she also walkedaway from some of her own class prlvilegesand spent her life trying to helpwhite workmg-class women.Florence Kelley has long been a fasclnatingfigure in part because of that fundamentaltenslon. In many ways she wasthe far left wlng of the crowd of whitewomen centered around Jane Addamsand Hull-House who, beginnmg in 1889,encamped in the middle of Chicago’sslums and dedicated themselves to servingthe victims of industrial capitallsmThese women-among them Addams,who would go on to wln the Nobel PeacePrize; Julia Lathrop, who would head theU.S. Children’s Bureau; and Kelley herself,who served as general secretary ofthe National Consumers’ League from1899 to 1932”are now the subject of agreat deal of attention as among thefounders of the U.S. welfare state.Dana Frank teaches Arnerlcan studresat the Umverslty ofCallfornra,SantaCruz. She IS the author of PurchasmgPower: Consumer Orgamzlng, Gender,and the Seattle Labor Movement, 1919-1929 (Cambridge).Many scholars, including Theda Skocpol,have begun to insist on the historicalimport of Kelley’s cohort as state builders,and as the heroines of a new “gendered”history of politics that views themas powerful pioneers for both social justiceand women’s empowerment. Others,such as Gwendolyn Mink, view their ascendanceless happlly, criticizing the raceand class agendas embedded in the Hull-House generation’s endeavors.Jane Addams oneredFlorence Kelley a job, aplace to live andmembership in whatKeley described as a‘colony of efficient andintelligent women.’Kathryn Kish Sklar’s engrossing newbiography of Florence Kelley lands rlghtin the middle of this debate. Based onvoluminous research, written with acompelling narrative command, this firstof two volumes on Kelley’s life sweepsthrough the world of white reformers inthe late-nineteenth-century United States.Like Sklar’s pioneermg 1973 study ofCatharine Beecher, Florence Kelley andthe Nahon’s Work IS a model of biographythat captures the subject while usingher to dluminate historical processes ofwhich her hfe was part.lorence Kelley was born in Philadel-F phia in 1859, the daughter of Willlam“Pig Iron” Kelley, judge, Congressmanfor thirty years and one of the most powerfulpoliticians of the late-nineteenthcenturyRepublican Party. He dashed offdally missives from his desk in Washingtonpassionately confiding to Florencethe reception of this speech or that bill,conveying a sense of “the immediacy ofpolitical power” that was the key to herlater politics, along with the tradition ofwomen’s benevolent reform she got fromher great aunt Sarah Pugh.In 1876, at the age of 16, the serious andmitted to colleges in the United States. AtCornel1 she appears to have been treatedin many ways as the equal of men of herclass and race.But once she left Ithaca, the bars ofgender discrimination came thuddingdown. Even her father’s connectionscouldn’t get her into graduate school in1882, although they could get her thesis onchild labor published. Driven by a deeplymoral commitment to alleviating the miseriesof the white working class, shesearched for a place in the reform world,teaching evening classes for workingclasswomen back in Philadelphia.Learning that the University of Zurichwould grant Ph.D.s to women, she enrolledthere in 1883 to study government.In Zurich, Kelley burrowed deeper anddeeper into reform circles until she burstupon the inner core of Marxian soclalistexiles from all over Europe. In 1884 shemet and married one, Lazare Wischnewetzky,a Russian Jewish doctor. Soonthereafter she took up the translation ofEngels’s Conditron, while giving birth inquick succession to three children. Themost revealing evidence about the marriageappears in three family photos, inwhich Lazare’s visage appears successivelymore glowering and threatening, Florence’smeeker and more submlsswe.In 1886 the family moved to New York,where Florence sought to dedicate herselfto the socialist cause. But the SocialistLabor Party, the strongest explicitly Marxistgrouping at the time, was lost in Germansectarianism, and Kelley again turnedto cross-class white women’s groups. Shetaught economics at a settlement house,hustled for the appointment of womenfactory inspectors, rushed off letters toeditors and fought for child labor reform.All the whde Lazare beat her.In 1891 she fled with her children andlanded on the doorstep of Hull-Housein Chicago. Jane Addams, herself thedaughter of a prominent Illinois legislator,immediately offered Kelley a job, aplace to live and membership in whatKelley would describe as a “colony of efficientand intelligent women.”Again Kelley groped toward a way toaid white working-class women; againmany of her overtures fell into the gap betweenher intentions and her class politics.First she establlshed a job placement bureaufor domestic servants-but none applied.Then, through the Illinois Woman’s1
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