The Nation. - Department of Government at Cornell University

I ~ .*798 The Nation. June 5, 1995Five world-renowned. scientists exploreEdlted byROBERT B. SILVERSLlvely, lucld, and engaglng,Hlddm Hzstones of Scrence ISa fasclnatlng collectlon of orlgmallnvestlgatlons Into forgottenand neglected aspects ofthe hlstory of sclence.Jonathan Mdler, Ollver Sacks,dnd Danrel Kevles show howand why some dlscoverles andlnslghts emerge wrth greatpromise, only to be dlscardedor forgotten, then re-emergeyears later ds ImportantRlchard Lewontln andStephen Jay Could suggestdeep and largely unacknowledgeddlstortlons In the waysclentlsts and popularlzersallke concelve the structureof the world and Its naturalhlstory“An excellent examinationof important issues in thebiological sciences.”- Kirkus ReviewsAn Alternate Selectlon ofthe Llbrary of Sclence,The Natural Sclence Bookcluband the Readers’ Subscrlptlon.Alliance, a federation of Hull-House reformersand trade union women, she campaignedsuccessfully for the appointmentof women as factory inspectors, althoughher trade union allies, both male and female,eventually opposed the campaign.She finally came into her own andswept into public prominence through amass 1892 campaign against sweatshoplabor. Rousing “publlc opinion”-ratherthan the labor movement-into an uproarthrough speeches, “monster meetings”and lobbying, Kelley also sweptherself into a job with the Bureau of LaborStatistics of Illinois, studying sweatshoplabor conditions and thexploltationof female and child labor. Quicklywork for women, for example, functionedher final report became a bill in the state as a Trojan horse for legislation shortenlegislaturerecommending the eight-hour ing hours for all workers. Kelley and herday for women, a ban on chlld labor colleagues “used gender as a surrogateunder 14 and the abolition of tenement for class-based legislation” and the risinglabor. Passed in 1893, it funded achlef in- tide lifted all working-class boats.spector to enforce it, and John Peter Altgeld,newly elected reform governor,named Kelley. From 1893 to ’97 she wasin the vanguard of state regulation of industrialexploitation.When industrialists swept back intopower in 1897 Kelley was once again thestruggling, intermittently unemployedsingle mother of three-if always able tosend her children to private schools. In1899 she accepted a new Job as generalsecretary of the National Consumers’League in New York. At that point Kelley’sfull national prommence commenced,and this first half of her biography closes.Sklar uses Kelley’s story to present aset of big arguments about gender,class and late-nineteenth-century politlcs.She begins with the assertion that politicsitself is gendered-that gender serves asa fundamental category in understandingpolitlcal processes. In the 1880s and ’90s.electoral politics and the state were inmale hands, Sklar argues; but civil society,which she places at center stage, wasaccessible to women. Women such asFlorence Kelley “used the power of civilsociety to create new powers for thestate,” to increase not only their ownpower but to “expand the power of thestate to do good.”That outcome depended, Sklar argues,upon a dynamic of supply and demand.Just as the first crop of college-educatedwomen graduated in the 1880s and 1890s,all dressed up with nowhere to go andarmed with the tools of social science,men’s politics collapsed into a “governancevacuum.” The gap in the social fabricwidened “to create an urgent publicdemand for the skills white, middle-classwomen possessed and the agendas theyrepresented.’’Into that vacuum marched the womenof Hull-House. In part through crossclassalliances with white working-classwomen, Sklar argues, Kelley and herfriends were able to become “servants ofall”; they “became a voice that served nomaster but the public welfare.” Their riseto state power served “the complementarygoals of social justice for working peopleand an expansion of women’s public authority.”Thus women, in coalition withmen, “achieved what men alone couldnot.” Legislation limiting the hours ofsklar establishes thatthe history of politicalmovements makes nosense without a genderanaIysis.Sklar irrefutably establishes that thehistory of Progressivism-and, implicitly,any political movement-simply doesn’tmake sense without a gender analysis.Equally persuasive is her argument thatthese women became enormously powerfulthrough their reform activities, thatthrough great effort and creativity theywere able to overturn gender barriers tocarve out a new role for themselves aswell as for the state.Whether this led to the empowermentof women, as Sklar argues, seems a thornierquestion. Sklar, like many others, isattracted to Kelley as a heroine in part becauseKelley’s story turns history on itshead to cast women not just as victimsbut as powerful makers of history. Theevidence presented in the book suggests,however, that only a very small circle ofrich white women gained power. FlorenceKelley’s father was in 1870 “one of thewealthiest men in Philadelphia.” JaneAddams’s father was a banker and millowner; she spent $lO,OOO of her ownmoney to found Hull-House. Ellen Henrotin,described as Kelley’s “second mostpowerful ally,” was educated in Dresden